{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_74748/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_74748","id":"gutenberg_74748","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/74748","summary":null,"tags":["Authorship","Category: American Literature","Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: Humour","Category: Philosophy & Ethics"],"text":"STRAWS _and_\n  PRAYER-BOOKS\n\n\n\n\nBOOKS _by_ MR. CABELL\n\n\n_Biography_:\n\n  Beyond Life\n  Figures of Earth\n  Domnei\n  Chivalry\n  Jurgen\n  The Line of Love\n  The High Place\n  Gallantry\n  The Certain Hour\n  The Cords of Vanity\n  From the Hidden Way\n  The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck\n  The Eagle's Shadow\n  The Cream of the Jest\n  Straws and Prayer-Books\n\n\n_Scholia_:\n\n  The Lineage of Lichfield\n  Taboo\n  The Jewel Merchants\n\n  Jurgen and the Law\n    (_Edited by Guy Holt_)\n\n\n\n\n  _STRAWS AND\n  PRAYER-BOOKS_\n\n  _Dizain des Diversions_\n\n  _By_\n  JAMES BRANCH CABELL\n\n\n  \"_Behold the child, by Nature's kindly law,\n  Pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw....\n  Scarfs, garters, gold, amuse his riper stage,\n  And beads and prayer-books are the toys of age._\"\n\n\n  ROBERT M. McBRIDE & COMPANY\n  NEW YORK  :  :  :  :  :  :  1924\n\n\n\n\n  Copyright, 1924, by\n  James Branch Cabell\n\n  _Printed in the\n  United States of America_\n\n  Third Edition\n\n  Published, 1924\n\n\n\n\n  To\n  BALLARD HARTWELL CABELL\n\n  _is dedicated whatever may be of worth in this\n  volume, or elsewhere in the Biography_.\n\n\n\n\n_Contents_\n\n\n                                                        PAGE\n\n  The Author of Jurgen                                   3\n\n  I A Note on Alcoves                                   25\n\n  II The Way of Wizardry                                49\n\n  III Minions of the Moon                               79\n\n  IV The Thin Queen of Elfhame                         123\n\n  V Celestial Architecture                             139\n\n  VI Romantics About Them                              171\n\n  VII Diversions of the Anchorite                      193\n\n  VIII The Delta of Radegonde                          225\n\n  IX A Theme With Variations                           239\n\n  X Flaws in the Spur                                  267\n\n  The Author of The Eagle's Shadow                     285\n\n\n\n\nTHE AUTHOR OF JURGEN\n\n \"As to the book of the Laws composed by him, what good have they done\n us? And yet he ought (as Lycurgus did the Laced\u00e6monians, and as Solon\n did the Athenians, and Zaleucus the Thurians), if they were excellent,\n to have persuaded some to adopt them. How, then, can we consider\n Plato's conduct anything but ridiculous?--since he appears to have\n written his laws, not for men who have any real existence, but rather\n for a set of persons invented by him.\"\n\n\n\n\n_The Author of Jurgen_\n\n\n\u00a7 1\n\n\"But this is grossly unfair!\" John Charteris complained. \"All these\nlong years you have been promising to write a book about me. And now,\nit seems, I am to remain forever a minor character.\"\n\n\"Well--!\" I admitted.\n\n\"And why, pray?\"\n\n\"Well--!\" I explained: and I went on, \"I mean, of course, that is,\nafter I had given the matter real consideration--\" Then I summed it all\nup even more completely. \"But, come now, Charteris! you, as a writer\nyourself, know how these submitted notions by and by come back from\nthe cellar of what we--well, as one might say, fraudulently--term the\nsubconscious; and come back either transmuted into something quite\ndifferent or else marked Not Available for Our Present Needs.\"\n\nHe shook his head. \"In the fidgeting face of such tergiversation I can\nbut observe that, really, of all things! For, when one considers the\npersons whom you have elected to give a whole book to, civility must\nseek refuge in aposiopesis. Me, look you, me, you have passed over in\nfavor of a moonstruck Kennaston and of that fat little Woods widow!\"\n\n\"The Author,\" I pleaded, \"does not customarily explain why he elects to\ndo anything.\"\n\n\"None the less, I am sure I would have made a most remunerative\nprotagonist. My inconsistencies are amusing: my whimsies, although\ndecorous, are flavorsome: my morals are, if not exactly beyond\nreproach--\"\n\n\"Beyond hope, anyway,\" I suggested.\n\n\"--And, in short, I am inclined to think that, here again, the Author\ndoes not quite understand just what he is about.\"\n\n\"Upon my word,\" said I, \"you touch a truth--\"\n\n\"Each has his m\u00e9tier,\" the little man admitted, modestly. \"The flea\nleaps well, most senators carry their liquor well, whereas the clergy,\none deduces from the numerousness of their children--\"\n\n\n\u00a7 2\n\n\"I mean,\" I interrupted, \"that once you talked to me all through one\nfine spring night. It was about Romance you talked--\"\n\n\"I remember,\" Charteris stated, with a grin. \"I can well remember how,\nin that terrible dawn, after all my lovely rhetoric, you thought I had\nbeen explaining how books ought to be written.\"\n\n\"Well, I do not think that now. I incline, rather, to think you were\ntalking about man's attitude toward life and the universe. I am sure,\nthough, that in all your speaking of books you left unsettled the\nquestion you raised a moment since, as to what the Author is about? For\nwhat reason, in fine, and with what reward in view, does any author\nwrite his books?\"\n\n\"I voiced for you most plainly and mellifluously the principles of his\neconomy--\"\n\n\"Yes: I remember your high observations as to Villon and Marlowe.\nThe artist, you argued, is unwilling to be wasted; and he alone\nmanages--sometimes--to perpetuate himself where everybody else\nperishes. You were quite eloquent about the artist's immortality.\nOnly, I remember too that, toward the end, you admitted a considerable\ndistinction. In art, you cried, it may so happen that the thing which\na man makes may endure to be misunderstood and gabbled over, but it\nis not the man himself. We retain--I am still paying you the handsome\ntribute of exact quotation,--we retain the _Iliad_, but oblivion\nhas swallowed Homer so deep that many question if he ever existed at\nall.\"\n\nCharteris replied with something of the hasty affability appropriate\nto dealings with the insane. \"Now, my dear man! the whole point was\nthat the artist strives to make something which endures--\"\n\n\"I know! You explained what he attempts to do: but you did not explain\nwhy he should want to do it. You did not explain what he gets out\nof it,--beyond suggesting, and then retracting the suggestion, that\nhe aspires to a sort of terrestrial immortality. No, Charteris, you\nexplained, in fine, nearly everything connected with books except why\nan author writes them.\"\n\nHe deliberated this. He said: \"Oh, but I must have made that plain. I\ncan most vividly remember elucidating every bit of the universe, and\nthat rather important detail could not well have been ignored.\"\n\n\"Ignored or not, you left it unexplained.\"\n\nAnd promptly Charteris settled back in his chair, intent to remedy this\nomission.\n\n\"The author, then, very much as I did, will under provocation become\nmagniloquent, and will say this, that and the other. But every author's\nreal reason for writing is that, if he did not write, he would be bored\nto death. He writes because--\"\n\nHere I stopped him. \"No, Charteris! You are too fond of juggling\nphrases with no better end in view than to get pleasure from your own\ndexterity. And I happen to be in earnest. Some twenty years and more,\nyou conceive, I have given over, together with health and eyesight, to\nthe writing of the Biography: and I am nowadays, however late in the\ngame, quite honestly and not unnaturally concerned to find out why.\"\n\n\"So, then! at last, you sympathize with your reviewers!\"\n\n\"It was well enough, in the beginning,\" I went on, \"to listen to your\nEconomist theories: and while you talked I could believe in them,\nalmost. Your verbal jugglery, I do not question, would still have that\neffect. But the moment you have done talking, I can but come back\nto the blunt truth, unwillingly: the artist cannot ever by making a\nstatue or a painting or a book--no matter how long the thing made\nmay last,--immortalize himself. He would come a great deal nearer to\nperpetuating himself by begetting as many children as his natural\nforces and the frailty of his friends permitted--\"\n\n\"Ah, the lewd Jurgen touch!\" said Charteris, regretfully.\n\n\"--And it can in no way concern the artist, either for good or ill,\"\nI continued, \"that something which he happened to make, endures after\nhe has perished. No doubt, you could explain the contradiction in\nyour argument: you slightly married men have learned how to explain\neverything. But, after all, this is an affair in which I want my own\nnotions, not yours.\"\n\n\n\u00a7 3\n\n\"Let me have just one other book to live and talk in,\" Charteris said,\n\"and I will explain the scope and aim of novel writing with such a\ngrace and loveliness as never was! My notions have a freer wing than\nyours: and if you are obstinate about this, you will be encountering by\nand by that statement in the public prints. 'The author has here vainly\nendeavored to recapture the charm of his earlier _Beyond Life_,\nand when he speaks in his own person is by no means so amusing.' That,\nI forewarn you, will be the unanimous verdict.\"\n\n\"I do not altogether aim at being amusing. I want, rather, to wind up\naffairs by contriving an epilogue for the Biography.\"\n\nHe regarded me for some while: and I do not know how to indicate his\nkindly and rather commiserating pensiveness.\n\nPresently he said: \"But I forewarn you, too, that nobody is ever\ngoing to recognise the Biography as an actual fact. You may pretend\nto yourself, if you like, that all your writing is of this one human\nlife reincarnated over and over again, in the flesh of Manuel's various\ndescendants, and endlessly performing the same r\u00f4le in what is, at\nbottom, always the same comedy. The nearest anyone will ever come to\nagreement with you is to admit that you have wasted time and pains\nin patching up a sort of genealogy; and that your books, in fact,\nare--if you think it a merit,--rather monotonously the same, because\nyou are unable to draw any figure other than yourself in a more or less\ntransparent masquerade.\"\n\n\"The charge of monotony--in that word's primal sense, which you might\nwith profit look up in the dictionary,--I acknowledge, and even glory\nin. For, as you say, it is perhaps the main point of the Biography that\nit--and human life--present for all practical purposes the same comedy\nover and over again with each new generation.\"\n\n\"Ecclesiastes, I believe, commented on the same phenomenon. Still, if\nyou want people to read more than one of your books--\"\n\n\"Not my books,\" I amended, \"but my one book, which is the Biography,\nand of which my various publications are chapters.\"\n\nCharteris shrugged. \"My dear fellow! I, in common with the remainder of\nmankind, refuse to admit the possibility of anybody's writing a book in\nnineteen volumes. It simply is not done.\"\n\n\"But,\" he was told, with stubborn modesty, \"but I have done it. Anyhow,\nfifteen volumes--\"\n\n\"Oh, no: you have merely written fifteen books. That is a quite\ndifferent affair, which anyone could manage, given pen and ink and\ntime and a sufficient lack of consideration for one's fellows. The\nconnection of these various books, I can assure you, is either forced\nor imagined: otherwise, they would be an affront to the rest of us.\"\n\n\"Of course,\" I conceded, a bit mollified, \"of course, if you are\nputting the Biography upon a basis with Sir Thomas Browne's Relations\nWhose Truth We Fear--\"\n\n\"I am putting, to the contrary, the author of the Biography,\" said\nCharteris, \"into a phrase.\"\n\n\"And that phrase is--?\"\n\nCharteris grinned. \"The author of _Jurgen_.\"\n\n\"I begin already,\" I commented, \"to dislike that phrase--\"\n\n\"Nevertheless, you need never look to find yourself regarded as\nanything save the author of _Jurgen_ and, just incidentally, of\nsome other books. There, after all, my friend, the Tumble-bug has\nscored: and nobody, for the rest of your lifetime, will you ever hear\nspeak of those other books except, more or less politely, to find\nfault with their likeness or their unlikeness to _Jurgen_. Either\nquality, as you perhaps have learned already, is equally to be deplored\nand shrugged over.\"\n\n\"As the subscriber to a clipping bureau,\" I admitted, \"I have noticed\nthe fact rather unavoidably. Any likeness to _Jurgen_ is the\ntiresome reworking of an exhausted vein: but any difference from\n_Jurgen_ proves my exhausted abilities.\"\n\nAgain beneath his moustache his teeth showed. \"So you remain, you see,\nthe author of _Jurgen_.\"\n\n\"Scott,\" I replied, \"wrote _The Antiquary_; and Thackeray wrote\n_Henry Esmond_; and Dickens wrote _Our Mutual Friend_: yet\npeople even to-day continue to think of them as the authors, severally,\nof _Ivanhoe_ and _Vanity Fair_ and _Pickwick Papers_. So\nI suppose that nothing can be done about it.\"\n\nCharteris regarded me for a lengthened while. \"I see: you have become\nstoically reconciled to having posterity go on thinking of you, for\ncentury after century, as merely the author of _Jurgen_.\"\n\nIt may be that I flushed. \"But, Charteris, I never said--\"\n\nAnd now his shoulders went up. \"My dear man! as if you had to!\"\n\n\n\u00a7 4\n\n\"Yet, in this epilogue at least,\" John Charteris went on, \"you may, as\nit happens by rare good luck, hope to avoid the ephemeral--\"\n\n\"Not utterly,\" I dissented. \"In literary fields there are always\nso many May-flies about--But then, Charteris, I had thought to add\nfootnotes which would explain all such allusions--\"\n\n\"As may be incomprehensible to your readers of a few hundred years\nhence? I see. Such carefulness must be granted to display a kindly\nheart, in an illuminating blaze of self-complacency. But I was in train\nto suggest, my friend, that you might avoid the ephemeral by rather\ndifferent methods.\"\n\n\"As how?\" I asked.\n\n\"By listening,\" replied Charteris, \"to me, while I discourse of eternal\nverities. This happens to be one of my loquacious afternoons--\"\n\nAnd here I raised my hand, in utterly unheeded protest.\n\n\"--For you inform me that you need for this debatable Biography,\"\nJohn Charteris continued, \"an epilogue,--which of course ought to be\nspoken by the same person who afforded the prologue. Well, I shall\noverlook your crass misrepresentation of me in that prologue, which\nyou so ill-advisedly called _Beyond Life_. You will remember how\nmany 'spiritualists' turned to it with fervor, and away from it with\ndisgust? I, none the less, forgive: and off-hand, I would say--\"\n\n\"No, Charteris! No, for I must myself contrive this epilogue--\"\n\n\"But, dear man, I have it already complete, to the last paradox. It is\nin my mind now, hastening to the tip of my tongue--\"\n\n\"No, Charteris, I will not hear you!\"\n\n\"--Art, just as Schiller long ago perceived, is an outcome of the\nhuman impulse to play, and to avoid tedium by using up such vigor as\nstays unemployed by the necessities of earning a living. The artist is\nlife's playboy. The artist, to avert the threats of boredom, rather\ndesperately makes sport with the universe--\"\n\n\"It is a universe you are quitting--\"\n\n\"--For, as you of course perceive, the literary artist plays: he does\nnothing else, except with haste and grudgingly: and the sole end of his\nendeavor is to divert himself--\"\n\nBut I had shaped the Parting Sign of Ageus, which is interpreted\nvariously, but whose efficacy does not vary....\n\n\n\u00a7 5\n\nI hated thus to despatch the little fellow, after we had played\ntogether for all of twenty-two years. Besides, his going was not alone.\nA great many others, I suspected, departed with him: and I fancied\nthat if, rising, I now looked out of the library window as far as the\nMill Road, I might see yonder,--passing now away from me, now that our\ncommerce was over, and travelling in motley companionship through the\ngray spring weather,--all the various men and women whose lives I had\nfashioned for me to play with in my books. Heaven only knew, if Heaven\nimprudently concerned itself with such matters, how many hundreds of\nthem there must be....\n\nAnd now they were all gone, I turned to the task of getting down upon\npaper my notions as to the aims of my writing, and some explanation\nas to what I had been about during the years which I had given over\nto the compiling of the Biography of Dom Manuel's life. For the task\napproached completion: or, rather, the game drew toward its end; and\nthat ending might well be the appropriate season for me to sit out,\nirrevocably, while the others played on.\n\nHowever! once the Biography was really done, and once the volumes as\nyet accessible nowhere save in, as went my resources, that almost\nprohibitively priced Intended Edition, when these had been issued\nuniformly with the rest,--with the Kalki binding, and the usual number\nof misprints,--then I might or might not want to write something else.\nOr perhaps before that time came would come death. Time, either way,\nwould settle the upshot without my aid. Meanwhile I most certainly\nwanted my epilogue, in the shape of a summing up which would explain,\nif only to me, just why I had been at pains to write this exceedingly\nlong book,--which all other persons, whether obtusely or whether in\nself-protection, insisted upon regarding as _Jurgen_ and several\nother books.\n\n\n\u00a7 6\n\nAnd somehow, now that, comfortably replete with luncheon, I approach my\nepilogue, now it is in my mind to make verses rather than to discourse\nin sober and reasonable prose. But I lack any matter, too, that plainly\nprompts to versifying. So I somewhat vacantly consider the trees which\nstand about my library window. At this season they have put off their\nnakedness, but the green of their leaves has not yet come to its full\nvolume. The leaves are sallow and infrequent. They dapple a luminous\ngray sky with much the effect of germs seen under a microscope. The\ngrass in the long field beyond is pale and sodden: for I regard all\nthis in a gray shining pause between the heavy spring rains. The world,\nin preparing to be very beautiful, is for the while disheveled looking:\nand it suggests to me, without any stepping stones of exact analogy,\na handsome woman defamatorily clad in a shabby green dressing-gown,\npoised before her mirror, with her hair already partially loosened in\norder that she may prepare for a festival.\n\nIt is a fine festival for which the world makes ready. It is a pageant\nand a banqueting that will feed all the senses, and will last for\nmonths, until the white winds of November come, like gaunt janitors, to\nremove the furniture and decorations. Life everywhere will burgeon and\nexult, and bear fruit, and wane peacefully.\n\nI mean not only grasses and bushes and trees. There will be a great\nbarking of dogs, and cats also will make the warm night vocal. And\nbirds too will cry out in the night, as if amazed and wistful, and\nthat crying will be very piercingly sweet and, for no reason at all,\npathetic. There will be lambs, and foals, and calves, with amateurishly\nconstructed legs. And of course the young people--But I wonder about\nthose young people! There is upon them a bland hard innocence, like\nthe gloss of white china. It is slippery, and it ever so lightly\nchills. Yet it does seem, essentially, innocence. I recall, with a\nwealth of ancient instances, that my own generation, where it went\nunchaperoned, was remarkably unhampered by innocence: and I wonder if\nmy own generation was like this in the presence of our elders? I do\nnot remember; I feel that nobody could hope to remember a thing so far\naway: and it is in my mind to make verses.\n\nFor I remember many other matters that have to do with moonlight\nand with the touch of young flesh and with a lost consciousness of\nbeing fearless and eternal. Music too seems to be woven through the\nbackground of my memories, not as a thing quite noticed, but as not\never wholly absent. I remember, in fine, youth: and I know that the\nglad magic of youth was always a promise of whose fulfillment one\nlived, then, utterly assured: and I suspect that to be old means\nmerely coming to comprehend that this promise has not been, and never\nwill be, kept. Meanwhile I observe it is still the nature of young\npersons to seek out quiet places in couples, and to evince no distaste\nfor twilight: and I surmise that even those inexplicable automobiles\nwhich stand to the side of our country roads at evening and after\nnightfall have at least two persons inside them. These phenomena\nalso are a portion of the premeditated festival, of that sublimely\nirrational festival whose _ducdam\u00ea_ (as Jaques in the play, you\nwill remember, calls that invocation which draws fools into a circle)\nis still the promise which all, by and by, perceive to stay eternally\nunfulfilled.\n\nNow it is in my mind to make verses about this festival, but I lack\nany matter, here again, that plainly prompts to versifying. We\nolder persons must sit out, sit out forever from this especial form\nof recreation, while others play on. We dare at most to attend as\nchaperons, and with a smile to observe these junketings: for Time, that\nstern old Roman, states outright (in of course his native tongue),\n_Lusisti satis!_\n\nI do not say that we have not equally important things to do, in\nour traffic with affairs of the mind: I would not assert our utter\nreadiness, as yet, for the scrap-heap and the graven tributes of the\nstone-mason. I merely note that we are but, at best, the chaperons at\nthis festival for which the April world is preparing. So we must look\non benevolently, and must preserve decorum, and also must not ever\nconcede what urge it is that prompts this festival.... Still, it is in\nmy mind to make verses....\n\n\n\u00a7 7\n\nThere is, though, I reflect, than this knack of sitting out at the\nright moment, and without sulkiness, from avocations for which the\nunfriendly years disqualify you, no finer, no more beneficent, and no\nmore difficult art. To some, indeed, mere sitting out does not appear\nquite adequate: and there is much to be said for the contention that\nthe key to real success in living is to die soon enough. Yet this is an\nun-American accomplishment: even our leaders rarely show the masterly\ntact of Lincoln; and the result is that most depressing list which\nbegins with Benedict Arnold, continues with William Jennings Bryan and\nAaron Burr, and so passes calamitously through the alphabet to Woodrow\nWilson. There is no one of these transient inheritors of glory but has,\nthrough a mere faux-pas in longevity, impaired his chance of retaining\neternal admiration and applause.\n\nThe writer, though, I think, is over-precipitate in dying at a day less\nthan eighty. By that time he, with steadily failing faculties, will\nhave published a deal of insufferable twaddle: but by that time, too,\nhis name may well have become familiar to a fair number of ponderable\nand unliterary persons; and the excellence of his writing may be\neverywhere conceded as the obvious polite alternative to reading it.\nHe has become in the cultural vista a known, not necessarily majestic,\nfeature: he has won, in fine, to that certain undeniable assured\nposition which no American artist anywhere can hope to secure except\nby prolonged survival of his talents. Longevity, indeed, is with us\nthe one auctorial accomplishment which intelligent people can honestly\nesteem: we tend to share a generous national pride in all gifted\npersons who have painstakingly attained to our common level through\nthe discomforts of senile decay. Time thus induces us to cherish our\nLongfellows and Bryants, and even to tolerate our Whitmans: it enables\nour Joseph Jeffersons to earn a competence upon the stage as soon\nas they have grown too feeble to act: and it has also persuaded us,\nthrough just this self-same sympathetic desire to gladden the last\nyears of every striking case of mental indigence, to establish and\nstock our American Academy of Arts and Letters.\n\nSo I must certainly endeavor to live as long as may prove possible.\nEven if I may not hope ever to be anything more than--in the phrase not\nutterly peculiar to John Charteris,--\"the author of _Jurgen_,\"\nthere may be compensations by and by. And in fact, I turn here to\nthinking, with a pleasant warm thrill, about Mencken's prediction that,\nif I live to be eighty, I too may be elected to the American Academy....\n\n\n\u00a7 8\n\nNone the less, now that I approach completion of the Biography, this\nmay well be the time to sit out from the most high and joyous game of\nwriting. The young are not merely at the door, they are in all the\nadvertising columns devoted to the season's literary masterpieces,\nand behind most of the editorial desks. I, who was but four years\nago a dangerous revolutionary upstart, begin, even among editors and\npublishers, to be treated with something of the gingerly respect with\nwhich one handles antique glassware or a veteran of the War Between the\nStates. Among the really \"vital\" writers, still in strenuous practise\nof their lack of art, \"the old fellow who wrote _Jurgen_\" is\nrelegated at best to the Middle or, as they playfully call it, the\nMuddle generation in American Letters; and I am become a relic vaguely\nassociable with bicycles and hansom-cabs and cigar-store Indians and\ncast-iron deer, and other coeval items of extinct Americana.\n\nSo it may well be time, once the Biography is quite complete, for me to\nsit out from the game of writing, and to make sport with words no more.\nAnd _Lusisti satis_ has a dreary sound, at the first hearing:\nyet I do not know but that it is, in reality, the aptly worded praise\nof attested wisdom. \"You have played enough!\" I shall take it to mean\nthat I have not stinted myself at playing, that I have got out of the\nwriting all the diversion which is allowable.\n\nFor I begin to see fine implications in John Charteris' parting\nstatement that the artist labors primarily, even solely, to divert\nhimself. Whatever Schiller may have said remains to me unknown: but\nI find this theory, of art as play, in notoriously good standing\nelsewhere, among many; and I find, too, by the light of experience, a\ngreat deal in this notion that the artist--or, at least, the artist who\nhappens to be a novelist,--is life's half-frightened playboy....\n\n\n\n\nI\n\nA NOTE ON ALCOVES\n\n \"Such is the present state of the world: and the nature of the\n animated beings which exist upon it, is hardly in any degree less\n worthy of our contemplation than its other features. Yet our first\n attention is justly due to Man, for whose sake all other things appear\n to have been produced by Nature; though with so great and severe\n penalties for the enjoyment of her bounteous gifts, that it is far\n from easy to determine whether she has proved to him a kind parent or\n a merciless step-mother.\"\n\n\n\n\n_I._\n\n_A Note on Alcoves_\n\n\n\u00a7 9\n\n\"The literary artist plays: and the sole end of his endeavor is to\ndivert himself....\"\n\nSeated now at my desk, I weighed the phrase. All valid artists in\nletters might or might not with justice be describable as life's\nhalf-frightened playboys. I, in any event, knew that, whatever other\nmotives might now and then have prompted me, the Biography had been\nwritten in chief for my own diversion. Whenever people had unfavorably\ncriticised my writing--I now perceived,--my first emotion had been,\nalways, surprise at their imagining I had especially tried to give\npleasure to them. I had, instead, for nearly a quarter of a century,\nbeen trying with the Biography to divert myself. That might or might\nnot be the correct principle upon which to write novels: it was most\ncertainly a principle to which I was committed in any justifying of\nthe form and scope of the Biography.\n\nSo I tapped out upon my typewriter, first of all, as a self-obvious\naxiom, \"The literary artist labors primarily to divert himself....\"\n\n\n\u00a7 10\n\nIt is surprising, though, what protean gifts a theme develops once\nyou attempt to grapple with it. When I was just now moved to set down\non paper my personal notions as to the form and scope and aim of the\nnovel, as these notions are illustrated in the Biography, the affair\nseemed simple. With the task actually begun, the typewriter-bell may\nhardly tinkle thrice (for my machine is of a venerable model) before\none sees that the guide to further composition must be that once\ncelebrated chapter, in I forget whose Natural History, upon The Snakes\nof Iceland. It read, as you recall, \"There are no snakes in Iceland.\"\nFor one perceives that the form and scope of the novel, if not\nsimilarly non-existent, at least stay indeterminable in lands wherein\nthe form and the scope of prose fiction stay limitless.\n\nThe aim, however, of the written, printed and formally labeled novel\nis, I take it, to divert. Such is (one may assume with in any event\nquite reputable backing) the only aim of creative writing, and of\nall the arts. But much the same sort of diversion seems to be the\npurpose of a staggering number of human endeavors: and it is when one\nconsiders the novels which are not formally labeled, that the theme\nevasively assumes all manner of shapes, and the field of prose fiction\nis revealed as limitless.\n\nI do not hunt paradox. I wish in real sincerity to acknowledge that our\ntrade of novel writing and publishing is an ineffably minor evincement\nof the vast and pride-evoking truth, that human beings are wiser than\nreason. Pure reason--I mean, as pure as human reason assays,--reveals\nout of hand that the main course of daily living is part boredom,\npart active discomfort and fret, and, for the not inconsiderable\nrest, a blundering adherence to some standard derived from this or\nthat hearsay. But human beings, in this one abnegation infinitely\nwise, here all discard the use of their reasoning powers, which are\nperhaps felt here to be at least as gullible as usual: and brave men\ncheerily deny their immersion in the futile muddle through which they\ntoil lip-deep.... Pinned to the wall, the more truthful of flesh\nand blood may grant that this current afternoon does, by the merest\ncoincidence, prove answerable to some such morbid and over-colored\ndescription by people bent on being \"queer\": but in the admitter's mind\nforgetfulness is already about its charitable censorship of the events\nof the morning, to the intent that this amended account be placed on\nfile with many expurgated editions of yesterday and the most brilliant\nromances about to-morrow.... For human memory and human optimism are\nadepts at the prevarications which everybody grasps, retails and\ntirelessly reiterates: these two it is who coin the fictions which\nevery person weaves into the interminable extravaganza that he recites\nto himself as an accurate summing-up of his own past and future: and\neverywhere about this earth's revolving surface moves a circulating\nlibrary of unwritten novels bound in cloth and haberdashery.\n\nThe wholesome effect of these novels is patent. It is thanks to this\nbrace of indefatigable romancers, it is due to the lax grasp of memory\nand to the perennation of optimism, that nobody really needs to notice\nhow the most of us, in unimportant fact, approach toward death through\ngray and monotonous corridors. Besides, one finds a number of colorful\nalcoves here and there, to be opened by intoxication or venery, by\nsurrender to the invigorating lunacy of herd action, or even by mental\nconcentration upon new dance-steps and the problems of chess and\nauction bridge. One blunders, indeed, into a rather handsome number of\nsuch alcoves which, when entered, temporarily shut out the rigidity\nand the only exit of the inescapable corridor. Life thus becomes for\nhumankind a far different matter from what it would seem to any\nmerely reasonable creature, since life's monotonous main tenor is thus\ndiversified by an endless series of slight distracting interests and\nof small but very often positive pleasures in the way of time-wasting\nand misdemeanor. And in addition, as we go, all sorts of merry tales\nare being interchanged, about what lies beyond the nearing door and the\nundertaker's little black bag.\n\n\n\u00a7 11\n\nThese are not, though, the only an\u00e6sthetics. The human maker of fiction\nfurnishes yet other alcoves, whether with beautiful or shocking ideas,\nwith many fancy-clutching toys that may divert the traveller's mind\nfrom dwelling on the prevalent tedium of his journey and the ambiguity\nof its end. I have not yet, of course, come to consideration of the\nformally labeled novel, for this much is true of every form of man-made\nfiction, whether it be concocted by poets or statesmen, by bishops in\nconclave or by advertisers in the back of magazines. And since memory\nand optimism, as has been said, are the archetypal Homer and St. John,\nthe supreme and most altruistic of all deceivers, the omnipotent and\nundying masters of omnipresent fictive creation, their \"methods\" are\nin the main pursued by the great pair's epigoni; who likewise tend to\ndeal with the large deeds of superhuman persons seen through a glow of\namber lucency, not wholly unakin to that of maple syrup.\n\nOf the romances which make for business prosperity and religious\nrevivals and wars to end war forever, here is no call to speak. Nor\nneed I here point out that well-nigh everyone who anywhere writes prose\nto-day, whether it take form as a tax return or a magazine story or a\nletter beginning \"My dear So-and-so,\" is consciously composing fiction:\nand in the spoken prose of schoolrooms and courts of law and social\nconverse, I think, no candid person will deny that expediency and\ninvention collaborate. It may be true that lies have short legs, but\ncivilization advances upon them.\n\n\n\u00a7 12\n\nI, in any event, get daily bewilderment from considering how\ndeep-rooted seem all life's serious and practical endeavors in\nimplausible fictions. The most long-headed of us, for instance, may\nreasonably confess to some faith in money and in mathematics: these\nthings at least are stable realities, these are the pillars, the very\nBohas and Jakin in the Temple of Common-Sense. And yet, here also, is\ndisclosed by two minutes' consideration another side.\n\nMoney I regard, I hope, with all appropriate gravity. I know that I\nnow and then accept without derisory outcry, even thankfully, small\nmetal disks disfigured with a remarkably unaquiline eagle and the\nfat-jowled head of a female criminal very neatly guillotined. Nor am\nI here deceived by appearances. These things suggest extremely rococo\npoker-chips, they look like counters to be used in playing some sort of\ngame, for the sound reason that this is precisely what they are. And\nwe play. We all play quite gravely, at every hour in our lives, at the\ngame wherein these disks, which in themselves no mortal could regard\nwith \u00e6sthetic pleasure or employ for any imaginable practical purpose,\nare supposed to be worth something. In time we get quite used to these\nhorary excursions of fancy: and indeed we so enter into the spirit of\nthe game as very often to \"buy\" things with a feeling that the clerk is\nswindling us, rather than we him.\n\nBut, as an even more remarkable fiction, I consider the new five-dollar\nbill which I chance this morning to possess. In itself, like the metal\ndisks, it is worth nothing: and its glazed surface chills the thought\nof devoting it to the one use suggested by its general dimensions. It\nbears, though, I find, an engraved assurance that to the bearer of this\npaper the People's National Bank of Strasburg, Virginia, will pay five\ndollars.\n\nSince, as it happens, the president and the cashier of that\ninstitution have not signed in the spaces reserved for them, the\nassurance comes unsupported: for it nobody, so far as I can see,\nassumes any least responsibility. Yet, in any event, if the unsponsored\nstatement be true, such is the sole value of this paper rectangle: its\nonly virtue is that in Strasburg, Virginia, you can exchange it for\nfive dollars.\n\nI have no intention of going to Strasburg, Virginia: I shall instead\nbuy something with this note, under the romantic pretence that the\nshopkeeper is going to exchange it, in Strasburg, Virginia, for\nfive dollars. And he will part with it to somebody else on the same\nimaginative terms. And that make-believe will continue until this note\nis worn out. Meanwhile this bit of paper will gravely be exchanged,\nin varied surroundings, for every sort of commodity.... It will\nbe transmuted into dinners, it will tread the pavements of remote\noutlandish cities in the form of a pair of shoes, and as pajamas it\nwill pass beyond the proper scope of my meditations. It will flower\ninto orchids, it will blaze as coal. Not without ostentation will it\nfall into the collection plate, nor toward Christmas flutter into the\nkettle of the Salvation Army: more furtively will it, thrice-folded,\nslip into the top of the feminine stocking. Darkness will sometimes\nengulf it like a pocket. Very deep will it descend, as fares the sewer\nrat, into grim social underworlds; as most inferior whiskey it will be\nswallowed up; and in the manner of the dead that are laid away, will\nit go down into the steel catacombs beneath banking houses. Thence\npresently it will arise. It will arise unchanged, a trifle deteriorate\nin crispness perhaps, yet very potent to aid in lifting mortgages, in\nraising children, and in elevating many households, I would like to\nthink, in the avatar of two of my books.... But never on any forenoon\nin Strasburg, Virginia, will it be exchanged for five dollars: and the\none purpose for which this paper is so precisely designed is precisely\nthe one to which it will not ever be put.\n\nWhat will in point of fact become of it, I learn after serious inquiry\ninto this mystery--in financial circles, wherein I was humored as a\nharmless lunatic,--is that, when the note gets sufficiently dirty and\ndecrepit, \"some bank will turn it in, at Washington,\" in exchange for\na fresh paper rectangle; and the senior note will then be destroyed by\nTreasury employees. But nobody will ever convey to Strasburg, Virginia,\nthis representation of Benjamin Harrison looking like a dishonest\nSanta Claus, and of the Pilgrims putting ashore at Plymouth Rock to\ninvestigate the phenomena of a wind that blows two ways and of a tree\ngrowing from the ocean. Nobody will ever deal logically with all this\nintricate engraving: and if anybody ever did, he would, as the very\ncream of this monetary fiction, be thought \"queer.\" At worst, his\nsanity would become a matter of medical investigation: at best, he\nwould be given for this paper rectangle another banknote, and the\nromancing would now gild a different Carcassonne.\n\nAnd similarly outrageous seem to any calm considering the fictions\nof mathematics. This fact, indeed, was recently pointed out to me by\nmy small son, in whom his governess was endeavoring to implant the\nconviction that two and two make four. But the child stayed sceptical.\nHe was reservedly polite about a rational \"Suppose you had two apples,\nand I gave you two more apples, how many apples would you have then?\"\nHe conceded with readiness, not unflavored with resignation to the\nobtuseness of grown-up persons, that in such circumstances he would\nhave four apples, but could not eat that many without being real sick.\nYet that two and two, in consequence, make four, he excluded as a\nlogical inference: and he depreciated that inference by stating it did\nnot mean anything. He was, of course, quite right.\n\nFor that \"two and two make four\" becomes, the very instant that you\nplay this familiar axiom the childish trick of thinking about it, at\nbest an unprovable hypothesis. That two apples and two more apples\ncompose four apples is, as my son admitted, plain enough. Or, you may\nchange your unit to a penny, a match, a pencil, or to a bungalow, and\nstill produce convincing evidence to prove your arithmetic. But the\nmathematician requests us to consider an abstract \"two,\" to believe\nin two apples with the pomaceousness removed: his incorporal and\nincorporeal \"two\" has never existed and never can exist. His \"two\" is\nnot merely a fiction, but an inconceivable fiction which the human mind\ncan no more, really, imagine than it can his \"four.\" You need only for\none moment attempt to form some rational and clear-cut idea of this\n\"two\" to perceive that the governess in fact was (with all respect to\nher) talking about incredible fictions, just as my son affirmed.... And\nwhen the mathematician goes on from \"two\" and \"four\" into the higher\nbranches of his romance weaving, and postulates as yet other realities\nhis \"lines\" that have length but no breadth or thickness, or his\n\"points\" that have not even length, you face the choice between fleeing\nfrom his self-evident lunacy and accepting his insane but very useful\nfictions.\n\n\n\u00a7 13\n\nSo do we all exist as if in a warm grateful bath, submerged and soothed\nby fiction. In contrast to the inhabitants of the Scilly Islands, who\nare reputed to have lived by taking in one another's washing, so do\nwe live by interchanging tales that will not wash. There seems to be\nno bound, no frontier trading-post appointed anywhere to this barter\nof current fiction, not in the future nor in the years behind.... Men\nhave been, almost cynically, shown with what ease the romance which we\ncall history may be recast throughout, now that America rejoices in an\namended past which has all been painstakingly rewritten with more care\nof the King's English, and wherein the War of the Revolution takes its\nproper place as the latest addition to the list of German outrages.\nState legislatures dispose of man's arboreal ancestry by passing a\nlaw against it: and Congress, by bestowing upon non-intoxicating\nbeverages an illegal alcoholic content, at once repeats and repudiates\nthe miracle of Cana. Our newspapers continue the war-time economizing\nof intelligence, and still serve patriotic substitutes in serials,\nwherein Black and Yellow and Red perils keep colorful the outlook, and\nfiends oppose broad-minded seraphim in every political difference. Our\nclergy are no less prolific in their more futuristic school of art,\nand on every Sabbath morning discourse engagingly of paradise and of\nthat millennium of which the arrival is at present being furthered by\nthe more \"modern\" of our prelates bringing fearlessly to bear upon the\nmystery of the Incarnation the intellect of a midwife.... The past, the\npresent and the future are thus everywhere presented in the terms of\ngenerally diverting prose fictions: and life is rendered passable by\nour believing in those which are most to our especial liking.\n\n\n\u00a7 14\n\nMan is, they say, the only animal that has reason; and so he must have\nalso, if he is to stay sane, diversions to prevent his using it. Man,\nalways nearing and always conscious of approaching death with its\nunpredictable sequel, and yet bored beyond sufferance by the routine of\nhis daily living, must in this predicament have playthings to divert\nhim from bringing pitiless reason to bear upon his dilemma: and he must\nhave too the false values which he ascribes to these playthings.\n\nThe lines of Pope that I have quoted elsewhere dwell truthfully\nenough upon life's endless playing,--upon the playing of the child\nwith straws and rattles, of the young man with his mistresses, of the\nmature with wealth and worldly honors, and of the aged with rosaries\nand prayer-books. But the solace, the true virtue, of these playthings\narises from the fiction that the player tells to himself about them. No\nchild plays with a straw: he brandishes a sword that has just chopped\noff a dragon's head. The young man, exultant, terrified, touches and\nuncovers, not an expanse of epidermis and small hairs and sweat glands,\nbut the body of a goddess. The banker is reveling in that romance\nabout Strasburg, Virginia: and the aged clasp not a prayer-book but the\nkey to eternal bliss. Everywhere, in fine, the creating romantic who\nlives in every human being is either composing or else borrowing the\nkind of romance which most potently diverts him, and prevents his going\nmad.\n\n\n\u00a7 15\n\nWell, it is the privilege of the novelist--I mean, at last, the\nnovelist who is frankly listed as such in Who's Who--to aid according\nto his abilities in this old world-wide effort, so to delude mankind\nthat nobody from birth to death need ever really bother about his, upon\nthe whole, unpromising situation in the flesh. It is the privilege of\nthe novelist who happens also to be an artist, to blaze a trail upon\nwhich his readers may follow, and be delighted by the by-products of\nhis hedonism. For it is his higher privilege to divert his own thoughts\nfrom unprofitable and rational worrying; and to lead such as may choose\nto follow him in one more desperate sortie from that ordered living and\nfrom the selves of which all men are tired.\n\nSo I suspect there must always be, to the last digit, precisely as many\n\"methods\" as there are novelists. For the endeavor of the novelist,\neven by the lowest and most altruistic motives, is to tell untruths\nthat will be diverting: and of their divertingness he needs, and\nin fact can have (prior to the receipt of royalty statements), no\ntouchstone save only the response which these untruths evoke from him.\nHis primary endeavor must therefore, upon merely rational and sordid\ngrounds, be to divert, not any possible reader, but himself.\n\nBy the novelist who is more tradesman than artist, and who is guided\nby ideals rather than selfishness, this truth is not recognised:\nand he often commits the deadly error of succumbing to praiseworthy\nmotives. He, as a rule, indeed, wrong-headedly begins by considering\nhis public's real virtues and aspirations; he endeavors to strengthen\nthese by finding for them vicarious exercise: and he thus allows\nhimself to be misled into evanescence through philanthropy. Now it is\nthe privilege of the public (which, to be sure, has an alternative)\nto consider the artist: but the artist who for one half second during\nhis hours of play with ink and paper considers anybody except himself\nis contriving a suicide without dignity. For the one really ponderable\nsort of writer--the writer who communicates to us something of his\nown delight and interest in his playing, and who thus in the end\ncontributes to our general human happiness,--has been influenced while\nabout this playing by none save selfish considerations. He has written\nwholly to divert himself: he has for that moment been inclavated to\npleasure-seeking with somewhat the ruthlessness of a Nero and all the\ntenacity of a d\u00e9butante: and if I seem unduly to emphasise this obvious\nfact, it is merely because the man afterward so often lies about it.\n\nSome tale-tellers find themselves most readily bedrugged by yearning\ntoward loveliness unknown and unobtainable: these are, we say, our\nromanticists. To them are, technically, opposed such Pollyannas among\nfiction writers as Mr. Theodore Dreiser and Mr. Sinclair Lewis, who can\nderive a species of obscure \u00e6sthetic comfort from considering persons\neven less pleasantly situated than themselves,--somewhat as a cabin\npassenger on a sinking ship might consider the poor devils in the\nsteerage,--and so turn rhyparographer, and write \"realism.\" The process\nis not unnatural, and has been more or less profitable since at least\nthe time of Pir\u00e6icus.\n\nBut, either way, the inspiring principle remains unchanged: you think\nof that which is above or below you in order to avoid thinking of what\nis about you. So it really does not greatly matter whether you travel\nwith Marco Polo to Cathay or with the Kennicotts to Gopher Prairie.\nThe excursion may be for the purpose of looking at beautiful things\nwistfully or at ugly things contemptuously: the point is that it is an\nexcursion from the place where you regard over-familiar things with a\nyawn.\n\nWhen one considers these truisms,--and fails to see why they need be\ndisputed by anybody not actually engaged in the physical labor of\nteaching or of contributing to the more successful periodicals,--then\nthe form and scope of even the formally labeled novel seems, plainly,\nfluctuating and indeterminable. The novelist, it is apparent, will\nwrite in the form--with such dramatic, epic or lyric leanings as his\ntaste dictates,--which he personally finds alluring: his rhythms will\nbe such as caress his personal pair of ears: and the scope of his\nwriting will be settled by what he personally does or does not find\ninteresting. For the serious prose craftsman will write primarily to\ndivert himself,--with a part thrifty but in the main a philanthropic\nunderthought of handing on, at a fair price, the playthings and the\ngames which he contrives, for the diversion of those with a like taste\nin anodynes. And to do this will content him. For he will believe that\nhe may win to fame by brewing oblivion, he will hope to invent, if he\nprove thrice lucky, some quite new form of \"let's pretend.\" But he\nwill not believe that anybody with a valid claim to be considered a\npost-graduate child can gravely talk about affixing limits to the form\nand scope of that especial pastime.\n\n\n\u00a7 16\n\nAnd so his \"creed,\" to my experience, stays troublingly nebulous.\nAt most he will admit but general tenets to himself, conceding very\nsecretly:\n\nImprimis, I play, when all is said, with common-sense and piety, as my\nfellows appraise these matters, and with death also. I have embarked in\na gaming in which to win is not possible: and every sensible person of\ncourse thinks this extremely foolish. Yet I know that, for my purpose,\nthe opinions of all other persons are negligible. My own opinions, if\nindeed I have the patience and the temerity to unearth them, are, as\nI know also, erroneous; they are unstable: but they remain, none the\nless, the only reliable guides to my intended goal, diversion.... And\nmy rational standards can be adhered to, I consider, with more safety\nif they are kept concealed.\n\nItem, I must find out what are, in reality, my real beliefs: and I must\nset these forth to the best possible advantage; and I must be zealous,\nabove all, not ever to regard my beliefs quite seriously. Human ideas\nare of positive worth in that they make fine playthings for the less\nobtuse of mankind. That seems to be the ultimate lean value of all\nhuman ideas, even of my ideas. I must carefully conceal my knowledge of\nthis humiliating fact.\n\nItem, I must cherish my ideas as I do my children, with a great love\ncommingled with admitted inability to foresee what they may be like\nto-morrow. For my ideas and my impressions, in the moment that these\nvisit and pass away from the consciousness which is I, from the\nfragment of consciousness which insecurely lurks inside this skull,\nare the only realities known to me in the brief while wherein I am, as\nyet, permitted to play with common-sense and piety and death. I will to\nenjoy and play with and, it may be, to perpetuate after my flickering\nfrom this skull, these true realities: if I succeed in perpetuating\nthem, that is well; if I fail, I shall not at all worry about this\nfailure once I am dead, and I am fairly certain to be dead by and by.\nAt worst, the ability and the body and the life which transiently were\nat my disposal will have been really used, both to make something and\nto divert me.... And at best, it would be foolhardy not to keep such\nintentions concealed.\n\nItem, with human life as a whole I have no grave concern, and I am\nbeguiled by no notion of \"depicting\" it. My concern is solely with\nmyself. I have no theory of what we call \"life's\" cause or object;\nnor can I detect in material existence any general trend. The stars\nand the continents, the mountains and these flustering hordes of men,\nevery mole-hill and the diligent dancing of gnat swarms,--all appears\nto blend in a vagrant and very prettily tinted and generally amusing\nstream by which I too am swept onward. If but for my dignity's sake, I\nprefer to conceal my knowledge of this fact.\n\nItem, there is upon me a resistless hunger to escape from use and wont:\nI seem more utterly resolved than are my fellows, not to be bored: and\nit is in my endeavor to evade the tediousness of familiar things that I\nam playing--playing, as I know, quite futilely,--with common-sense and\npiety and death. Such levity tends, it well may be, to no applaudable\noutcome: meanwhile this playing diverts me.... And meanwhile, my\nfellows being what they are, my amusement is a matter very profitably\nconcealed.\n\nItem, I really must, in the teeth of all solicitation, refuse to\nplagiarize anything from what people call \"nature\" and \"real life.\" My\nplaying, which I term my \"art,\" has no concern with things which, in\nany case, are too ill-managed to merit imitation. For, still adhering\nto that simile of the prettily tinted stream, I am persuaded my art\nneed not pretend to be a treatise upon hydrodynamics: my art is well\ncontent to be the autobiography of an unvalued straw adrift in this\nsparkling and babbling stream that hastens toward an unguessable ocean.\nLet us avoid guesswork, since it is profitless. Let us avoid, too, no\nreasonable pains to conceal this fact.\n\nItem, let us avoid, also, the narcotizing perils of reverence,--even\nfor our juniors, who are in all \u00e6sthetic matters invariably in the\nright,--or of being quite as serious about ourselves and our doings\nin collusion with printers and publishers as if mankind and the books\nof men were of grave and demonstrable importance. And let us, above\nall, avoid disastrous candors, and say boldly none of these things.\nLet us who \"write\" protest that we have no concealments, that we\nexpose ourselves entire, and that our unselfish aim is to benefit\nand entertain other persons, the while that we play ceaselessly with\ncommon-sense and piety and death.\n\n\n\n\nII\n\nTHE WAY OF WIZARDRY\n\n\n \"Such star-gazings show you indeed a bluer heaven and bigger stars\n and a sun rising out of the night: yet neither Athos will reveal to\n those who climb up to it, nor Olympos, so much extolled by the poets,\n in what way God cares for the human race, nor make plain the nature\n of virtue and of justice and temperance, unless the soul scans these\n matters narrowly; and the soul, if it engages on the task, pure and\n undefiled, will soar much higher than this summit of Caucasus.\"\n\n\n\n\n_2._\n\n_The Way of Wizardry_\n\n\n\u00a7 17\n\nThe literary artist plays, I had said, with common-sense.... But here I\nharked back, compunctious. For only a moment since I had admitted that\n\"travel with Marco Polo to Cathay\" was, after all, not the sole end of\nour art: such romanticizing was merely one of the two avenues which,\nequally, afforded escape from the tediousness of familiar material\nsurroundings. Yet it was the only avenue I was in train to recommend.\nAnd so I paused here to reflect that in the Biography I had always\nignored the very real and solid claims of \"realism.\"\n\nWell, of that other method of escape, just indicated by my\nconcession of the possibilities of \"travel with the Kennicotts to\nGopher Prairie\"--of the type of diversion which is furnished by\nthe \"realist,\"--I could but admit the existence and the potency,\nrestricted, to be sure, to an unenvied class of minds; and must so\npass on, with no too obvious shuddering. \"Realism\" simply did not\ndivert me, that was all: and thus in my mind ranked with dancing and\nThe Literary Digest[1] and golf, as aberrancies of dullness that I\ncould profitably avoid without reprehending.... Indeed, it had been\nmy droll luck to have some pre-compository insight into the shaping\nof, if not the most notable, certainly the wideliest talked about,\nof this century's \"realistic\" novels; so that I still cherish a\npeculiar leniency for these Kennicotts whom I first met in manuscript;\nand I read their family history with a double sense of guilt. Here\nis the marriage I suggested between the school-teacher and Ramie\nWutherspoon: and I recall, with qualms describable as second cousins\nto remorse, that in a \"realistic\" novel no marriage can ever turn\nout really happily. Here, murdered by me, I am afraid, in the middle\nof another man's book, is the unoffending Scandinavian girl, Bea\nSorgenson, who, but for my lethal intervention, might perhaps have\nthrived and have utilized the resources, and have educed the covert\nvirtues and nobilities of Gopher Prairie, overlooked by the less\npractical heroine in chief; for this was to have been coincidently\nthe story of Bea's success and of Carol's failure as an exponent of\ngeneral social uplift: and would so have converted the whole affair\ninto a feminized and unreadable down-to-date version of the Idle and\nIndustrious Apprentices. I might, I reflect with a troubled spirit, I\nmight perhaps have here struck \"realism\" a shrewd blow by heartening\nLewis in his first suicidal plan.... To the other side, here is Carol's\ntechnical virtue preserved unmarred, in the teeth of my lewd urgings:\nfor I was resolute to have her fall from grace, duly escorted by Eric\nValborg, and then to find that nothing whatever came of it. And here\nis not one of the suggested remedies for the Middle West's regrettable\nprovincialism, of which, but for my protestations and scoffings upon\nbended knees, the reader might have had full benefit. I recall rather\nvaguely the nature, but vividly the great number, of these possible\nremedies which Lewis, once, planned to suggest: and I guiltily\nspeculate if it would not have been the part of true kindliness, as\nwell as of \u00e6sthetic morality, to have encouraged the launching of that\navalanche of constructive criticism upon the unsuspecting reader of\n_Main Street_. He, paralyzed, engulfed, demolished, would probably\nnot ever again, my conscience whispers, have opened another \"realistic\"\nnovel.... At all events, I too had been in this matter of \"realism\" at\nleast once, tinily, a _particeps criminis_. I confessed it, and\nresumed my epilogue.\n\nFor all this seemed remarkably remote from my introductory remark\nabout Marco Polo. I had in mind, then, not _The Travels of Marco\nPolo the Venetian_, but the small novel called _Messer Marco\nPolo_ which Donn Byrne published now some years ago. And it is of\nthis fiction that I wish here to speak more specifically, because of my\npersonal involvement in its fortunes.\n\n\n\u00a7 18\n\nNot often does one sustain the sense of having long awaited the book\nwhich time and chance and a kindred desire in another's being have\ncombined to produce at last, and to make at last a vended commodity, as\neasy now to come by as blotting-paper or bad whiskey. I had this sense\nabout _Messer Marco Polo_. It was, to me, the most delightful of\nsurprises, a bit of unanticipatable flotsam washed up from the wide\nsunless sea of \"realism.\" For we were, at just that time, being edified\nrather remorselessly. Sinclair Lewis had, via the book to which I\nhave but now referred, detected several flaws in the cultural life of\nthe Middle West; John Dos Passos had discovered that the Wilson War\nhad been conducted not altogether as a pleasure trip for the private\nsoldier; and Upton Sinclair was in his customary low spirits. Nobody, I\nthink, could have looked for the coming of a _Messer Marco Polo_\nthrough the auctorial welter,--whose susurrus was after all but a more\nliterate, vast \"Ain't it awful, Mabel?\"--among those fretful waves of\nindignation over the dreariness of small-town life and the loneliness\nof the artist in this unappreciative country, and over how terribly our\narmy swore in Flanders, and over the venality of our press and pulpit\nand every other institution, and (lone lisper of good yet to come) over\nthe imminence of several more stupendous wars that would wipe out us\nand all our sordid existence. And yet, through these gray floods of\nportentous information (here neatly to round off my simile) floated\nthis carved spar of loveliness, with absolutely startling irrelevance.\n\nThat _Messer Marco Polo_ should have \"happened\" at this precise\nmoment seemed a small miracle so pleasure-giving that I hastily waived\nall consideration as to the book's ultimate value. I only knew I had\njoyed in the reading of it, somewhat as the partially starved might\nrejoice in an unexpected windfall of savory food, without any need to\ndeliberate the viands' durability.\n\nNone the less does the tale, some years after that first keen greedy\ngulping of its delights, and after a more leisured third reading,\nremain a very fine and beautiful strange book. I sincerely hope you\nare familiar with it: even if you are not, here is no need for me\nto summarize this tale of how young Marco Polo, loitering through\nyouth's amiable adulteries in thirteenth century Venice, became\nenamored, through report, of the Khan of Tartary's daughter, and of his\nadventuring as he crossed Asia to win to her. It suffices to report\nthat here, in brief, we have a variant of the old high tale of Geoffrey\nRudel and his Far Princess, adorned with very vivid, curious ornament,\nand brought to a d\u00e9nouement no less sad but more soul-contenting.\n\nYet the essential thing about this book, I thought at my first reading,\nwas its prodigality in the transforming magic which--heaven knows, in\nhow few books!--quite incommunicably lends romantic beauty to this\nor that not necessarily unusual or fertile theme, somewhat as sunset\ntinges the wooded and the barren mountain with equal glamour. To me\nthis book at once exposed Donn Byrne as a practitioner of that rare and\nunteachable wizardry without which one writes only words, and without\nwhich the most carefully made sentences tend but to bury one another\nlike neat undertakers.\n\nTechnically, though, the construction of _Messer Marco Polo_ must\nremain always to any novelist peculiarly interesting. To Mr. Byrne,\nin Westchester, N.Y., \"at the second check of the hunt, came the\nmessage that a countryman and a clansman needed me,\" in the person of\nMalachi Campbell of the Long Glen: and it is the old Celt who tells of\nwhat, in a far-off golden yesterday, Marco Polo the Venetian saw and\nencountered in Cataia. So then does Mr. Byrne set about his magicking,\nto lure you from the prosaic to the wonderful, at last to leave you\ncontentedly cuddled in the lap of the incredible. He raises for you, to\nbegin, the milieu of his Westchester,--\"the late winter grass, sparse,\nscrofulous, the jerry-built bungalows, the lines of uncomely linen, the\nblatant advertising boards.\" It is in, seen through, and continuously\ncolored by, this almost Gopher Prairean atmosphere that Malachi evokes\nthe old time and the great plenty of Ireland in the days of her\nchampionship, and the gleaming world of tall Dermot and Granye of the\nBright Breasts and amorous fierce Maeve and Cuchulain in whose heroic\nlooks were love and fire; and evokes too, seen as if beyond and colored\nby the glow of this Celtic wonderland, not merely the opulent sleek\nlife of the heyday and prime of Venice, \"that for riches and treasures\nwas the wonder of the world\"; since past even that, illuminate and\ntinged by all, is evoked also the Venetian's notion of the inscrutable,\ngood-tempered, shining, evil East.\n\nThe tale, thus, seems a fantastic and gracious pageant, saddened\nsomehow by the known evanescence of its beauty, regarded through\nthree opalescent veils: or, rather, all that happens--just as we upon\nreflection prefer to have had it happen,--in the Chinese jasmine\ngarden by the Lake of Cranes, is viewed through a rose-tinted gauze\nof medi\u00e6val fancies seen through thin aureate Celtic mists observed\nthrough the unhued but glazing window-panes of a Westchester, N.Y.,\ndrawing-room. I am by no means sure this curious tour de force was\nworth performing; but I am unshakably convinced that Mr. Byrne \"brings\nit off\" to a nicety.\n\nWell, such was the romance which appeared some years ago without much\nheralding, and which, when I first read it, had existed as a book for a\nmonth or two without attracting any particular attention. And, reading,\nI wondered. For this tale, in itself delightful--for a reason to which\nI shall recur,--seemed to me to be told in words so \"warm and colored,\"\nand so adroitly marshalled as to drive any honest-minded reader to the\nconfessional. I confessed, then, to being uncritically seduced by the\nfact that Mr. Byrne, without apparent effort or shame, wrote perfectly\nof beautiful happenings and seemed no whit afraid of elaborated\ndiction. I confessed to thinking that many of the episodes, perhaps\nmost notably the efforts of Marco Polo to convert to Christianity the\npagan girl who while he talks is merely conscious of the fact that she\nloves the talker, have a queer and heart-wringing loveliness that is\nwell-nigh intolerable. And I confessed to finding the brief chapter\nwhich bridges seventeen years, and winds up the story to \"the true\nrhythm of life,\" a small masterpiece of art and wisdom.\n\nAbove all, I now confess this is the only contemporary book that ever\nI actually sought the privilege of reviewing. And when this task was\nentrusted to me, by The Nation, I indited every word of _Messer Marco\nPolo's_ encomium with a teasing faint suspicion that I was almost\ncertainly writing high-pitched nonsense which I would some day re-read\nwith embarrassment.\n\nAt all events, while the first rapture lasts, said I, let me profess\nthat I most cordially admire this story, and seem to find no praise too\nexquisite. You, I advised potential readers, may derive from it a more\ntemperate pleasure, you may not even enjoy what my more sophisticated\njuniors, I confess, are deprecating as \"this pseudo-Celtic stuff\":\nand, in fact, the tale can hardly appeal to any considerable audience,\njust now, since it \"exposes\" and \"arraigns\" nothing whatever. With\nthat I had no concern. It was merely my affair to tell everybody who\nwould listen that, to my finding, _Messer Marco Polo_ was a very\nmagically beautiful book.\n\n\n\u00a7 19\n\nSo I said all this in a review which I have here more or less exactly\niterated. I count myself to-day fortunate that this review achieved\na brief bewildering sort of fame. Virtuosi thought well of it, it was\nquoted with approval by the literary editors of the leading papers\nof Des Moines and Walla Walla and Mobile. It seemed, indeed, to be\nreprinted illimitably in papers everywhere throughout the country, so\nthat The Nation's honorarium but visited me in transit to the bank\naccount of my clipping bureau. And the publishers reproduced this\nreview at full length in their advertisements, and reproduced it,\nagain virtually at full length, upon the novel's dust jacket.... I\ncould open no periodical wherein reading-matter was advertised without\nencountering the proclamation, \"James Branch Cabell says _Messer\nMarco Polo_ is a very magically beautiful book.\" At first the phrase\nread like a ukase, it had the full and final ring of an imperial\ndecree: later, with so constant repetition, it began to take on somehow\nthe flavor of a taunt, and I would read on a bit further, in the next\nadvertisement, hurriedly.... And people wrote to me about my p\u00e6ans,\nsome to thank me for, as they put it, \"discovering\" the novel for them,\nand some of course to rebuke me as the member of a petty clique of\nassassins, atheists and tomb-defilers who combined thus shamelessly\nto puff one another's books. And in fine there was rarely seen so\nmuch bombilation over any one brief and not especially remarkable\ncriticism, whose only striking characteristics were the dubious ones\nof enthusiasm and sincerity.\n\nBut this to-do had the merit of drawing people's attention to _Messer\nMarco Polo_ and of provoking people to read this small novel. And\nmany thousands joyed in the reading of it, very much as I had done.\nFor here again was the true formula and the hero with whom mankind\npeculiarly delights in imagination to identify itself,--the hero\nwho wanders footloose and at adventure through lands which are to\nhim and to the reader in nothing familiar. It is the formula of the\n_Odyssey_, the formula of picaresque romance, and of all fairy\nstories properly equipped with quests and an indomitable third prince.\nIt is of course precisely the one formula which cannot ever lose its\ncharm so long as men retain that frame of mind which seems coeval\nwith recorded history, of being bored by the routine of their daily\nliving.... And people also found in _Messer Marco Polo_ just the\nquality I had ascribed to this book, the quality which I have vaguely\nindicated as wizardry.\n\n\n\u00a7 20\n\nWizardry is, we know, one of the very oldest of human avocations....\nYet I recall how my friend Richard Harrowby, of Montevideo, once told\nme that, to his mind, the most strange feature of wizardry was the\nadroit consistency with which truth here has always been distorted or\nconcealed. For it stays an indisputable fact, as Harrowby pointed out,\nthat many persons still believe wizardry, in common with its sister\nbranch of witchcraft, to have been a delusion; and that the majority\nof those who are wiser remain at considerable pains not actively to\ndispute this quite common belief. The art of censorship had, in fact,\nhere achieved its oldest and capital triumph.\n\n\"Well, you,\" I admitted, \"know more about such matters than I even\npretend to. So far as I can judge, your friends the wizards have\njust emulated the family doctor and all business men, in their usual\nendeavors, to prolong life and to change less rare materials into\ngold. Their sagas, from the history of Geber to that of Cagliostro,\npresent--in so far, anyhow, as the tale is formally told,--mighty dull\nand sordid reading: and each of these ancient fakirs would seem to have\ngot little enough out of the powers and privileges of the mage who, in\nthat jolly old sonorous phrase, holds in his left hand the branch of\nthe blossoming almond, and in his right hand the clavicles of Solomon.\"\n\nTo which Harrowby replied quite gravely: \"Cabell, you tempt me. You\nreally should distinguish between wizards and sorcerers-- But, no!\nI shall not voice any indiscretions. The day is not yet come, I\ntoo concede, for wise persons to speak candidly about magic, though\nalready, I believe, the day dawns.\"\n\nHis faith in that day is perennial, and at times rather pathetic....\n\n\"For one thing, though,\" I urged him on, \"I am ready to argue that,\njust on material grounds, much of the fabulous wonder-working which our\nlong-headed fathers used to dismiss with a shrug, to-day is taking on a\ndifferent aspect; and that it becomes increasingly difficult to reject\nas a popular delusion performances which our own senses note to the\nright and left of us every day.\"\n\n\"And what,\" asked Harrowby, \"imply these rolling periods?\"\n\n\"Well, I mean that, when I was younger, no intelligent person for one\ninstant saw more than nonsense in the legend that Simon Magus had\nridden visibly through the air in a winged car or that Apollonius of\nTyana could be acquainted with remote events within a minute or two\nafter they happened. Such old wives' tales were outgrown superstitions,\nand that was all there was to it. But to-day--\"\n\n\"In this enlightened age,\" he suggested, with a small smile.\n\n\"--To-day, with the manufacture of aeroplanes ranking as a standardized\nbusiness, and with radios in every third home, these miracles, as\nyou see for yourself, do not sound a bit remarkable. To-day, with one\nprecaution, nobody need question that Pietro d'Apone actually did hold\nimprisoned, each in his separate metal vase, seven spirits to instruct\nhim audibly in astronomy, alchemy and philosophy, in painting, physic,\npoetry and music. The needful precaution is, of course, merely to call\nthese vases phonographs.\"\n\n\"I see, I see,\" said Harrowby, quietly. He was still smiling, for some\nreason or another. \"They were crystal vases, by the way. And they were\nnot phonographs.\"\n\n\"Anyhow,\" I answered, in the dismissory large manner of Mrs. Nickleby,\n\"the principle is the same. And beyond just such material suggestions\nI, for one, would not venture--\"\n\n\"I think,\" Harrowby stated, \"that you will very soon hear others going\nfarther. Men begin to perceive, in a great many other ways, that for\nsome two thousand years has existed covertly a vast fund of knowledge\nand philosophy and religious teaching, not necessarily at odds with the\nmore popular tenets of Christendom, but not sharing anything with these\ntenets nor at all reverencing them.\"\n\nTo me this sounded interestingly insane. So I began, \"But, why--?\"\n\n\"It is, obviously, a fund which its inheritors have been compelled\nto keep occult, through Christendom's set habit of arraigning and\nmurdering out of hand all caught adherents to such irritating\nstandards, as sorcerers.\"\n\n\"Indeed?\" said I, with a pleasant consciousness of now having him\nnicely started.\n\n\"Men are beginning,\" Harrowby continued, \"to discover piecemeal by\n'scientific' methods something of that knowledge which sorcerers, as\nignoramuses call them, have since time's youth attained through rather\ndifferent avenues. And more and more widely is the fact becoming\nrecognized that sorcery and witchcraft and magic were as far from\nbeing popular delusions as they were remote from being implicated with\nChristian mythology, to the imputed extent of siding with the devil\nagainst Heaven.\"\n\n\"You don't tell me!\" I observed.\n\nBut he did. He went on to tell me, in fact, a great deal more. For\nhere, he told me, is a religion really old: and to its adherents that\nfaith which came out of Nazareth seems still, they say, an upstart\naffair which may yet prove ephemeral. So the devotees of that elder\nfaith have not ever really concerned themselves with Christianity,\nnot even those of them who have, for one reason or another, become\nbishops and cardinals and popes. There had been, in the outcome of\nthis indifference, Dick Harrowby considered, something of irony: and\nit was droll enough to reflect that the supreme head of the Christian\nchurch--as when Gerbert of Aurillac, Hildebrand, Felice Peretti,\nBenedict Cajetan or Jacques d'Euse was pope,--had so often been the\ndevout practitioner of an unspeakably more ancient religion.\n\nSo Harrowby talked on, with that rapt gravity which the old fellow\nreserves for discussion of \"the occult\": and I listened, in part almost\nbelieving him, who knew so much more about such matters than did I,\nand in part reflecting that sanity and insanity are, at best, elastic\nterms....\n\n\n\u00a7 21\n\nBut now I listened more attentively: for Harrowby had gone on to\nsuggest that theories now endemic among the miscellaneous gentry whom\nwe inclose in the term \"scientists\"--these \"new\" theories as to a\nfourth dimension,--begin to-day to enable us to see much more than\nnonsense in that reiterated ageless whispering as to men who had sought\nand through the aid of magic had found their diversion in lands not\nformally set down on any map.\n\n\"You mean--?\" I prompted him.\n\nWell, it developed, he meant that certain travellers, this whispering\nhas always reported, had been to very queer places. And returning,\nthey had told discreetly of realms wherein living was much more\nsatisfactorily conducted than in our workaday existence.\n\n\"Yes, but,\" I commented, \"even so--\" I spoke just as a conversational\nspur, just as a dubious provocative: and Harrowby went on.\n\nOne traveller had been down into a twilit country where the people\nwere small and flaxen-haired, and ate neither fish nor flesh of any\nkind. These people, he reported, wore brown caps to which were fastened\nlittle silver bells. Their country knew no sunlight, but was radiant\nwith the shining of what, to the eye, seemed diamonds and carbuncles:\nand nothing noxious nor hurtful was to be found anywhere in this covert\nlovely land.\n\n\"Still--!\" I observed.\n\nAnother spoke of a hollow mountain, wherein you entered to unending\ndelights. And he spoke, spoke as if he were troubled, of the queen of\nthis place. Yes, she was different from other women. And he talked\ntoo of the great Emperor Karl, and of giants and dwarfs, and of the\nWildefrauen, who were more beautiful than the wives and daughters of\nmen.\n\n\"Nevertheless--\" I stated. But Harrowby was in full cry.\n\nSo he went on to tell me how yet another spoke of a palace which was\nbuilded, so far as human sense might judge, of pink seashells and of\ncrystal. A woman was to be encountered there also, very lovely in a\nrobe of green: her eyes were intent and changeless: her black hair was\ninterwoven with red coral. To her postulants she served, in a hall hung\nwith pearls, eight kinds of wine in as many goblets of chased silver:\nand then with a gold frying-pan she prepared the velladen of fish,\nwhich was the marriage feast.\n\nA fourth told of a quite different palace that was designed by the\napostle Thomas; and was builded of Sethym wood and sardius and\nimperishable ebony and ivory and onyx; and was enwrought with the horns\nof reptiles. Before this palace stood a mirror to which you ascended\nupon a stairway of porphyry and serpentine: armed warriors guarded it\nnight and day, for in this mirror you beheld all that was taking place\nin every province and region subject to the master of this palace: and\nwithin this palace you lived among all manner of pleasures and delights.\n\nAnd yet another spoke of an untroubled and great-hearted people ruled\nby one that had not the appearance of a human being. Some said the\nreal name of this ruler was Aradia: others boasted of large reason to\nbelieve the lord of the hidden city of Mommur in everything male. This\nmonarch retained among mankind many secret worshippers, marked with\nthe sign of their service: these worshippers had privileges: and in the\neye of each one of them, when you looked closely, you would find the\nsmall likeness of a horse.\n\nThen also men had been to Blath Annis, and to the Stremb\u00f6lglings, and\nto a secret country among mountains wherein the lost tribes of Israel\nawaited the coming of Anti-Christ, when a fox would liberate them; and\nto the pleasant uplands of Ladaria, about which rolled perpetually,\nwith terrible reverberations, a river not of water but of great stones;\nand to bright Audela, to which the very brave might enter through a\ngateway of fire, and no man could enter except in that way. Whereas\nyet other travellers had journeyed beyond Mistorak and the dreadful\ntrumpets and thunder-blasts of the Vale of the Devil's Head, and had so\nwon to the happy Isle of Bragman--\n\n\"But they came back,\" I suggested, at this point.\n\nYes, all had perforce returned to man's colorless workaday life, to the\ntediousness of over-familiar things, and to the ever-nearing shadow of\ndeath. Yet here and there, and now and then, some men had managed to\nenter into quite other ways of living. Men had in journeying toward\ndeath contrived--sometimes by chance, more frequently by the aid of\nmagic,--for a while to elude the laws of ordinary human life, and for a\nwhile to divert themselves--\n\n\"In alcoves,\" I suggested.\n\n\"Yes, if you like,\" said Harrowby,--\"in alcoves in which the laws of\nhuman polity and of material nature, as we know them, had not any\njurisdiction. The point is that these tales were obviously not invented\nby liars with the intention of deceiving their hearers. For these\ntales, encountered in every part of the world, have never made the\ntiniest concession to plausibility: instead of wooing, they summons\nfaith with the abruptness of a sheriff; and have assumed from the\nfirst that all our best-thought-of theories about the universe are\ncomparable, let us say, to the knowledge which a fly in a dining-car\npossesses as to the management of railways.\"\n\n\"I see,\" I stated, comfortably. \"Men, it was whispered, had, for\nhowever brief a while, escaped from the obligations and restraints and,\nabove all, from the tediousness of workaday life,--that tediousness\nwhich people have always tried to vary and color, under every sort\nof human civilization, with so many forms of fiction. I see.... Yes,\nHarrowby, I see: and your insanity is really a great help to me.\"\n\n\"But,\" he began, \"you have the ladder of seven metals, and you know\nperfectly well the secret of the mirror and the pigeons--\"\n\n\"That,\" I protested, \"isn't the point!...\"\n\nFor I was in fact not at all concerned with the exact amount of truth\nupon which these legends were based. The point, with me, was that men\nhad since time's beginning wanted such tales to be true; and that\nthese stories illustrated man's immemorial and universal desire to\nescape from the self-imposed routine of his daily life. Man had always\nbelieved that he could do this by the aid of wizardry: and in this\nbelief, as I now saw, he had been always and perfectly right.\n\n\n\u00a7 22\n\nFor everywhere, of course,--to-day, just as in Homer's nonage,--this\nneed is contented by the literary artist. The literary artist--he,\nin any event,--does actually fulfil this universal desire, by his\nown especial wizardry. He temporarily endows his followers with the\nillusion of possessing what all alchemists have sought,--unfading\nyouth, wealth and eternal life. He engineers the escape for which men\nhave always longed, and which they have always known to be attainable,\nas here, by magic. And his is the charitable miracle-working which\nenables you to figure enviably in unfamiliar surroundings. Through his\nkind thaumaturgy you, as Odysseus, deal intrepidly with cyclopes and\nascend the ivory beds of goddesses; as Job you get, from any ethical\nstandpoint, decidedly the better of the Lord God of Hosts and reduce\nHim to rhetorical bullying; as the third prince you overpass all\nperils to win to the desired trinket; and as Christian you with a\ndeadly thrust superbly discomfit lion-mouthed, bat-winged Apollyon. It\nis in this fashion that the artist makes sport with the first of his\nthree adversaries, and derides common-sense.\n\nFor common-sense tempts men to be contented with their lot, to get the\nmost from what is theirs, and not to hanker nonsensically after the\nunattainable. At the elbow of each of us lurks always this enchantress,\nwith luring rhapsodies, more treacherous than ever any siren lilted, in\npraise of the firm worth of money and conformity. \"Let us be rational,\"\nshe whispers; \"and let us remember that, whatever we might prefer, in\nthis world two and two make four.\" And with many gaudy enticements\ndoes she prompt the unwary to yield homage to her insensate paramour,\nthe doltish and vain idol of mathematics.... Thus tirelessly, thus\nunabashedly, does common-sense urge every man to obtain in this world,\nsuch as it is, the permitted uttermost from that life which stays\npeculiarly his own: and to the wheedling solicitings of common-sense\nthe literary artist can answer but one word. That word is \"Bosh!\" And\nhaving uttered it, the artist proceeds to divert himself by living\ndozens upon dozens of lives which in nothing resemble the starveling\nand inadequate existence allotted him by the mere accident of birth.\n\n\n\u00a7 23\n\nYes: the creative romanticist alone can engineer a satisfying evasion\nof that daily workaday life which is to every man abhorrent. I am\nconvinced, upon several grounds, that the motive of the literary artist\nis wholly unaltruistic: he blazes for his own pleasuring the trail\nupon which any number of readers may, so far as he cares, follow or\nnot follow, just as they elect, and be hanged to them! Whenever he\njourneys into some such improbable country as, let us say, Poictesme,\nit is, I know, for his own recreation. But I choose here, entirely from\nthe viewpoint of a reader of books, to consider with less scrutiny his\nselfishness than my firm grounds for gratitude.\n\nFor, thanks to these haphazard sorcerers, my life has been a marvellous\naffair. I look back, for example, upon the last month, which, as my\nhigh-flown and roystering way of living averages, has been uneventful\nenough. Yet in that time, I have quested through Thessaly, disguised\nby the old magic of Apuleius as Mr. Gilbert Seldes, in pursuit of\nall the lively arts, and, somewhat more necessitously, of a wreath\nof roses; and have, with an intrepidity which I perforce admired,\nsailed for the moon, to take part in the wars between Endymion and\nPha\u00ebthon.... Descending, I have passed that night with a fair and\ncharming woman--in a bed very white and wide, with two coverlets\nof scarlet silk cloth,--and all our queer intercourse has been\nconducted, amid many other incomprehensible happenings, chastely.\nIn the morning we two went out into sunlit fields; and so came to a\nspring of clear water enclosed by a stone basin, upon which someone\nhad left forgotten a comb of gilded ivory. Entangled in this comb,\nas I (whom men called Lancelot) saw with glad wondering, and with\nthe heroic passion for which I had long suspected myself to have the\ntalent, was near a handful of the hair of Guenevere. And I remember\nhow I thought that gold a hundred thousand times refined would seem\ndarker than midnight compared with the brightest day of that year's\nsummer, if anyone were to set such gold beside this hair.... Soon\npassing thence,--and travelling now under the alias of Gil Blas de\nSantillane,--I have disastrously changed rings with a plump, dimpled\nbrown-eyed niece of the governor of the Philippine Islands; I have\ncome, disguised as a green and gold pasteboard dragon, into the bedroom\nof the most beautiful of Casmirians; I have criticised the sermons of\nthe Archbishop of Granada and found him in nothing different from\nany other author under criticism. Fleeing episcopal wrath, I chatted,\nnear Plessis les Tours, with a thin-nosed and threadbare burgess, who\nturned out to be the most shrewd of kings, and who sent me perilously\njourneying to the court of yet another bishop. But Louis de Bourbon\nhad been murdered, I discovered, at an over-uproarious supper-party\nconducted by the Wild Boar of Ardennes.... So I journeyed instead into\nEngland, to fetch back the Queen's diamonds in good time for her to\nfoil the nefarious Cardinal, by duly wearing these twelve gems when\nshe danced in the ballet of La Merlaison at the f\u00eate of Messieurs\nthe Echevins. In England, though, I wandered so far astray, both\nnorthward and chronologically, that, lost, I paused, under the wood of\nLettermore, to ask my way of red Colin Campbell, in the very moment the\ngreat, ruddy jovial gentleman was shot down from ambush; and through\nthis mishap I became again a fugitive, now wandering through the howes\nand bracken of wild Scotland.... Always, you perceive, no matter what\nmage guided, he kept to the tried formula, and led me, footloose and\nat free adventure, through eras and surroundings which were to him and\nme in nothing familiar.... So that eventually I came, by way of the\nBritish Linen Company's bank, and so past the lair of Tharagavverug, to\nthe steel gate, to The Porte Resonant, of the Fortress Unvanquishable;\nand I am now upon the point of going in to cut off, for the third or\nfourth time, Gaznak's evil head.\n\nYes, looking back, I can see that the last month has been fairly\nvarious and contenting. And I am convinced that I must owe all these\nhappy adventurings to the charity of beneficent wizards rather than\nof mere writing persons. And I elect to think of each and every valid\nromantic novelist as a skilled sorcerer who, accompanied by a suitable\ncort\u00e8ge of readers, departs at will from the workaday world, to travel,\neternally young and always comfortably opulent, upon the blessed way\nof wizardry which conducts him away from boredom, and enables him to\nwander footloose and at continuous unflagging adventure, in unfamiliar\nlands wherein, as Poictesme phrases it, almost anything is rather more\nthan likely to happen.\n\n\n\u00a7 24\n\nAnd I would like to think that every self-respecting novelist goes to\nhis magicking in suitable estate, and follows high and approved old\nformul\u00e6. In any event, so many persons have, at odd times, inquired\nabout my own \"methods\" of composition that it seems well here to jot\ndown what would appear to be a few of the more obvious rules of thumb.\n\nThe novelist, then, most appropriately prologizes his evasion of\ncommon-sense--after of course performing the proper suffumigations\nof camphor and aloes and amber,--by writing his first chapter in\na robe of white, with a triple collar of crystals and pearls and\nselenite. His diet upon this day will be fish. When there is fighting\nin manuscript, the writer may always advantageously, I believe, shift\nto a rust-colored robe adorned with amethysts, and having a belt and\nbracelets of steel,--clothed in which gear, he will while writing\nkeep as near as circumstances permit to the chimney, favored by\nMars. When he is about to kill anyone scriptorially, he will in mere\nself-protection put on a wreath of ash and cypress, and burn scammony\nand alum. He will likewise upon this day be careful to stint none\nof the functions of nature; and will circumspectly remember that he\ntraffics with the wan and ashy overlord of the greater infortune.\n\nBut to bring off a love scene properly, demands of course much more\nelaborate paraphernalia. The room, so far as general experience\nindicates, should be hung with green and rose; the author, whom a\nNubian mute is fanning with swans' down, now is robed in sky blue, and\nwears a graven turquoise ring. Musicians are in attendance, preferably\nchoristers, fiddlers and pipers. Upon the writer's head is a tiara of\nlapis lazuli and beryl, wreathed about with myrtle and roses: upon\nthe auctorial breast a copper talisman opposes to the busied keys of\nthe typewriter the mystic sign of Anael and the inscription AVEEVA\nVADELILITH....\n\nI do not mean that in writing the Biography I myself have always in\nevery detail followed these exact \"methods\" of composition. What with\none thing and another, such as having small children in the house,\na similar account at the bank, and the attendance within candid\nconversational range of one who holds at best the customary views\nas to what may be put up with in a husband,--with such deterrents\nabout, these \"methods\" have sometimes, in some respects, been found\ninexpedient. And so I merely suggest them here as that ideal of conduct\nwhich should be aimed at by the creating romanticist, in absolute and\nstrict logic. For he in reality is a sorcerer, and in consequence is\namenable to the most ancient of rules.\n\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[Footnote 1: An American periodical of the day, designed to cure the\nhabit of reading magazines.]\n\n\n\n\nIII\n\nMINIONS OF THE MOON\n\n\n \"Schiller's _R\u00e4uber_ perverted the taste and imagination of all\n young men. The high-minded, metaphysical thief, its hero, was so\n warmly admired that many raw students abandoned their homes and betook\n themselves to the forests to levy contributions upon travellers. But\n they found that real, everyday robbers were unlike the banditti of the\n stage; and that three months in prison was very well to read about by\n their own firesides, but not agreeable to undergo in their own proper\n persons.\"\n\n\n\n\n _3._\n\n _Minions of the Moon_\n\n\n\u00a7 25\n\nThe literary artist plays, I had said, with piety.... But here I\nwas pleasantly interrupted by the sun's appearance without, and the\nconsequent inrush of new color and of livelier gilding into the massed\nbindings of those books, of so many more books than I shall ever accord\na second reading, assembled upon my library shelves. Everything had of\na sudden brightened, with a cheerfulness which my thinking absorbed,\nsince (even with that awkward question of piety ahead) I had found\nat least one excellent palliation for the devoting of my life to the\nBiography. For the novelist and every creative writer travelled on the\ngay way of wizardry while his less favored fellows, for the major part\nof their journeying, approached toward death through more staid and\nmonotonous corridors.\n\nYet in these corridors men were continually finding alcoves: and these\nalcoves, as reflection had already suggested, were of two sorts. Men\nfound solace in--to continue my figure,--alcoves of useless or even\nof reprehensible action; and in alcoves of thought. By the rogue, and\nby the rather rarer addict of mental exercise, might, at reasonable\nintervals, diversion be obtained as we passed toward the exit at the\nend of the inescapable corridor....\n\nWell, and as I continued idly to regard my books, I noted in particular\ntwo volumes which yet stood side by side. Their appearance in America\nhad been, I recollected, contemporaneous. And these two relatively\nenfranchised types of men--the thinker and the rogue,--had then\nbeen, I considered, afforded exoteric illustration, by that most\nquaint of accidents which gave us simultaneously as published books\n_The Education of Henry Adams_ and _The Legend of the Glorious\nAdventures of Tyl Ulenspiegel_. I could remember thinking that\nnot often were thus coincidently granted, for the first time to\nAmericans, two volumes with such a plausible air of being destined\nfor longevity,--although the cautious would affix to the making of\nthis assertion the rider that each book centres on a personality which\nis by way of being unfairly beguiling. Each protagonist here is a\npersonality evocative of the reader's friendship, in the instant happy\nway in which people between book-covers are privileged to establish\nsuch relationship with beings less permanently issued in flesh; and\nso each of these two evades calm judgment. For to many of us these\nhad figured at once as new-found, heart-delighting and eminently\n\"personal\" friends,--this Ulenspiegel come a-swaggering out of Belgium,\nand this wistful Adams then just released from the decent reticences\nof living,--and we perforce appraised them with a bias of friendship\nrather than by any code of strictly \"literary\" values.\n\nStill, the two figures appeared quite perfectly to illustrate the\nseeking of diversion in alcoves of reverie and of misdemeanor. To\nAdams I decided to come back: and to the Fleming I turned with frank\nconfession that of the somewhat incongruous pair one finds Tyl\nUlenspiegel the more difficult to judge with any pretence of equity,\nprecisely because this Tyl is, as I suggested at the beginning, a\nrogue....\n\n\n\u00a7 26\n\nIt would be pleasant here to digress into speculation why in our\nliterature there should be so few rogues portrayed full-length; and\nwhy America, that in daily life derives such na\u00efve pleasure from\nbeing cheated by \"fine business men\" and \"far-seeing statesmen\"\nshould have produced in its writings no really memorable rogue, with\nthe possible exception of Uncle Remus's Br'er Rabbit. But upon the\nwhole, it appears preferable to say that Tyl Ulenspiegel has been\nfor some five centuries famous among the people of Belgium and the\nNetherlands as a sort of Dutch Figaro or Scapin,--as \"mischief-maker,\njack-of-all-trades, and by turns fool, artist, valet and physician.\"\nThis character was appropriated and ennobled by Charles de Coster\nas the central figure of a heroic romance, _La L\u00e9gende de Tiel\nUylenspiegel_, published in 1867, and since known as \"the Bible\nof the Flemings\"; and it is this book which was, some fifty years\nafterward, translated into our tongue. So much it appears preferable\nto say as simply as possible, because, in Geoffrey Whitworth's\ntranslation, a splendid and great-hearted example of literary art was\nthen rendered into delightfully adequate English: and I incline to\nthink that a masterpiece should be greeted simply and reverently, and\nwithout vain speaking. Even to recommend it to your consideration (as\nI none the less must conscientiously do) seems rather on a par with\nsaying pleasant things about a sunrise.\n\nSo honest comment can but come back to this: for Tyl Ulenspiegel\nhimself one straightway establishes a sort of personal liking, a\nliking unbased on \"literary\" values, and an unmoralizing liking such\nas entraps you into indignation when the reforming Henry the Fifth\nrepudiates that other not-unlovable rogue, Sir John Falstaff.\n\n\"A Fleming am I from the lovely land of Flanders, workingman, nobleman,\nall in one,--and I go wandering through the world, praising things\nbeautiful and good, but boldly making fun of foolishness.\" Such is Tyl\nUlenspiegel's description of himself, in terms a bit over-modestly\nincommensurate to the speaker's variousness. Tyl can, for example,\nbe upon occasion a very pretty fighting-man, performing salutary\nhomicides with an approach to professional despatch and thoroughness.\nFor so often as a national hero finds a deserving person to be rescued\nfrom oppression, ten or twelve adversaries amount, as we sometimes\ndiscontentedly foreknow, to nothing more than to afford, in the moment\nthat their presumption procures for them demolishment, yet another\nproof of the foolishness of the wicked; and all such slight battues\nthe national hero regards as trifles. Thus here, for serious work,\nan Ulenspiegel too requires some three or four fully armed opposing\ncohorts of Spanish cavalry to be discomfited single-handed, and really\nto justify a display of that animation with which Sieur Roland laid\nabout him at Roncesvaux, and which enabled Achilles to choke Scamander\nwith slain Trojans.\n\nSo much of physical prowess, I repeat, one has the fair and ancient\nright to expect of any national hero. Quite another facet of the jewel\nis the roguish, not at all \"heroic\" Tyl of elder legends, who delights\nin perpetrating jokes not always pre-eminent for delicacy. These\nthimble-rigging and cloacinal jeux d'esprit De Coster, to be sure, has\nfor the most part omitted, with here and there just a bland indication.\nFor another matter, although Tyl is devotedly attached to the fair\nNele, and their marriage at the end of his wanderings is a conclusion\nsuch as the erudite describe as foregone, nobody can expect a rogue\nmeticulously to emulate Joseph. The national hero of Belgium, be it\nrepeated, is a rogue.... So there came about inevitably that affair of\nthe beautiful gay-hearted dame whom Tyl escorted to Dudzeel: in all her\ndealings with young men, howsoever impudent, she abhorred in particular\nthe sin of cruelty, and could not be pricked into it. And there was\nthe Walloon maiden into whose home Tyl went one night, to take part in\norgan practise of the right accompaniment to some Flemish love-songs.\nAnd there was the Comtesse de Meghen, another lovely and benevolent\nlady, who offered Ulenspiegel, in the beginning, hospitality, and in\nthe end, her sincerest compliments upon the fact that he did not in\nanything resemble her elderly and flabby husband.... In fine, Tyl\nUlenspiegel marches, in the pride of his youth, about a world of\nbrightly-colored and generous women, and graces a world wherein he\ndisplays as much continence as appears consistent with politeness; and\nwherein Joseph in the final outcome could not manage to combine these\ntwo virtues.\n\nSo likewise this rogue marches, with chance for guide, about a world\nwhich--then also,--was ruled by folly and bigotry; and he goes with\njauntiness, as befits \"a master of the merry words and frolics of\nyouth,\" even in the shadowed places where over-head his betrayed and\ngibbeted kindred fester between him and the sun. His is Hamlet's\nheritage, but the Fleming wears his rue with a marked difference;\nsince the ashes of a martyred father lie upon Tyl's breast without at\nall oppressing a heart whose core is roguishness. And in the presence\nof injustice Tyl Ulenspiegel does not shrink, not even into drawing\nmorals: instead, with chance for guide, he marches. For those who\nwould wrong him his eye and tongue and sword stay keen; and the rogue\nknows these weapons to be in the long run sufficient: meanwhile, that\none should now and then encounter over-troublesome fellows needing to\nbe killed, is as naturally a part of wandering at adventure as that\none should find everywhere girls to be assisted out of virginity and\nflagons to be emptied, and songs to be made beyond any numbering, but\nnever the last song.... So the rogue marches, and puts all things to\ntheir proper uses. And the heart of the reader, given something better\nthan the heart of a flea, goes out to the resistless rogue.\n\nThere is, to be sure, a \"story\": in fact, around this sprightly figure\nDe Coster has woven--contemporaneously, it is bewildering to reflect,\nwith the weaving of a dreary mystery about one Edwin Drood,--an\nintricate romance as cruel as life and considerably gayer. Somewhat to\ndeviate metaphorically, De Coster, in this tale of fifteenth-century\nFlemings in course of being enlightened and uplifted by the auto-da-f\u00e9s\nand hangmen of the Holy Inquisition, has builded a story which is not\nunsuggestive of a time-mellowed fifteenth-century cathedral; with the\ngentry about their devotions, and with peasants joking on the porches,\nand with a stately hymn music accompanying both the aspiration and\nthe guffaws; a cathedral, too, that is no less opulent in glowing\npaintings of rapt saints and archangels than in captivatingly hideous\ngargoyles.... Here again, one is tempted to expatiate, concerning\nthese gargoyles: and I would like here to talk about the superlunar\nbleak buffooneries of the chapter which depicts the death of Charles\nthe Fifth, and his trial in heaven; or to applaud the account of Tyl's\nhunting of the werwolf; or, at least, to note that really intolerable\n\"catharsis by pity and terror\" when Katheline the good witch attempts\nto share her cup of cold water with Joos Damman in the torture\nchamber....\n\n\n\u00a7 27\n\nBut what, above all, remains with us is the figure of the tall young\nrogue who passes hardly any alcove which hide-bound morality has\nlabelled \"Keep Out\" without a little dalliance therein. Ahead is a\nclosed door, lightly ajar, a black door with silver-plated handles,\nwhich one perforce approaches always: in the meantime it is astonishing\nto note what a number of pleasant and blameworthy things one can\ndiscover to do.\n\nReflection finds the circumstance unfortunate that most of the\nagreeable actions of life are either forbidden or else deplorably\nbehedged with restrictions. From drunkenness and from the effects of\ncertain drugs can be obtained moments, and even hours, of conscious\ncontentment: probably in no other way, indeed, is it possible for human\nbeings to induce an unbroken twenty minutes of actual and complete\nhappiness: but with repetition such pleasures increasingly work the\ndeuce of a damage to one's health and purse. Besides, our inefficient\nbodies prove unable to stay comfortably inebriate, for more than a\nbrief while, without drifting into sleep or collapsing in sickness:\nand our equally inefficient medicine men have found out no amiable\nmethod of, in the time-honored phrase, recuperating from alcoholic\nexcesses.\n\nThen also the more intimate recreations of amour, when once you are\nover with the disappointments unavoidably attendant upon loss of\ninnocence, compose a very pleasant pastime so long as the game is\nplayed by relative strangers. Even superficial exploration of the\ncharms and the little ways of any unfamiliar and personable young\nwoman, they tell me, is unflaggingly rewarded and incited to fresh\nexertions by the discovery of some slight novelty or small strangeness.\nThighs differ, breasts are always unpredictable, and the piquant mole\ncontinually \"by himself surprises,\" I am informed. Yet, in America at\nall events, one finds extant a perceptible tendency to deprive the\noldest and most popular of amusements of just this essential element of\nunfamiliarity, by restricting it to married persons; and even within\nthis licensed class to limit each husband to the embraces of his own\nwife. Now with the morality of this social ruling the most precise\nneed pick no fault: I would merely point out that, here again, should\nmonogamy ever become prevalent among us, we would be deliberately\nabating one of the more considerable pleasures of an existence wherein\npleasures are not over-frequent.\n\nNor, of course, not even in actual need, are you allowed to take\nanother person's money away from him except through the tedious\nchannels of business; nor to fare publicly appareled in lovely colors\nexcept just where your necktie shows but stays invisible to--of all\npeople--you alone; nor are you permitted to keep enjoyable, through\nthe amenities of homicide, your commerce with persons who admittedly\nexist but to annoy their fellows. Tyl Ulenspiegel might deal as the\nwhim took him with those obnoxious cohorts of Spanish cavalry. But\nwith us there is never an open season for religious revivalists or\nbook peddlers or collectors of internal revenue: and traffic policemen\nand the conductors of \"tag-days\"[2] and prohibition agents all live in\nexasperating immunity. Even the women you adored, and wrote letters to,\napproach you intrepidly. Everywhere, in fine, this or that pleasant\naction is forbidden or in one way or another restricted; and man, upon\nthe verge of actual, sharp, zestful enjoyment is brought up short by a\ntaboo of his own inventing.\n\nSo it is pleasant--_faute de mieux_, as in our current\nfiction superb worldlings no longer observe to other members of\nthe _\u00e9lite_,--it is very pleasant to indulge in these sports\nvicariously through considering the exploits of the Ulenspiegelian\nrogue who does do these things. And we cannot but rather fondly admire\nthe dashing fellow who commits the pleasure-giving misdemeanors from\nwhich we are held back by prudence or by physical limitations. Every\ncountry rejoicing in the dubious benefit of a history has, they say,\nalike its great national hero and its great national thief: and it\nis a fact that St. George endures in balladry with Robin Hood, St.\nDenis with Cartouche, St. Andrew with Rob Roy. Then, too, if Belgium\nyet remembers Tyl Ulenspiegel, Spain has not yet forgotten Guzman\nd'Alfarache, nor Germany her Schinderhannes, nor Hungary her Schubry.\nEverywhere through the shadowland of legend canter and gallop--with\nthe gleaming eyes of nocturnal creatures, with a multitudinous tossed\nshining of steel,--these \"squires of the night's body, Diana's\nforesters, these minions of the moon,\" whom the prosaic call thieves\nand highwaymen: and everywhere men have admired and cherished some\ncunning strong unconquerable rogue.\n\nThis foible has from the beginning been recognized and shared by the\nliterary artist. It is perhaps one reason (among others) why really\nreputable persons have always felt, however obscurely, that there is\nsomething dangerous in novels; and why the reading of fiction has\nalways been more or less deprecated by all citizens of appreciable\nelevation and influence. And here the well-thought-of are, very luckily\nfor the literary artist, far more profoundly in the right than ever\nthe well-thought-of have comprehended: for in all polities imaginative\nliterature has tirelessly advocated revolution, by depicting the\npossibilities of a more pleasure-giving state of affairs; and in his\ndiversions the artist has consistently tended to identify himself with\nthe rogue and the law-breaker.\n\n\n\u00a7 28\n\nRomantic art has from the first inclined to glorify the breaker of\nlaws current in the artist's lifetime. Nor are the provocatives for\nthis sedition obscure; since no society has ever provided any exact or\ngenerally respected status for the artist, nor afforded him, at most,\nmuch more than the half-contemptuous, cosseting indulgence which is\ngranted to lap-dogs. Moreover, the artist alone is permitted hourly\nto use his reason,--an action which in any other walk of life would\nat once upset business usage or professional etiquette,--because of\nmen's general conviction that here it doesn't especially matter. In\nconsequence the artist has always found our human ordering of this\nworld, under all r\u00e9gimes, to be unsatisfactory; and to offenders\nagainst any part of this ordering he inclines with irrational\nunavoidable sympathy.... You may, in fact, observe that nobody is\nquite at ease in dealing with a policeman: the man represents, however\ngenially, with howsoever bright adornments of figured brass and\nrubicundity, an oppression that is upon us; and while in theory the\nrelation between the legally honest tax-payer and his two hired and\nliveried retainers, the policeman and the mail-carrier, is the same,\none notes in practise a marked difference. The courts and officers of\nthe law, and all legal processes, are matters with which we as if by\ninstinct avoid involvement: for, here again, man occupies somewhat\nthe position of a Frankenstein.... So Robin Hood is voted an unending\ntriumph, from black letter ballads to the moving pictures, and the\nfact that Christ was crucified by due process of law has everlastingly\nendeared His story to romantic art and human sympathy.\n\nNow very often, I daresay, the artist is guided by this sympathy for\nthe rogue without suspecting its existence. Thus even in the most\ngenteel and circumspect of arts,--which I take to be the composition\nof a novel in the English language,--it is droll to find from the\nbeginning the most respectable of scribes, if not always of pharisees,\ndepicting one or another rascally law-breaker with fervors of fond\nadmiration whereof the writer seems wholly unconscious. For the\nEnglish novel began with the rogueries of Lovelace and Tom Jones.\nThen followed the chronicles of Rob Roy and Jack Sheppard and Paul\nClifford, most exemplary and magnanimous of highwaymen. Seth Pecksniff\npresently fell down the steps of his cottage in Wiltshire: and tall\nRedmund Barry fled up to Dublin, just two years later, after his duel\nwith Captain Quin. By and by, in Lymport, the great Mel assumed his\nover-tight lieutenant's uniform, and was laid out in his coffin, by way\nof beginning the tale which his personality infuses all through: and\nthe gay young Master of Ballantrae (after tossing a guinea with his\nbrother) travelled northward from Durrisdeer, singing as he rode toward\nCulloden, with a fine new white cockade in his hat.... For all these\nare rogues, in each of whom his creator obviously joyed, no matter\nunder what protective coloration of moral purpose and of self-deceit.\n\n\n\u00a7 29\n\nThat art is a criticism of life, appears a favorite apothegm among\nthose who know least about either. Yet the statement is true enough,\nin the sense that prison-breaking is a criticism of the penitentiary.\nArt is, in its last terms, an evasion of the distasteful. The artist\nsimply does not like the earth he inhabits: for the laws of nature his\nadmiration has always been remarkably temperate; and with the laws of\nsociety he has never had any patience whatever.\n\nSo the literary artist leaves the earth which he inhabits, daily\nand with no more to-do than daily is made over the same feat by\nprofessional aeronauts. And the literary artist diverts himself by\nconstructing other worlds, whose orderings are different, and to\nhis mind more approvable. All creative writers have thus, whether\nconsciously or no, embarked in an undertaking compared with which\nthe axiomatic attempt to weave ropes of sand or to construct silk\npurses from even less adapt material is a quite sane and unassuming\nenterprise. For the literary artist here is at play with the second of\nhis adversaries, with piety; and has offered to instruct the aggregate\nwisdom of his fellows and even of Omnipotence how to create a more\nsatisfactory world.\n\nBy the less venturous the suggestions thrown out have been partial\nand in the nature of slight amendments to existent orderings. For\ncenturies where magic has attempted to coerce Providence, and religion\nhas urged the bribing of Heaven, whether with burnt offerings or good\nbehavior, here the artist has more urbanely adhered to moral suasion,\nby setting a praiseworthy example for the Demiurge to follow.... Thus\nhas the novelist long proposed, through this delicate intimation\nof setting the example, that a time limit might advantageously be\nplaced upon human discomforts, and immunity from the sum total be\ngranted, say, along with a marriage license. Suitable incomes, it\nhas in the same tactful way been suggested to Providence, should be\nconferred upon all virtuous and guileless persons, for whom the bonds\nof reality rarely afford coupons. And something certainly ought to\nbe done about man's positively dangerous racial custom of getting\nolder and dying; for which the novelist's alternative would seem to\nbe that, after an equitable distribution of confessions and brides\nand unexpected legacies and jail-sentences, everybody should enter a\nstatic condition of middle age. Such at least is the impression left\nby the last paragraphs of our elder novels, with all the characters\ncongealed into perdurable domesticity and standing sponsor for one\nanother's children. Scheherezade is, to me, the only known tale-teller\nwho has punctiliously and convincingly accounted for the future of her\npuppets, after the winding up of each comedy, by stating that they\nwere duly disposed of by the destroyer of delights, and presumably\nthe undertaker.... Let it, in fine, be understood that the business\nof human life, as we know it, will by and by be reorganized, and\neverything be made entirely and permanently different: and fortified by\nthat firm understanding, we can for the present allow the conditions of\nhuman life. That much at least has been from the beginning a proviso\ninsisted upon by every creative writer.\n\nBut those whom life has more deeply disappointed and bored, these turn\nto diverting themselves with worlds that are in everything dissimilar\nfrom the one world with which ill luck has made them familiar. These\nare the romantics, the fantastics, who, cursed with actual imagination,\ndevoted it in youth to pre-figuring what life must be when you became\nan untrammeled adult. They have faced the reality, they have faced the\nreal and incredible antickry of men as social units. They have faced\nit with a candor uncharacteristic of common-sense. And they have now\nno further concern with the laws and other hebetudes of men, except\nto forget these disappointments as utterly as possible, and to divert\nthemselves in worlds of their own creation wherein their whims are\nthe only laws. So Ulenspiegel is sent hunting werwolves; Holy Ma\u00ebl\nis tricked into sailing northward, in a demon-rigged stone trough,\namong fabulous seas and immodest sirens; the huge shadow which bears\nobscurely, as if beneath the wings of a bat, the Seven Deadly Sins, is\ncast across the roof of Anthony's hut in the Thebaid; the Snow Queen is\nbundled into a great sledge painted white, and fetched south to kidnap\nlittle Kay; Alice is lured into the rabbit hole and tumbled, very\nslowly, down that very deep well whose walls were inset with cupboards\nand bookshelves: and the creating romantic is diverted.\n\n\n\u00a7 30\n\nMeanwhile you may note the unreflective raising somewhat of a pother\nover the circumstance that the artist is as a rule disliked and is\nbelittled, if not actually persecuted, by his contemporaries. Yet no\nother outcome can seem more natural, I am afraid, when you consider\nthat the art of every important creative writer is an hourly protest\nthat he finds his contemporaries dull and inadequate persons, and\nthat he esteems the laws which they have devised, and live under, to\nbe imbecile. Laws based upon rationality one could endure: but any\nsane person, as the fretted artist perceives, must regard with an eye\nfull of provisos the professed aim of so many of our laws, to make\nfor the public's general welfare and happiness. For the artist is\nlogical; and therein differs from the majority of his fellows, who\nunthinkingly assume that all efforts to promote the well-being of\nmankind at large are praiseworthy. I myself concede that we are here\napt, through however admirable motives, to act precipitately, where one\ncalm instant's thought would tend to show all such efforts irreligious\nand illogical. By no religious code, and by no course of logic taught\nin any school, is the average man entitled to happiness: his demerits\njustify in logic the earthly misery which religion postulates: and to\nimpose upon him happiness would be, by the best-thought-of standards,\nan unreasonable and blasphemous act, which, one may proudly say,\nAmerican civilization has never come anywhere near committing.\n\nInstead, the orthodox should find it very gratifying to note with what\ncomplete inutility altruism flourishes everywhere, and legal enactments\npullulate to promote men's general well-being; since faith and logic\nalike, I take it, are strengthened by the utterness with which all\nthese laws fail, and, in fact, appear to muddle matters rather worse\nthan ever.\n\nAnd it is perhaps a good thing too that we, who have taxes,\nby-laws, licenses, passports, burial certificates, and permits to\nmarry,--we who must do all that is done by us either in violation\nor with the permission of one or another law, we who live bound\nand fretted by innumerable small legal requirements and taboos and\nrestrictions,--cannot in the least imagine what living must have been\nlike under less omnipresently paternal governments. In simpler and upon\nthe whole less muddle-headed ages the relatively few laws whereunder\nmankind lived did not pretend to accomplish anybody's positive\nbenefit; their slighter and more feasible aim was to prevent your\nundue annoyance of anybody else: and, that secured, the laws took--it\nbecomes a positively incredible concept,--no further account of your\nactions....\n\n--Which is not of course to suggest that the artist fared in more\nArcadian days a whit the merrier. I would not imply that the artist\nwas then content with his material surroundings, nor that in any\nsociety he is likely ever to be content. Here and there, to be sure,\nas I have admitted, he wins to the cuddlings and applause of the\nlapdog with a quaint repertoire of tricks; and dies, some while after\nforgetting these tricks, comfortably enough of being over-pampered.\nBut the romantics, the true romantics, these also, are in a wholly\nun-Falstaffian sense all minions of the moon,--who has condemned them,\nas I recall my Baudelaire, eternally to love the place where they\nare not and the woman whom they know not. Astrology is more exact;\nand, under those whom the moon rules, defines very perfectly the true\nromantic, as \"a soft tender creature, a searcher of and delighter in\nnovelties; unsteadfast, timorous, prodigal; loving peace and to live\nfree from care; hating labor; and content in no condition of life,\neither good or ill.\" To me that last clause seems in every sense\nconclusive.\n\nHe that is born one of the minions of the moon must therefore always\nbe a little at odds with what his fellows describe as piety. For his\nreason, such as it is, compels him to disapprove of most human laws,\nupon the ground of their foolishness, and of most natural laws, upon\nthe ground, not merely of their unreason nor even of their lewdness\nand cruelty, but of their ugly and un\u00e6sthetic results. So that in the\nworlds he builds as both a lesson and a rebuke to Providence, the\ncreative artist inclines to favor and to place in a heroic light such\npersons as Tyl Ulenspiegel and Robin Hood, who, by the standards of\nhuman laws, are better fitted for jail. Nor is that all....\n\n\n\u00a7 31\n\nNo: that is not by any means all. For the romantic enters into frank\ncompetition with nature by attempting not merely to create more\ninteresting persons than nature creates, but also to outvie nature\nby making his creations durable. And, as a sort of supreme affront,\ncreative art now and then plucks from the graveyard one of nature's\nput-by failures, and, with a triumphant, \"See now what I can do with\nthe very material this bungler has flung away!\" converts the dead man\nor woman into an ever-living romantic myth. So are begotten those\nfavored persons whose vitality and whose adventuring each generation of\nmankind renews.... I refer, of course, to such persons as Prometheus\nand Pan and Judas and the Sphinx,--and to Andromeda and Helen of Troy\nand Satan. I refer to the Wandering Jew and Faust and Odysseus, who\nstay always irresistible to the romanticist: and I refer to King\nSolomon and Queen Cleopatra and the knight Tannh\u00e4user, and to Lilith\nand Don Juan also, for whom are yet reserved, we know, the most\nspirit-stirring adventures in the manuscripts of writers still unborn.\nI refer to Blue Beard, and to Dame M\u00e9lusine, and to Punch, and to a\ngreat many others who were so lucky as to originate in a satisfyingly\nromantic myth, and who in consequence stay always real and always free\nof finding life monotonous.\n\nNow, it is an ever-present reminder of our own impermanence to\nnote that no human being stays real. In private annals a species\nof familiary canonization sets in with each fresh advent of the\nundertaker; no sooner, indeed, do our moribund lie abed than we begin\neven in our thoughts to lie like their epitaphs; and all of us by\nordinary endure the pangs of burying ineffably more admirable kin\nthan we ever possessed.... Nor does much more of honesty go to the\nmaking of those national chronicles which Mr. Henry Ford, with a\ncandor that at one time really seemed incurable by anything short of\nfour years in the White House, has described as \"bunk.\" In history\none finds everywhere an impatient desire to simplify the tortuous and\ncomplex human being into a sort of forthright shorthand. Alexander\nwas ambitious, Machiavelli cunning, Henry the Eighth bloodthirsty,\nand George Washington congenitally incapable of prevarication. That\nis all there was to them, so far as they concern the average man: and\nthus does history imply its shapers with the most curt of symbols,\nsomewhat as an astronomer jots down a four's first cousin to indicate\nthe huge planet Jupiter and compresses the sun that nourishes him, into\na proof-reader's period. Always in this fashion does history work over\nits best r\u00f4les into allegories about the Lord Desire of Vain-glory and\nMr. By-ends, about Giant Bloody-man and Mr. Truthful; and rubs away the\nhumanness of each dead personage resistlessly, as if resolute to get\nrid in any event of most of him; and pares him of all traits except the\none which men, whether through national pride or the moralist's large\nplacid preference for lying, have elected to see here uncarnate.\n\nQuite otherwise fare those luckier beings who began existence with the\nadvantage of being incorporeal, and hence have not any dread of time's\nattrition. The longer that time handles them, the more does he enrich\ntheir experience and personalities....\n\n\n\u00a7 32\n\nI found recorded, for example, not long ago, in Mr. Robert Nichols'\nfine book _Fantastica_, the very latest adventures of three\nof these favored beings. And let me protest forthwith that I\nprofoundly enjoyed this book. This trio of stories, about such copious\nprotagonists as Andromeda and the Sphinx and the Wandering Jew, came,\nto me at least, as the most amiable literary surprise since Mr. Donn\nByrne published _Messer Marco Polo_. Here was beauty and irony\nand wisdom; here was fine craftsmanship: but here, above all, were\ncompetently reported the more recent events in the existence of favored\npersons whose vitality and whose adventuring each generation of mankind\nrenews.\n\nI found, for instance, Mr. Nichols writing very beautifully about\nAndromeda. Well, it was Euripides, they say, who first popularized this\nmyth of Andromeda: and, for all that the dramas he wrote about her\nare long lost, it were time-wasting, of a dullness happily restricted\nto insane asylums and the assembly halls of democratic legislation,\nhere to deliberate whether Andromeda or Euripides be to us the more\nimportant and vivid person, in a world wherein Euripides survives as a\nquadrisyllable and wherein Andromeda's living does, actually, go on.\nYou have but, for that matter, to compare Andromeda with the overlords\nof the milieu in which her fame was born, with the thin shadows that\nin pedants' thinking, and in the even gloomier minds of schoolboys\nupon the eve of an \"examination,\" troop wanly to prefigure Cleon and\nPericles and Nicias, to see what a leg up toward immortality is the\nomission of any material existence. These estimable patriots endure at\nbest as wraiths and nuisances, in a world wherein Andromeda's living\ndoes, actually, go on. It is not merely that she continues to beguile\nthe poet and painter, but that each year she demonstrably does have\nquite fresh adventures.... Only yesterday, I reflected, Mr. C.C.\nMartindale had attested as much, in his engaging and far too scantly\nfamous book, _The Goddess of Ghosts_; as now did Mr. Nichols\nin _Fantastica_.... For it is, through whatever human illogic,\nyesterday's fictitious and most clamantly impossible characters who\nremain to us familiar and actual persons, the while that we remember\nyesterday's flesh-and-blood notables as bodiless traits.\n\nSo it comes about that only these intrepid men and flawless women\nand other monsters who were born cleanlily of imagination, in lieu\nof the normal messiness, and were born as personages in whom, rather\nfrequently without knowing why, the artist perceives a satisfying large\nsymbolism,--that these alone bid fair to live and thrive until the\nproverbial crack of doom. Their living does, actually, go on, because\neach generation of artists is irresistibly impelled to provide them\nwith quite fresh adventures.... And no one can, with certainty, say\nwhy. One merely knows that these favored romantic myths, to whom just\nnow I directed the stiletto glance of envy, remain the only persons\nexistent who may with any firm confidence look forward to a colorful\nand always varying future, the only persons who stay human in defiance\nof death and time and the even more dreadful theories of \"new schools\nof poetry\"; and who keep, too, undimmed the human trait of figuring\nwith a difference in the eye of each beholder. For all the really fine\nromantic myths have this in common. As Mr. Nichols phrases it, in\napproaching a continuation of the story of Prometheus one may behold in\nthe Fire-Bringer, just as one's taste elects, a pre-figuring of Satan\nor of Christ or of Mr. Thomas Alva Edison.\n\nAnd this one sometimes guesses to be--perhaps--the pith of such\nmyths' durability, that the felt symbolism admits of no quite final\ninterpreting. Each generation finds for Andromeda a different monster\nand another rescuer; continuously romance and irony endeavor to\ncontrive new riddles for the Sphinx; whereas the Wandering Jew--besides\nthe tour de force of having enabled General Lew Wallace to write a book\nwhich voiced more fatuous blather than _Ben-Hur_,--has had put to\nhis account, at various times, the embodying of such disparate pests as\nthunderstorms and gypsies and Asiatic cholera.\n\nWell! here--just for an instant to recur to _Fantastica_, as\na volume which I delight in commending to the particular notice\nof the urbane,--here one finds Mr. Nichols also writing remarkably\ncontemporaneous parables about the Sphinx and her latest lover, about\nAndromeda and Perseus, about the Wandering Jew and Judas Iscariot.\nThey are, to my finding, very wise and lovely tales; they are, I hope,\nthe graduating theses of a maturing poet who has become sufficiently\nsophisticated to put aside the, after all, rather childish business\nof verse-making. But the really important feature, in any event, is\nthat Robert Nichols adds to the unending imbroglios of these actually\nvital persons, and guides with competence and a fine spirit the\nimmortal travellers. Nor is this any trivial praise when you recall\nthat, earlier, they have been served by such efficient if slightly\nincongruous couriers as Goethe and Charles Kingsley and Euripides and\nEug\u00e8ne Sue, as Matthew of Paris and Flaubert and Nathaniel Hawthorne\nand the Reverend George Crowley.\n\n\n\u00a7 33\n\nFor these great myths have, over and above that quality of which I\nspoke just now as wizardry, some common and not readily definable power\nwhich resistlessly makes captive the dreams of men of all conditions\nand faiths and degrees of intelligence. I can remember puzzling a\nlong while over what conceivable feature these so divergent stories\ncould be said to have in common; since some shared trait must be,\nI reasoned, the explanation of their virtually uniform allure. And\nthese myths baffled me. Their might seemed, as their origin, not\nwholly explicable. I say \"their origin\" because no great romantic myth\nseemed the product of any especial brain. Never could we detect any\nwriter seated at his desk about the diligent invention of any one of\nthese stories, told now for the first time. Rather did legends gather\nslowly and contradictorily, arising none knew whence, about the tale's\nprotagonist, who was by ordinary an actual personage some while since\ndead. By and by somebody had perhaps written down a part of this rumor,\nalways with plain inability to narrate the whole; and the result\nmight be, to the one side an _Odyssey_, to the other a _Juif\nErrant_.... Sometimes one of these inexplicably macrobiotic myths\nhad found no formal chronicler, and for centuries existed in detachment\nfrom literature. There was, for example, I reflected, the fine figure\nof Punch, which imaginative artists had prodigally left unexploited.\nIn fact, nobody except Mr. Conrad Aiken[3] seemed ever to have written\nwith seriousness about Punch; and this superb theme as yet awaited\nmerely the attention of some gifted writer, to enrich the world with a\nmasterpiece. Then there was M\u00e9lusine. There was, for that matter, Blue\nBeard.... All these stayed uncommemorated with any adequacy as yet, and\nwere, despite that fact, no whit the less recognizable as magnificent\nand immortal.\n\nI could not see that these old stories had anything whatever in\ncommon; and even if in these ageless fables some shared feature were\ndiscovered, that would hardly explain the unvarying strange sequel.\nIt would not, I thought, explain the emergence from the \"story\" of a\nfigure which, the story done with, and all its incidents put behind,\ncontinued to live on in other stories, and continued through generation\nafter generation to have quite fresh adventures. Nothing seemed able\never to explain that. Yet it was a fact. One was tempted to imagine\nthese immortal figures had guiles of their own, and exerted strange\npotencies less to afford the artist a fruitful theme than to demand\nhis service. Man here again, it might be, enacted his not infrequent\nr\u00f4le of Frankenstein.... At any rate, the secret was not in the\nstories: artists did not repeat these stories, but instead arranged new\nimbroglios for the old tales' protagonists.\n\nOf course the truth was that these figures, for one reason or another\nas yet unrevealed to me, were such as, for that reason, appealed to\na majority of creating romanticists. They were toys with which, for\nhowsoever veiled causes, the artist peculiarly delighted to play. It\nmight, I guessed, have been the element of dubiety which fascinated,\nand the half-vexed feeling that, when all which is apparent to sense\nand rationality had been checked off and labeled, much yet remained\namenable to neither. It might be, just as I had said, the pith of\nsuch myths' durability that the felt symbolism admits of no quite\nfinal interpreting; and so arouses the not utterly rational suspicion\nthat the whole truth about these mythic figures has never yet been\napprehended by anybody.\n\n\n\u00a7 34\n\nStrikingly did this seem exemplified by the perennial magic of Pan.\nHis epopee, as taken over by the artist, was virtually eventless. Pan\nfigured in no story of marked interest or importance. He merely was:\nand what he was, nobody had presumed to voice with any precision.\nPan was but indicated--always with a queer effect of the narrator's\nsuspecting somebody might, undesirably, be eavesdropping,--by this\nvague talk about a hirsute wanderer with the horns and feet of a goat\nand a taste for pipe-playing: these features were, you knew, not the\nessentials. Such tales recorded only small and immaterial truths,\nas if--you somehow knew,--you were to define the Pope as an elderly\nCatholic who wears underclothing and eats breakfast, or a duly\nnominated candidate for the White House as a Protestant of unexigent\nhonesty. So the creating romanticist had begun to divert himself with\nguesses about Pan: and now these guesses filled libraries.\n\nBut Pan was not in the library. He was afield, he was in all the\nmagazines for the month after next now on the news-stands, having quite\nfresh adventures, which yet-living poets were under a tribal bond to\ncontrive for him. In the records of English literature research might\nlook in vain for any considerable poet who had not paid his scot of\ncontriving some fresh adventure for Pan, and Pan yet roved the jungle\nof free verse. Pan, alone of the old Hellenic gods, had thus lived on,\nand had survived all his peers. Pan would not, to be sure, especially\nregret them, since he had never forgathered with the other gods....\n\nAnd there, in that seemingly irrelevant fact, I began to detect a\ndarkling light. Pan had never forgathered with the other gods: Olympos\nhe appeared at utmost to visit now and then, with, as I recall _The\nBook of Job_, a curious similarity to Satan's coming among the sons\nof God, \"from going to and fro in the earth and walking up and down in\nit.\" Pan, also, that unexplainedly dreadful and lonely wanderer, was\nthe divine outcast. In the one existent story, that of Psyche, wherein\nPan was represented as having any even very remote dealing with the\nother gods, his part was to aid a mortal against them. Pan, alone of\nthe gods, had abandoned, and at a pinch sided against, Heaven. And that\nmight well be the reason why the romantic artist had cherished him.\n\nThat perhaps was why Pan had become for romanticists the Master. That\nmight be why, when Olympos crumbled, romanticists had set between\nthose ungainly horns the pentagram; had caused this hairy brown body\nto burgeon with scales and feathers; had given to the most virile of\nthe gods the breasts of a woman; and had kindled in his honor the moons\nof Chesed and Geburah. The goat god had thus, alone of the Olympians,\nendured. He endured as Baphomet, as Azazel, as Janicot, as Eblis; as\nthe Master of the Gnostics, the Master of the Sabbath, the Master of\nthe Two Moons, moons which had, here again, their minions....\n\nI shall not, in this place, speak at any length of what the prosaic\nperhaps do well to regard as bedlamite nonsense: here I shall only\nindicate from afar the mystery I could not ignore. For I knew that\nthe romantic had whispered of two scapegoats, of Christ and Pan, the\nsaviors severally of religion and of art: the one dying in atonement\nfor human sin, in the manner of the stainless beast which was\nsacrificed in the Temple; the other serving men in the manner of that\nother beast, not necessarily immaculate, which was loaded with the\nsins of the twelve tribes, and driven out of the Temple forever, as\none consecrated not to death but to life, and condemned not to rest\nbut to the exile's freedom, in those desert places which belonged to\nPan-Azazel. For it is recorded--where we would least look for it, even\nin our English Bible,[4]--that the Lord of Sabaoth commanded such\nsacrifice and such honor be divided between Himself and the goat god,\nas equals share. And it is recorded too, in the sacred lore of the\nMoslems, that to the Master of the Two Moons, and to that especial\nmanifesting of Pan which the East called Eblis, was relinquished by\nHeaven--through a compact such as, once again, is made by equals,--the\noverlordship of all loneliness, of wine, of verse and song and\nrhetoric, and of all the arts. You will perceive this is, very exactly,\nthe heritage of the creating romantic....\n\nWell! thus Christ had His servitors, whose reward was to be, by and by,\nin a land fulfilled with the glory of the Sun, eternal rest: and Pan,\nthe Master of the Two Moons, had mustered likewise his minions, whose\nreward was their work. By these exceedingly diverse saviors, I knew,\nhad been evolved the magic of the sanctuary and of the wilderness,\nthe white magic and another magic rather less candid. So had arisen\nthe messiahs who led men severally to hope for contentment to come,\nor to create contentment, somehow, even in this unsatisfying life and\nmoment.... Pan was, in fine, the god who had looked upon the divine\nhandiwork, and seen that it was not good; or, at any rate, not good\nenough. The creating romanticist had always hoped that somewhere must\nat least one such clear-sighted god exist; and, finding him, had\nworshipped appropriately....\n\nAnd so I got my clue, and esteemed it, upon the whole, unwelcome.\n\nFor I saw that the one feature common to all the great mythic figures\nover whose deathlessness I had been puzzling, was that each was a\ndivine and unrepentant outcast, that each one of them was a rebel who\nhad gained famousness by warring in one way or another against Heaven.\nAnd that might be, I felt uncomfortably, just what had made them to\nall creative artists irresistible. Here well might lurk, for so long\nunapprehended by me, another and more lurid instance of art's need to\nmake sport with piety; here revealed in art's unfaltering endeavor to\nglorify not merely the rogue but the rebel. Once the discovery might\nhave pleased me. But nowadays, rebellion in any form really does seem\nrather unurbane and almost certainly futile: and very much as penitent\nVillon turned monk, or as the wild Highlanders ceased to rebel after\nthe Stuarts lost in 'Forty-five, so have I found the same numeral to be\nremarkably sedative.\n\nNevertheless, at the bottom of his heart, the romantic artist, I\nknew, has not ever been in harmony with Providence and this world's\nDemiurge. He has not ever honestly believed, as I recall the dicta of\nJohn Charteris, that this world reflected credit upon its Maker. And\nso, toward offenders against this divine ordering the artist might\nwell incline with unavoidable, unreasoning and, I preferred to think,\nunconscious sympathy.\n\n\n\u00a7 35\n\nCertainly, of the myths I have named, all save two deal with\nprotagonists who are condemned perforce to struggle against, and who\ncontrive to thwart, inimical gods, as did Andromeda and Odysseus; or\nwho rebel with the volition and candor of Satan and Tannh\u00e4user and\nPrometheus. But the myths of the Sphinx and of Queen Helen rest upon\nother bases of impiety.... Helen, indeed, stands pedestalled above the\nbickerings of mere gods.... And to the romantic the Sphinx has never\nreally been that offensively feeble-minded monster who molested \u0152dipus\nwith a conundrum so inane as to result, quite properly, in the death\nof its perpetrator. Instead, the Sphinx has become, for the romantic,\nthe one being who foreknows the answer to all riddles and the outcome\nof all experience. And because of this foreknowledge, obviously denied\nto demiurgically experimenting gods, the Sphinx does nothing.... This\ndreadful certitude, equally male and female, as was Baphomet and as\nwas the veiled Lord of Mommur, this quietness that is equally a beast\nof the field and an unslayable immortal, this very large and pitiless\nfelinity, lies waiting; and waits in blasphemous and perturbingly\nuntroubled ease. The years pass; pious nations come into being and high\npower and pass; heaven is no longer great enough to contain a catalogue\nof the gods that have reigned in heaven: the Sphinx, men say, has never\nstirred. For the Sphinx waits. All the august doings of Olympos and\nSinai and Valhalla have been witnessed by the Sphinx: and the most\nfavorable interpreting of that changeless face is, upon the whole, to\nhope it wears the provisional smile we bend toward the playing of not\nyet unbearable children. And therein lies the impiety of the waiting\nSphinx, in this amused deep comprehension that there is no need to\nrebel against our gods.... For the Sphinx is immortal: and the secret\nof the Sphinx, men say, is that secret which the harried gods strive\ndesperately to surmise: the Sphinx knows why no god may ever hope to be\nimmortal.\n\n\n\u00a7 36\n\nYes: all these so inexplicably popular myths commemorate a rebel\nagainst Heaven's orderings. Each myth, in one fashion or another,\nadopts the true Byronic posture of looking the Omnipotent in the face\nand imparting to Him the, upon the whole unstartling, information that\nHis evil is not good. And that--where every dictum is perforce an\nhypothesis,--that well may be why these especial myths, rather than\nothers, overruled the art of yesterday; and why upon us is yet laid\ntheir mastery, from which the spiritual descendants of us who are\nminions of the moon shall not escape.\n\nNo matter into what sort of world this planet develops, through\nhowsoever laudable a magic-working of social and mechanical and\nhygienic improvements, that future also belongs to these inscrutable\nimmortals. Into that world, however handsomely it all be changed by new\ninventions and fresh fallacies, I think, they will come as conquerors.\n\nFirst will come Helen. I mean that Helen who was verily at Troy. For\nthe wife of Menelaus, we know, did not ever come to this city: and\nPhilostratus tells us how the whole truth as to the Greeks' crusade, in\nthe high cause of outraged morality, was revealed by Achilles' ghost\nto Apollonius of Tyana. \"For a long time we leaders of the Ach\u00e6ans\nwere deceived and tricked into fighting battles in Helen's behalf,\nthrough our belief that she was in Ilium; whereas she really was living\nin Egypt, in the house of Proteus, whither through the device of Zeus\nshe had been snatched away from Paris. But when we became convinced\nof this, we continued fighting to win Troy itself and the riches of\nTroy and the power these riches would give to us, proclaiming that\nthis empire must be destroyed in order that the world might be made\nsafe for democracy.\" And from Egypt Helen's husband--if that at all\nmatters,--duly retrieved her on his way homeward when the warring was\ndone.\n\nBut Hera, it is recorded, gave to Paris that woman's likeness, made of\nthe white mists of night and of dawn's rosy-colored clouds and of the\ngolden clouds of sunset, and shaped in that perfect loveliness with\nwhich Hera had before this time betrayed Ixion, leading the King of\nThessaly to beget upon this shining phantom a dreadful spawn of twisted\nand blotched monsters.... And this bright emptiness was what the heroes\nfought for, in the most famous yet not by any means the most irrational\nof all the wars that have ever been. And when the warring was done, the\nleaders shared the spoils with much quarreling, and maimed soldiers\nknew they had fought for a colored mist, in this war also.\n\nSo Troy fell because the appearance of this phantom had beauty without\nany flaw. And the Trojans died. And the Greeks died. And Menelaus and\nhis wife died too. And in time Queen Hera also died. But the phantom\nthat had been at Troy endured, masterless, purposeless, and immortal.\n\nWherever men have been, she too, the romantic aver, has passed like\na cool flame of marsh-fire, passionlessly, inconceivably bright:\nand of the beauty of this Helen there are many tales recorded. Yet\nwhosoever has not seen her, it is declared by these poets also, to\nhim beauty remains but one of the words he puts upon paper. They that\nhave seen her, are a wistful folk who go thereafter with dazzled eyes\nand can write nothing truly. None the less does Helen keep her old\ncomplaisance; she, impassionate, denies not anything to the passion of\nher lovers: and they may still beget upon her loveliness all manner of\ntwisted and blotched monsters, in the fashion of the King of Thessaly.\nSo art endures, and critics and curators are providentially provided\nfor. And Helen grants to her lovers everything except happiness: that\nthey may never hope for; that she has not to give, nor has she ever\nknown of it, who goes as a bright emptiness, without any like or\nkindred anywhere save in the monsters which are her spawn, as Helen\npasses from the ruining of one lover to another lover, masterless,\npurposeless, and immortal....\n\nYes, Helen will come first, I think. And near to her, no doubt, will\nfollow her servitors from of old, crafty and great-thewed Odysseus, and\nFaust, in the pulled down cap and the furred robe of a scholar. And Don\nJuan, and pallid, desperate Tannh\u00e4user, and Ahasuerus, who has put away\ndespairing and hope forever, will come too; with many others.\n\nAnd for an instant these thronged myths will look smilingly upon\nthe ensorcelled romanticists of that far-off strange future. In\nthat instant all the \"new\" schools of literature will perish; all\nthe magazines sufficiently \"vital\" to be in bankruptcy will suspend\npublication; and--for that single instant,--the youngest of that far\nday's \"realists\" will cease from telling about what a devil of a fellow\nhe was at college.\n\n\"Now,\" these immortals will say, \"do you leave off this foolishness,\nand contrive for us fresh adventures.\"\n\nAnd the tale-tellers will obey.\n\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[Footnote 2: The reference is to a then prevalent form of brigandage\nand blackmail practised by the females of the smaller American cities,\nby which reputable women also were permitted to \"accost\" and to\nexercise all the other street privileges of strumpets.]\n\n[Footnote 3: A minor poet and essayist of the period.]\n\n[Footnote 4: In the Revised Version: King James's bishops hushed up\nthis awkward matter with a pious mistranslation.]\n\n\n\n\nIV\n\nTHE THIN QUEEN OF ELFHAME\n\n\n \"This pleasing method of instilling instruction into the mind has been\n found by experience to be the shortest and best way of accomplishing\n that end among all ranks of persons. The fable of The Poor Man and His\n Lamb, for example, as related by Nathan to King David, carried with\n it a blaze of truth that flashed conviction on the mind of the royal\n transgressor: and many lessons of reproof, religion, and morality, we\n find to be continually delivered in this mode by the sages.\"\n\n\n\n\n_4._\n\n_The Thin Queen of Elfhame_\n\n\n\u00a7 37\n\nThe literary artist plays, I had said, with these large ageless\nsymbols. And all artists would, I thought, continue indefinitely in\nsuch playing, because their fundamental desire in life is not quite the\nsame desire which guides their fellows. The artist is as other men:\nhe may well, in common with Shylock, assert himself to be fed by the\nsame food and subject to the same diseases as a Christian is: and yet\nbetween him and the Christian is a difference.\n\nCertainly, there was a difference: and the nearest I could come to\ndefining this difference was to say it lay paradoxically housed in\nthe circumstance that the artist, precisely like the most zealous of\nChristians, is in this material, four-square world not ever utterly\nat home. The Christian's desiderated home, we knew, was heaven: but\nthe artist, as I had suggested, looked to a somewhat different savior.\nMeanwhile the artist went among men as a visitor, evincing at once\nthe astonished interest and the detachment of a tourist in a foreign\ncountry. His home, and his fundamental desire, stayed elsewhere. This\nworld of men and women did not content nor even vitally concern him:\nand always he wanted--no matter with what nebulousness he envisaged his\nneed,--something else, which, somehow, was his heritage.\n\nSome day, the artist felt, he would set forth to seek and find this\nneeded something, like Anavalt in the old tale which I had once retold.\nAnd I fell here to recalling the story of Anavalt's last quest. For\nI had been assured time and again that this tale was a parable of a\nwithdrawal from life to the solaces of art, and that there was some\nobvious symbolism, toward the end, in a seemingly off-hand reference\nto the tenuity of canvas and of paper. And I could only reply with the\nadmission which youth finds it impossible to make about anything, but\nwhich with age comes easier. I said, I do not know. Nescience seemed\nalike the end and the beginning of the old story, which narrated why so\nmany silken ladies wept....\n\n\n\u00a7 38\n\nFor even just how many silken ladies wept, well out of eyeshot of their\nhusbands, when it was known that courteous Anavalt had left Count\nEmmerick's court, remains an indeterminable matter. But it is certain\nthe number was large. There were, in addition, the tale tells, three\nwomen whose grieving for him was not ever to be ended: these did not\nweep. In the meanwhile, with all this furtive sorrowing some leagues\nbehind him, and with a dead horse at his feet, tall Anavalt stood at a\nsign-post, and doubtfully considered a rather huge dragon.\n\n\"No,\" the dragon was saying, comfortably, \"no, for I have just had\ndinner, and exercise upon a full stomach is unwholesome. So I shall not\nfight you, and you are welcome, for all of me, to go your ways into the\nWood of Elfhame.\"\n\n\"Yet what,\" says Anavalt, \"what if I were to be more observant than you\nof your duty and of your hellish origin? and what if I were to insist\nupon a fight to the death?\"\n\nWhen dragons shrug in sunlight their bodies are one long green\nglittering ripple. \"I would be conquered. It is my business to be\nconquered in this world, where there are two sides to everything, and\nwhere one must look for reverses. I tell you frankly, tired man, that\nall we terrors who keep colorful the road to the Elle Maid are here for\nthe purpose of being conquered. We make the way seem difficult, and\nthat makes you who have souls in your bodies the more determined to\ntravel on it. Our thin Queen found out long ago that the most likely\nmanner of alluring men to her striped windmill was to persuade men she\nis quite inaccessible.\"\n\nSaid Anavalt, \"That I can understand; but I need no such baits.\"\n\n\"Aha, so you have not been happy out yonder where people have souls?\nYou probably are not eating enough: so long as one can keep on eating\nregularly, there is not much the matter. In fact, I see the hunger in\nyour eyes, tired man.\"\n\nAnavalt said:\n\n\"Let us not discuss anybody's eyes, for it is not hunger, nor\nindigestion either, which drives me to the Wood of Elfhame. There is a\nwoman yonder, dragon, a woman whom ten years ago I married. We loved\neach other then, we shared a noble dream. To-day we sleep together,\nand have no dreams. To-day I go in flame-colored satin, with heralds\nbefore me, into bright long halls where kings await my counsel, and my\nadvising becomes the law of cities that I have not seen. The lords of\nthis world accredit me with wisdom, and say that nobody is more shrewd\nthan Anavalt. But when at home, as if by accident, I tell my wife\nabout these things, she smiles, not very merrily. For my wife knows\nmore of the truth as to me and my powers and my achievements than I\nmyself would care to know: and I can no longer endure the gaze of her\nforgiving eyes, and the puzzled hurt which is behind that forgiveness.\nSo let us not discuss anybody's eyes.\"\n\n\"Well, well!\" the dragon returned, \"if you come to that, I think it\nwould be more becoming for you not to discuss your married life with\nstrangers, especially when I have just had dinner, and am just going to\nhave a nap.\"\n\nWith that the evil worm turned round three times, his whiskers drooped,\nand he coiled up snugly about the sign-post which said \"Keep Out of\nThese Woods.\" He was a time-worn and tarnished dragon, as you could\nsee now, with no employment in the world since men had forgotten the\nmyth in which he used to live appallingly; so he had come, in homeless\ndecrepitude, to guard the Wood of Elfhame.\n\nAnavalt thus left this inefficient and outmoded monster.\n\n\n\u00a7 39\n\nAnd the tale tells how, when Anavalt had passed this inefficient and\noutmoded monster, Anavalt went into the wood. He did not think of the\ntilled meadows or the chests of new-minted coin or the high estate\nwhich belonged to Anavalt in the world where people have souls. He\nthought of quite other matters as he walked in a dubious place. Here to\nthe right of Anavalt's pathway were seen twelve in red tunics: they\nhad head-dresses of green, and upon their wrists were silver rings.\nThese twelve were alike in shape and age and loveliness: there was no\nflaw in the appearance of any, there was no manner of telling one from\nanother. All these made a lament, with small sweet voices that followed\nthe course of a thin and tinkling melody: they sang of how much better\nwere the old times than the new; and none could know more thoroughly\nthan did Anavalt the reason of their grieving, but since they did\nnot molest him he had no need to meddle with these women's secrets\nany more. So he went on: and nothing as yet opposed him; at most, a\ngrass-hopper started from the path, sometimes a tiny frog made way for\nhim.\n\nHe came to a blue bull that lay in the road, blocking it.\n\n\n\u00a7 40\n\nThe tale tells that a blue bull lay in the road, blocking it. The tale\nnarrates that this beast appeared more lusty and more terrible than\nother bulls, telling of how all his appurtenances were larger and\nseemed more prodigally ready to give life and death.\n\nCourteous Anavalt cried out, \"O Nandi, now be gracious, and permit me\nto pass unhindered toward the striped windmill.\"\n\n\"To think,\" replied the bull, \"that you should mistake me for Nandi!\nNo, tired man, the Bull of the Gods is white, and nothing of that\nserene color may ever come into these woods.\"\n\nAnd the bull nodded very gravely, shaking the blue curls that were\nbetween his cruel horns.\n\n\"Ah, then, sir, I must entreat your forgiveness for the not unnatural\nerror into which I was betrayed by the majesty of your appearance.\"\n\nWhile Anavalt was speaking, he wondered why he should be at pains to\nhumor an illusion so trivial as he knew this bull to be. For this of\ncourse was just the ruler of the Kittle cattle which everywhere feed\nupon the dewpools. The Queen of Elfhame, in that low estate to which\nthe world's redemption had brought her, could employ only the most\ninexpensive of retainers, the Gods served her no longer.\n\n\"So you consider my appearance majestic! To think of that now!\"\nobserved the flattered bull; and he luxuriously exhaled blue flames.\n\"Well, certainly you have a mighty civil way with you, to be coming\nfrom that overbearing world of souls. Still, my duty is, as they say,\nmy duty; fine words are less filling than moonbeams: and, in short, I\ndo not know of any sound reason why I should let you pass toward Queen\nVae.\"\n\nAnavalt answered:\n\n\"I must go to your thin mistress because among the women yonder whose\nbodies were not denied to me there is one woman whom I cannot forget.\nWe loved each other once; we had, as I recall that radiant time, a\nquaint and callow faith in our shared insanity. Then somehow I stopped\ncaring for these things, I turned to matters of more sensible worth.\nShe took no second lover, she lives alone. Her beauty and her quick\nlaughter are put away, she is old, and the home of no man is glad\nbecause of her who should have been the tenderest of wives and the most\nmerry of mothers. When I see her there is no hatred in the brown eyes\nwhich once were bright and roguish, but only forgiveness and a puzzled\ngrieving. Now there is in my mind no reason why I should think about\nthis woman differently from some dozens of other women who were maids\nwhen I first knew them, but there is in my mind an unreason that will\nnot put away the memory of this woman's notions about me.\"\n\n\"Well,\" said the bull, yawning, \"for my part, I find one heifer as good\nas another; and I find, too, that in seeking Queen Vae one pretext is\nas good as another pretext, especially from the mouth of such a civil\ngentleman. So do you climb over my back, and go your way, to where\nthere are no longer two sides to everything.\"\n\nThus Anavalt passed the King of the Kittle cattle.\n\n\n\u00a7 41\n\nAnavalt thus passed the King of the Kittle cattle, and the tale tells\nhow Anavalt journeyed deeper into the Wood of Elfhame. No trumpets\nsounded before him as they sounded when the Anavalt who was a great\nlord went about the world where people have souls: and the wonders\nwhich Anavalt saw to this side and to that side did not disturb him,\nnor he them. He came to a house of rough-hewn timber, where a black\nman, clothed in a goat-skin, barked like a dog and made old gestures.\nThis, as Anavalt knew, was the Rago: within the house sat cross-legged,\nat that very moment, the Forest-Mother, whose living is innocent of\nevery normal vice, and whose food is the red she-goat and men. Yet upon\nthe farther side of the home of perversity was to be seen a rusty nail\nin the pathway, and bits of broken glass, prosaic relics which seemed\nto show that men had passed this place.\n\nSo Anavalt made no reply to the obscene enticements of the Rago.\nAnavalt went sturdily on, to a tree which in the stead of leaves was\novergrown with human hands: these hands had no longer any warmth in\nthem as they caught at and tentatively figured Anavalt, and presently\nreleased him.\n\nNow the path descended, among undergrowth that bore small purple\nflowers with five petals. Anavalt came here upon wolves which went\nalong with him a little way. Running they could not be seen, but as\neach wolf leaped in his running his gray body would show momentarily\namong the green bushes that instantly swallowed it: and these wolves\ncried hoarsely, \"Janicot is dead!\" But for none of these things did\nAnavalt care any longer, and none of the peculiarities of Elfhame\nstayed him, until his path had led further downward, and the roadway\nhad become dark and moist. Here were sentinels with draggled yellow\nplumes, a pair of sentinels at whom Anavalt looked only once: then with\naverted head he passed them, in what could not seem a merry place to\nAnavalt, for in the world where people have souls he was used to mirth\nand soft ease and to all such delights as men clutch desperately in the\nshadow of death's clutching hand.\n\nIn this place Anavalt found also a naked boy.\n\n\n\u00a7 42\n\nIn this place Anavalt found, as the tale tells, a naked boy whose body\nwas horrible with leprosy: this malady had eaten away his fingers, so\nthat they could retain nothing, but his face was not much changed.\n\nThe leper stood knee-deep in a pile of ashes: and he demanded what\nAnavalt was called nowadays.\n\nWhen courteous Anavalt had answered, the leper said then:\n\n\"You are not rightly called Anavalt. But my name is still\nOwner-of-the-World.\"\n\nSays Anavalt, very sadly, \"Even though you bar my way, ruined boy, I\nmust go forward to the windmill of the Elle Maid.\"\n\n\"And for what reason must you be creeping to this last woman? For she\nwill be the last,--as I forewarn you, tired man, who still pretend to\nbe Anavalt,--she will be the last of all, and of how many!\"\n\nAnavalt answered:\n\n\"I must go to this last love because of my first love. Once I lay under\nher girdle, I was a part of the young body of my first love. She bore\nme to her anguish, even then to her anguish. I cannot forget the love\nthat was between us. But I outgrew my childhood and all childishness:\nI became, they say, the chief of Manuel's barons: and my living has\ngot me fine food and garments and tall servants and two castles and\na known name, and all which any reasonable mother could hope for her\nson. Yet I cannot forget the love that was between us, nor our shared\nfaith in what was to be! To-day I visit this ancient woman now and\nthen, and we make friendly talk together about everything except my\nwife, and our lips touch, and I go away. That is all. And it seems\nstrange that I was once a part of this woman,--I who have never won to\nnor desired real intimacy with anyone,--and it seems strange to hear\npeople applauding my wisdom and high deeds of statecraft, and in all\nmatters acclaiming the success of Anavalt. I think that this old woman\nalso finds it strange. I do not know, for we can understand each other\nno longer. I only know that, viewing me, there is in this old woman's\nfilmed eyes a sort of fondness, even now, and a puzzled grieving. I\nonly know that her eyes also I wish never to see any more.\"\n\n\"Still, still, you must be talking \u0152dipean riddles!\" the leper\nanswered. \"I prefer simplicity, I incline to the complex no longer. So,\nvery frankly, I warn you, who were Anavalt, that you are going, spent\nand infatuate, toward your last illusion.\"\n\nAnavalt replied:\n\n\"Rather do I flee pellmell from the illusions of others. Behind me I\nam leaving the bright swords of adversaries and the more deadly malice\nof out-rivalled friends and the fury of some husbands, but not because\nI fear these things. Behind me I am leaving the puzzled eyes of women\nthat put faith in me, because I fear these unendurably.\"\n\n\"You should have feared them earlier, tired man,\" replied the other,\n\"in a sunlit time when I who am Owner-of-the-World would wonderfully\nhave helped you. Now you must go your way, as I go mine. There is one\nwho may, perhaps, yet bring us together once again; but now we are\nparted, and you need look for no more reverses.\"\n\nAs he said this, the ruined boy sank slowly into the ash-heap, and so\ndisappeared; and Anavalt went on, through trampled ashes, into the\nquiet midst of the wood. Among the bones about the striped windmill\nthat is supported by four pillars, the witless Elle Maid was waiting.\n\n\n\u00a7 43\n\nThe witless Elle Maid was waiting there, as the tale tells, among much\nhuman wreckage. She rose and cried:\n\n\"Now you are very welcome, Sir Anavalt. But what will you give Maid\nVae?\"\n\nAnavalt answered, \"All.\"\n\n\"Then we shall be happy together, dear Anavalt, and for your sake I am\nwell content to throw my bonnet over the windmill.\"\n\nShe took the red bonnet from her head, and turned. She flung her\nbonnet fair and high. So was courteous Anavalt assured that the Queen\nof Elfhame was as he had hoped. For when seen thus, from behind, the\nwitless Queen was hollow and shadow-colored, because Maid Vae is just\nthe bright thin mask of a woman, and, if looked at from behind, she is\nlike any other mask, with no more thickness than has canvas or paper.\nSo when she faced him now and smiled,--and as if in embarrassment\nlooked down and pushed aside a thigh bone with her little foot,--then\nAnavalt could see that the Elle Maid was, when properly regarded, a\nlovely and most dear illusion.\n\nHe kissed her. He was content. Here was the woman he desired, the woman\nwho did not exist in the world where people have souls. The Elle Maid\nhad no mortal body that time would parody and ruin, she had no brain to\nfashion dreams of which he would fall short, she had no heart that he\nwould hurt. There was an abiding peace in this quiet Wood of Elfhame\nwherein no love could enter, and nobody could, in consequence, hurt\nanybody else very deeply. At court the silken ladies wept for Anavalt,\nand three women were not ever to be healed of their memories: but in\nthe Wood of Elfhame, where all were soulless masks, there were no\nmemories and no weeping, there were no longer two sides to everything,\nand a man need look for no reverses.\n\n\"I think we shall do very well here,\" said courteous Anavalt, as yet\nagain he kissed Maid Vae.\n\n\n\n\nV\n\nCELESTIAL ARCHITECTURE\n\n\n \"To this end, that Scyrian Pherecydes, Pythagoras his Master, broached\n in the East among the Heathens first the immortality of the Soul, as\n Trismegistus did in Egypt, with a many of feigned Gods. 'Twas for a\n politic end and to this purpose the old Poets feigned those Elysian\n fields, their \u00c6cus, Minos, and Rhadamanthus, their infernal Judges,\n and those Stygian lakes, fiery Phlegethons, Pluto's kingdom, and\n variety of torments after death.\"\n\n\n\n\n_5_.\n\n_Celestial Architecture_\n\n\n\u00a7 44\n\nThe literary artist plays, I had said, with death. But everybody played\nwith death: it was the one subject not anywhere to be approached except\nin a spirit of sober superficiality. And I wanted--in at any event this\nepilogue to the Biography,--to offend the sensibilities of nobody. At\nforty-five one has become, with no choice in the matter, bourgeois; and\nhas no least desire to \u00e9pater one's clan.\n\nHere, indeed, it occurred to me that, somewhat farther back, I had\nreferred, without assuming the proper elongation of countenance and\na suitably spondaic utterance, to our natural delight in most forms\nof what we are generally agreed to describe as sin. And I hoped that\nwould not be taken as implying that we can nowhere find more diverting\nemployment than in wrong-doing, and should give over our lives to its\npractise. For iniquity, in its pleasanter branches, I reflected, is\na pursuit in which the young excel. With age, one is adapted only for\nthe less amusing crimes: and so with age one tends, upon the whole,\nand willy-nilly, to become reasonably virtuous. One tends, one in fact\nis driven, to seek diversion in the alcoves of thought rather than of\naction. One begins to toy amorously with ideas, now that age abates the\nardor and the equipment for more juvenile recreations.\n\nOf course there were many ideas to play with: so congressmen harped\nzealously upon morals, with a just half-boastful air of having often\nheard of them; the clergy averted from instructing Heaven in its\npainful duty toward Germany, to settle civic affairs and the proper\nnumber of feet allowable to an embrace in moving picture films; and\namong our state justiciary far-reaching codes of literary criticism,\nnot to speak of Clean Book Leagues, were evolved by the distressing\ndiscovery that one's daughter was running counter to parental\ntraditions by reading a book.\n\nBut hardier spirits would play with the greatest and most diverting\nof all ideas.... So that, in the outcome, I decided I would not,\nas I had intended to do, recur to Henry Adams. His thinking hardly\naspires, it lacks such elevation as would warrant dwelling upon its\nmodest pinnacles. Besides, there was always the ugly book which Adams\nwrote about John Randolph of Roanoke, to shake one's faith in the\n_Education_: once anybody has been at public pains to demonstrate\nhimself an expert at coloring and falsifying the truth about another\nman, he cannot complain if none regards very trustingly his pretensions\nto write the truth as to himself. No doubt the prompter to this\nbiographical blackguardism, the notion of standing up for your family\nname and your great-grandfather's intelligence, was all very well: and\nhere, indeed, I could peculiarly sympathize, since it happened that my\nown paternal great-grandfather, also, had been aspersed by Randolph\nwith just the same spirited and careful malignity he displayed in his\nverbal portraits of the Adams \"bear and cub.\" Even so, it seemed to me\nthat the natural impulse to atone by defaming Randolph was more easily\nunderstood than justified.\n\n\n\u00a7 45\n\nIn any event, this Henry Adams, too, is everywhere faintly rancid with\nthe taint of Puritanism, and that fact could not but lead me into\ninjustice. Puritanism has many excellent points, which it perhaps\nemploys too much in the manner of the porcupine: yet we Virginians\ncannot ever quite overcome our feeling that the Puritans are parvenus,\nderiving from families too recently arrived in this country to be as\nyet completely Americanized. We have never, for that matter, learned\nto think of the Pilgrim Fathers and their descendants as belonging,\nexactly, to the gentry. And while we do try, at a pinch, to be polite\nand respectful about their undeniable virtues, the result, somehow,\nstays a bit unconvincing and condescending.\n\nBesides, I had faced my especial troubles with the Puritan tradition,\nthrough the imbroglio incidental to the attempt to suppress\n_Jurgen_, and through the clinging, undesirable repute thus\nfastened to that book, and indeed to my books in general. I mildly\nresent, even now, my need to rest for the remainder of my lifetime\nunder the imputation of being in lack-lustre eyes an \"indecent writer.\"\nIt sounds all very well, and stays, I believe, undeniable, to say that\nit was only a coterie of the obsessed--obsessed with the mad notion\nthat \"decency\" is an affair of corporal centrifugality,--who had\nesteemed _Jurgen_ an improper book. But that is, too, upon a par\nwith protesting on a pestered summer night it is only mosquitoes who\nare annoying you. Those shyster Sanhedrins of tinpot Torquemadas--as\nMr. Mencken, you may remember, has for some reason or another not\nyet called the incorporated supporters of the Puritan tradition in\nletters,--are, beyond question, made up of peculiarly filthy and\nsenseless little creatures acting after the law of their insectean\nkind. Yet they are also innumerable and poisonous: and they are blest,\ntoo (no doubt in common with the mosquitoes) with sincerity and an\napproving conscience, in all these assaults of the petty upon that\nwhich, however harmless, offends them by being bigger than they are.\n\nBut I drift into a discussion of the _Jurgen_ case, which, as\ngoes the law, is settled: and all that I really need to say about the\nindecency of _Jurgen_, or of the Biography as a whole, and about\nthe baffling literary problem of censorship in general, was said some\nwhile ago.\n\n\n\u00a7 46\n\nFor censorship of our reading matter, as I granted even when\n_Jurgen_ was yet lying under arrest in Mr. Sumner's[5] cellar,\nmay, in pure theory, be--just possibly--advisable. In practise, though,\nI can imagine no persons or class of persons qualified to perform\nthis censorship. Speaking here with all, if only, the respect due to\nthe Society for the Suppression of Vice, I must none the less insist\nthere is a difference between pornography and fine literature, if but\nthe difference that everybody enjoys the first where few care one\nway or the other about the second: and certainly the two should be\nappraised by diverse and appropriate standards. A work of art should\ntherefore, in theory, be judged entirely as a work of art, by a jury of\npractitioners of the art concerned.\n\nYet, since every self-respecting author at bottom abominates his\ncompetitors, despises his inferiors, and is frantically irritated by\nthe writings of those who differ from him in \u00e6sthetic canons, such an\narrangement would, in practise, only fling open more conspicuous fields\nwherein to flaunt the mutual spite and miscomprehension common to us\ncreative writers. Besides, it is not difficult to forecast what sort of\nwriters might, and would, be chosen for the judiciary, as representing\npre-eminence in letters by the happiest combination of mediocrity and\nsenility. Thus, in the end, an attempt to establish a purely \"literary\"\ntribunal would result in setting over American art a death-watch of\ngenial clergymen and decrepit college professors: and I despondently\nquestion if their decisions would be a whit less imbecile than the\npresent arbitraments of the Society's hired spies.\n\nIt remains, moreover, the defect of every method of legal \"suppression\"\nthat magistrates and courts of law are unable really to suppress any\nbook. A book, once printed, either suppresses itself or else stays,\nas things human fare, immortal. And that always appeared to me the\nvery silliest feature of the _Jurgen_ imbroglio. Irrespective\nof any possible legal decision, as I patiently pointed out, over and\nover again, when _Jurgen_ lodged in Mr. Sumner's cellar, the\nbook existed in a sufficient number of unarrestable copies to place\nit beyond destruction by anything except its own inherent faults. If\n_Jurgen_ contained the right constituents it would live; and if it\nlacked the stuff of longevity it would in due course die: either way,\nthe outcome was to be decided neither by me nor by vice commissioners,\nnor even by a judge and a grand jury.\n\nNobody disputed this logic: nobody in fact paid any attention to it.\n\nAnd as touches my personal share in the publication of an \"indecent\nbook called _Jurgen_\"--though, indeed, I hear that a great deal of\nthe Biography is \"indecent,\"--it is in the end by my book that I must\nbe condemned or justified, rather than by what anyone, including me,\nmay for some while to come elect to say about my book, which is the\nBiography. So I say nothing. For against the explicit charge of having\nviolated the current morality of 1920, I think, any serious defence\nwould be waste of effort, if only because the question must so soon,\nand in fact already tends to, become of purely antiquarian interest.\nOur children may not improve, even from the standpoint of humor, upon\nour moral standards, but our children will certainly not retain them.\nWhen, as must inevitably happen before very long, our present ethical\ncriteria have come to seem as quaint as those of the Druids or the\nEtruscans, or even as the flyblown and rococo axioms of 1913 appear\nnowadays, offences against any one of these outmoded codes will hardly\nbe esteemed worth talking about. Should _Jurgen_ be remembered ten\nyears hence, it will, through being remembered, be amply exonerated:\nwhereas if _Jurgen_ be forgotten, the book will then of course\nbe violating nobody's moral sensibility. Time thus lies under bond to\nsilence, whether with praise or with oblivion, every conceivable sort\nof \"moral\" aspersion; and willy-nilly I must defer to time.\n\nNone the less do I still believe that _Jurgen_ is, as originally\nlabelled, \"a book wherein each man will find what his nature enables\nhim to see\": and when anyone confesses that he finds therein only\n\"offensiveness, and lasciviousness, and lewdness, and indecency,\" I\nmust make bold to take the announcement as a less candid summary of the\nbook's nature than of the critic's.\n\n\n\u00a7 47\n\nWhat can be done, people very often ask of me, with a flattering if\nmisplaced assumption of my ability to answer,--what can be done toward\nrestraining our present literary saturnalia of prudishness? And I\nmust answer, if at all, with a shrug: for the intelligent here contend\nagainst well-meaning and courageous persons who fight for high aims.\nThe most fantastic feature of this droll year-long warring is the\nprofound sincerity of the participants, upon both sides. You and I\nmay know--and welcome, as the saying runs,--that we are in the right\nso far as goes the unhuman abstraction called rationality. But the\nofficers and backers of the Clean Book League and of the Society for\nthe Suppression of Vice, also, quite honestly believe they are engaged\nin praiseworthy work when, to cite but two farces from the exhaustless\nrepertoire, they hale Petronius and _Mademoiselle de Maupin_ into\nthe police courts.\n\nIndeed they appear inebriated to these antics by much the same real\nlove of virtue which incites a portion of their congeners to burn an\nunruly negro as a torch to illumine their reprehension of lawlessness;\nand drives yet others to express their disfavor of intemperance by\ndecreeing that wine is a compound too atrocious to be employed for any\npurpose except to symbolize the blood of Christ. In the face of so many\nlaudable intentions thus obscurely communicated, we can but deduce, I\nam afraid, that whenever stupidity and high morals pig together they\nbeget an offspring doubly cursed with zealotry and toxic aphasia. Nor,\nof course, does it appear quite unblasphemous to contend against these\npresumably ordained phenomena.\n\nAt all events, those who believe the artist has any \"rights\" are in\nthe negligible minority. I hardly need to explain why the bashaws of\nsuch orgiastic societies have embattled back of them the complacent\nmuddle-headedness of that \"solid\" upper middle-class which pays\npew-rent, and which from the first has rather fretfully resented any\ntalk about \u00e6sthetics. Dr. Paul E. More,[6] in one of the letters\nrelative to the _Jurgen_ imbroglio, has nicely summed up this\npopular point of view: \"I am not at all in sympathy with a group\nof writers who would take any protest against the Society as a\njustification of what they are pleased to call art. The harm done by\nthe Society seems to me very slight, whereas the harm done by the\nself-styled artist may be very great.\"\n\nNow that is really the popular and, therefore, the most exalted moral\nattitude. For the morality of a republic is, after all, a matter of\nelementary arithmetic: and one counts the ballots (sometimes, here and\nthere, it is said, quite honestly) in order to distinguish between\nright and wrong, because the voice of the people is notoriously the\nvoice of God. And time and again this divine orality has proclaimed\nthat the American peerage of nature's noblemen does not want to be\nbothered with any nonsense about literature and art: for the reasons,\nfirst, that such fripperies play no part in honest poll-tax-payers'\nlives; and, second, that in very much the manner of this Dr. More, our\nreputable citizenry--obscurely and inarticulately, but none the less\ngenuinely,--resents the impudence of \"self-styled artists\" who presume\nto know more than their betters about \"what they are pleased to call\nart.\"\n\nAnd here, I must protest, our more reputable citizens are wholly in the\nright. I think they feel, without ever quite perceiving, the innumerous\ndangers, for the reputable, which lurk in this continual playing with\npiety and common-sense. The artist, they dimly feel, is up to something\nwhich--somehow--threatens them and their security: and in this, I\nrepeat, they are wholly right. If art were not very cruelly restrained\nit would empoison and wreck all civilizations, not here to speak of\nreordering heaven. But there is no need to worry, because art, as it\nhappens, is always, and probably always will be, just thus restrained,\nby the inefficiency of the artist. So art may never ruin America, after\nall.\n\nIt seems, in any case, eminently appropriate that in our National Hall\nof Statuary, along with such world-famous statesmen and shapers of\nhuman destiny as Jacob Collamer, S.J. Kirkwood and George L. Shoup, the\nsole representative of our art and letters should to-day be General\nLew Wallace; for _Ben-Hur_ is really the perfected expression of\nthe best-thought-of American ideals in literature. And it is equally\nappropriate, I like to think, that, when judged by these ideals,\n_Jurgen_ and all the rest of the Biography should be decreed\n\"offensive, and lascivious, and lewd, and indecent....\"\n\nWell! a good deal of this I said (over and over again) before the\ncourts decided that _Jurgen_ had been incarcerated for twenty-one\nmonths, as an \"indecent\" book, through error.... And I have not\nanything to add or to retract. Still, the affair has left me, I\ncannot but suspect, with a bias against the Puritan tradition and its\nadherents. I feel, indeed, that much of what I have just written down\ndoes not over-cloyingly reek of loving-kindness toward--in Swinburne's\nphrase,--\"the barbarian sect from whose inherited and infectious\ntyranny this nation is as yet imperfectly delivered.\" So I dismiss the\nPuritans and their latter-day flowering in Henry Adams, in favor of\na noticeably different person. I turn instead to M. Anatole France,\nas affording a clear illustration of the point I have in mind; and\nas perfectly illustrating my point as to the most diverting of all\nthemes which thought can play with, in _La R\u00f4tisserie de la Reine\nP\u00e9dauque_.\n\n\n\u00a7 48\n\nWhat one first notes about _La R\u00f4tisserie de la Reine P\u00e9dauque_,\nas I have elsewhere observed, is the fact that in this ironic and\nsubtle book is presented a \"story\" which is remarkable for its\ninnocence of subtlety and irony. Abridge the \"plot\" into a synopsis,\nand you will find your digest to be what is manifestly the outline of a\nstraightforward, plumed romance by the elder Dumas.\n\nIndeed, Dumas would have handled to a nicety the \"strange surprising\nadventures\" of Jacques Tournebroche, if only Dumas had ever thought\nto have his collaborators write this brisk tale, wherein d'Astarac\nand Tournebroche and Mosa\u00efde display, even now, a noticeable\nsomething in common with the Balsamo and Gilbert and Althotas of the\n_M\u00e9moires d'un M\u00e9dicin_. One foresees, to be sure, that, with the\ntwin-girthed Creole for guide, M. J\u00e9r\u00f4me Coignard would have waddled\ninto our affections not quite as we know him, but with somewhat more\nof a fraternal resemblance to the Dom Gorenflot of _La Dame de\nMonsoreau_ and _Les Quarante-Cinq_; and that the blood of the\nabb\u00e9's deathwound could never have bedewed the book's final pages,\nin the teeth of Dumas' economic unwillingness ever to despatch any\ncharacter who could be used in a sequel.\n\nAnd one thinks rather kindlily of the _R\u00f4tisserie_ as Dumas would\nhave equipped it.... Yes, in reading this book, it is the most facile\nand least avoidable of mental exercises to prefigure how excellently\nDumas would have contrived this book,--somewhat as in the reading of\nMr. Joseph Conrad's novels a many of us are haunted by the sense that\nthe Conrad \"story\" is, in its essential beams and stanchions, the sort\nof thing which W. Clark Russell used to put together, in a rather\ndifferent way, for our illicit perusal. Whereby I only mean that such\nseafaring was illicit in those aureate days when, Cleveland being\nconsul for the second time, your geography figured as the screen of\nfictive reading-matter during school hours.\n\nOne need not say that here is no question, in either case, of\n\"imitation,\" far less of \"plagiarism\"; nor need one, surely, point out\nthe impossibility of anybody's ever mistaking the _R\u00f4tisserie_\nfor a novel by Alexandre Dumas. Ere Homer's eyesight began not to be\nwhat it had been, the fact was noted by the observant Chian, that\nvery few sane architects commence an edifice by planting and rearing\nthe oaks which are to compose its beams and stanchions. You take over\nall such supplies ready hewn, and choose by preference time-seasoned\ntimber. Since Homer's prime a host of other great creative writers have\nrecognized this axiom when they too began to build: and \"originality\"\nhas by ordinary been, like chess and democracy, a Mecca for little\nminds.\n\nBesides, there is the vast difference that M. Anatole France has\nintroduced into the Dumas theatre some pre-eminently un-Dumas-like\nstage-business: the characters, between assignations and combats,\ntoy amorously with ideas. That is the difference which at a stroke\ndissevers them from any helter-skelter character in Dumas as utterly as\nfrom any of our clearest thinkers in office.\n\nIt is this toying, this series of mental amourettes, which\nincommunicably \"makes the difference\" in almost all the volumes of M.\nFrance familiar to me; but our affair is with this one story. Now in\nthis vivid book we have our fill of color and animation and gallant\nstrangenesses, and a stir of characters who impress us as living\nwith a poignancy unmastered as yet by anybody's associates in flesh\nand blood. We have, in brief, all that Dumas could ever offer, here\nutilized not to make drama but background, all being woven into a\nbright undulating tapestry behind an erudite and battered figure,--a\nfigure of odd medleys, in which the erudition is combined with much of\nAutolycus, and the unkemptness with something of \u00e0 Kempis. For what one\nremembers of the _R\u00f4tisserie_ is l'Abb\u00e9 J\u00e9r\u00f4me Coignard; and what\none remembers, ultimately, about Coignard is not his crowded career,\nhowever opulent in larcenous and lectual escapades and fisticuffs and\nbroached wineflasks, but his religious meditations, wherein a merry\nheart does, quite actually, go all the way.\n\nCoignard I take to be a peculiarly rare type of man (there is no female\nof this species), the type that is genuinely interested in religion.\nIn that his mind is actually at grapple with the most diverting of all\nthemes, he stands apart. He halves little with the staid majority of\nus who sociably contract our sacred tenets from our neighbors like a\nsort of theological measles. He halves nothing whatever with our more\nearnest-minded juniors who--perennially discovering that all religions\nthus far put to the test of nominal practise have, whatever their\nparadisial entr\u00e9e, resulted in a deplorable earthly hash,--perennially\nrun yelping into the shrill agnosticism which believes only that one's\nneighbors should not be permitted to believe in anything.\n\nThe creed of Coignard is more urbane: \"Always bear in mind that a sound\nintelligence rejects everything that is contrary to reason, except\nin matters of faith, where it is necessary to believe blindly.\" Your\nopinions are thus all-important, your physical conduct is largely\na matter of taste, in a philosophy which ranks affairs of the mind\nimmeasurably above the gross accidents of matter. Indeed, man can\nwin to heaven only through repentance, and the initial step toward\nrepentance is to do something to repent of. There is no flaw in\nthis logic, and in its clear lighting such abrogations of parochial\nand transitory human laws as may be suggested by reason, and the\nconsciousness that nobody is looking, take on the aspect of divinely\nappointed duties.\n\n\n\u00a7 49\n\nSome dullard may here object that M. France could not himself have\nbelieved all this while writing the book, and that it was with an\nironic glitter in his ink he recorded these dicta. To which the\nobvious answer would be that M. France (again, like all great creative\nwriters) is an ephemeral and negligible person beside his more\npermanent puppets; and that, moreover, to reason thus is, it may be\nprecipitately, to disparage the plumage of birds on the ground that\nan egg has no feathers.... Whatever M. France may have believed, our\nconcern is here with the conviction of M. Coignard that his religion\nis all-important and all-significant. And I find it curious to observe\nhow unerringly the abb\u00e9's thoughts aspire, from no matter what remote\nand low-lying starting point, to the loftiest niceties of religion and\nthe high thin atmosphere of ethics. Sauce spilt upon his collar is but\na reminder of the influence of clothes upon our moral being, and of how\nterrifyingly is the destiny of each person's soul dependent upon such\ntrifles; a glass of light white wine leads, not, as we are nowadays\ntaught to believe, to instant ruin, but to edifying considerations\nof the life and glory of St. Peter; and a pack of cards suggests,\nstraightway, intransigent fine points of martyrology. Always this\nchurchman's thoughts deflect to the most interesting of themes, to the\nrelationship between God and His children, and what familiary etiquette\nmay be necessary to preserve the relationship unstrained. These\nproblems alone engross Coignard unfailingly, even when the philosopher\nhas had the ill luck to fall simultaneously into drunkenness and a\npublic fountain; and retains so notably his composure between the\nopposed assaults of fluidic unfriends.\n\nWhat, though, is found the outcome of this philosophy, appears a\nquestion to be answered with wariness of empiricism. None can deny that\nCoignard says, when he lies dying: \"My son, reject, along with the\nexample I gave you, the maxims which I may have proposed to you during\nmy period of life-long folly. Do not listen to those who, like myself,\nsubtilize over good and evil.\" Yet this is just one low-spirited\nmoment, as set against the preceding fifty-two high-hearted years. And\nthe utterance wrung forth by this moment is, after all, merely that\nsentiment which seems the inevitable bedfellow of the moribund,--\"Were\nI to have my life over again, I would live differently.\" The sentiment\nis familiar and venerable, but its truthfulness has not yet been\nattested.\n\nTo the considerate, therefore, it may appear expedient to dismiss\nCoignard's trite winding-up of a half-century of splendid talking,\nas just the infelicitous outcropping, in the dying man's enfeebled\ncondition, of an hereditary foible. And when moralizing would approach\nan admonitory forefinger to the point that Coignard's manner of living\nbrought him to die haphazardly, among preoccupied strangers at a casual\nwayside inn, you do, there is no questioning it, recall that a more\ngenerally applauded manner of living has been known to result in a more\ncompetently arranged-for demise, under the best churchly and legal\nauspices, through the rigors of crucifixion.\n\nSo it becomes the part of wisdom to waive these mundane riddles, and\nto consider instead the justice of Coignard's fine epitaph, wherein we\nread that \"living without worldly honors, he earned for himself eternal\nglory.\" The statement may (with St. Peter keeping the gate) have been\nchallenged in paradise; but in literature at all events, the unhonored\nlife of J\u00e9r\u00f4me Coignard has clothed him with glory of tolerably\nlongeval looking texture. It is true that this might also be said of\nIago and Tartuffe, but then we have Balzac's word for it that merely\nto be celebrated is not enough. Rather is the highest human desideratum\ntwofold,--_D'\u00eatre c\u00e9lebr\u00e9 et d'\u00eatre aim\u00e9._ And that much Coignard\npromises to be for a long while.\n\n\n\u00a7 50\n\nThe thoughts of M. J\u00e9r\u00f4me Coignard, then,--here somewhat to retrace\nmy argument,--untiringly return to the most diverting of all themes,\nto the relationship between God and His children, and what familiary\netiquette seems most adapt to keep that relationship an affable one.\nI know that religion is, just now, rather out-of-date. I know that\nnowadays a great deal of atheism is going about among the foolish and\nunreflective. But we may wiseliest, I am sure, put out of mind the\nnotion of there being no God, and of the dead finding beyond the black\ndoor at the end of the gray corridor, that silver-handled door which\nis the sole exit from our workaday existence, nothing whatever. Even\nif one would, upon the whole, prefer to find there nothing, here it\nremains, in every sense, a rather wasteful parade of agnosticism to\nadmit the existence of nothing.\n\nIt is wasteful because no diversion is to be had of thinking about\nnothing. But any amount of diversion can be gained from meditation\nupon the strange realms beyond the tomb for which we may, quite\nconceivably, all be en route: for in this place also is the proffered\nlure that ageless aspiration toward lands which are in nothing familiar.\n\nThese conjectural kingdoms were, of course, the earliest chosen subject\nmatter for poetic adornment everywhere: poets were, of course, the\nfirst to guess at what it would be most interesting to find beyond the\nblack door: and every ancient religion, again, of course, grew up from\npeople indulging in the two habits, now equally antique, of reciting\npoetry and of taking it seriously. They had at least the excuse that\nthis poetry was magnificent, because in surveying and populating these\npost mortem countries the creating romanticist has displayed his most\nimposing reach of power.... Here he, indeed, has need of power: for he\nis here intent to make sport with his third great opponent, and to play\nwith death; intent to bereave the tyrant of all terribleness, intent\nto color roseately the dreadful face of doom, intent to detect in the\nskeleton's multidentate grinning a smile of reassurance. He has done\nthis, handsomely.\n\n--Though, to be sure, these promised paradises are fugacious: over\nand over again has the Scriptural prophecy been fulfilled as to the\nheavens being rolled up like a scroll, and one by one the heavens pass\naway with no greater noise than is made by the staid commentaries of\nethnologists. For a winter that will have no ending has oppressed the\nblissful fields of A\u00e4lu: the proud castle of Nin-kigal is pulled down,\nits seven gates are fallen away into dust; and only pedants now and\nthen recall the lion-guarded golden thrones whereon sat crowned, and\nendowed with eternal youth, the chief ones and the sages of Babylon.\nManannan holds court no more in Emhain. Instead, he amicably shares his\nsomewhat lowlier estate in nothingness with Oannes and Ahura-Mazda;\nfor all of these well know to-day that all promised paradises are\nfugacious.... Nor may the noblest of heroes any longer win to Xisuthros\nand that most lovely, nameless land, \"at the mouth of the rivers,\"\nwherein contentment had no wasting away under the nibbling of time, and\nhuman grief was like the fragment of some word in a torn manuscript\nwritten in a language which no man any more remembers. The white vase\nof Thoth is broken, also: he has no need of it to-day, he has desisted\nfrom the weighing and the taxing of ghostly imports, now that the\nnarrow bridge which led across the abyss to Sraosha's thousand-pillared\npalace upon Demavend, has for some while been closed to traffic. For\nthese promised paradises are really very fugacious.... So the carved\nand shining house of E-Sagila is decayed; and Olympos may not claim\nto oversee and rule the doings of gods and men from a rather modest\nofficial altitude of 9,754 feet. Only the professorial in quest of\nsolar myths now care to thrust and poke, like rag-pickers, among\nthe dust-heaps that were Gimli and Audlang and Vidblain: and time\nstrips every paradise alike of its delights and its believers. Yet,\nat forty-five, one does not really marvel at the flying of felicity\nanywhence. And so it seems a stranger pillagement that all the hells,\nwhich once were the fine thriving homes of bale and anguish, have been\nby time's dilapidation bereft of every little discomfort. For the ice\nof Nifleheim is melted: the dreadful flames of Tartarus have spluttered\nout like damp firecrackers: even Aratu, wherein reigned mere oblivion,\nhas been swallowed by oblivion.... Poets build against eternity\nsometimes in dealing with trifles; but never in erecting the eternal\nhomes of men.\n\nMeanwhile it is most gratifying to reflect that, while they lasted, the\nglories and the terrors of all this celestial architecture divertingly\nfilled many lives with spiritual consolation and salutary dread; have\nchecked extravagance in the way of bloodletting or of chastity or of\nwhatever at the time was vice; have heartened the devout to eat their\nparents or to burn infidels or to give alms, or to do whatever else at\nthe time was virtue; and have evolved their countless hierarchies of\nsaints and holy persons. Here is no room for irony. Nuns, doubtless,\nhave assumed the veil and entered convents in a religious exaltation\nas lofty as that with which the virgins of Assyria put on the crown\nof little cords and went to the temple of Mylitta and their first\ncommunion with the first amorous male passer-by. Yet, to uphold the\nsplendors of the paradise of Mohammed his Mussulmans have waged\nreligious wars with a malignity not often surpassed by the servitors\nof Christ: and Solomon may well have gazed upon the completed Temple,\nand have beheld the ark of the covenant of the Lord brought in unto\nthe most holy place under the wings of the cherubim, in very much that\npious joy with which, from high Tenochtitlan, rapt priests looked\ndown upon the slowly advancing line, two stately miles in length,\nof warriors who ascended to disembowelment upon the jasper altar of\nHuitzilopochtli. In fine, these hells and paradises, the while that\ntheir bright evanescence lasted, have provided employment, and support,\nand recreation, and exalted sentiments to boot, for innumerable\nmillions.\n\nEven so, in populating these worlds, the romanticist has been tardy\never to imagine the gods as other than sinister and, as a rule,\ndetestable beings. You see, the creature stays incurably logical, he\nis as faithful to logic as was Florian de Puysange in the old story,\nand he reasons from effect to cause. The romanticist has thus from the\nfirst been unable to conceive of this world, which he found, upon the\nwhole, abominable, as being the creation of any other sort of Demiurge,\nor as being ruled by any other sort of overlords. In all heathen\ntheogonies heaven is thus the home of every pravity in the way of lust\nand greed, of deceit and cruelty and plain childishness; and looms as\na mysteriously splendid court of rogues and paphians presided over by\na supreme tyrant, who is also a master-rogue. This formula was, very\ngradually, improved upon by Hebraic poets, who in particular recolored\nall anaphrodisiacally: so that the Old Testament presents, by and\nlarge, a rather novel and a more strait-laced notion of the Demiurge\nand his immediate entourage; with only here and there, in passages\nabout the sons of God and the daughters of men, and more embarrassingly\nin the stories of Eve and Sarah, the unedited, unexpurgated,\nunrecolored legend of divine amours left, to consideration, apparent.\n\n\n\u00a7 51\n\nBut about the Jahveh-Elohim of the Old Testament, who remains by tacit\nadmission the God the Father of the New Testament, I really prefer\nhere not to speak at all. I find it far too difficult to resist an\nunfair bias in the favor of any target of so many assaults. For His\npresent embarrassment is not merely that Colonel William Jennings\nBryan[7] and the Reverend William Ashley Sunday[8] have ruthlessly\nunited to compromise Him with their praise: even the state legislators\nof Tennessee and Oklahoma, and Florida, have officially endorsed Him\nin His difference of opinion with Charles Darwin, and rest vociferant\nin Zion.... Outside, is a troubling babblement about tribal deities\nand Babylonian myths, and a rather distressing tendency to discuss the\nbirth of Christ from Joseph's point of view. Meanwhile the ordained\nand inescapable clergy are at pains to suggest that in His official\nrevelations the Lord God of Sabaoth, like the dear, queer, overmodest\nold fellow He is, has branded Himself with uncommitted atrocities; and\nin their denials of any really grave wrong-doing, commend Him in terms\nas high as were, from any pulpit, ever applied to a prohibition agent\ndetected in embezzlement. And meanwhile too, among the advanced young,\nthere is much superior sniffing at His bloodthirstiness and variability\nof mind, at Jonah's great fish and the bears of Elisha, at Noah's raven\nand Adam's rib. And I find it droll to reflect that the deity who was\neverywhere trusted and worshipped in my youth is to-day as little\nregarded as Jupiter Stator or Marduk of the Bright Glance.\n\nAnd to me His downfall seems in some ways rather sad. For, as I recall\nit, He was not thought of as being particularly cruel and dreadful--any\nlonger. And the Old Testament was accepted in its entirety and without\nany especial difficulty in the Virginia of that day, wherein almost all\nother generally respected elderly gentlemen had been, as a matter of\npublic knowledge, rather wild in their youth.... As I recall it, there\nwas a prevalent feeling that God had some while since settled down,\nin very much the manner of your grandfather; and that the Amalekites\nand the Hittites and all those other demolished persons were in some\nway connected with the hundreds of Yankee soldiers whom, for equally\ninexplicable but assuredly good causes, your grandfather had killed so\nlong before you were born. Thus there was no large difficulty about our\nEpiscopalian Jehovah, and really no terribleness....\n\nAnd I sometimes incline to question if this god--with wild oats\nundeniably sown and harvested in the past, but with a prevailing\ndisposition nowadays to be agreeable, subject always to His not having\nbeen of late upset by one or another mysterious grown-up affair,--was\nnot, after all, the most plausible sort of demiurge I have yet heard\nof. He still seems to me the likeliest creator, upon the whole, to\nhave fashioned, it may be in some moment of youthful indiscretion\nand effusion, such as elsewhere had resulted in people having\nmulatto cousins, the wholly incomprehensible world we live in....\nAnd essentially, I find, I still believe in Him, with a faith that\nundermines and goes deeper than mere reason because it was developed\nin me earlier. During thunderstorms this faith assumes especial vigor:\nand while I do not presume to think all this terrific display was got\nup solely for my benefit, the notion most certainly does flicker about\nme, livid and troubling, that while He has this storm in hand, and is\nactually passing my way, it might appear to Him mere thriftiness to\nuse a thunderbolt in the old, practical, explicit manner. So I do not\nquite heartily enjoy the beauty of a thunderstorm.... But the point is\nthat this demiurge also conformed to the great general rule. The point\nis that men have not ever, at any time, pictured the benevolence of\ntheir gods and creators as being anything like a good risk; and that no\nmythology has ever told of such gods as would in strict logic seem apt\nto be foreplanning a pleasant future for anybody.\n\nNone the less, here also, men have very manfully forced that slippery\nshirk optimism to help out with logic's work. And so have men always\nbeen assured that these overlords would by and by arrange everything\nsatisfactorily; and that the door at the far end of the corridor\nopened, when you also had done with alcoves, and when you also had\nperforce passed through, upon one or another delightful vista. The\nfact has been divinely revealed, or in any event has the authentic\nIngoldsbean support of one or another leading citizen who \"well\nremembers to have heard his grandmother say that 'Somebody told her\nso.'\" ... And men have preferred to accept the revelation rather than\nto recollect that, by all current accounts, the deity accredited with\nthis revelation is not elsewhere remarkable for truthful dealings. Men\nhave, out of so many thousand years of speculation, contrived no surer\ncreed than Coignard's creed, that \"in matters of faith it is necessary\nto believe blindly.\" Men have discovered no firmer hope than that,\nin defiance of all logic and of all human experience, something very\npleasant may still be impending, in--need I say?--bright lands which\nare in nothing familiar.\n\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[Footnote 5: John S. (Sexton?) Sumner; other authorities state that Sex\nwas his middle name; secretary of the then notorious New York State\nSociety for the Suppression of Vice.]\n\n[Footnote 6: Arch\u00e6ologist of the period. Mencken has several mentions\nof him.]\n\n[Footnote 7: Of the Third Nebraska Volunteer Infantry.]\n\n[Footnote 8: Itinerant clergyman of the day, who preached a species of\nChristianity.]\n\n\n\n\nVI\n\nROMANTICS ABOUT THEM\n\n\n \"He has more authorities than those whose names he has given. These\n are, however, a few: Alcm\u00e6on of Crotona; Dionysius of Apollonia;\n Herodorus of Heracleum in Pontus, the father of Bryson the sophist;\n Ctesias of Cnidos; Herodotus of Halicarnassus; Syennesis of Cyprus;\n Polybus; Democritus of Abdera; Anaxagoras of Clazomene; Empedocles of\n Sicily; and many more which do not just now occur to my memory.\"\n\n\n\n\n_6._\n\n_Romantics About Them_\n\n\n\u00a7 52\n\nThe literary artist plays, I repeated, with death. But I had not\nmeant only in a religious way: I had not meant merely that the\nartist lovingly carves the beads, and polishes the rhetoric of the\nprayer-books, with which not merely the aged delight to play in turn.\nAnd I had not meant, either, to dwell so long upon orthodox religious\ndiversions, since reputable religion is of necessity, like any other\npopular fashion, an ever-varying unstable affair.\n\nOne sect alone--made up of true believers in the everywhere underlying,\nand the really religious principle, as I interpreted it, of the\nBiography,--seemed not ever to have varied in its faith. I was thinking\nof the immodest, impotent, and internecine sect of literary artists.\nAnd I could, I believed, best indicate the two main tenets of the\nliterary artist's religion by a rather roundabout approach.\n\n\n\u00a7 53\n\nFor chance, no great while earlier, had condemned me to sit by and\nlisten to a pair of notably successful authors in what, at that time,\nhad seemed a preposterous talk. This talk, a little, troubles memory\neven now.... For they were not at all heeding me. These two when they\nforgather effuse a na\u00efve effect of emperors meeting, incognito and with\na relished casting off of formality, in a world of underlings. Each\none of them is, in fact, too fair a judge of literature to depreciate\nin anything an admirable book on account of his own name being upon\nthe title-page: and if these two endure each other excellently, it\nis because each loyally esteems the other to be the next to the most\nwondrous of American writers, and affects some modest reticence as to\nthe first choice.\n\nThe scene was the library of one of them, the period after dinner. The\nvisiting author had but now looked up from where his polychromatic\nvolumes were gaily marshalled (with a perhaps not unpremeditated\nconspicuousness) toward a shelf across the way, a shelf whereon the\nhost's own books more sombrely convened. The two men had, I repeat,\nquite recently eaten and had drunk with some thoroughness. They were\nreplete and a bit drowsy. All earthly worries and obligations stood for\nthe moment aloof. Both men had reached their later forties; both were\ndone alike with actual fervors and with real self-distrust; and each,\nI am certain, is assured, in his private meditations, of a tolerably\npermanent sort of fame.\n\n\"We,\" said the visitor, the while that he, reflectively, thus looked\nfrom the backbones of the one set of books to those of the other, \"we\nhave been lucky.\"\n\n\"I wonder?\" said the host....\n\n\"Yes,\" stated the first and (upon the whole) the fatter of the two\nspeakers, \"for we have got what we wanted, without paying the full\nprice. We might have been poor Dowson or Villon, you know--\"\n\n\"Or any other of the mighty poets in their misery and customary attics\ndead? I always wondered how they managed to stuff the broken window\npane with a pair of trousers, though--\"\n\nBut the visitor was talking unfrivolously. \"Yes, the world's full of\ntalent. Talent is nothing. Genius is nothing. These congenital amateurs\nwho have nothing but genius give me a pain.\" He specified the corporal\nlocation of this pain. He continued: \"It is the getting what you want\nthat counts. And we have got a great deal--\"\n\n\"I grant it: we belong, we also, to the race of go-getters. But then\nthe bargain, I suspect, was for cash payment.\"\n\nNow for an instant, through the two pairs of big round spectacles, as\nif with the magnified eyes of somewhat torpid insects, the two men were\nlooking each at the other, in a slow sort of shared and unmirthful\namusement. They said nothing. Then the visitor went on:\n\n\"Yes, we have paid a great deal, too. Still, here at almost fifty we\nhave rather charming homes and bank accounts, and wives that continue\nto put up with us; and the books are done, quite as we wanted them\ndone. There aren't many of us, you know: not many S.O.B.'s contrive to\nsay that much unsmashed. No: we haven't paid for doing those books the\nfull and usual price. We have slipped by, somehow--\"\n\nThe other surmised pensively: \"You mean, by that big Thing that doesn't\napprove of our getting our books done? I hadn't guessed He bothers you.\"\n\nAfter a request for deific condemnation of the third personal singular\nneuter pronoun, the visitor stated he meant all the Things. \"They don't\nlike us, you know. They're as vicious as the bright young men.\"\n\n\"It _is_ droll, how They seem,\" the host conceded, \"to lurk behind\nyou somewhere, watching, waiting, and--that's the worst,--so able to\nwait. They don't have, you see, to hurry. But you have to. So, with\nevery book, when I unwrap the advance copies, I always feel, Well, I\ngot that one done, anyway!\"\n\n\"And we've slipped by Them!\"\n\n\"So far,\" the other amended. And he exhibited his fingers crossed.\n\nWhereon the visitor mentioned the infernal regions, with an outbreak\nof rolling, oleaginous, wholly unreticent laughter. And he said\nexultantly: \"But I'm forty-seven! And sixteen books are done the way\nI god-damn wanted them done! They can begin on me, now, when They are\nready.\"\n\nThe host, however, looked disapproving. \"I wish you would be a little\nmore tactful about Them. This is my library, you know. I really,\nyou know, would rather not have anything said here to attract Their\nparticular attention to the place. You see, only next month I am all of\nforty-nine, and there are one or two other books I want to do here.\"\n\nBoth of these aging romantics seemed quite in earnest....\n\n\n\u00a7 54\n\nThey were talking, I reflected, the most incomprehensible of nonsense.\nA whit later, though, I believe, I understood these not unpompous\nand, from some aspects, not utterly underisible nor unpathetic\nfiction-mongers. For, as I now construe it, they talked of that\nformidable three with whom the artist plays and makes his troubled\nsport. They talked,--they also, I believe,--of common-sense and piety\nand death. And so to these oldsters some slight periphrases seemed\ncalled for, since, in their own romanticizing eyes (as I interpret it),\nthey went as rebels under the fitful surveillance of powers that do not\ndeal tenderly with rebels.\n\nThey felt themselves to have escaped quite unaccountably, thus far.\nBesides, at best, you went to each day's typing a bit precariously,\nhaving only the stiffening fingers of this undependable middle-aged\nbody to work with, nowadays, in a world wherein, according to\nthe morning paper, your juniors were every day evincing such\ninconsideration for your natural feelings, by dropping down with\napoplexies and heart seizures.... Well, by and by would come the\nunavoidable, with its concomitant indecent exposure of the partially\ndone book on which you would then be typing. And people, viewing\nit, would perforce decide that your mind had preceded you in your\ndeparture, for people would not comprehend that only in the last\nrevisions could you knit together the loose ends with verbal\nlove-knots. Meanwhile you went about the one thing you, nowadays, knew\nhow to do, typing, always typing, in a continuous t\u00eate-\u00e0-t\u00eate with this\nindeterminate tapped-out tattoo of ticktocking types and tinklings.\nFor you were intent upon getting a fair copy of what might yet be\nfinished, intent to get down what might yet be permanently phrased, if\nonly They did not strike in time for to-morrow's paper....\n\nYes, I, upon reflection, seemed to understand those aging romantics'\nodd air of furtiveness--and the blustering, too.\n\n\n\u00a7 55\n\nFor the aim of art is, to the one side, an illegal economy and a\nthievish sortie upon oncoming times' remembrance.... This, to be sure,\nis the less important of the artist's bifold endeavors. \"Fame\" and\n\"immortality\" rank in all moderately clear eyes (for reasons to which I\nshall recur) as but the stakes that, with favoring luck, may be won at\nthis game which the clear-eyed play in chief for diversion. The artist,\neven so, does undeniably strive for these stakes; sometimes indeed he\n(foolishly enough) thinks his \"immortality\" a really important hazard:\nand his art becomes a form of freebooting rebellion, in a world whose\npolity foredooms all men to perish utterly as far as go their earthly\nrelics.... Yet none the less does the literary artist mutinously\nattempt to avoid the appointed customs of obliteration; and he tacks\nwith a harried and piratical shiftiness about the quiet haven wherein\nhis betters--the far-seeing statesmen and the Federal judges, the\nbankers and the writers of book reviews and the big-sleeved bishops\nand the best known of moving-picture actors,--all enter every day\nand law-abidingly cast anchor, among the wharfs of Lethe. For his\ndespairing, futile aim is to economize and--herewith to remit that\nperhaps over-colored buccaneerish simile, in favor of a more cadaverous\nfigure,--to embalm as lastingly as may be, where time flows like a\ncool and steady wind and all else is vapor, his personal notions. Yet,\nsomewhere, may be watching him, as to the mazed artist is whispered\nby what seems a nameless and troubled instinct, somewhere may be\nincuriously observing his rebellion, a power which that instinct fears\nas the calm foe of human presumption. Somewhere may exist supernally\nan all-overbrooding common-sense aware that the upshot of any man's\nlife is a matter most profitably forgotten. And this high common-sense\n(endowed perhaps with plenary executive duties) may well be one of\nThem....\n\n\n\u00a7 56\n\nTo the other side, the artist seeks and goes always\nseeking--unpatriotically, if not with absolute irreligion,--to\ndivert himself in his native universe, whose constitution does not\nself-evidently provide for the amusement of the inhabitants. No\nartist's long-faced magniloquence about \"his work,\" I must for the\nhundredth or so time repeat, can in the least prevent that vocation\nbeing in reality, and only, his diversion.... And a very striking\nattestation of this truth, now I think of it, is furnished by the\nfailure of such talk for one half-instant to delude the man's wife.\nFor women have, as some profound philosopher or another has observed,\ntheir intuitions. The woman whom marriage with a creative artist has\nswindled of a husband thus always knows, or she at worst obscurely\nfeels, that behind those locked doors the humbug is at a sort of secret\ntippling: and for that reason (among others) you will find the wife\nof every valid artist to regard his art, however tacitly, however\nself-perjuringly even, with unconcealable impatience....\n\nSo much is true, I believe, of all the arts. The endeavor of the really\nserious creative writer, in any case, is hourly to divert himself:\nand, pending extinction, he intends to continue to divert himself with\nsuch fancies as he elects. The man, as I have admitted, lies about it,\nthrough, one would like to think, some remnants of shame. Or perhaps\nit is by his publishers alone that the besotted hedonist is restrained\nfrom answering those critics who deplore his fancies, or who pick fault\nwith his chosen manner of expressing them: \"What is that to me? and how\nam I concerned with your likings and your dislikings? These notions\ndivert me. I have set them forth in the fashion which I personally\nfound most diverting. Why, as we meet here, momentarily, doomed\nprisoners in the death-cell of existence, should I be bothering about\nyour taste in an\u00e6sthetics? Mix, in your own god's name, whatever drugs\nyou like, to keep you firm in magnanimity until you too are summoned to\nthat last hackneyed journalistic hearty breakfast of ham and eggs and\nto the other clich\u00e9s of being killed. Meanwhile I stick to my approved\nstrong tipple.\"\n\nSo then--not quite out of rash hilarity,--does the creating writer\nintoxicate himself with such self-brewed imaginings as he finds most\neffective: so does he flout perforce the opinions of his fellow\ncitizens, the while that he creates a more approvable race in his own\nimage: and so does he dismiss, half negligently, the material cosmos\nas rather bungling prentice work, in very little exemplifying the\nrules which he himself prefers as demiurge. As Hecuba to Hamlet, so to\nhim is the knowledge that such creatures as \"realists\" are everywhere\ntruckling to nature in their tenth large editions, and go enfranchised\nin these books to patch up a mimic existence in every respect as\nundesirable as their own.... For the creating romanticist quite simply\ndeclines to accept either the human conduct of life upon earth or\nany assumable theocratic overseeing of it from heaven as a competent\nperformance. Men and whatever gods may potter about in charge of men\nthis myopic weakling unaffectedly esteems to be not at all up to his\nstandards. Yet, none the less, somewhere from afar may be watching\nhim--as, here again, seems whispered by irrational instinct,--a power\nwhich exacts, without any pliable descent into logic, that its material\nhandiwork be approached with the civil condonations of piety....\nThat power may well be the second of Them. And by this ruthless but\nunangered power perhaps the babbling runagate must always be punished,\nin one way or another, for his disloyalties to his fellows and to his\nnative overlords. Such was the feeling, I believe, which fidgeted\nin the bottom of the minds of my replete, romantic oldsters,--the\nboth of them well-nigh used up, it might be, but both unsmashed,\nand both unrepentantly aware of not having been, in common with the\nmost of their contemporaries, wasted,--as they drowsed among their\nfinished books. For, whatever happened, that many of their books were\nfinished....\n\n\n\u00a7 57\n\nWhy then, though, granting these delusions,--the sane may reasonably\ninquire,--should any madman seek to provoke this punishment, and\neven court it with painstakings and with year-long self-denials? The\nreply to that question is simple: I do not know. I doubt if anybody\ndoes. Nor, I imagine, had either of these paunched and spectacled\nand thin-haired fanatics, blinking among his finished books, the\nleisure for such, upon the whole, irrelevant problems.... It would\nmerely seem, I daresay, to his romanticizing time-bleared eyes, that\nsingle-mindedness, if but occasionally, if but for a brief while as\ngo the necessaries of high-wrought prose, may evade Them. It would\nseem to him that, in this grudged, snatched while, he, somehow,--in\npart through less of crass ill luck than daily tumbles mere genius\ngraveward, and in part, too, through wasting no least moment upon\nirrelevant matters,--had contrived to get some of his books completed\nin more or less the shape he had wanted, with that irrational, inborn,\nresistless hunger which made the other matters irrelevant.... And\nthen you would be almost as grateful for as you were worried by the\nunaccountable way in which you would seem still to be slipping by Them,\nsomehow, and thus far. And so at times you would bluster to keep up\nyour courage. And at other times you would cross your fingers.... For,\nreally, in the last forties, with those depressing items in the paper\nevery morning, you might with an equal sense of assurance be typing,\nalways typing, on a battlefield to a distracting accompaniment of\nburst shells. And each new book completed by you would thus take on an\nelement of the miraculous not wholly based upon the volume's contents:\nand you would, in point of fact, quite probably unwrap the first actual\ncopies saying, with rather more of wonder than of gloating, \"Well, I\ngot that one done, anyway!\"\n\nFor about the third of Them there is no doubt nor any possible\ndisputing. And it is against common-sense and piety and death that the\nartist conducts his utterly futile rebellion.... Yes, I believe, I\nunderstood those aging romantics, who approached, the colophon of so\nmany books.\n\n\n\u00a7 58\n\n--Because, I submit, it is wholly conceivable that men may, by and\nby, get rid of common-sense and piety; but this human habit of dying\nappears ineradicable. There is always ahead, and always a little\nnearer, the one and one only exit from the familiar corridor of\nour workaday existence. All of us thus pass, futilely, nesciently,\nhelplessly, through tedium to horror: for we live _in articulo\nmortis_; our doings here, when unaffectedly regarded, are but the\nrestlessness of a prolonged demise; and the birth-cry of every infant\nannounces the beginning of the death-agony....\n\nAnd that, too, you observe, is in the approved time-tested style. For\nit is through consideration of his own unimportance and transiency that\nman rises to the largest resonance of poetry and wisdom. Vanity of\nvanities! saith the Preacher, the son of David: and \u00c6schylos answers,\nOh, ye little race of men, what does your living show! and goes on with\nthe customary observations as to parti-colored leaves that are swept\naway by the wind. Horace takes up the tale, We are all bound on one\nvoyage. Villon continues with derogatory evaluations of the final worth\nof the fair queens and the thrasonical potentates and the melted snows\nof yesterday; and Shakespeare rounds off the dirge with the assertion\nthat human living, however full of sound and fury, signifies precisely\nnothing.... Everywhere fine literature, in its more purple passages,\ntends to voice the futility of man's endeavors, the impermanence of\nhis works, and his generally unarguable claims not to be worth writing\nabout.\n\nNevertheless,--here to continue in this high scholastic\nvein,--nevertheless, as Chrysippus of Cnidos, you will remember, has\nstrikingly phrased a weighty truth, in that noble monograph _On\nthe Cabbage_ (which some critics of the Alexandrian school, as we\nshould of course with due caution bear in mind, would attribute to a\nsomewhat later date and to a pupil of Erasistratus),--nevertheless,\ndeath is the one impending fact which is certain. Now, thought of in\nits physical aspects, death is an indignity before which any sort of\nhuman self-respect--not here to speak of the wild actuality of human\npride,--becomes preposterous. Thought about logically, it makes any\nconceivable human action rather silly, as upon the whole inappropriate\nto condemned persons in a death cell. Thought of in the light of man's\npossible immortality, it seems no longer to raise, if ever it did,\nany positive enthusiasm. And so beyond doubt the majority of us act\nwiseliest by not thinking about it at all, except as a thing which\nhappens to other people.\n\nAnd it is perhaps inadequate comfort to reflect that the one world\nknown to us, wherein everything exists by virtue of destruction, can\nhardly be described as a realm of life rather than of death. As I\nwrite, I can observe, in the long field across the roadway, our family\ncow indefatigably grazing in the level light of sunset, a stolid Gothic\nmonster whose placid conduct of existence I have sometimes envied....\nMore often, though, have I frowningly gazed out of the library window,\nin search of some elusive word, to find the creature tirelessly\nmunching forward, and never for one instant having to use her brain;\nand then I have suspected that cow of being a really competent literary\ncritic.... Well, the grass is, as we say, alive, and by its death she\nis being nourished. And it is rather vexatious to reflect that this\ncow will probably for some time be retained as the source of our milk\nsupply. Otherwise I could go on to moralize how she will presently\nbecome steaks and roasts, to furnish me with nutriment through her\ncenatical interment; and how I in a little while shall be dead and\nnourishing new grasses for her descendants to feed on; and how the\ncycle of grass, cow and man will thus go on interminably and, some say,\naimlessly. It could be worked up, I think, into a quite effective prose\npassage. Unluckily, I know I shall in every likelihood never eat that\nespecial cow; and so my neat and edifying sermon is despoiled by the\nraid of common-sense, always inimical to art.\n\nNone the less do two minutes of reflection beget perturbing offspring,\nin shape of the knowledge that everywhere life brings about death, and\ndeath life, until the hardiest of philosophers may hardly dare assert\nwhich upon earth is prevalent. From wasp to tiger, from the eagle to\nthe frog, all animate beings must kill ceaselessly, and eat and kill\nagain, until they themselves be killed for another's nourishing. We\nmay say, as we very glibly do, that the worm is the wren's food: yet\nit seems equally true that every wren is but a flying compost of dead\nworms, just as that cow yonder is, to the considerate, a heaving rick\nof dead hay.... And we human beings also are condemned to incessant\nkilling, we are doomed to the diurnal massacre of innumerable fellow\nmammals, who very much excel us in some virtues, such as patience\nand taciturnity, even if they be upon the whole our inferiors in\nmalevolence and folly. I do not imagine, for example, that many persons\nwould declare an archbishop to be as near a thorough Christian as is a\nlamb, or could, with an unpricking conscience, affirm a congressman to\nbe, in every district, as intelligent as a cow.\n\nSo we all live by grace of killing, as indubitably as did any medi\u00e6val\nbravo or headsman. Wheresoever, in the familiar Scriptural phrase, two\nor three are gathered together, there again is the customary alliance\nof the Bible and Shakespeare justified by the aptness of the na\u00efve old\nstage direction, _Enter three murderers_.... Nor is it instantly\napparent that an assassination is converted into righteousness by a\nsubsequent eating of the corpse. It is an epilogue, indeed, which\nsavors a little distastefully of the necrophile. Besides, a passionate\nor disinterested murder may well in many circumstances retain a certain\nchildish grace, as befits the first invention of the first baby: a mere\nmurder is often picturesque and, I am told, enjoyable: but that crime\nwhich is called a dinner party was never, to my knowledge, either of\nthese things.... And therefore one laments this obscene crunching and\ndevouring which, when reflected upon, abates man's proper pride in his\nrace, and coolingly checks love and every other exalted sentiment. It\nis not possible to think with adoration, or even with actual pleasure,\nof the most dear of ladies as the sarcophagus of fish and chicken, as\nthe moving monument of so many mangled sheep, as the animated ossuary\nof oxen, as in brief a mere morgue. And man that is born of woman\ndoes literally, we see, come out of a coffin into the tedium of life,\nwhereunder he encounters on all sides the yawning of one or another\ngrave, in the persons of his fellow omnivora.\n\nSo by the considerate our world may hardly be described as the realm\nof life rather than of death. And in all lands men have obscurely felt\nthat death was perhaps the beginning as well as the end of all things.\nThus, naturally enough, you find the Northmen talking of Ymir, the\nslain giant, whose flesh and blood and bones decayed into our earth\nand sea and mountains. In India men told of the giant Purusha, from\nwhose dead body the world was just thus mortifyingly made: in Babylon,\nof rotting Tiamat; in China, of P'an Ku; and in Persia, of Gayomart.\nEverywhere you encounter the suspicion that this world and the busy\nlife with which it swarms reveal the phenomena attendant upon the\nputrefying of any other sizable carcass: among all nations the older\npoets have, with queer unanimity, identified mankind with the worms\nwhich breed in a puffed and bubbling corpse; and have protested that,\nrightly speaking, in our terrestrial existence is nowhere apparent\nanything save the operation and products of death.\n\n\n\u00a7 59\n\nYet the chelonian-footed progress of science here, as usual, has in\nthe outcome managed to catch up with the forerunning hare-brained\nfancies of the poets. Astronomers are now agreed that we inhabit a\nworld already dying, a world made tenable for parasites through the\nabating of its vital heat; and that our race infests earth only during\nthe last stages of the globe's demise. We men and women in our worldly\nrelations rank, if you be an optimist, with lice: if pessimism be your\ncreed, you will lean to the old poetic idea of our being maggots. For\nthe science of the astronomer does, in essentials, but revert to the\nmost ancient notions of cosmology; finds nowhere apparent anything save\nthe operation and products of death; and rather cheerlessly unveils the\ncold and murderous tides of circumambient \u00e6ther, about which drift so\nmany other moribund planets among the corpses of their fellows.\n\nNone the less, it is with this omnipresent and omnicorporeal monarch\nthat the artist makes sport, depriving death of terrors with the\nopiates of religion; and maiming death of potency likewise, so long\nas the artist eludes destruction and survives in his art. To that\nattenuated, grotesque and defamatory survival I shall by and by come\nback: meanwhile I must protest, even here, that in this third struggle\nis no least beckoning chance of victory.\n\nFor, before common-sense or piety man figures, as I have said, in the\nr\u00f4le of Frankenstein; he is as Dom Manuel before the vivified image of\nSesphra; and he combats, without much hope, his own terrible creation:\nbut here, the opponent seems far more likely to have created him,\nhowever accidentally. By the fanciful may mankind, thus, be viewed as\nan unpremeditated by-product, as some serious task's d\u00e9bris, which for\nthe moment rather clutters this corner of death's workroom. Others\nwill play with the notion--which, as I remember, Felix Kennaston once\nsuggested,--of life's having somehow got into the material universe\nas a small, alien, unwelcome interloper; and will suspect this is the\nreason that death appears to come upon us and our labors frowningly, as\nthe vexed housewife comes toward the unloved weavings of the spider,\njust seen.\n\nBut, in either case, the poets are sonorously agreed that never while\ntime lasts can man's existence really matter; for time, they say, is\ndeath's broom.\n\n\n\n\nVII\n\nDIVERSIONS OF THE ANCHORITE\n\n\n \"He shaved himself, and changed his raiment, and came in unto\n Pharaoh.... And Pharaoh took off his ring from his hand, and put it\n upon Joseph's hand, and arrayed him in vestures of fine linen, and put\n a gold chain about his neck; and he made Joseph to ride in the second\n chariot which he had; and they cried before him:--'Bow the knee!'...\n And in the plenteous years the earth brought forth by handfuls.\"\n\n\n\n\n_7._\n\n_Diversions of the Anchorite_\n\n\n\u00a7 60\n\nThe literary artist plays, I had said, with such ideas as he\npersonally finds diverting.... But at this point criticism, remote but\ndecisive, dwelt feelingly, and with, I believe, a tinge of imaginative\nembellishment, upon the miseries of housekeeping in establishments\nwherein people never could manage to be on time for their meals. For I\nseemed to have written through and blotted out another entire, bright,\nirretrievable afternoon: and rising, prior to a brief venturing into\nthe society of human beings, I wondered how the poetically favored\nsimile of the life of a galley-slave could ever have occurred to, of\nall persons, some writer or another, as representing thralldom....\n\nAfter supper I returned to the library: and there--with the artificial\naid of electricity now, somehow symbolically, replacing the true\nsun,--I resumed the quest of my epilogue....\n\nTo the one side, as I had pointed out, the artist seeks to divert\nhimself with the ideas which he, whether or no he absolutely and\ncrudely \"believes in them,\" does personally find diverting. This is\nthe game he chooses to play: it is the game with which, at any cost,\nhe intends to amuse himself. And considering all things, I was really\nafraid that when Mr. Joseph Conrad talked about the artist being\nprompted by \"an obscure inner necessity,\" we overheard the resort\nof a pricking conscience to pleonasm. There is nothing particularly\n\"obscure\" about our general human unwillingness to be bored: and the\nartist evades his boredom by playing at his art. That seemed to me all\nthere was to it.\n\nLet us excogitate, as a most pregnant example,--I said, with the\npedantic touch befitting graver issues,--the famous case of Joseph\nHergesheimer....\n\n\n\u00a7 61\n\nNow, in order to approach the most striking but one of all modern\ninstances, and the case which in so many features, I believe, resembles\nmy own case, I must recapitulate a great deal written a while back,\nwhen Joseph Hergesheimer was to me, in the main, a collection of some\nhalf a dozen books, and the hand which wrote them had shaken my hand\nnot more than half a dozen times. Since then we have become--within\nthe limits of such confidence as remains possible and wary between\ncreative writers,--rather intimate....\n\nBut I am speaking of a time before this intimacy, and of my very first\nimpressions of Mr. Hergesheimer as these impressions were derived from\nhis books alone. At that time so said they, spoke they, and told they\nthe tale, in \"literary gossip,\" that Joseph Hergesheimer \"wrote\" for\na long while before an iota of his typing was transmuted into proof\nsheets. And the tale told how for fourteen years he could find nowhere\nany magazine editor to whose present needs a Hergesheimer story was\nquite suited.\n\nIt was then, and to-day remains, my belief that, in approaching Mr.\nHergesheimer's writings, one should bear constantly in mind those\nfourteen years, for to me they appear, not uncuriously, to have shaped\nand colored every book he has ever published.\n\nThe actual merit of the writing done during that period of\n\"unavailability\" is--here, at least--irrelevant. It is not the point\nof the fable that he high-heartedly wrote a story to which, when\ncompleted, his unbiased judgment could not quite honestly deny such\ndeference as is due to a literary masterpiece; and which, through\nsome odd error, was rejected by a magazine that every month was\npublishing vastly inferior stories; and which was later declined by\nanother magazine, and by a host of magazines, with a dispiriting bland\nunanimity not unsuggestive of editorial conspiracy. Meanwhile--of\ncourse--he had written another tale, which was much better than the\nfirst, and which proved to be an equally faithful chaperon of return\npostage. So story followed story, each dreeing the same weird....\n\nAnd he used to wait for the postman, no doubt, and to note from afar\nthat it was a large envelope; and would open the damned thing with a\nfaint hope that perhaps they just wanted some slight changes made;\nand would find only the neat, impersonal, and civilly patronizing\ndeath-warrant of hope. And Joseph Hergesheimer kept on with his\nfoolishness, without any gleam of success, or even (they report) any\nword of encouragement. And doubtless his relatives said the customary\nthings....\n\nYet none of these circumstances, either, is the point of the apologue,\nbecause in all save one detail the comedy has been abraded into\npointlessness by over-constant repetition; and is, of course, being\nfutilely performed at this moment in one prefers not to reflect how\nmany thousand homes. The leading r\u00f4le, though, is too unprofitable\nand irksome for any quite sane person to persist in enacting it for\nfourteen years. Here I speak with curt decision as to a subject upon\nwhich I protest myself an authority.... This r\u00f4le, then, Joseph\nHergesheimer did enact for fourteen years; and that is the fable's\nsignificant point.\n\n\n\u00a7 62\n\nYes, it is the boy's illogical pertinacity which is the fable's point,\nbecause that pertinacity at once explains why nearly all the men in\nMr. Hergesheimer's books are hag-ridden by one or another sole desire\nwhich spurs them toward a definite goal, through every instant of their\nmimic lives. These men but variously reflect, I take it, that younger\nHergesheimer's \"will to write,\" that wholly selfish and unconquerable\nwill. To Mr. Hergesheimer, even to-day, it probably seems natural\nthat a man's whole living should be devoted to the attaining of one\ndesire quite clearly perceived, because once his own life was thus\ndedicated.... The more shrewd mass of practical persons that go about\nin flesh are otherwise; and comfortably fritter through the day, with\nno larger objective at any time in mind than the catching of a car, the\nrounding off of a business transaction, the keeping of an engagement\nfor luncheon, and the vesperal attendance to some unmental form of\nrecreation,--with one small interest displacing another in endless\nsuccession, until bed-time arrives and the undertaker tucks them in.\n\nThose fourteen years explain to me the Hergesheimer women, too, those\nsomewhat troublingly ornamental odalisques. They are fine costly toys,\ntricked out in curious tissues: and, waiting for the strong male's\nleisure, they smile cryptically. They will divert him by and by, when\nthe day's work is despatched, maintaining their own thoughts inviolate,\neven in that treacherous instant of comminglement wherein the strongest\nof men must abate reserve. But their moment is not daylit, for the\nHergesheimer women are all-incongruous with what is done during\noffice-hours, nor are they to be valued then. Sometimes they are\nembodied ideals, to be sure, remotely prized as symbols or else grasped\nas trophies to commemorate the nearing of the goal: but for the most\npart they rank candidly as avocational interests. I find nowhere in\nJoseph Hergesheimer's stories any record of intimacy and confidence\nbetween a man and a woman.... And this too, I think, reflects that\nall-important formative fourteen years wherein, whatever may have been\nMr. Hergesheimer's conduct of his relatively unimportant physical life,\nhis fundamental concernments were pursued in a realm, of necessity,\nuninhabited by women.\n\nIndeed, no woman can with real content permit the man whom she\nproprietorially cherishes, to traffic in this queer lonely realm, and\nshe cannot but, secretly, regard his visits thereto as a personal\nslight. So the creative artist remains (when luckiest) at silent feud\nwith his current wife, because both are perpetually irritated by the\nfailure of their joint effort to ignore the fact that she ranks as\nan avocational interest. And the creative artist remains, at bottom,\nan anchorite whose actual living is given over to his diversions in\na withdrawn and not over-wholesome country whereinto no other person\ncan ever enter; and whence he, tired out for the while by his playing,\ndeviates now and then into four-square existence--should it be only, we\nwill say, to come down to his supper,--as a talking and laughing and\namorous and blatant animal, very much as other wearied persons wander\noff into their dreams.\n\n\n\u00a7 63\n\nWhat, though, the dull may wonder, was the precise goal of the fourteen\nyears of visually unproductive \"writing\"? Since those first stories\nhave not ever been printed, one may here seem to advance on a bridge\nof guesswork. Yet really, to the considerate, the answer is plain. In\nall that is to-day accessible of Mr. Hergesheimer's earlier creative\nfeats--with one exception duly noted hereinafter,--you observe\nperforce an overt negligence, and indeed an ostentatious avoidance,\nof any aiming toward popularity. That during the fourteen years young\nHergesheimer labored toward the applause and cheques of a \"best-seller\"\nbecomes to the considerate inconceivable. Nor could that well, indeed,\nhave been a motive strong enough to sustain him thus long, since the\nmaker of reading-matter, like any other tradesman, has need of quick\nreturns where the artist battens on immediate rejections.\n\nNo: Mr. Hergesheimer's monomania, one perceives, was then to write\nfor his own diversion. He was then playing all the while at the game\nthe artist must always play: and doubtless he also, like the most of\nhis confr\u00e8res in diversion, devised extremely imposing titles for his\nself-indulgence. But the point is that here, for fourteen years, the\none possible incentive for the boy to go on writing was that he enjoyed\ndoing it. The point is that Joseph Hergesheimer, whatever his voiced\npretexts or his actual intentions, gave over these fourteen years to an\nattestation of the fact that the main and the all-absorbing purpose of\nliterary art is to divert the literary artist.\n\nSome by-products in the way of minor gains, he, questionless, might\nlook for as he went about his playing with words, and gave all to the\ngame which he played in large part because he could not help it, and\nin part with the hope of, somehow and some day, obtaining an audience\nwith the same or a kindred sense of beauty.... This hope, to be sure,\nseems always a vain aspiration: and that which we loosely talk about\nas \"beauty\" perhaps does not exist as a vital thing save here and\nthere in the thoughts of not too many and not to be too seriously taken\npersons. In life, rather frequently, one appears to catch a glimpse of\nsomething of the sort just around the corner or over the way; but it is\nrarely, and perhaps never, actually at hand. Sometimes, of course, one\nseems about to incorporate the elusive thing into one's daily living;\nand, striving, finds the attempt a grasping at an opalescent bubble,\nwith the same small shock, the same disrupting disillusionment. And\n\"beauty,\" thus, is by the judicious conceded to be an unembodiable\nthought, never quite to be grasped by the mind; and certainly not ever\nnicely nor with any self-content to be communicated via the pages\nof a book, wherein are preserved, at best, the faded petals and the\nflattened crumbling stalks of what seemed lovely once to somebody who\nis as dead as are these desiccated relics of his ardor and of his\ndisputable taste.\n\nIn brief, it may be granted--and by Mr. Hergesheimer most cheerfully\nof all persons,--that during these fourteen years young Joseph\nHergesheimer diverted himself by attempting the self-evidently\nimpossible.\n\n\n\u00a7 64\n\nNow, to my thinking, there is something curiously similar to that\nunreasonable endeavor to be found in all the Hergesheimer novels.\nHere always I find portrayed, with an insistency and a reiteration to\nwhich I seem to detect a queer analogue in the writings of Christopher\nMarlowe, men laboring toward the unattainable, and a high questing\nfoiled. No one of the Hergesheimer novels has varied from this formula,\nfrom the first published of them to the current _Balisand_....\n\nAnthony Ball, of _The Lay Anthony_, strives toward the beauty\nof chastity,--not morally concerned one way or the other, but bent\nto preserve his physical purity for the sake of a girl whose body,\nhe finds at last, has long ago been ravished by worms. Again, in\n_Mountain Blood_ is no hint of moral-mongering,--for Mr.\nHergesheimer is no more concerned with moral values than is the\nDecalogue,--when Gordon Makimmon toils toward the beauty of atonement,\nto die in all a broken man, with his high goal yet gleaming on the\nhorizon untouched. The three black Pennys flounder toward the beauty of\na defiant carnal passion, which through the generations scorches and\ndefiles, and burns out futilely by and by, leaving only slag where the\naspiring lovely fire was. And through the formal garden ways of _Java\nHead_ pass feverishly at least five persons who struggle (and\nfretfully know their failure to be fore-doomed) toward the capturing\nof one or another evincement of beauty, with the resultant bodily\ndemolishment of three of them and the spiritual maiming of the others.\n\nThat which one, for whatever reason, finds most beautiful must become\none's diversion from all other interests; it is a goal which one\nseeks futilely, and with discomfort and peril, but which one seeks\ninevitably: such is the \"plot\" of these four novels. Such is also, as\nI need hardly say, the \"plot\" of the aforementioned fourteen years\nwherein not anything tangible was achieved except the consuming of\nyouth and postage....\n\nNor does the d\u00e9nouement differ, either, in any of these novels: the\npostman comes with the plethoric envelope which signals from afar that\nthe result of much high-hearted striving is not quite suited to the\npresent needs of this world's editor; and sometimes the postman is Age,\nbut more often he is Death.\n\n\n\u00a7 65\n\nNow the fifth of the Hergesheimer novels is _Linda Condon_, which\nrenders self-confessedly a story of \"the old service of beauty, of the\nold gesture toward the stars,\"--\"here never to be won, never to be\nrealized,\"--of the service which \"only beauty knows and possesses\"....\nFor _Linda Condon_ is to be valued less as the life-history of a\nwoman than as the depiction--curt, incisive and yet pitying,--of a\nshrine that, however transiently, was hallowed.\n\nAt the exacting workaday pursuit of being a human being this Linda\nfails, fails chilled and wistful. She has, like more of us than dare\nproclaim the defect, no talent whatever for heart-felt living: so\nthat most persons seem but to pass grayly upon the horizon of her\nconsciousness, like unintelligible wraiths gesticulating,--and always\nremaining somehow disjunct and not gravely important,--the while that\nall the needs and obligations of one's corporal life must be discharged\nwith an ever-present sense of their queer triviality. Toward nobody,\nneither toward Linda Condon's mother nor lover, nor husband nor\nchildren, may she, the real Linda, quite entertain any sense of actual\nattachment, far less of intimacy....\n\nMeanwhile she has her loveliness, not of character or mind, but a loan\nof surpassing physical beauty. And to Linda Condon her own bright\nmoving carcass becomes a thing to be tended and preserved religiously,\nbecause beauty is divine, and she herself is estimable, if at all, as\nthe fane which beauty briefly inhabits.... And by and by, under time's\nhandling, her comeliness is shriveled, and her lovers are turned to\nvalueless dust: but first, has Linda's lost young beauty been the\nburied sculptor's inspiration, and this has been perpetuated, in\neverlasting bronze. The perfection of Linda Condon's youth is never\nto perish, and is not ever to be dulled by old age or corrupted in\ndeath. She comprehends this as she passes out of the story, a faded,\ndesolate and insignificant bit of rubbish, contented to know that\nthe one thing which really meant much to her is, as if by a miracle,\npreserved inviolate. The statue remains, the immutable child of Linda's\ncomeliness and Pleydon's genius, the deathless offspring of transitory\nthings.\n\nBeauty is divine; a power superior and somewhat elfinly inimical to\nall human moralities and rules of thumb, and a divinity which must\nunflinchingly be served: that, in this book is Mr. Hergesheimer's text.\nFor this is the divinity which he, too, has served, time and again,\nwith strangely patterned evocations, in striving to write perfectly of\nbeautiful happenings.\n\nIt is an ideal here approached more nearly and more nobly than in the\npreceding Hergesheimer books. Nowhere, indeed, to my thinking, has\nJoseph Hergesheimer found an arena nicelier suited to the exercise of\nhis most exquisite powers than in this modern tale of domnei,--of the\nworship of woman's beauty as, upon the whole, Heaven's finest sample\nof artistic self-expression, and as, in consequence, the most adequate\nrevelation of God; and, as such a symbol, therefore, the one thing to\nbe revered above all else that visibly exists, even by its temporary\npossessor. That last is Mr. Hergesheimer's especial refinement upon\na tenet sufficiently venerable to have been nodded over by Troy's\ngray-bearded councillors when that phantom woman whom they believed to\nbe Queen Helen passed,--and a refinement, too, which would have been\nrepudiated by Helen herself, who, if one may trust to Euripides' report\nof her sentiments, was inclined to regard more prosaically her own\npersonal appearance, as a disaster-provoking nuisance.\n\nWell, and to Linda, also, was beauty a nuisance,--\"a bitter and\nluxurious god,\" that implacably required to be honored with sacrifices\nof common joys and ties and ruddy interests, but was none the less\ndivine. Sustained by this one faith, Linda Hallet goes out of the\nstory, when youth is over, and when she too must pass,--and goes\nregarding not very seriously that which is human and ephemeral, even as\nembodied in her lovers and her children, nor in herself, but, rather,\nalways turning grave blue eyes toward that which is--perhaps--divine.\nShe passes, as at once the abandoned sanctuary, the priestess, the\npostulant, and the martyr, of that beauty to which fools had referred\nas \"hers.\" She passes not as the wreckage of a toy, but as an outworn\ninstrument which has helped to further--it may be--the labor of a god.\nFor she passes, as all must pass, without any assurance of achievement;\nbut with content. That, really, is the happy end....\n\n\n\u00a7 66\n\n--Which reminds me that for the most part I am rattling very old\nbones. Those seemingly unfruitful fourteen years are to-day at one\nwith those other fourteen years which brought an elder Joseph into\nEgyptian publicity. Neglected merit has here been rewarded with that\nsort of loud and full-blown triumphing which in fairy-stories moves\nus to delighted applause, and in real life to instant, envious, sharp\ndisparagement. For Mr. Hergesheimer has long ago \"arrived\": his books\nhave found their proper and appreciative audience; whereas his short\nstories are purchased, and probably read, along with the encomiums of\nready-made clothing and safety razors, by the I forget how many million\nbuyers of the world's most popular magazine....\n\nNow, here, when I first wrote about Mr. Hergesheimer, here I seemed\nto find stark provocations of uneasiness. I spoke with diffidence,\nand was not entirely swayed, I believe, by the natural inclination of\nevery writer to backbite his fellow craftsman. In any event, dismissing\n_Gold and Iron_ (after some reflection) with unqualified applause,\nI took up _The Happy End_: and of the seven stories contained\ntherein six seemed to me to display a cornerstone of eminently\n\"popular\" psychology, ranging from the as yet sacrosanct belief that\nall Germans are perfectly horrid people, to the axiom that the\nyoungest, unrespected brother is invariably the one to exterminate the\nfamily enemies; and duly including the sentiment that noble hearts\nvery often beat under ragged shirts. And I was made uneasy by the\nspectacle of these uplifting faiths--these literary baking powders more\nproperly adapted to the Horrible Trites and the Gluepot Stews among\nreading-matter confectioners,--thus utilized by a Joseph Hergesheimer.\n\nI was made uneasy because I reasoned in this way: when Mr. Hergesheimer\nis writing a short story to be printed next to advertising matter\nin some justly popular periodical, Mr. Hergesheimer, being rational\nand human, cannot but think of the subscribers to that popular\nperiodical. I forget, I repeat, how many millions of them have\nbeen duly attested upon affidavit to exist, but certainly not many\nthousands of our fellow citizens can regard Mr. Hergesheimer at his\nbest and purest with anything save bewildered abhorrence. So he must\ncompromise,--subconsciously, I believe,--and must adapt his methods to\nthe idiosyncrasies and the limitations of his audience, very much as he\nprobably refrains from addressing his chauffeur in the heightened and\nconsummated English of _San Crist\u00f3bal de la Habana_.\n\nThe danger, I reflected, was not that Joseph Hergesheimer would lower\nhis ideals, nor in anything alter what he wished to communicate; but\nwas the fact that he must attempt to transmit these things into the\nvernacular and into the orbits of thought of his enormous audience,\nwith the immaculate motive of making his ideas comprehensible. He could\nnot, being rational and human, but by and by be tempted yet further to\nendeavor--as he had flagrantly endeavored in the tale called \"Tol'able\nDavid,\"--to convey his wayside apprehensions of life via some such\nalways acceptable vehicle as the prehistoric fairy-tale clich\u00e9 of\nthe scorned and ultimately victorious third champion. This was with\na vengeance the pouring of new wine into a usage-battered and always\nbrazen cup which spoiled the brew....\n\nSix of these stories, then, were beautifully written moral tales:\nalthough, to be sure, there was an alleviating seventh, in \"The Flower\nof Spain,\" which was a well-nigh perfect and a profoundly immoral work\nof art. I therefore put aside this volume with discomfort....\n\nBut I suspect that here the axiomatic mutual jealousy of all authors\nshould be discounted. As an \"outsider\" in letters, I could not, at\nthe time to which I refer, be expected to view with equanimity the\nthen recent installation of Mr. Hergesheimer in the American National\nInstitute of Arts and Letters, wherein the other representatives of\ncreative literature were such approved masters as Mr. Nelson Lloyd,\nMr. Will Payne, Mr. Robert W. Chambers and Professor Hermann Hagedorn.\nAt this port, once so neatly charted as \"the Ellis Island of the\nAcademy,\" had the skipper of _The Happy End_ arrived. The fact\nhad been formally recognized by our best-thought-of cultural element,\nthat in artistic achievement Joseph Hergesheimer had but fifty living\nsuperiors, and only a hundred and ninety-nine equals, at that moment\nresident in the United States: and I, who had not been tendered any\nsuch accolade, could not but be aware of human twinges when Mr.\nHergesheimer as a matter of course accepted this distinction.\n\nSo it was, no doubt, the impurest sort of envy and low-mindedness which\ncaused me here to suspect alarming symptoms. I, in any event, put\naside _The Happy End_ with profound discomfort; and turned to the\nreflection that Mr. Hergesheimer had since written _Linda Condon_,\nwhich discomforted me quite as poignantly by exposing to me my poverty\nin phrases sufficiently noble to apply to this wholly admirable book.\n\n\n\u00a7 67\n\nYet Mr. Hergesheimer, even in the least worthy of his magazine stories,\nwrites really well. The phrase has an inadequate ring: but of how\nmany novelists can this be pardonably said by anybody save their\npublishers? The majority of us, whatever and however weighty may be our\nother merits, can manage, in this matter of sheer writing, to select\nand arrange our adjectives and verbs and other literary ingredients\nacceptably enough, every now and then: and that is the utmost which\nhonesty can assert.\n\nBut Mr. Hergesheimer almost always writes really well, once you have\nlicensed his idiosyncrasy of depending upon interjected proper names\nto explain to whom his, Hergesheimer's, pronouns refer; or of, as if\nwith a feigned yawn, inserting the synonym, the qualification, which\nexplains, suggests, that the word, the phrase, used, printed, isn't,\nafter all, entirely, quite the affair he'd wanted.... Perhaps I here\ndrift too remotely into technicalities, and tend to substitute for a\nconsideration of architecture a treatise upon brick-making. In any\nevent, I shall not here join in the chorus of the innumerable hundreds\nof critics who have pointed out how intensely Mr. Hergesheimer realizes\nthe sensuous world of his characters and, in particular, the optic\nworld. Yet I grant, he is the most insistently superficial of all\nwriters known to me, in his emphasis upon shapes and textures and\npigments. His people are rendered from complexion to coat-tail buttons,\nand the reader is given precisely the creasing of each forehead and\nthe pleating of their under-linen. \"The Works of Joseph Hergesheimer\"\ncontain whole warehousefuls of the most carefully finished furniture\nin print; and at bric-\u00e0-brac he has no English equal. It is all\nvisioned, moreover, very minutely. Here is a guide who exhibits not\nmerely the halls and presence-chambers of the building wherethrough\nhe shepherds the public, but forces you to observe the chairs and\npanellings and wall-papers and window-curtains also, with an abnormal\nscrutiny. The scenery and the weather, to be sure, are \"done\" just as\npainstakingly; but these are indigenous impedimenta to most stories.\n\nNow of course, like virtually every other practise of \"realism,\" this\nis untrue to life: nobody does in living regard adjacent objects as\nattentively as the reader of a Hergesheimer story is compelled to\nnote them. For one, I cannot quite ignore this fact, even when I\nread with most complaisance. I have, though, my own faith as to the\nvalue of all descriptory passages: and, it may be, I shall presently\nspeak of this.... Meanwhile I sometimes wonder if Mr. Hergesheimer\npremeditatedly sits down to inventory for scriptorial use the precise\naspect of a chair or an andiron, of a fan or a shelf of East India\nmoney or a fallen magnolia petal; or whether his personal existence is\nactually given over to this concentration upon externals and inanimate\nthings. But he was once a painter; and large residuals of the put-by\nart survive.\n\nAll this results in a \"style\" to which the reader is never quite\noblivious. The Hergesheimer dramas--dramas wherein each of the players\nhas a slight touch of fever,--are enacted, with a refining hint of\nremoteness, behind the pellucid crystal of this \"style,\" which sharpens\noutlines, and makes colors more telling than they appear to everyday\nobservation, and brings out unsuspected details (seen now for the first\ntime by the reader, with a pleasurable shock of delight), and just\nnoticeably glazes all.\n\nThe Hergesheimerian panorama is, thus, if I may plagiarize a little,\nrather truer than truth: and to turn from actual life to Joseph\nHergesheimer's pages arouses a sensation somewhat akin to that\nsustained by a myopic person when he puts on spectacles.... And thus,\ntoo, is an inoffensive tropic town fore-doomed to be a perennial source\nof disappointment to all tourists who have previously read _San\nCrist\u00f3bal de la Habana_,--that multi-colored sorcerous volume, with\nwhich I have here no instant concern,--and who, being magic-haunted,\nwill over-rashly bring to rest upon a duly incorporated city, thriftily\nengaged in the tobacco and liquor-business, their eyes unre-enforced.\n\n\n\u00a7 68\n\nSuch, then, were, and are yet, this artist's materials: in a world\nof extraordinary vividness a drama of high questing foiled, a\ntragedy of beauty sought, with many blunders but single-mindedly,\nby monomaniacs,--in fine, a performance suggestively allied, in its\nessentials, to the smaller-scaled and unaudienced drama of the young\nman with the percipient eyes of a painter, who throughout fourteen\nyears was striving to visualize in words his vision of beauty; and\nwho was striving to communicate that vision; and who--the tastes of\nthe average man being that queer slovenly aggregation which makes the\npopular periodical popular, and the ostensible leaders of men being\nregular subscribers to the slatternly driveling host,--was striving in\nvain.\n\nThese things are but the raw materials, I repeat,--the bricks and\nmortar and the scantlings,--for, of course, there is in Joseph\nHergesheimer's books far more than plot or thought, or even \"style\":\nthere very often is that indescribable element which is magic.\n\nWhen Linda Condon came to look closely at Pleydon's statue, you may\nremember, she noted in chief the statue's haunting eyes, and marveled\nto find them \"nothing but shadows over two depressions.\" Much the\nequivalent of that is the utmost to which one can lay a crude finger in\nappraising the best of Mr. Hergesheimer's books. They are like other\nbooks in that they contain nothing more prodigious than words from\nthe nearest dictionary put together upon ordinary paper.... But the\neyes of Pleydon's statue--you may remember, too,--for all that they\nwere only indentations in wet clay, \"gazed fixed and aspiring into a\nhidden dream perfectly created by his desire.\" And viewing the statue,\nyou were conscious of that dream, not of wet clay: and you were moved\nby the dream's loveliness as it was communicated, incommunicably, by\nPleydon's art.\n\nNow, at its purest, the art of the real Hergesheimer, the fundamental\nand essential thing about Joseph Hergesheimer, is just that intangible\nmagic which he ascribes to his fictitious Pleydon. And the dream that\nJoseph Hergesheimer, too, has perfectly created by his desire, and has\nso often sought to communicate, I take to be \"the old gesture toward\nthe stars ... a faith spiritual, because, here, it is never to be won,\nnever to be realized.\"\n\nThis is, I think, the \"gesture\" of the materially unproductive fourteen\nyears: and its logic, either then or now, is indefensible. Still, one\nagrees with Cyrano, _Mais quel geste!_ and one is conscious of\n\"a warm indiscriminate thrill about the heart\" and of a treacherous\nsympathy, which evades reason....\n\n\n\u00a7 69\n\nIt was through distrust of this beguiling sympathy that, when I first\nwrote elsewhere about Mr. Hergesheimer, I spoke throughout with\nself-restraint, and hedged with \"I think\" and \"I believe\" and \"It seems\nto me,\" and niggled over Hergesheimerian faults that were certainly\ntiny and possibly non-existent; because of my private suspicion\nthat all my private notions about Joseph Hergesheimer were probably\nincorrect. To me, I confess, he did at that time appear a phenomenon a\nlittle too soul-satisfying to be entirely credible.\n\nPure reason did not brevet it as plausible that the Hergesheimer I\nprivately found in the pages of the Hergesheimer books could flourish\nin any land wherein the creative writer is as a rule condemned to\nchoose between becoming the butt or the buttress of mediocrity; so\nthat I must cautiously refrain from quite believing in this Joseph\nHergesheimer as a physical manifestation in actual trousers and\nwaistcoat.... Indeed, his corporeal existence could not well be\nconceded except upon the hypothesis that America had produced, and was\neven nourishing, a literary artist who might endure in the first rank.\nWhich was absurd, of course, and a contention not to be supported this\nside of Bedlam, and, none the less, was my firm private belief.\n\nNone the less, also, did it then seem to me the part of wisdom to speak\nwith very self-conscious self-restraint, because for the judicious any\nmore thorough-going dicta were checked by the probability, and the\nardent hope, that Mr. Hergesheimer's playing with words and ideas had\nhardly begun. Nobody would be so rash as to predict the upshot of any\nauthor's career with no ampler data to educe from than the initial\nchapters, however fine. Rather, must it perforce content me to believe\nthat the Joseph Hergesheimer who had made head against the fourteen\nyears of neglect and apparent failure, without ever arranging any very\nserious compromise with human dunderheadedness and self-complacency,\nwas now in train to weather unarithmeticable decades of public success\nby virtue of the same wholesome egoism. And I could see besetting him,\nI said, just one lean danger,--a feline peril which hunts subtly, with\nsheathed claws and amicable purrings,--in the circumstance that the\nwell-meaning Philistia which yesterday had been Mr. Hergesheimer's\nadversary, so far as it had noted him at all, would be henceforward\naffording him quite sensible and friendly and sincere advice.\n\nWell! the results should, at the worst,--I said also,--be\ninteresting....\n\n\n\u00a7 70\n\nAnd the results have, indeed, been interesting. The drawback to my\nappraising these results is the fact that I have since come to know the\nauthor with a familiarity which clouds my vision of his art. I can\ninvest in my judgment of Joseph Hergesheimer's later books no heartier\nfaith than I would hazard on my opinion of my own writings.\n\nNo: I for various reasons cannot judge _Steel_, nor _The\nBright Shawl_, nor _Balisand_; about my extreme fondness for\n_The Presbyterian Child_ here is no need to speak; and as to\n_Cytherea_ I shall likewise say not anything. For the man talks to\nme--talks all abeam and generally reminiscent of a time-battered cherub\nwho fell long ago with Lucifer, but only as far as Pennsylvania,--about\nthe book he is going to write. I, meekly attendant, warm alike to\nhis notion and to his cordial delight in himself. And by and by he\npublishes a volume which, to cold reason, would seem, I daresay, very\nfaintly suggestive of the book he talked about. But I do not ever read\nthe published volume in the light of cold reason. Instead, I read with\ncomprehension. Not only do I understand and by ordinary applaud the\nchanges from his original conception, the changes based upon logic and\nexpediency and upon Mr. Hergesheimer's virtually inerrant technical\nskill: I also read into the actual book those fine first ideas which,\nfor one cause or another, proved impracticable, and were omitted\nwholly. I read the book, in brief, with a comprehending sympathy that\nbefogs judgment, and with such passionate unwillingness to find fault\nanywhere as makes for no very valuable critical appraisements. I\nknow it is all most gratifyingly good. But just how good, I have no\nnotion.... No: here is an artist whom I can no longer criticize with\nany feeling of security; and so about his later books (which, indeed,\ndo not bear weightily upon the point I would now emphasize) I shall\nhere say nothing.\n\nYet I must in this place confess that I read sundry criticisms of his\nplaying--which you may, if you like, call \"work,\"--with a half-fretted\nsense of wonder. Joseph Hergesheimer is, to my mind, a fact, a largish,\na significant, and an enduring fact. The regret of brilliant and\nearnest-minded reviewers that Joseph Hergesheimer is not in one or\nanother feature different, seems a small and ephemeral fact: and I\ncandidly wonder why the critic thinks the regret worth stating. It\nreally does, when appraised from any utilitarian standpoint, suggest\nthe squandered insolence of the gentleman who spoke disrespectfully\nof the equator. I do not contemplate with seriousness the notion that\nsome reviewer here or there may imagine that his disapproval will cause\nJoseph Hergesheimer, or, for that matter, any other self-centered\ncreating romanticist, to follow in his next book the critic's advice,\nbecause such a delusion cannot be harbored, I hope, by anybody. For\nthe artist plays the especial game he chooses: the diversion he gets\nout of such playing is for him the one veritably important thing in\nlife: and when you tell him you do not approve of all the by-products\nof his diversion, he very frequently does not damn your impudence quite\naudibly; but he invariably wonders why you should be telling, of all\npersons, him about your disapproval, rather as if you expected him to\ndo something about it.\n\n\n\u00a7 71\n\nSo,--to go back,--I can criticize none of these later books with\nany feeling of security. But of one thing I am wholly certain. It\nis to the Hergesheimer I never knew that I now have large cause to\nbe grateful,--to the younger Hergesheimer of those seemingly wasted\nfourteen years, which, far from being wasted, were given over to\nestablishing the fact that at least one other novelist then wrote\nprimarily to divert himself; and that, for at least one other person,\nthe craft of the creating romanticist stayed all this while a game at\nwhich the artist played, regardful always of his high and joyous gaming\nand of nothing else.\n\nNor, very naturally, does he play with those ideas--any more than does\nM. Anatole France,--in which he crudely \"believes.\" I glance back, for\nexample, over the novels of which I have just spoken. Well! the author\nof _Mountain Blood_ and _The Lay Anthony_ is, I consider,\nas rational as most of us about atoning for his misdeeds or about\npreserving one's physical chastity: I would trust him as utterly as\nI would myself never in private life to evince upon either topic any\nembarrassing fanaticism. And it is equally gratifying to record that\nthe man who wrote _The Three Black Pennys_ and _Linda Condon_\nis neither the dazed slave of carnal passion nor of any continual\nhigh evaluation of his own physical loveliness. The \"ideas\" of these\nnovels, in fine, are not his idols but his playthings; and are the\ndiverting toys with which the anchorite has entertained his stay in\nthat withdrawn queer lonely country to which also I recently referred.\n\nAnd such, I repeat, is the ultimate and lean, but real, value of all\nhuman ideas. So I applaud the wisdom of Joseph Hergesheimer. I applaud\ntoo, because of the joy I have got out of it, his talent. Yet I in\npart applaud because of my pleased consciousness that this fine talent\nseems, like all considerable creative talent, a form of self-indulgence\nwhich has become beneficent to other persons almost by chance. For\nI think that through the haze of those \"wasted\" fourteen years one\nglimpses, clearly enough, the artist who labors primarily to divert\nhimself.\n\n\n\n\nVIII\n\nTHE DELTA OF RADEGONDE\n\n\n \"The same mode of teaching was not adopted by all, nor, indeed, did\n individuals always confine themselves to the same system, but each\n varied his plan of instruction according to circumstances. For they\n were accustomed, in stating their argument with the utmost clearness,\n to use figures and apologies, and to put cases as circumstances\n required; and these might be either cases which came under trial in\n the courts or fictitious cases.\"\n\n\n\n\n_8._\n\n_The Delta of Radegonde_\n\n\n\u00a7 72\n\nThe literary artist plays, I had said, at the game of lending to his\npersonal notions a life which will survive the life of his body. But,\nas I prepared to go on to that, I was stayed by an uneasy doubt lest\nhere was needed some further explanation as to why I should label the\nyounger Joseph Hergesheimer, and for that matter every other valid\nartist, an anchorite. The especial word, I reflected, might still be\nconsidered inappropriate by persons who in their muddled minds had\nsomehow associated anchorites with extreme religious zeal and with\nphysical asceticism and pietistic self-denials.\n\nYet an anchorite was, of course, a person who lived in actual rather\nthan specious retirement: among the great anchorites of all time, whose\nreal living was \"in the little farm of one's own mind, where a silence\nso profound may be enjoyed,\" had been that Marcus Aurelius who walked\nand spoke in unflagging imperial publicity and slept with Faustina....\nBut, I knew, here again was a matter most nearly explicable by a\nparable: and my thoughts turned to another old tale out of Poictesme,\nthe story of that gallant Holden who was for all the bustle of his\ndaily living an anchorite and also, in his way, I suspect, an artist.\n\n\n\u00a7 73\n\nIt was, the tale declares, just after the followers of the Silver\nStallion had sacked Lacre Kai that young Holden found, among his\nplunder, the triangular portrait of Elph\u00e0nor's queen: and for the time\nyoung Holden thought little about the picture. He could not foreknow\nthat its old frame, in shape like the Greek letter Delta, was to\nbind all his living. But after a few months of peace the lad went to\nGuivric, afterward called the Sage, who was already coming into esteem\nas a most promising thaumaturgist.\n\n\"Guivric,\" says Holden, \"the lady in this three-cornered picture is the\nlady of my love; and you must tell me how I may win her affections.\"\n\nGuivric looked at the portrait for some while, scratched off a fleck of\npaint from it with his finger-nail, and answered:\n\n\"There are impediments to your winning this Queen Radegonde. For one\nthing, she has been dead for thirteen centuries.\"\n\n\"I admit that thirteen is proverbially an unlucky number; but my\nall-consuming love is not to be intimidated by superstitions.\"\n\nGuivric thereupon consulted the oldest and most authentic poems, and\nGuivric admitted:\n\n\"Well, perhaps her being dead such an unlucky number of centuries does\nnot matter, after all, because my authorities appear agreed that love\ndefies time and death. Yet it does matter, I suspect, that the woman\nin this picture was the notion which a dead artist perpetuated of the\nQueen Radegonde whom he saw in the flesh.\"\n\n\"So would I see her, Guivric.\"\n\n\"Holden, my meaning is more respectable than your meaning. I mean\nthat, if the man labored as a tradesman executing an order, your cause\nmay prosper: but there is the ugly chance that this radiant, slim,\ngray-eyed girl was born of the man's brain, very much as, even more\nanciently, they say, King Jove brought forth a gray-eyed daughter to\ndevastate the world with wisdom: and in that case, I fear the worst.\"\n\n\"What, then, is the worst that can happen?\"\n\n\"Thinking about it too much beforehand,\" replied Guivric, drily.\n\nWhereupon the young mage gave directions which must be followed to the\nletter if one wished to avoid an indescribable fate. But Holden was\ncautious, and did follow these instructions to the letter; and when it\nproved to be the Greek letter Delta he entered it, and so came to his\ndesire, and communicated his love to Queen Radegonde.\n\nNow this Radegonde had been alone ever since she was first painted,\nbecause in filling in the background, and in completing her portrait,\nthe painter had provided her with no company in the quaint triangular\ntropic garden he had painted to enhance her charms. So to have Holden\nthus thrusting himself into the vacancy was welcome to Radegonde. And\nto him her loveliness, and the dearness of her, was greater than he\ncould quite believe in after he had left the Delta, and had returned,\nin the gray and abject way which Guivric had foretold, to the world of\nmen.\n\n\n\u00a7 74\n\nHolden thereafter kept the picture in a secret place, and the years\nwore on: and in the spring of one of these years Sir Holden rescued\na bright-haired princess, from an enchanter in a large and appalling\nline of business near Perdigon: and Holden married her, and they got on\ntogether very nicely. But times had changed in Poictesme, for Manuel\nthe Redeemer had ridden away to a far place beyond the sunset, and\nhis wife Dame Niafer ruled over-strictly in the tall hero's stead:\nand to Holden life seemed not the affair it once had been, and all\nhis pleasuring was to go into the Delta that belonged to tender and\nwarm-blooded Radegonde. The delights of that small tropic garden were\njoys unknown in the world of men, wherein there are no such women as\nElph\u00e0nor's queen: and therefore the poets have not invented any words\nto describe these delights, and they must stay untold.\n\nBut these delights contented Holden. \"Blessed above all men that live\nam I, in that I am lord of the Delta of Radegonde,\" said Holden, who\ncould not foreknow his fate.\n\n\n\u00a7 75\n\nAnd it was to Holden an unfailing cordial, thus to steal away\nfrom his prosaic workaday life of fighting dragons and ogres, and\ndiscomfiting wicked monarchs by guessing their riddles out of hand,\nand riding about in every kind of weather redressing the afflictions\nof downtrodden strangers in whom he was not interested; and from the\nstrain of pretending to be wise and admirable in all things for the\nbenefit of his numerous children; and from living among many servitors\nsomewhat lonelily. For comeliness and mirth had soon departed from his\nbright-haired princess wife, through much child-bearing, and presently\nlife too had gone out of her; and her various informal successors\nproved to be rather stupid once you got to know them. But tender and\nwarm-blooded Radegonde, whom alone Sir Holden loved, and the engaging\never-new endearments of Elph\u00e0nor's queen, were to the knight an\nunfailing cordial.\n\n\"Blessed above all men that live am I, in that I am lord of the Delta\nof Radegonde,\" still said, in his gray beard, Sir Holden, who could not\nforeknow his fate.\n\n\n\u00a7 76\n\nBut as the years went, so went youth; and the appearance and the\nabilities of Holden were altering, and bashfully Radegonde asked\nquestions about certain noticeable changes. The aging champion\nexplained, as well as he could, the ways of nibbling age and of\ndevouring death, to Elph\u00e0nor's ageless queen, who knew nothing of\nthese matters, because her painter had willed to put other affairs in\nthe triangular garden. And it troubled Radegonde that Holden must be\nstripped by such marauders of all vigor. Her love for her sole lover,\nand her horror of being left alone where no other man was ever apt to\ncome thrusting himself into the vacancy, were so great that, with a\nshedding of resistless tears, the gray-eyed girl persuaded Holden to\nconsult once more with Guivric the Sage; and to discover through the\naid of his magic if there were no wizardry by which Radegonde could be\nmade mortal.\n\n\"For then,\" said she, \"we shall abate in vigor together, my dearest,\nand die together; and not even after death need we dread separation,\nwhen I lie buried at your side where men will have engraved upon your\ntomb _Resurgam_.\"\n\nAnd wise Guivric said that certainly there was a way in which Radegonde\nmight come out of the picture, and assume mortality. But Guivric,\nshaking his white head, advised against it.\n\nAnd Guivric said:\n\n\"It would be better, old friend, to accept the common lot of men; and\nto be content to see your dreams played with a while and then put by,\nrather than see them realized. Besides, you have many grandchildren,\nand you owe them an example.\"\n\nBut Holden answered, \"Bosh! Do I owe nothing to myself?\"\n\nSo the high-hearted lovers followed the way of which Guivric had told\nthem. This way is not to be talked about; but blood was shed in the\nDelta, and the worm that dies not was imprisoned: and after other\nappalling happenings, Holden the Brave climbed out rheumatically from\nthe canvas, and gave his hand to Queen Radegonde; and she also stepped\nfrom the triangular frame, and entered into life as the mortal woman\nthat Radegonde had been in the old time.\n\n\n\u00a7 77\n\nStraightway she recollected her husband and her children and many of\nher lovers, and the gilded domes of Elph\u00e0nor's seven proud cities,\nwhere now not even a hut was, and all the perfumed wasteful living\nwhich Radegonde had known in the old time; and straightway, too, she\nsaw that Holden was a tedious decrepit fellow, well past the love of\nwomen. And Holden saw that his Radegonde was a flighty and a rather\nsilly barbarian wench, sufficiently good-looking to be sure, but in no\nway remarkable. And the two gazed at each other rather forlornly.\n\nThe queen began to shiver and to whimper. \"I never,\" she said, \"I never\nfor one moment was so lonely in my Delta as I am now.\"\n\nAvuncularly he patted her white shoulder. \"Do not give way, my dear.\nWe have acted unwisely, and nobody denies it: but do you come out of\nthis draught, and I will get you some clothes and have you baptised;\nand then I will present you to our young Count Emmerick, and you can\nentertain yourself, within Christian limits, by making a fool of him.\"\n\n\"A vigorous and handsome count would be better than nothing,\" the fair\ngirl conceded.\n\nSo this presentation was arranged. And tall Emmerick was infatuated\nthe moment he saw the queen's beguiling innocent young face. Forthwith\nthe high Count of Poictesme proclaimed a banquet: and when all were\ndancing, Holden returned to the void frame; and he considered that lost\ntropic garden, bereft now forever of the radiant and gray-eyed slip of\nwomanhood whom he had loved, and who would content his life no more.\n\nGuivric came with him: and these two old men kept silence.\n\n\n\u00a7 78\n\n\"We may deduce that the painter loved her thirteen centuries ago,\" says\nGuivric,--\"erecting loveliness where there was little to build upon.\nThus it is that the brain of man creates women more desirable than\nmay be created by other means: and such women endure. But the women\nchildren that have two parents, may endure only a very little longer\nthan may the scant delights a man can get in gardens that bear bitter\nfruit or else insipid fruit: for these women have no such Delta as had\nyour lost Radegonde, no more than has that dispossessed lean ogling\nflirt of whom young Emmerick will presently be tiring.\"\n\nMoreover Guivric said:\n\n\"The women who are born of man's brain have no flaw in them and no\nseed of death. There was a Radegonde conceived in Camwy, that walked\nthe glittering pavements of Lacre Kai, and wedded Elph\u00e0nor, King of\nKings, and trysted with many lovers, and later trysted with small\nworms: but in the artist's brain was conceived another Radegonde, a\nmaid who walks the sun-paths of eternity, and who is new-born with\nevery April. Thus it was of old: and this tale is not ended.\"\n\nAnd Guivric said also:\n\n\"The women who are born of man's brain bear to their lovers no issue\nsave dissatisfaction. Their ways are lovely, but contentment does not\nabide in these ways: and he that follows after the women who are born\nof man's brain is wounded subtilely with wounds which may not ever\nbe quite healed. So let no woman with two parents cosset him: for\nshe toils vainly and in large peril; because it is upon her that he\nwill requite his subtile wounding, just as you, poor Holden, were the\ndestruction of that golden-haired young wife who loved you, and whom\nyou could not love.\"\n\n\n\u00a7 79\n\nThus said Guivric the Sage; and Holden, a spent man, much hurt but very\nproud, who now foreknew his fate, replied with resolute smiling:\n\n\"Blessed above all men that live am I, in that in the days of my folly\nI have been lord of the Delta of Radegonde. I know this, Guivric, as\nyou may not ever know it,--not you, who are as old as I, and who have\nonly wisdom to look back upon.\"\n\nGuivric the Sage answered very soberly:\n\n\"That is true. For, to have been wise throughout one's youth becomes by\nand by a taunt; and to remember it is a disease.\"\n\nAnd Holden the Brave said now, with another sort of smiling:\n\n\"There is in attendance upon everybody a physician that heals all\ndisease. Pending his coming, old friend, I mean to beat you at one more\ngame of chess.\"\n\nWhereon these aged men fell to such staid diversion as was suited to\ntheir remainder of life. But slim gray-eyed Radegonde danced merrily\nwith her new lover.\n\n\n\n\nIX\n\nA THEME WITH VARIATIONS\n\n\n \"I expose myself entire: 'tis a body where, at one view, the veins,\n muscles and tendons are apparent, every of them in its proper place;\n here the effect of a cold; there of the heart beating, very dubiously.\n I do not write my own acts, but myself and my essence.... Because\n Socrates had alone digested to purpose the precept of his god, 'to\n know himself,' and by that study had arrived at the perfection of\n setting himself at nought, he only was reputed worthy the title of a\n sage.\"\n\n\n\n\n_9._\n\n_A Theme With Variations_\n\n\n\u00a7 80\n\nThe literary artist plays, I had said, at the game of perpetuating, not\nmerely (as did the painter of Queen Radegonde) his personal notions,\nbut also his own personality....\n\nTo me that seemed a secondary consideration. Yet that was, I took it,\nthe main tenet of the Economists and of the creed which John Charteris\nhad elsewhere expounded. Kings and prime ministers and admirals and\nczars and popes and bank-presidents all shrivelled with the passing of\ntime, as I had said earlier, into some uncarnate quality, uncertainly\nremembered. But writers here and there did attain to a sort of\nterrestrial immortality as rounded, actual human beings. The lyric\npoet bequeaths to us like a legacy his personal emotion, the familiar\nessayist makes the gossamer of his whims and fancies perdurable as\ndiamonds. The great egotists, in particular, such as Pepys, Casanova,\nMontaigne, Cellini, Rousseau, are generally conceded each to have\nimmortalized himself and all his traits, especially his frailties: for\neach lounges into our libraries unreticently, proclaiming, in the words\nof Montaigne, \"I expose myself entire\"; and each too has, by lending\nto every peccadillo permanency, kept letters healthily lewd, with the\nlustiness of eternal youth....\n\nWell! that, with just one reservation, which I thought not unimportant,\nseemed true enough. For the great egotists do achieve very charming and\ntolerably permanent results, in a fashion that I could best appraise,\nI believed, by pausing here to consider the triumphant outcome, in our\nown era, of the literary endeavors of Mr. George Moore.\n\n\n\u00a7 81\n\nNo reasonably conceited author, I said,--if for the moment one might\nimagine any of the tribe to merit the adverb,--would aspire to be\nperpetuated in a form more worthy than, in the Carra Edition, had\nlately been bestowed upon the Collected Works of George Moore. It was\ntrue that I spoke with, of the promised twenty volumes, only fourteen\nat hand: but these I had found in every nicety of book-making to be\nwholly admirable. Paper and binding and printing were of the sort\ndescribable as luxurious. The frontispieces most handsomely presented\nGeorge Moore in every imaginable phase of moustache and mental\nabstraction. In fine, it was the sort of Collected Edition which any\nvictim of the ennervating habit of writing books could not but view a\nlittle wistfully. And, though for a while I had thought to lay finger\nupon one marked, consolatory defect,--that the lack of running-heads\nto the pages creates some difficulty in locating at once the especial\nsubdivision of the volume for which you happen to be looking,--yet\nreflection had made against such petty fault-finding, by revealing\nthat, after all, it was as remunerative to read in one place as\nanother, in this longish book which is devoted, after all, entirely to\none topic.\n\nFor Mr. Moore, of course, had nowhere written except incidentally about\nanything except George Moore. To some this might appear a dubious\naxiom, in view of the circumstance that of these fourteen volumes no\nless than eight consisted of the earlier Realistic Novels,--as we used\nto hear them called, only yesterday, with a certain lowering of the\nvoice,--wherein there is no explicit word as to George Moore. Yet,\nwhen seen in the entirety of the Carra Edition, I thought,--as I still\nthink,--and when appraised as component parts of the one longish book\nwhich every sincere literary artist perforce composes, and of which\nhis various publications are each a chapter, then these novels fall\ninto their proper niche. George Moore in youth was exposed to, among\nother perils, the corrupting influence of \"realism\"; and here are some\nof the results, directly valuable to letters, in chief, as the record\nof a phase through which passed, long ago, George Moore. These books,\nto-day, rank somewhat with the extracts which Balzac gives you from\nthe writings of his auctorial protagonists,--of Lucien de Rubempr\u00e9, of\nLousteau, of Canalis,--and which Balzac very sensibly presents not as\nliterature _per se_, but as useful lights upon their partly taken\nfrom life and partly imagined author. So here, in depicting George\nMoore, does the compiler of the Carra Edition appear to illumine his\nsubject with copious extracts from the novels of his hero, who, again,\nis partly taken from life.\n\n\n\u00a7 82\n\nI must at outset confess that I find these novels are quaint reading\nnow. They seem faded, and somewhat pathetically droll, and they a bit\ntoo aptly illustrate their writer's petted word _surann\u00e9_, the\nwhile that young George Moore toils conscientiously at a ruthless\nexposition of the race-track, or a depiction of the evils of drink,\nor is daringly describing the temptations of stage life. Yes; it\nreally is rather quaint as long as George Moore is playing up to his\nthen current Vizetellean advertisements, and turning out \"studies of\ndegradation mercilessly done,\" or is endeavoring to convince the unwary\nthat \"you are in a moral dissecting room, watching the demonstration\nof a brilliant psychological surgeon.\" But the first moment he spies\na chance to let his characters, at some breathing-spell between their\ndisasters and their fornications, fall into talk about academic or\n\u00e6sthetic matters which interest George Moore, then the style quickens\nand fancy gallops. And the puppets discourse for pages upon pages the\nheresies and petulancies and \"studied disrespects\" of George Moore,\nand all advances briskly, undrugged by any narcotizing \"drops of\nstory.\" By and by, to be sure, the ghost of Germinie Lacerteux or of\nBel-Ami (though the Carra Edition tactfully omits _Mike Fletcher_)\narises to coerce the apostle of candor--the whole-hearted devotee of\ncandor, even then,--with its gibbers about realism. But in a while the\nyoung puppet-master is again playing truant from his art's imagined\nresponsibilities, and is contentedly expounding the notions of George\nMoore.\n\nSo one must not take these realistic novels over-seriously. That sort\nof realism--the realism of \"the human document\" and the selected\n\"corner of creation,\" here to re-echo that far time's old-fangled\ncatchwords,--was, as they said, the \"trend\" of that era. And even\nto-day, with the innate conservatism of youth, still do the immature\nlaboriously transcribe the insignificant, in their exposures of the\ninadequacy of American standards and the loneliness of the budding\nartist in one or another parish of Philistia. These \"trends\" we,\nwilly-nilly, must put up with....\n\n\n\u00a7 83\n\nOf course, there is not, and never has been, in any important sense,\nany trend in literature. One says, in any important sense, because of\nthe so amply attested fact that the only books which ultimately count,\nfor their permitted season, are adequate expressions, not of any ideas\njust then in the air (to employ that delightfully two-edged phrase),\nbut of the individual being who wrote that particular book. And\npersonality seems a remarkably haphazard affair. You are born, for one\ninexplicable reason or another, as such and such a person, as a person\nendowed with private and especial faults and hallucinations. And if\nyour book is ultimately to count, however transiently, you will in your\nbook have managed to expose that person, very much as Mr. Moore came in\nthe end to do, without talking or thinking any nonsense about \"trends.\"\nYou will have contrived, in fine, your own particular \"method\": and in\ncontriving it you will do well to remember that, just as I pointed out\nat the beginning, there must always be, to the last digit, precisely\nas many \"methods\" as there are novelists.\n\nMeanwhile, to be sure, the popular styles in books for the\nintelligentsia must always be varying, somewhat as every season the\nstyles a little alter in disbeliefs and neckwear, and give room to some\nother method of irritating the conventional. And all really competent\nmanufacturers of reading-matter, whether as publishers or authors,\nmust always stay upon the alert to cater to the latest hebetude of\nserious-minded persons sufficiently cultured to assume that whatever\nthey cannot quite understand or read with reasonable pleasure is\nprobably high art. But the philosopher recalls that, somewhat to emend\nthe proverb, every vogue has its day; and that, also, all literary\nmodes must pass, pass very often with a hullabaloo, but always with\nrapidity.\n\nIt seems, in fact, only yesterday that both the books and the decollet\u00e9\n\"sport shirt\" of Blasco Ib\u00e1\u00f1ez were the height of fashion, and _The\nYoung Visiters_ was a perdurable production. And now, in really\nliterary circles, they tell me, the sublimities of M. Maeterlinck are\nno longer spoken of in lowered tones, but rather with raised eyebrows;\nStevenson has become just a working model for writers upon the art\nof selling the short story; and even Mr. Kipling has passed into the\n_g\u00f6tterd\u00e4mmerung_ of being praised by Mrs. Gerould.[9] Thus\nsuddenly their fame is made a vain and doubtful good, and the shining\ngloss of all their glories is vaded, in the bright prime of such\nimpeccant prosateurs as Herman Melville and Joseph Conrad and Marcel\nProust: and it is salutary to reflect that Sir Rabindranath Tagore\nand O. Henry, they also, were once upon a time immortal for several\nmonths....\n\nWell, and just so, in the departed youth of this George Moore, in\nthe perverse Victorian 'eighties and 'nineties,--when, as Mr. Moore\nnow puts it, \"we were all cowed by the spell of realism, external\nrealism,\"--did many persons regard Zola and Flaubert and Maupassant\nand Huysmans with a seriousness which the considerate dare not wager\nthat posterity will emulate, when it comes to appraising us and our own\nliterary idols.\n\n--All of which seems rather Mooreishly digressive. It would be perhaps\na neater adhesion to the point succinctly to note here that, with\nthe addition of some peculiarly delightful prefaces, the books which\nVizetelly & Co. used to advertise as Mr. George Moore's Realistic\nNovels--listing them, one finds, with an invidious separateness from\nthose of the firm's publications which, The Sheffield Independent was\nwont to guarantee, \"may be safely left lying about where the ladies of\nthe family can pick them up and read them,\"--have, in preparing these\nbooks for this Carra Edition, been rewritten throughout, alike with\na view of stylistic improvement and of, as it is rather handsomely\nphrased, \"returning from the conventions of _Vanity Fair_ and\n_The Small House at Allington_ to those that inspired the writing\nof Shakespeare's plays and the Bible.\" Mr. Moore, at last at ease in\nthe exclusive company of one thousand subscribers only, can now speak\nfreely without bothering about such finicking contemporaneous notions\nof delicacy and indelicacy as, we now learn, had until the printing of\nthis Carra Edition somewhat hampered him. And for the rest, even in\ntheir most tedious passages of brilliant psychology, Mr. George Moore's\nRealistic Novels really do remain interesting, as relics.\n\nYet there perhaps I underrate these novels, which may be taken as\ninteresting from quite other points of view. Mr. Moore is, for example,\nso convincingly the great prose artist everywhere in manner and gesture\nthat we are rather generally apt to overlook his frequent omission to\nbe anything of the sort in his writing....\n\n\n\u00a7 84\n\nIn fact I now recall that I once, regretfully, compiled my choice of\nthe world's ten worst writers. Regretfully, I say, because I suspected\nthat about every author in my list I was, in all likelihood, entirely\nwrong. For I found that, somehow, I had listed only such writers as\npossessed their recognized \"cults\" of perfervid admirers, and such\nwriters as a respectable lapse of time had attested--perhaps--really\nto make some sort of mysterious appeal to a largish number of persons.\nOne might of course, in private, assume that \u00e6sthetically these persons\nbemuse themselves with notions of their own superiority and refinement.\nSuch an\u00e6sthetic notions still enable self-complacency to pull through\nmany pages that are perused with rather less admiration of the author\nthan of the reader,--although, for that matter, the majority of\ngenerally acknowledged and most permanent literary reputations would\nseem to be based upon some similar innocuous self-deceit.\n\nHere, in any event, are the ten \"established\" authors endowed with\n\"cults\" whose masterpieces once appeared to me the most violently\nuninteresting and ill written: Jane Austen, George Borrow, Miguel de\nCervantes, Henry James, Herman Melville, George Meredith, Friedrich\nNietzsche, Thomas Love Peacock, Fran\u00e7ois Rabelais, and Walt Whitman.\n\nI submitted this list without any comment save that I had made all\nsuitable endeavors toward Melville since 1907: the antipathy was not\nnew-born, among the bleated idiocies of his later ovine, or more\nrobustiously arietin, admirers. And upon consideration, Peacock,\nI admitted, had not ever annoyed me with the relentless and deep\ntediousness of the others: and I for a moment inclined to strike out\nhis name in disfavor of Marcel Proust or of James G. Huneker or of\nW.H. Hudson, who were at the time regarded vociferously; but refrained\nbecause that week's pother about any of these three might, after all,\nvery well and speedily prove transient. The ten I named, though, seemed\nactually established in one or another sort of enduringness,--which\nwas, to me, a fact that roused wonder not unmingled with regret. For\nthere really must be something of enjoyment deep-hidden in the writings\nof these appalling persons. And, naturally, one dislikes to miss it.\n\n\n\u00a7 85\n\nI repeat all this because to-day, upon reflection, and upon the\nstrength of these Realistic Novels, I somewhat incline to substitute\nfor the name of Thomas Love Peacock the name George Moore. The\nreputations of Mr. Moore and of Ananias, in fact, as masters of\nfictitious narrative, stand high above almost equally slender\npediments; with no proof anywhere existent that Ananias even attempted\nthe difficult art wherein Mr. Moore has certainly never succeeded.\n\nI am now about to speak with all possible moderation. For I very\ncordially admire the talent of Mr. Moore. That is one of the reasons\nwhy I must regret its occultation in these Realistic Novels.\n\nIt is not merely that these novels adhere to the na\u00efve and now\nsenescent device of assuming for the author omniscience. These stories\nhave, that is, no stable point of view: the thoughts and the emotions\nof each character are divulged just as these come into being; and you\nare thus kept skipping, with all the agility and considerably more\nthan the penetration of the well-named genus _pulex irritans_,\nfrom the inside of one imagined mind to the interior of another. That\nconvention, I know, is old, it is, in fact, decrepit; but it is also\nchildish: prose fiction really has advanced beyond such puerilities,\nexcept of course in its more popular variants and in the prevailing\nbalderdash of the imperishable classics of prose fiction: and this\nconvention, for me at least, destroys everywhere the illusion which I\nwould willingly foster, destroying it for the reason that I can imagine\nno existence wherein I would know, even partially, what everybody was\nthinking and feeling.\n\nNor is it merely that these thin-blooded novels are broken out with a\nrash of descriptory passages. I confess that, for one, the utmost I can\ndo is to put up with the writer who formally and impersonally sets out\nto describe anything. When I am in my more amiable moods, then hurrying\neyes glide by the solid stolid-looking paragraphs; I incuriously accept\non faith the probability that the description is being competently\nattended to: and I, unvexed, pass on toward such portions of the book\nas may conceivably prove remunerative reading.... But far oftener am I\nthe prey of logic and of peevishness, when I consider the malversation\nof time involved in every attempt to convey the true efficacy of a\nregarded vista, or of any observed object, by recording seriatim such\nattributes as, in life, we note simultaneously with plural senses. The\ndiscrepancy is the really considerable difference between a row of\ncanned vegetable tins, howsoever painstakingly labeled, and a vegetable\nsoup. And Lessing did so long ago dispose of the whole topic, among\nso many allied topics, that one would whole-heartedly like to see the\npassing of an examination upon the _Laoko\u00f6n_ made preliminary to\nthe securing of a license to write prose.... No: here again, I must\nprotest, the conscientious novelist will assume a conscious point of\nview. The utmost he will permit himself in the way of description is to\nnote that which would be noted, naturally, from that point of view at\nthat especial moment. And all description will thus be converted into\naction, in the form, not necessarily stated outright, that so-and-so\nobserved such-and-such phenomena. For I must here point out some\nobvious, if disregarded, truisms: that no scene or object can display\nany qualities unless there is some one to notice them; that, even then,\nthese qualities stay undisplayed unless the potential observer have the\nneedful interest and the time, just then, to notice them; and that to\npresent these qualities as existing impersonally--howsoever general in\n\"writing\" may be this insane practise,--is to present (here again) an\nexistence which is inconceivable.\n\nBut, passing over these grave common imbecilities, it does seem to\nbe somebody's duty to protest against the equally grave and common\ndelusion that Mr. Moore, even in these Realistic Novels, is \"a master\nof English prose.\" The assertion is as a rule advanced, I suspect,\nby ordinarily well-balanced persons who have just seen or heard Mr.\nJoseph Conrad described as \"a master of English prose,\" and have not\nutterly recovered: the prose of Mr. Moore, in any event,--not here,\nbut in his embellished romancing about himself,--one may very often\ngrant to be adequate. Yet Mr. Moore's vocabulary is far from adequate,\nfor anyone who seeks distinction in an art of which the masters are\nomniverbarious. Here, too, variety appears a grace unthought-of;\nand his employment (in these Realistic Novels) of the ready-made,\ntime-battered phrase amounts--where his clich\u00e9s do not, indeed, effuse\na perturbing aspect of feeble-mindedness,--to mere wallowing in the\nslovenly.\n\nI am still speaking with all possible moderation, as to a man whose\nwriting, in his major performances, I admire. And yet I fear that what\nI have just said may sound overstated.... Well, I open the revised\nand final version of _A Mummer's Wife_, as it chances, at page\n220; and Mr. Moore there tells me, \"A word sufficed to set the whole\ngang recounting experiences and comparing notes.\" I turn to page 229,\nand, still avoiding dialogue, I find Mr. Moore in the r\u00f4le of narrator\naverring, \"At the end of the act she received an ovation.\" Hastily I\nproceed to page 236, where Mr. Moore philosophises,--\"As is generally\nthe case, there was right upon both sides.\" Even then do I afford him\nanother chance; I go on to the next chapter, which, upon page 245, I\ndiscover to begin, \"It never rains but it pours.\" And thereupon I close\nthe book: for really nobody, no matter how widely he be acclaimed a\nmaster of vigorous and delightful prose, is privileged to talk with me\nin just that flat and meagre tone.... If, for the rest, you have an\nhour to waste, not quite unedifyingly, you might compare almost any\none of the earlier versions of Mr. Moore's more ambitious passages\nwith its replacer in the Carra Edition, and marvel over his faith in\nthe stylistic thaumaturgy wrought by interjecting the word \"and.\"\nAnd so will it become apparent to you that the haven of the artist's\ndream and the unfalteringly sought ideal of \"revising\" is not utterly\ninaccessible, and can be won to by and by, through steadily adhering\nto this bland and magic monosyllable, and by employing it to link each\nsentence in the book with the sentence which precedes it and with the\nsentence which follows it, and so to connect all the sentences into one\nsingle and sliding and ever slipping forward sentence, and languidly\nto model all upon the tentative and wavering progression of a long and\nthin and frail and flesh-tinted angle-worm....\n\nBut at this point I desist from tapping at the typewriter keys; and I\nre-read what I have just said in--upon the whole--depreciation of Mr.\nMoore. And every word of it seems to me quite true. Yet it lacks that\nfine frank ring of amateurishness without which literary dicta are as\nnothing; and I appear somehow to have lapsed into the professional\naccent of the luckless being who makes a business of reviewing books.\nNow, this accent I can only describe as that of one speaking from an\neminence, which it is not at all necessary to have attained. It is\nthe accent which implies that you may by and by, should other more\nimportant interests permit, take a Saturday afternoon off, and write\na literary masterpiece of the same genre in which the discussed writer\nhas, you benignantly allow, done his poor best during the last year or\nso. It is the accent with which the eunuch advocates birth control,\nstrongly every month in The Dial, and weekly in The New York Times Book\nReview.[10] It is, in fine, an unlovable accent.\n\nSo I lament this accent, even in the moment that I protest it voices\nhere--rather sniffishly, if you will,--the truth. I have endeavored\nto speak, I repeat, with all possible moderation. But that accent\nvery certainly has crept in,--perhaps because I am here dealing with\n\"realism,\" perhaps because of some occult underlying envy of these\nbooks' handsome physical appearance. It may be I am thinking the\nBiography ought to be issued thus, instead of George Moore's novels. I\nam sure I do not know....\n\nIn any event, I reflect that Balzac, also, does not always, nor\nindeed as a rule, ascribe to his auctorial heroes the gift of writing\nespecially well; that the samples which Balzac, also, presents from the\nnovels of an imaginary author do not pretend to be fine literature; and\nthat Mr. Moore, in preparing this Carra Edition, had thus the shield of\nweighty precedent....\n\n\n\u00a7 86\n\nThe going, even so, is immeasurably better when we come, as now, to the\nconsistently important books, to _The Confessions of a Young Man_,\n_Avowals_, _Memoirs of My Dead Life_, _Conversations in\nEbury Street_, and to the _Hail and Farewell_ trilogy. For here\nMr. Moore is candidly, and without any vain pretence of ascribing real\nweightiness to anything else, expressing his own nervous reactions\nto painting and books and to the best examples of human thought and\nanatomy, and here he has turned most potently to ensnaring us with\n\"nets woven of curious stuffs,--of a singer's corset-lace, a forgotten\ndream, a strand of honey-colored hair, a phrase from Walter Pater,\nmoonlight on a pillow in Orelay, a scrap from the Catechism translated\nby Verlaine, hopes, and aspirations, and, here and there, a faint and\nnot too secret shame.\"\n\nNow, it is in these books, to my finding, that Mr. Moore has made\nperhaps his only but his ineffably interesting addition to creative\nliterature; and has caused to move like a corporeal, breathing\nbeing of flesh and blood his one great character, George Moore. How\nlavishly that character repays attention by the parodist was shown\nbut yesterday when, in _Heavens_--that most trenchant of volumes\nfrom which I have just quoted,--Mr. Louis Untermeyer wrote what is,\nactually, the very best and loveliest appreciation of George Moore\nyet given us by anybody outside the pages of Mr. Moore. Then, too,\nthere is the Beerbohm parody, not anything like so good, of course,\nbut still containing its really superb sentence,--\"There are moments\nwhen one does not think of girls, are there not, dear reader?\" This\nis the sentence which George Moore has not ever, quite, dictated to\nhis secretary: but for some years now he has fluttered close to its\nperfection....\n\nYes, certainly, the character does lend itself to caricature. Yet I\nshall not here speak of the r\u00f4le's component oddities, nor prattle\nany word about the Nouvelle Ath\u00e8nes or the Celtic Renaissance. Nobody\ndare attempt in one chapter to sum up George Moore after seeing a fine\nartist give over a lifetime to the task. So I can but refer you to the\nCarra Edition, as to a longish book which is devoted entirely to this\ntopic, with the rider that I have found nowhere volumes more engaging\nthan are the best of these.\n\nOne's human taste for the irrelevant provokes, of course, some natural\nspeculation as to how little of this perverse, painstaking, fleering\nand inconsequential personality is based upon truth? What parsimonies\nin veracity, how much of self-denial, in short, has Mr. Moore at odd\ntimes woven into his scandal-mongering about George Moore? I grant\nthat, from the reader's selfish standpoint, it does not matter; and\nthat our general pleasure in the performance ought not to be dashed\nby anybody's lugging in the refrain of Edgar Allan Poe's most famous\npoem. For Casanova also, you will recall, indulged in the same sort of\nromancing; and secured his most admirable effects through mixing in\nsome revelatory fiction with etymologically pure truth. Nor did Cellini\nwrite under affidavit.... Then too, to me, the George Moore of the\nCarra Edition suggests--with, to be sure, a difference,--that Thackeray\nwho is really the main character of Thackeray's Collected Works, the\nThackeray who is always interrupting his puppets, to edify you with\nthe unaffected confidences of the author, as a shrewd and tolerant and\ntender-hearted man of the great world who, as we now know, existed\nnowhere outside these books. Just so, one tacitly assumes, Mr. Moore\nhas given us George Moore as he, not wholly spurred by either moral or\n\u00e6sthetic criteria, would like to be: and, for one, I find--upon the\nwhole, and if it a bit matters,--both his aspiration and his artistry\nto be commendable. In that unending literary shadow-show wherein \"all\npasses except Shakespeare and the Bible,\" George Moore should stay for\na long while one of the great characters of English fiction: and in\ncreating him, Mr. Moore has rendered everybody a considerable service\nat the price of condemning himself to eternal oblivion.\n\nFor these egotists who write perpetually about themselves are under\nno bond, and under no temptation whatever, to write the truth. So\ndo we come to the reservation which I said just now I thought not\nunimportant: it is that in pretending to commemorate himself the\nself-respecting artist, who is also an egoist, substitutes an edited\nand a considerably embellished effigy. He immortalizes, in fine,\nsomebody else.\n\nAnd it is indeed to-day a fairly open secret that Mr. Moore in very\nlittle resembles the George Moore of the confessional romances. All\npersons who have known Mr. Moore in the flesh seem here unanimous:\nand in particular do those who have known in the flesh this historian\nof his own so many fleshly loves acclaim in him a beguiling tendency\nto rival the eremite St. Anthony in continence and imagination. \"Some\nmen kiss and do not tell,\"--thus Lady Gregory has phrased it, with\nperfection:--\"George Moore does not kiss; but he tells.\" Yet the point\nis that he \"tells\" very charmingly; and that therefore, beyond any\npossible doubt, posterity will rejoicingly accept George Moore, and,\nwith admirable good sense, forget all about Mr. Moore.\n\nSo Mr. Moore has not hired perpetuity for himself, but has prolonged\nthe existence of quite another person, through, no doubt, actual\nphilanthropy....\n\nNor can I think of any conceivable reason why any author, whether he\nbe called Moore or Thackeray or Casanova,--and no matter what be his\nnotorious repute as an egoist where other writers have with lower\ncunning concealed their similarity to him,--should be at pains to\nimmortalize himself. In fact, an egoist thinks too much of himself\never to let the truth get out. And no one who has encountered and\nconversed with authors, whether of marked or moderate ability, can fail\nto note what superior persons and how much more desirable associates\nthey are in their books.... Nor, of course, does that alter the truth\nI voiced just now: your book, if it is to count, must express your\npersonality: but most assuredly not all of it naked. Rather, should\nyour book suggest what you would like to make of that personality when\nshaved, and bathed, and becomingly clothed, and judiciously inspirited\nwith alcohol, before going out to be, to the reach of one's ability,\nagreeable company.\n\nBesides, the literary artist, I must here repeat, labors primarily\nto divert himself. A man can get many emotions from contemplating a\nquite candid portrait of the person he finds in his own mind and in\nthe bathtub, but pleasure, I suspect, is not one of them. So when the\nartist takes as his ostensible theme himself, he must take too the\nliberty to adorn that theme with such variations as may happen to\nstrike his fancy. Otherwise, his art might very well fail in its main\npurpose, which--need I say again?--is to divert the artist.\n\n\n\u00a7 87\n\nAnd I shall here claim the advantage of my own rulings, I shall here\ndivert myself by turning candidly to egotism, without any beatings\nabout the bush in search of even one fig-leaf.... I have, then, always\naimed to give my writings some quality of permanence: but I am in smug\naccord with all the more unsympathetic of my critics in detecting in no\none of my now numerous volumes any tendency to immortalize me. That is\na fault of which the Biography, I rejoicingly protest, is innocent.\n\nIt would, for one matter, be unendurable to find myself portrayed in\nbooks which I so often am forced to read in the already depressing\nenough pursuit of misprints and blunders. For no man--as Moli\u00e8re and\nIsaiah and William Dean Howells have all not improbably observed, at\nsome time or another,--cares quite to face the truth about himself.\nLooking back upon my own past, I find it undiversified, under howsoever\nmany dappling clouds of legend, by any very striking crimes: but there\nis much of what to the first glance seems shirking and equivocation,\nso much of petty treacheries, of small lies, and of responsibilities\nevaded, that I am whole-heartedly glad to reflect my private\nobservatory is not, and never will be, open to the public. Item by\nitem, I can explain away each one of the disfiguring features; I can\nprove, in my half-magnanimous and half-aggrieved meditations, that\nin no one of these affairs was I really to blame; and I can utterly\nextenuate myself from all fault and wrong-doing. I do, very often.\nBut, at bottom,--even so,--somewhere,--lurks as if clouded with much\nink the cuttlefish suspicion that I may not after all be endowed with\nthe wholly blameless and, indeed, heroic character which mere logic\nassures me I possess. I have the notion, too, that many of my most near\nassociates would agree with the suspicion rather than the logic.\n\nAnd when I talk about my own doings or my personal sentiments, I\nmomentarily detect myself in heightening, softening, or overcoloring\nthe reality, as if in an instinctive effort to conform with what my\nhearer will, conceivably, expect and approve. Certainly not much of\nme gets into my conversation.... In writing, I do wax, as one might\nphrase it, bolder. This is largely fruit of my knowledge that to the\npersons among whom my physical existence is passed, my writing means\nnothing, or at most is visited now and then by an unardent glance, as\na highly problematic source of income: the persons about whom alone I\nreally care will never read whatever I may elect to publish, nor ever,\nif by some unforeseeable circumstances compelled to do so, could they\ntake my nonsense seriously. I am thus at liberty to write, without\nincurring any discomforts of actual weight, whatever I may prefer. I am\nnowadays even sure of getting it printed. Yet when I reflect how little\nI find, in so much writing, of any candid and fair expression of that\nperson whom I with real regret accept as myself,--in my own thoughts'\nvery privately issued version, with so many unopened leaves and with\nsuch handsome margins of error,--why, then, I am somewhat astonished\nand vastly pleased.... I marvel at, for one thing, the maniacal zeal\nwith which I have transferred the credit for almost every line I have\nwritten, to this or the other invented \"authority\" or narrator. I seem\nfrom the first thus to have hidden myself as if instinctively. And\nmoreover, in the few nooks thus unprotected, I find I have, throughout\nthe whole Biography, enacted one who is rather wiser and more amiable,\nand rather more clever and more sophisticatedly broad-minded and more\nfreakish, than I can on any terms believe myself.... No: I am not\nintimate with the author of the Biography: and now and then I suspect\na certain condescension in his manner, even toward me, because of my\npersistency in working for him so hard.\n\nAnd all these small deceits are benefactions for everybody concerned.\nBut the point is that every person whom egoism reduces to writing,\nmust aspire to, and the more adroit do truly succeed in, just this\nlaborious form of suicide and self-interment, under the effigy they\nfind diverting.\n\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[Footnote 9: Katherine Fullerton Gerould, a writer of the day, and the\nauthor of many stories so exactly in the best manner of Henry James\nthat they well might actually have been written during the latter years\nof his life by Mrs. Edith Wharton.]\n\n[Footnote 10: Periodicals of the day, which occasionally published\narticles dealing with literary matters.]\n\n\n\n\nX\n\nFLAWS IN THE SPUR\n\n\n \"Exploits, however splendidly achieved, come, by length of time, to\n be less known to fame, or even forgotten among posterity. In this\n manner the renown of many kings has faded, and their deeds have sunk\n with them into the grave where their bodies lie buried,--deeds that\n had been performed with great magnificence when unanimous applause\n set them up as models before the people. The ancient Greeks, aware of\n this, were wise enough to use the pen as a remedy against oblivion.\"\n\n\n\n\n_10._\n\n_Flaws in the Spur_\n\n\n\u00a7 88\n\nThe literary artist plays, I had said, not merely in such fashions as I\nhad enumerated. He plays, even over and above all this, with the notion\nthat his self-diversions are altruistic and for the large benefit of\nposterity. This idea is, to the considerate, inexplicable: but nobody\nneed seriously question its potency. \"Fame is the spur,\" as Milton some\nwhile since observed, that very often rowels the artist into doing\nrather objectionably painstaking work.\n\nFor custom assumes that time deals very carefully with reading-matter,\nomnisciently discarding the trash, and preserving to outlast a kingdom\nor two that which is finest. And probably the notion of this posthumous\natonement for the current era's stupidity has heartened, in every era,\nthe creative writer who viewed with a shared seriousness his craft and\nhis income.\n\nOne may permissibly wonder, none the less, if time does right all\nunfailingly, in quite this taken-for-granted fashion. The present\ngeneration is the utmost that has thus far been produced in the way of\nposterity. It seems, at least, remarkable that we who have made the\nSaturday Evening Post a literary success second only to the Telephone\nBook should be the clear-eyed cognoscenti to whom dead poets appealed;\nand that it was in our standards of criticism they invested their\nlife's labor and confidence. For _Les Contes Drolatiques_ were,\nreally, written for the beguilement of Dr. Brander Matthews[11] and\nit was with an eye upon Mr. H.L. Mencken that \u00e0 Kempis compiled the\n_Imitation of Christ_.\n\n\n\u00a7 89\n\nNow, not as that all-righting posterity do we approach, of course,\nthe books we actually read. Nobody expects that our judgments of\ncurrent literature be perennially brazen when two or three unbend in\ntalk about that merchandise which is sold in the same \"department\" as\nstationery and string and glue. The rub is, rather, that our chief\n\"classics\" appear to have been selected and handed down to fame by\nthe long arm of coincidence. That which remains to us of Greek and\nRoman literature composes by general consent our greatest treasure,\nthe treasure which time has most thoroughly tested and approved. And\nit is precisely here that one finds least cause to suspect time of\nany entangling alliance with justice. There is no vaguest reason to\nsuppose that of the Greek and Roman writers we have preserved, by any\nstandards, what was best worth keeping; nor that of such authors as\n\u00c6schylos and Aristophanes of whom oblivion has spared more than the\nname we have retained the masterworks. We cherish, instead, each scrap\nthat accident has made peerless by the destruction of its betters.... I\nmight go on to speak, even more tediously, of Sappho and Petronius and\nPlutarch, and of Virgil's foiled endeavors to destroy the latter part\nof his _\u00c6neid_--and about the dream that revealed the hiding place\nof Dante's lost cantos, and about John Warburton's cook, and about how\nthe Bible came by its present contents,--to show through what queer\naccidents the world's chief \"classics,\" the books which are likely\nalways to remain in theory man's finest literary achievements, have\nbeen made just what they are. But the point is that they might quite\nas easily have been something else. The point is that they have not\nearned their present and probably perpetual rank by their pre-eminence\nin special qualities, nor by any \u00e6sthetic principle whatever. And if\nthe supreme names and masterpieces of the world's literature have\nbeen tagged as such by justice,--which always remains just barely\npossible,--it was done without removing her bandage, in the hazards of\na game of blind man's buff.\n\nBut I refrain in charity from such pedantic considerations. Here is\nreal need, though, to point out that before printing became pandemic\nthe only way in which anybody's writing won a chance of survival was\nby some other person's finding its matter sufficiently congenial\nto be at pains to make a copy of it. In nature, that which most\nrapturously recorded the inane struck home to most bosoms, upon the\nchronic principle that still procures admirers for the philosophy of\nDr. Frank Crane,[12] and for the novels of Floyd and Ethel Dell:[13]\nso, from the first, have long odds favored earnest mediocrity.... To\nthe vitality of the mediocre I shall return. Meanwhile that dangerous\ninvention of Gutenberg's has changed all; and has ensured a fair\nchance of perpetuity for that which is excellent, provided always this\nexcellence be not swept away unnoted and hidden by the spume and froth\nof the torrential river it floats in, that ever-passing deluge of the\ncurrent books. Sometimes befalls a favoring miracle of salvage, and\nsuch dissimilar lost argosies as those of Samuel Butler and Herman\nMelville return upstream with flying colors. But who may say how deep,\nhow irretrievably, their betters may not lie sunken? or can gravely\nassert that literary permanence is in any very general demand among\nthe buyers or publishers or writers of new books?... Indeed, I know of\nno class of men which quite whole-heartedly desires the production and\nformal recognizing of any more \"classics\": since even those who care\nfor fine literature cannot but obscurely feel that there is already a\ndeal more of it existent than any human being can hope to assimilate;\nand that already the literary pantheon of the self-respecting is\nthronged with gods whose virtues we are compelled, in this limited\nlifetime, to accept as an article of faith. There is, for example,\nDefoe or Richardson--or, of more recent hierarchs, Mr. Thomas Hardy or\nMr. Joseph Conrad,--before the shrine of each of whom many are zealous\nto pass with every form of respect which does not entail stopping. And\nI suspect, if the persons who cry up _Don Quixote_ were afforded\na choice between silence and reading every line of this world-famous\n\"classic,\" there would no longer be any need to think an instant before\nyou pronounce its name.\n\n\n\u00a7 90\n\nBut I spoke of the vitality of the mediocre. The quality which makes\nfor acknowledged greatness in a writer is--I know not how many\ntextbooks have assured us,--the universality of his appeal. His ideas\nare, in brief, the ideas which the majority of persons find acceptable;\nand Shakespeare has been praised, for once with absolute justice,\nas \"the myriad-minded,\" because myriads have always had just such a\nmind as his. The writer of \"classics,\" in short, has need of quite\nhonest and limited thinking, and of an ability to utter platitudes\nwith that wholesome belief in their importance which no hypocrisy nor\nart can ever mimic.... Of the letters of a foreign nation nobody can\nspeak without some danger of magnifying his everyday folly. But it\nappears safe here to point out that the main treasures of our national\nliterature, including its British tributaries, really are, when\nconsidered in the light of the ideas they express, rather startlingly\nsilly. The \"ideas\" of Chaucer and Shakespeare and Milton, when once\nlooked at without prejudice, appear to wander sheepishly from the\nplatitudinous to the imbecile, the while that their \"stories\" rove, in\nsomewhat more the manner of the mountain goat, about the heights of\nidiocy. And when you compare the reality with the ideas which Scott and\nThackeray and Dickens quite gravely expressed about human existence,\nthe incongruity breathes more of pathos than of mirth: for these\nnovelists expressed the usual ideas.\n\nMost persons really do believe, for example, that complete and abiding\nhappiness is to be won by marriage until they have tried it: and,\nfor that matter, widows have been known to carry this romanticism to\nthe extreme of taking a second husband. And most persons do honestly\nbelieve that, in the outcome, wickedness is punished and virtue\nis rewarded (again) with a complete and abiding happiness: and in\nconsequence of this belief most persons make it a point in social\nintercourse to check their natural, not infrequent impulses toward\nrape and murder. Most persons do, in fact, for various reasons, think\nit best to be \"good\"; and do expect, for equally various reasons, to\nbe happy by and by. Now, with hardly an exception, the concededly\n\"classic\" writers have, without any detectable scepticism, set forth\nsuch popular notions, with every fit adornment of rhetoric and cunning\ndiction: and their ideas have endured for the plain reason that they\nwere endurable.\n\n\n\u00a7 91\n\nYet here again, I am afraid, the fool is answered according to his\nfolly. It is, when you think of it, a rather dreadful fate to become a\nclassic. Once the writer is thus deified, his private character is the\nfirst burnt offering. He has well hidden himself beneath the effigy he\nfound diverting; he rests thereunder, untroubled: but about his tomb\nfrisk commentators obviously raised, by a superior education, from\nthat troglodytic race which enlivens the public privies with verse.\nFor his cult has need of a legend, and prefers a highly colored epopee\nof lechery and sexual curiosa, such as affords vicarious outlet to\nthose desires which we imprison fearfully in ourselves, and reveals the\ndemigod to be no better than anybody else. So Mary Fitton and Georgina\nHogarth and Mrs. Brookfield are dragged into the saga: stout volumes\nare devoted to proving that Wordsworth begot a bastard, or that Byron\nwas caught in incest with his sister; nobody appears able to write\nabout Moli\u00e8re without suggesting that his wife was also very probably\nhis daughter: and all our literary gossip becomes a whispered and\nsniggered ritual of phallic worship.\n\nNor do many of the auctorially great escape calumny in the form of a\nComplete Edition, wherein their self-confessed failures at writing,\nand the chips and rubbish of the workshop, and the rough draughts and\nnotes designed for the waste-basket, and the politic ephemer\u00e6 into\nwhich most writers are allured by kindness and advertising purposes,\nare piddlingly amassed to be bound up, in pompous scavengery, with\nall the unsigned refuse from the back files of magazines which can\nbe \"attributed\" to the victim. None other of the dead has even\nhis appointed executors combined to convict him of idiocy. And of\ncourse those less put-upon immortals who are recollected, however\ninfrequently, by virtue of one book alone are but too apt to get\ninto some such collection as Everyman's Library, and have the upshot\nof their existence identified with the twaddle and smug tediums of\nTrollope and Jane Austen and Mary Cowden Clarke.\n\nAnd the writer who is raised to the peerage of the remembered dead\nis likewise granted an estate, commensurate with his dignity, in the\nfields of human aversion. Luckless typesetters have to read every word\nof his books; in your library he usurps grudged shelfroom in the bright\narmor of a binding too handsome to be relegated to the dustheap of any\nmarried man; the oppressed young have his loathed archaisms included in\ntheir \"parallel reading\" at school, where also they are sometimes put\nto the _peine dure et forte_ of \"parsing\" him; in women's clubs he\nincurs the stigma of being quoted with approval from the platform, by\npersons in the bankruptcy of mind appropriate to that deadly eminence;\nand dear old bishops likewise quote him in their sermons, utilizing\nhis dreams as hypnotics.... He becomes, in fine, a nuisance, and is\nthought of with mingled condescension and haziness and dislike. And\nit appears, to the considerate, a prodigality of currishness, thus in\nso many ways to \"beat the bones of the buried\" because their outcast\nowner once voiced memorably the common beliefs and hopes,--the tonic\nfallacies, the sustaining delusions,--which keep a vigorous heart in\nthe ribs, and marrow in the bones, of all that are not buried, not yet.\n\nHere is no need to assume, however, that every classic author has from\nthe beginning been commonplace in absolutely everything. It may happen,\nindeed, that a writer putting forth an unpopularly rational thought\nmay have his heresy so generally assailed and so often controverted as\nto make it sufficiently hackneyed for wide acceptance: but mediocrity,\neven in \"daringness\" and \"unconventionality,\" thrives from the first;\nand is the firmlier assured of posterity's respectful reprinting.\nAnd the display of uncommon mentality is, as a rule, as fatal to the\nliterary life of a book as it is to the physical life of man.\n\n\n\u00a7 92\n\nFor there really does seem to be over all a force--to be labelled what\nyou will,--that is hostile to the undue development, in any direction,\nof man's mind. Here death is not directly involved: rather, does it\nappear to be life which is resolute to use men within very inflexible\nlimits.... And so I now incline to dismiss those earlier notions as\nto nothing being apparent anywhere except the operation and products\nof death. I begin to play with the fancy that life is indeed aiming\nat something quite definite; and that the wise man's part therein is\nto be patient, to cling to mediocrity, and to get bread and children,\nand presently to die, with no more of active discomfort than may be\nunavoidable.\n\nIt well may be, I reflect, that all is not at loose ends; and that\nsome scheme of happenings is fore-ordained; and that we serve in it,\nsomehow, when we live tranquilly and propagate; since, certainly, the\ndesire to do just these two things is the one human desire encountered\neverywhere.\n\nAnd perhaps--I yet further speculate,--the phenomena called \"literary\ngenius\" and \"artistic ability\" are vexatious little mishaps, a trifle\ngone wrong, in the broad working out of a plan which they minutely\nhamper.... So the contretemps is remedied. The person afflicted with\n\"genius\" is removed, be it by his other diseases or by his fellows'\nnatural dislike of him, it hardly matters: either way, there is by\nordinary in his removal a smack of haste: and you will note that,\nwhether in polity or mercy, it is somehow provided that his children\ndo not inherit his affliction.... So does life seem to keep her pawns\nfrom errancy. So does she seem to restrict them, with now and then\nsome show of pettishness, to the arena and service of her large and dim\nand patient gaming: and wisdom bids us emulate this patience, in the\ntime that we get bread and children, and strive to die with no more of\nactive discomfort than may be unavoidable.\n\nAnd yet, even so, in the bared teeth of outraged reason, no one of us\nrests quite content to be a mere transmitter of semen, and to serve\nas one of many millions of instruments in life's inexplicable labor,\nused for a little while as such, and then put by, worn out and finished\nwith forever. We appeal against oblivion. And not only does the\nshatter-pated artist appeal: the Pharaohs have filed pyramidic caveats,\nthe best-thought-of business-men yet enter demurrers in the form of\npublic libraries: there is no tomb-stone however modest but insanely\nappeals to posterity to keep in mind somebody's dates of birth and\ndeath and middle name.\n\nFor we will to continue here, in the world known to us, to continue\nif only as syllables. We all will not to be forgotten utterly by\nthose that must so soon inherit our familiar dear estate of tedium\nand muddle-headedness and fret and failure; and that in our places\nwill get bread and children; and that after our going will in our\nbeds be striving to die with no more of active discomfort than may be\nunavoidable.\n\nYet here is an odd thing: we can pretend to offer no example worth\nthe following, not even any salutary instance of just what to avoid;\nnor can we, in any of the limbos which have been divinely revealed,\nthus far, derive from being so remembered one minim of profit. We are\nspurred by neither altruism nor self-seeking; the counsellor that\npersuades to the appeal remains anonymous: and it seems that, here\nagain, some power which mocks at reason, or at least at human reason,\nis moving us to serve unknown but, one suspects, not unappointed ends.\n\nFor we do not know, either here or elsewhere, what ends may be\nappointed: but we do know, I think, that every wise man will avoid too\nmuch of guesswork, in the brief while that he gets bread and children,\nand patiently foreplans to die with no more of active discomfort than\nis unavoidable.\n\n\n\u00a7 93\n\nThus, then, I reflected, now that I approached my summing up, the\nwriter who is sustained by the notion of his books' being perpetual\nthings cannot, after two minutes of honest thought, believe himself\nto be sustained also by altruism, nor by any faith in the superior\ndiscernment of posterity. Upon no ground perceptible to me could reason\ndetect, the instant that reason weighed the present rate and direction\nof man's progress, any marked likelihood of posterity's being in\nanything more logical than is that contemporaneous, so huge and so\ndepressingly unimpressed audience which every artist must perforce\ncontemn. Posterity in its approach to literary matters would probably\nmuddle forward, as man has always done, upon humanity's time-tested\ncrutches of hearsay and stupidity. The men who after our departure\ninherited the gray tedium of man's daily living would keep some of our\nbooks (but not really read them), and others of our books they would\ndestroy, not in any haphazard fashion, but acting always under the\nadamantean human compulsion to be illogical about everything.\n\nNot any art or painstaking, nor certainly any accident of \"genius,\"\ncould enable a book to live. Chance alone appeared to do that, and\nthen only in a very limited sense. And in this final, frantic, and\nyet optimistic appeal to posterity--here, too, man clung to his great\nracial custom of being illogical about everything; and every serious\nauthor triumphantly attested himself to be, after all, quite human.\nThat seemed the conclusion of the matter....\n\nSo I ran over my enlinked deductions. Man lived, for the major part of\nhis conceded time, a meagre and monotonous and unsatisfying existence:\nthis he alleviated by endlessly concocting fictions which bedrugged\nand diverted him. The artist, and in particular the literary artist,\nlike every other person animate, attempted to bedrug and divert\nprimarily himself; which end the literary artist gained, as a rule, by\npicturing himself as figuring enviably in unfamiliar surroundings, and\nas making sport with the three martinets that he, in common with all\nmen at bottom, most genuinely abhorred,--that is, with common-sense\nand piety and death. Moreover, he diverted himself by playing with\nsuch human ideas as he found entertaining: and he played too with\nthe notion of hoodwinking posterity into accepting and treasuring\nhis highly imaginative portrait of himself. And the outcome of his\nmultifold playing--of that interminable self-diversion which he, quite\nunsmilingly, called his \"work,\"--was always unpredictable, always\nchance-guided, and, in any case, was of no benefit or hurt to him by\nand by, and was never of grave importance to anybody else. That seemed\nto be the whole truth about the literary artist. That seemed the gist\nof the epilogue I had now evolved for the Biography of Dom Manuel's\nlife, and was submitting to myself to-night as the explanation of why I\nhad given over so many years to writing.\n\nYes, all my premises seemed true: my deductions appeared to hold\ntogether. My logic and its upshot, in any event, contented me. What, I\nhad begun by asking, does the author get out of it all? Well, I had\nfound that unknown quantity; the equation now was solved; and _x_\namounted to, exactly, nothing. That was the mathematics of it: only, as\nyou may recall, it had been revealed to me, through the aid of my small\nson, that mathematics too amounted to, exactly, nothing. And, besides,\nhere also, in reaching this negation, I had most gratifyingly attained,\nin the same moment that I discredited, the aim of every valid author.\nFor I had found, I reflected, even here, some rather interesting ideas\nto play with.... Yes, and my argument ended, neatly, with the day: for\nthe clock behind me was now striking midnight....\n\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[Footnote 11: A prominent American litt\u00e9rateur of the period. The\ntitles of many of his books have been preserved, such as _His\nFather's Son_, _The Last Meeting_, _A Secret of the Sea_,\n&c.]\n\n[Footnote 12: A newspaper writer of the day. He specialized in very\nshort editorials, so notably pre\u00ebminent, even in American journalism,\nfor feeble-mindedness that these were published, simultaneously, by\nsome fifty of the leading papers of the United States, and were read\neverywhere with edification.]\n\n[Footnote 13: Novelists of the day; authors of _Charles Rex_,\n_Janet March_, _Greatheart_, &c.]\n\n\n\n\nTHE AUTHOR OF THE EAGLE'S SHADOW\n\n\n \"To the citizens and all the realm I make this proclamation: for now\n have I moored my bark of life, and so will own myself a happy man.\n Many are the shapes that fortune takes, and oft the gods bring things\n to pass beyond our expectation. That which we deemed so sure is not\n fulfilled, while for that we never thought would be, Heaven finds out\n a way. And such hath been the issue in the present case.\"\n\n\n\n\n_The Author of The Eagle's Shadow_\n\n\n\u00a7 94\n\n\"Would you advise me, sir,\" he was asking, \"to become a regular\nwriter--now?\"\n\nFor I had got just this far, and, as I have said, the clock behind me\nwas just striking midnight, when I was interrupted by an unlooked-for\nvisitor.\n\nMost writers, for their sins, are used to the incursions of the\nliterarily-inclined young man (with, as a rule, quite dreadful\nmanuscripts hidden about his person) who wants advice as to his\nlife-work. But that this especial young man should be calling upon me\nfor that purpose, or for any other purpose, did, I confess, even on\nWalburga's Eve, astonish me....\n\nFor he undeniably sat there. He was fat, remarkably fat for a lad of\ntwenty-two or thereabouts; and he had, as I noticed first of all,\nmost enviably thick hair, sleeked down, and parted \"on the side\" with\nsome fanfaronade in the way of capillary flourishes. He was rather\ncuriously dressed, too, I considered: the lapels of his coat were so\nsmall and stiff; they were held in place, I deduced, by a coat-spring,\nwhich would be to-day, I could have no doubt, the only coat-spring\nin existence. And he wore a fawn-colored waistcoat, and his rigorous\ncollar towered, incredible in height, above a sky-blue \"Ascot tie,\"\nwhich was resplendently secured with a largish sword-hilt asparkle\neverywhere with diamonds. And to describe the majestic rotundities\nof this boy's shoulders as due to \"padding\" would be through\nunderstatement to deceive you; since these coat-shoulders could have\nbeen designed and builded (I reflected), by no imaginable tailor, but\nonly by an upholsterer.... It must have been, in fine, a good twenty\nyears since I had seen anybody appareled quite as he was....\n\n\"You see, I have just sold three stories to magazines,\" he continued,\n\"and I was wondering, sir, if you would advise me to become a regular\nwriter now.\"\n\nTo that I gave my customary, sage and carefully considered reply. \"Of\ncourse,\" I informed him, \"there is a great deal to be said upon both\nsides.\"\n\n\"I wrote five, you see: and I mailed them all out together. And The\nSmart Set took one; and The Argosy took the one I sent them, too; and\nMr. Alden wrote me a real nice letter about the one I sent Harper's,\nand said they would be very glad to use it if I would let them say\n'paunch' where I had written 'belly'--\"\n\n\"Dear me! and so you are already writing with offensive coarseness. But\ndon't mind me. Go on.\"\n\n\"Well, but I was just going to say, and that's all right, of course,\nthough you do sort of think of Falstaff as having one. But the other\ntwo came back, although I can't see why, when you look at the stuff\nthose very magazines--!\"\n\n\"You will see, by and by,\" I assured him: \"and then you will wonder\nabout the stories that did not come back.\"\n\n\"Anyhow, I got a hundred and five dollars for the lot of them. Yes,\nsir, not a cent less. And to have three out of five stick, the very\nfirst time, is pretty unusual, don't you think?\"\n\nTo that I assented. \"It is the bait in the trap, it is the stroke of\ndoom, it is the tasted pomegranate of Persephone.\"\n\n\"Then I have the notion for a book, too. It's about a young man who is\nin love with a girl--\"\n\n\"That now is a good idea. It is an idea that has possibilities.\"\n\n\"--Only, he can't ask her to marry him, because she has lots of money,\nand he is poor. Of course, though, it all comes out all right in the\nend. His uncle left another will, you see.\"\n\n\"Now was that will, by any chance,\" I wondered, \"discovered long years\nafterward, in the secret drawer of an old desk? and did it transform\nyour high-minded but impoverished hero into a multi-millionaire?\"\n\nAnd the young man asked, \"Why, how did you know?\"\n\n\"It is not always possible to explain these divinations. Such flashes\nof imaginative clairvoyance just incommunicably come to me sometimes.\"\n\nHe considered this. He said, with a droll sort of awe, \"Probably you do\nthink of things quicker after you have been writing so long--\"\n\nI shook my head morosely. \"Quite the contrary.\"\n\n\"And of course you have written so many books that--You see, I\nnaturally read them, on account of our similarity in names--\"\n\n\"You liked them, I hope?\"\n\nVery rarely have I seen any young man counterfeit enthusiasm less\nconvincingly. \"Why, how can you ask that, I wonder! when everybody\nknows that your books, sir--!\"\n\n\"Come, come!\" I heartened him, \"I have been reviewed a great deal,\nremember! The production of articles as to my plagiarisms and\nobscenities ranks as a national industry. Very lately Judge Leonard\nDoughty[14] exposed me to all Texas as a chancre-laden rat whose\nancestry had mixed and simmered in the devil's cauldron of Middle\nEurope. And, besides, since Professor Fred L. Pattee[15] let the\nnews get out, in perfectly public print, that I am dead and my soul\nis already in hell, there does not seem much left for any moderately\noptimistic person to be afraid of.\"\n\n\"Well, but,\" the young man pointed out, \"I'm not unbiased. There is so\nmuch about me in your books, you see, sir; and you do make me seem sort\nof funny. You sort of keep poking fun at me.\"\n\n\"I know. But I cannot help it. For you appear to me, I confess, the\nmost ridiculous person save one that I have ever known. I am the other\nperson.\"\n\n\"Well, I am afraid I don't entirely like your books, sir,\" he conceded.\n\nAnd I sat looking at him, both amused and saddened. For never until\nto-night had it occurred to me how unutterably would this especial\nyoung man dislike my books if ever he could know of them. And he was\ntrying so hard, too, to be polite about it.\n\n\n\u00a7 95\n\n\"Why do you do it, sir?\" the boy asked now, almost reproachfully. \"You\nget a plenty of pleasure out of life, don't you? and what did you\nwant, anyhow, that you never got?\"\n\n\"Yes: and I don't know,\" I admitted, seriatim.\n\n\"Well, then, why don't you write some books that will make people see\nthe world is a pretty good sort of place after all?\"\n\n\"But surely it does not require two persons to point out such an\nobvious geographical feature? Cannot posterity rely upon you, by and\nby, to diffuse that truism single-handed?\"\n\n\"I certainly do hope so,\" he replied. Now his voice changed. \"For\nI would like to write the very nicest sort of books,--like Henry\nHarland's and Justus Miles Forman's and Anthony Hope's. They would\nbe about beautiful fine girls and really splendid young men, and\neverything would come out all right in the end, so they could get\nmarried, and not be sort of bitter and smart-alecky and depress people\nthe way\"--he coughed,--\"the way some people do.\"\n\n\"Young man,\" I started out severely, \"it is quite evident you are not\nmarried--\"\n\nTo which he countered, now I think of it, rather staggeringly. \"But\nyou, sir, are not in love. You never will be, sir, not ever any more.\"\n\nI said: \"Yes; that does make a difference. I remember.\" Then I\nsaid: \"Stop talking bosh! and stop calling me 'sir'! I'm not your\ngrandfather. It is rather the other way round. And, besides, we were\ntalking about books. Well, you may try, if you like, to write the\nblithering kind of novel you describe. But, somehow, I don't think you\nwill ever succeed at it.\"\n\n\"You ought to know best, sir, of course, about my abilities. And so, if\nyou would really and truly advise me--Still, I would certainly like to\nbe a real author--\"\n\nHe was looking at me now, across that remarkable blue tie and shiny\nsword-hilt, with very touching deference, and with, of all conceivable\nemotions, envy. I understood, with the most quaint of shocks, that\nI possessed every one of the things which this preposterous young\nfellow wanted. I had written and published, sometimes even with\ncommercial extenuation, at least as many magazine stories and books\nas he hoped by and by to have to his credit: I could imagine how my\ncomfortable-looking large home, and my ownership of actual stocks and\nbonds, and my acquaintance with a number of more or less distinguished\npersons, would figure in his callow mild eyes: and I had tasted, too,\nif not of fame, most certainly of all the notoriety he ever aspired\nto. Why, but what does it not seem to this pathetic boy, I reflected,\nactually to have one's picture in the papers! For I could well remember\ncertain ancient glancings toward that awesome pinnacle of being a\ncelebrity.\n\nI was, in fine, by this boy's standards, a success. I had to-day each\none of the things he had ever consciously desired. That really was a\nrather terrible reflection....\n\n\n\u00a7 96\n\nBut he was speaking. \"Then you would honestly advise me, sir, not to\ntake up writing as a regular thing?\"\n\n\"I don't see how I can advise you that,--not honestly, at least. For\nyou will get out of the writing all--heaven help you!--that you hope to\nget.\"\n\n\"Why, then--\" He was abeam.\n\n\"You simply wait until you have got it! You can attend to your grinning\nthen, if you feel like it. For you will get every one of the things you\nthink you want. Only, you will get them by the, upon the whole, most\nphilanthropic process of not ever writing any of the mush which you now\nplan to write.\"\n\n\"But I don't understand--\"\n\n\"Nor do I, either, quite. But from the start will be tugging at your\npen a pig-headed imp that will be guiding it his way instead of the way\nyou intended. And with each book he will be growing stronger and more\nimportunate and more cunning, and he will be stealing the pen away from\nyou for longer and longer intervals. And by and by that imp, full grown\nnow and the very devil of a taskmaster, will be dictating your books\nfrom beginning to end,--not to speak here of his making you sweat blood\nwhen you revise, at his orders, all the earlier ones.\"\n\n\"Come, now,\"--and the young fellow was looking at me rather like a\ntroubled cow,--\"come, now, sir, but you don't really mean I am going to\nbe possessed by a devil?\"\n\n\"Some people will put it that way, only a bit less politely. But I\nwould say, by a d\u00e6mon. Socrates had one, you may remember.\"\n\n\"Yes, but this one--?\"\n\n\"You,\" I replied, \"will call him the desire to write perfectly of\nbeautiful happenings. Other persons will call him quite different\nthings. Anyhow, with time, you will fall into a sort of bedrugging\nd\u00e6mon-worship, and you will go the way he commands you, without\nresisting any longer. It will be most deplorable. So Professor Henry A.\nBeers[16] will have, after all, to dismiss your literary claims from\nthe pale of serious consideration, because you are not of Colonial\nstock--\"\n\nThe boy viewed this as urgent. \"But, sir, my father's people came in\n1727, and my mother's in 1619--\"\n\n\"That will not matter. Facts are but reeds in the wind of moral\nindignation. And Maurice Hewlett must become very cuttingly sarcastic\nabout your being a Jew brought up on the Talmud--\"\n\n\"Me, sir?\"\n\n\"Most certainly, you. And a transfigured Richard Le Gallienne,[17]\npurified by his intellectual death and descent into the helotage of\nreviewing, will be compelled to unmask you as a moral and spiritual\nhooligan with a diminutive and unkempt and unsavory ego. And an\nenterprising young person named Bierstadt[18] will, on the strength\nof having twice had luncheon with you, write out for The Bookman\na remarkably intimate account of how partial you are to provoking\ntragedies and throwing flesh-pots at people's heads. And there will\nbe others,--oh, quite a number of others.... So that, altogether, you\nperceive, you will get, through this d\u00e6mon-worship, into some trouble.\"\n\nVery rarely have I seen any young man more unaffectedly appalled. \"But\nlook here, sir! I don't want to get into any trouble. I simply want to\ncontribute to the best magazines, and write some wholesome and nice\nentertaining books, that will sell like _The Cardinal's Snuff-Box_\nand _The Prisoner of Zenda_.\"\n\n\"I know. It is rather funny that you should begin with just those\ngoals in view. You will not ever attain them. That will not matter\nso much--after a while. But what will very vitally matter--to you,\nanyhow,--is that, having once meddled with the desire to write\nperfectly of beautiful happenings, you will not ever be able to\nforswear your d\u00e6mon. And such folly is, of course, enough to set every\nreally well-thought-of person in America braying. So that in time--who\nknows--you too may come to be a chancre-laden rat, and a German Jew\nwith a soul in hell and simmered ancestors and a notoriously unkempt\nego, and may otherwise help out with the week's literary gossip.\"\n\nWhereon the young man rose; and he remarked, with a perhaps not wholly\nunwarranted uncertainty, \"Then you advise me, sir--?\"\n\n\"I cannot advise you the one way or the other. I am merely forewarning\nyou that, if you insist upon writing books, you will get what you\nwanted.\"\n\nHe smiled now, brightly, intimately, strangely. \"I see: but isn't that\nalso in the one way which matters,\" he demanded of me, \"true?\"\n\nAnd I smiled back at him. \"Yes,\" I admitted, \"it seems true in the one\nway which matters, also.\"\n\n\"Why, then,\" said he, \"I reckon I had better keep right on with _The\nEagle's Shadow_.\"\n\nAnd after that he went quite suddenly away. He returned, I imagine, to\n1902 or thereabouts.\n\nI hope he did, for his sake. There was a rather nice girl awaiting\nhim, back there in 1902. Then, in addition to her, he would have the\nfacile, false inspirations of _The Eagle's Shadow_ to play with, I\nreflected, as I went back, a little saddened somehow, to concocting the\nneeded epilogue for the long Biography of Dom Manuel's life....\n\n\n\u00a7 97\n\nBut that queer boy's brief visit had quite broken my train of thought.\nHis passing seemed, indeed, to have disproved my train of thought.\nFor the instant I had proved, to my own satisfaction, that what I, in\ncommon with all creative writers, got out of writing was, exactly,\nnothing,--at that same moment he had appeared with his mild, bleated,\nso respectful question, \"Would you advise me, sir, to become a\nwriter--now?\"\n\nAnd I had answered his question. I had failed, at least, to advise\nhim not to become \"a regular writer.\" I had, virtually, admitted that\nwere my youth restored to me, as Jurgen's was, and had I my life to\nmuddle through all over again, I would, still somewhat in the Jurgenic\nmanner, repeat its unprofitable dedication. I could not deny to him, I\ncould not truthfully deny to anybody, that, in the one way which really\nseemed to count, I had in the end got what I wanted.\n\n\n\u00a7 98\n\nNo doubt it had been intermixed with a great deal which nobody could\nconceivably enjoy. From the beginning my books had been strong\nirritants to many of their readers,--it might be that their manner was\nannoying, indeed, as Dr. Canby put it, \"to all warm-hearted people.\" In\nany event there were my scrapbooks bulging with \"reviews\" by persons\nwho appeared to have written in seizures of incoherent rage, without\never having discovered precisely what they were angry about. These\nchattered denunciations had begun with _The Eagle's Shadow_: and\nno book by me had since failed to evoke them in respectable volume....\n_The Cords of Vanity_, in fact, had seemed to unhinge all power\nof self-control and self-expression in well-nigh everybody who wrote\nabout it: the scrapbooks which contained the press clippings relative\nto this novel suggested just the corybantics and mowings of a madhouse.\nThe people who had at most length and most bitterly denounced \"such a\nbook as _Jurgen_\" did at least base upon understandable ground\ntheir claims to be heard with respect,--this ground, of course, being\nthat their judgment had been kept healthily uncontaminated by their\nabstention from reading _Jurgen_.\n\nNor was time outmoding this frenzy. _The High Place_ seemed to\nhave aroused in sundry quarters much the same quality of inexplicable\nor, in any event, of unexplained fury. There was no doubt about it: the\ninstinctive reaction of many, many persons everywhere to each one of my\nbooks--even, as it seemed, without reading them,--had been the instant,\nunreasoning response of a reputable business-man or of a bull to the\nSoviet flag.... And that had not been pleasant.\n\nApart from those who went about thus incommunicatively raging, had been\nthe pitilessly explicit. These had, indeed, been tirelessly explicit\nin their exposure of my auctorial crimes and defects. Nobody could\npretend to remember all the literary vices which I had practised nor\nall the contagions in which I had been detected, but every one of these\ninfamies had, as I recalled it, been competently exposed, over and\nover again. I was both knave and imbecile, whose \"mannered\" writing\nwas mere kleptomania; I had, indeed, no sort of natural endowments\nonce you excepted the singular nastiness of my feeble mind: such were\nthe facts that had been quite regularly deplored, now I thought of it,\nfor the fifth part of a whole century. And when the press clippings\ncame in next week, somebody would, I knew, still be regretting these\nfacts. I could have little doubt that for the rest of my life I would\nbe continually encountering these regrets.... And that, too, was not\npleasant.\n\nWhat the reviewers had said did not, especially and eventually,\nmatter. They were, in fact, to-day united in their abuse nowhere\nexcept in my scrapbooks: I alone had--now for some twenty years,\nand rather charitably, I thought,--been at pains to preserve their\nutterances. Otherwise, all of yesterday's Olympians had loosed their\nthunderbolts and had passed sonorously; and each demolishing of me\nwas to-day as little remembered as was any other of that year's\nthunderstorms. To-day--if with a lessened frequency, from even loftier\naltitudes,--still now and then descended peltingly the onslaughts of\nyoung godlings. Yet to-day I still clung, somehow, to the belief that\nmy intelligence and morals were not so markedly below the average as\nI was constantly assured. And, in the manner of those elder tempests,\nso likewise, I knew, must pass away the reverberant condescensions\nof the young, who were condemned as yet to appraise my book, and all\nbooks, in the light of their contrast with that masterpiece which youth\nis immemorially about to dash off on some vacant Saturday afternoon.\nFor presently these godlings too would turn from the serious work of\nreviewing creative literature to the diversion of writing it....\n\nAnd whatever any other formally empowered or free-lance commentator\nmight futurely say, whether in print or conversation, about my\nstupidity and crass plagiarisms and self-conceit and futile\npruriencies, would not, I knew, matter either, in itself. The one\ntrouble was that all this maintained a clouded and sulphuric atmosphere\nin which I dubiously moved, so far as went the thoughts of so many\ndear, dull persons.... Meanwhile I had got the hearing which throughout\neighteen years of unreason I had hoped to get, and had always believed\nto be imminent; and the book which I had written, in the Biography, was\nfinished, more or less, and would for its allotted season remain. With\nthe length, or, if you will, with the extreme brevity of that season, I\nhad no concern: it was enough to know that the Biography was finished,\nand would outlast me.\n\n\n\u00a7 99\n\nFor that infernal boy had drawn from me the truth: I really had got\nout of life what I most wanted. I had wanted to make the Biography:\nand I had made it, in just the way which seemed good to me. To do that\nhad been, no doubt, my play and my diversion, in the corridors where\nmen must find diversion, whether in trifling with bank notes or women,\nwhether in clutching at straws or prayer-books, or else go mad: and\nmy enlinked deductions held as far as the chain stretched. But one\nlink more was needed. For it seemed to me, too, that I had somehow\nfulfilled, without unduly shirking, an obligation which had been\nlaid upon me to make the Biography. I was not, heaven knew, claiming\nfor myself any heavenly inspiration or even any heavenly countenance.\nRather, it seemed to me that the ability and the body and the life\nwhich transiently were at my disposal had been really used: with these\nlent implements which were not ever properly speaking mine, and which\npresently would be taken away from me, I had made something which was\nactually mine. That something was the Biography....\n\n\n\u00a7 100\n\nAnd still,--with all the bright day gone, and with the deepest gloom of\nmidnight also an affair of the past,--still, I seem not quite to have\nfound that final link, not wholly to have completed my epilogue. Some\nword, as yet unthought of, stays needed to round off all....\n\nHere then, upon this shelf, in these brown volumes which make up the\nBiography, I can lay hand and eye upon just what precisely my life has\namounted to: the upshot of my existence is here before me, a tangible\nand visible and entirely complete summing up, within humiliatingly\nfew inches. And yet, as I consider these inadequate brown volumes,\nI suspect that the word I am looking for is \"gratitude.\" It most\ncertainly is not \"pride\": and, as I hastily admit, nobody else is\ncalled on to share in my suspicion.\n\nBut I at least, who have found human living and this world not wholly\nadmirable, and who have here and there made formal admission of the\nfact, feel that in honor one ought to acknowledge all courtesies too.\nWith life, then, I, upon the whole, have no personal quarrel: she has\nmauled, scratched and banged, she has in all ways damaged me: but she\nhas permitted me to do that which I most wanted. So that I must be, I\nsuppose, grateful.\n\n--With which decision I very lightly pass my finger-tips across these\nfifteen book-backs; and touch in this small gesture, so didactically\nsmall, the whole of that to which, for good or ill, I have amounted.\nAnd thereafter (with a continuing sense of wholesome allegory) I go\nquietly to bed.\n\n  _Dumbarton Grange,\n  30 April, 1924._\n\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[Footnote 14: Nothing is known of him.]\n\n[Footnote 15: Dr. Pattee is stated to have lectured professionally, at\nPennsylvania State College, upon what patriotism described as American\nliterature. He is known to have edited Shakespeare's _Macbeth_,\nand to have contributed to The American Mercury.]\n\n[Footnote 16: Connected with Yale University.]\n\n[Footnote 17: An English writer of some promise under the latter years\nof Victoria's reign.]\n\n[Footnote 18: See note on Judge Leonard Doughty, page 288.]\n\n\nEXPLICIT\n\n\n\n\nTranscribers note: \"Text enclosed by underscores is in italics\n(_italics_).\"","title":"Straws and prayer-books; dizain des diversions","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":60179}