HOW TO TELL A STORY
AND OTHER ESSAYS
BY
MARK TWAIN
NEW YORK AND LONDON HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
1898
BY MARK TWAIN.
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CONTENTS
PAGE
How TO TELL A STORY 3
IN DEFENCE OF HARRIET SHELLEY 15
FENIMORE COOPER'S LITERARY OFFENCES .... 93
TRAVELLING WITH A REFORMER 119
PRIVATE HISTORY OF THE "JUMPING FROG" STORY 149
MENTAL TELEGRAPHY AGAIN 167
WHAT PAUL BOURGET THINKS OF Us 181
A LITTLE NOTE TO M. PAUL BOURGET 213
HOW TO TELL A STORY
NOTE
" How to Tell a Story " originally appeared in The Youth's Companion; "In Defence of Harriet Shelley," " Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences," "What Paul Bourget Thinks of Us," and 'The Private History of the 'Jumping Frog' Story," in the North American Review ; " Travelling with a Reformer," in the Cosmopolitan Magazine; and "Mental Telegraphy Again," in Harper s Magazine. " A Little Note to Paul Bourget " has not before appeared in print in this country.
HOW TO TELL A STORY
The Humorous Story an American Development.— Its Difference from Comic and Witty Stories.
I DO not claim that I can tell a story as it ought to be told. I only claim to know how a story ought to be told, for I have been al most daily in the company of the most expert story-tellers for many years.
There are several kinds of stories, but only one difficult kind — the humorous. I will talk mainly about that one. The humorous story is American, the comic story is English^the witty story isJFrencrh The "humorous story depends for its effect upon thfTmanner~oi the telling; the comic story andjt upon ihejng£Acr.
The humorous story may be spun out to great length, and may wander around as much as it pleases, and arrive nowhere in partic ular; but the comic and witty stories must be brief and end with a point. The humor-
4 HOW TO TELL A STORY
ous story bubbles gently along, the others burst.
The humorous story is strictly a work of art — high and delicate art— and only an artist can tell it ; but no art is necessary in telling the comic and the witty story ; anybody cai, do it. The art of telling a humorous story — understand, I mean by word of| mouth, not print — was created in America,' and has re mained at home.
The humorous story is told gravely ; the teller does his best to conceal the fact that he even dimly suspects that there is anything funny about it ; but the teller of the comic story tells you beforehand that it is one of the funniest things he has°ever heard, then tells it with eager delight, and is the first person to laugh when he gets through. And sometimes, if he has had good success, he is so glad and happy that he will repeat the " nub " of i glance around from face to face, collectin plause, and then repeat it again. It is a pa thetic thing to see.
Very often, of course, the rambling and dis jointed humorous story finishes with a nub, point, snapper, or whatever you like to call it. Then the listener must be alert, for in many cases the teller will divert attention from that
HOW TO TELL A STORY 5
nub by dropping it in a carefully casual and indifferent way, with the pretence that he does not know it is a nub.
Artemus Ward used that trick a good deal ; then when the belated audience presently caught the joke) he would look up with inno cent surprise, as if wondering what they had found to laugh at. Dan- Setchell used it be fore him, Nye and Riley and others use it to-day.
But the teller of the comic story does not slur the nub; he shouts it at you — every time. And when he prints it, in England, France, Germany, and Italy, he italicizes it, puts some whooping exclamation -points after it, and sometimes explains it in a parenthesis. All of which is very depressing, and makes one want to renounce joking and lead a better life.
Let me set down an instance of the comic method, using an anecdote which has been popular all over the world for twelve or fifteen hundred years. The teller tells it in this way:
THE WOUNDED SOLDIER
In the course of a certain battle a soldier whose leg had been shot off appealed to an other soldier who was hurrying by to carry
6 HOW TO TELL A STORY
him to the rear, informing him at the same time of the loss which he had sustained ; whereupon the generous son of Mars, shoul dering the unfortunate, proceeded to carry out his desire. The bullets and cannon-balls were flying in all directions, and presently one of the latter took the wounded man's head off — without, however, his deliverer being aware of it. In no long time he was hailed by an offi cer, who said :
" Where are you going with that carcass?" "To the rear, sir — he's lost his leg!" "His leg, forsooth?" responded the aston ished officer; "you mean his head, you booby."
Whereupon the soldier dispossessed himself of his burden, and stood looking down upon it in great perplexity. At length he said :
" It is true, sir, just as you have said." Then •-; after a pause he added, " But he TOLD me IT WAS HIS LEG! ! ! M"
Here the narrator bursts into explosion after explosion of thunderous horse -laughter, repeating that nub from time to time through his gaspings and shriekings and suffocatings.
It takes only a minute and a half to tell that in its comic-story form ; and isn't worth
HOW TO TELL A STORY '/
the telling, after all. Put into the humorous- story form it takes ten minutes, and is about the funniest thing I have ever listened to — as James Whitcomb Riley tells it.
He tells it in the character of a dull-witted old farmer who has just heard it for the first time, thinks it is unspeakably funny, and is trying to repeat it to a neighbor. But he can't remember it ; so he gets all mixed up and wanders helplessly round and round, put ting in tedious details that don't belong in the tale and only retard it ; taking them out con scientiously and putting in others that are just as useless ; making minor mistakes now and then and stopping to correct them and ex plain how he came to make them ; remember ing things which he forgot to put in in their proper place and going back to put them in there; stopping his narrative a good while in order to try to recall the name of the soldier that was hurt, and finally remembering that the soldier's name was not mentioned, and re marking placidly that the name is of no real importance, anyway — better, of course,, if one knew it, but not essential, after all — and so on, and so on, and so on.
The teller is innocent and happy and pleased with himself, and has to stop every little while
3 HOW TO TEEL A STORY
\
to hold himself in and keep from laughing out right ; and does hold in, but his body quakes in a jelly-like way with interior chuckles ; and at the end of the ten minutes the audience have laughed until they are exhausted, and the tears are running down their faces.
The simplicity and innocence and sincerity and unconsciousness of the old farmer are per fectly simulated, and the result is a perform ance which is thoroughly charming and de licious. This is art — and fine and beautiful, and only a master can compass it ; but a ma chine could teU the, other story.
To string incongruities and absurdities to gether in a wandering and sometimes purpose less way, and seem innocently unaware that they are absurdities, is the basis of the Amer ican art, if my position is correct. Another feature is the slurring of the point. A third is the dropping of a studied remark apparent ly without knowing it, as if one were thinking aloud. The fourth and last is the pause.
Artemus Ward dealt in numbers three and four a good deal. He would begin to tell with great animation something which he seemed to think was wonderful ; then lose confidence, and after an apparently minded pause add an incongruous rer
HOW TO TELL A STORY 9
a soliloquizing way ; and that was the remark intended to explode the mine — and it did.
For instance, he would say eagerly, excited ly, " I once knew a man in New Zealand who hadn't a tooth in his head " — here his anima tion would die out ; a silent, reflective pause would follow, then he would say dreamily, and as if to himself, " and yet that man could beat a drum better than any man I ever saw."
The pause is an exceedingly important feat ure in any kind of story, and a frequently re curring feature, too. It is a dainty thing, and delicate, and also uncertain and treacherous ; for it must be exactly the right length — no more and no less — or it fails of its purpose and makes trouble. If the pause is too short the impressive point is passed, and the audience have had time to divine that a surprise is in tended — and then you can't surprise them, of course.
On the platform I used to tell a negro ghost story that had a pause in front of the snapper on the end, and that pause was the most im portant thing in the whole story. If I got it the right length precisely, I could spring the finishing ejaculation with effect enough to mak-j some impressible girl deliver a startled little yelp and jump out of her seat — and that
IO HOW TO TELL A STORY
was what I was after. This story was called " The Golden Arm," and was told in this fash ion. You can practise with it yourself — and mind you look out for the pause and get it right.
THE GOLDEN ARM
Once 'pon a time dey wuz a monsus mean man, en he live 'way out in de prairie all 'lone by hisself, 'cep'n he had a wife. En bimeby she died, en he tuck en toted her way out dah in de prairie en buried her. Well, she had a golden arm — all solid gold, fum de shoulder down. He wuz pow'ful mean — pow'ful; en dat night he couldn't sleep, caze he want dat golden arm so bad.
When it come midnight he couldn't stan' it no mo'; so he git up, he did, en tuck his lan tern en shoved out thoo de storm en dug her up en got de golden arm ; en he bent his head down 'gin de win', en plowed en plowed en plowed thoo de snow. Den all on a sudden he stop (make a considerable pause here, and look startled, and take a listening attitude) en say : " My Ian , what's dat !"
En he listen — en listen — en de win' say (set your teeth together and imitate the w.viling and wheezing singsong of the wind), " Bzzz-z-
HOW TO TELL A STORY II
zzz " — en den, way back yonder whah de grave is, he hear a voice ! — he hear a voice all mix' up in de win' — can't hardly tell 'em 'part — " Bzzz-zzz — W-h-o — g-o-t — m-y — g-o-l-d-e-n arm ? — 7?z — zzz — W-h-o g-o-t m-y g-o-l-d-e-n arm ? (You ir.uct begin to shiver violently now.)
En he begin to shiver en shake, en say, " Oh, my! Ok, my Ian'!" en de win' blow de lan tern out, en de snow en sleet blow in his face en mos' choke him, en he start a-plowin' knee- deep towards home mos' dead, he so sk'yerd — en pooty soon he hear de voice agin, en (pause) it 'us comin' after him ! " Bzzz — zzz — zzz — W-h-o — g-o-t — m-y — g-o-l-d-e-n — arm?"
When he git to de pasture he hear it agin— closter now, en a-comm/ — a-comin' back dah in de dark en de storm — (repeat the wind and the voice). When he git to de house he rush up-stairs en jump in de bed en kiver up, head and years, en lay dah shiverin' en shakin' — en den way out dah he hear it agin! — en a- comin ! En bimeby he hear (pause — awed, listening attitude) — pat — pat — pat — hit's a- comin up-stairs ! Den he hear de latch, en he know it's in de room !
Den pooty soon he know it's ^-stannin by de bed! (Pauae.) Den — he know it's ^-bendin
12 HOW TO TELL A STORY
down over him — en he cain't skasely git his breath ! Den — den — he seem to feel someth'n c-o-l-d, right down 'most agin his head ! (Pause.)
Den de voice say, right at his year — " W-h-o — g-o-t — m-y — g-o-l-d-e-n arm?" (Y^11 must Avail it out very plaintively and accusingly ;- then you stare steadily and impressively into the face of the farthest-gone auditor — a girl, preferably — and let that awe-inspiring pause begin to build itself in the deep hush. When it has reached exactly the right length, jump suddenly at that girl and yell, " You've got it !"
If you've got the pause right, she'll fetch a dear little yelp and spring right out of her shoes. But you must get the pause right ; and you will find it the most troublesome and ag gravating and uncertain thing you ever under took.)
IN DEFENCE OF HARRIET SHELLEY
IN DEFENCE OF HARRIET SHELLEY
I HAVE committed sins, of course ; but I have not committed enough of them to en title me to the punishment of reduction to the bread and water of ordinary literature dur ing six years when I might have been living on the fat diet spread for the righteous in Pro fessor Dowden's Life of Shelley, if I had been justly dealt with.
During these six years I have been living a life of peaceful ignorance. I was not aware that Shelley's first wife was unfaithful to him, and that that was why he deserted her and wiped the stain from his sensitive honor by entering into soiled relations with Godwin's young daughter. This was all new to me when I heard it lately, and was told that the proofs of it were in this book, and that this book's ver dict is accepted in the girls' colleges of Amer ica and its view taught in their literary classes.
1 6 HOW TO TELL A STORY
In each of these six years multitudes of young people in our country have arrived at the Shelley-reading age. Are these six multi tudes unacquainted with this life of Shelley? Perhaps they are; indeed, one may feel pretty sure that the great bulk of them are. To these, then, I address myself, in the hope that some account of this romantic historical fable and the fabulist's manner of constructing and adorning it may interest them.
First, as- to its literary style. Our negroes in America have several ways of entertaining themselves which are not found among the whites anywhere. Among these inventions of theirs is one which is particularly popular with them. It is a competition in elegant deport ment. They hire a hall and bank the spec tators' seats in rising tiers along the two sides, leaving all the middle stretch of the floor free. A cake is provided as a prize for the winner in the competition, and a bench of experts in de portment is appointed to award it. Some times there are as many as fifty contestants, male and female, and five hundred spectators. One at a time the contestants enter, clothed regardless of expense in what each considers the perfection of style and taste, and walk down the vacant central space and back again
IN DEFENCE OF HARRIET SHELLEY 17
with that multitude of critical eyes on them. All that the competitor knows of fine airs and graces he throws into his carriage, all that he knows of seductive expression he throws into his countenance. He may use all the helps he can devise : watch-chain to twirl with his fingers, cane to do graceful things with, snowy handkerchief to flourish and get artful effects out of, shiny new stovepipe hat to assist in his courtly bows; and the colored lady may have a fan to work up her effects with, and smile over and blush behind, and she may add other helps, according to her judgment. When the review by individual detail is over, a grand re view of all the contestants in procession fol lows, with all the airs and graces and all the bowings and smirkings on exhibition at once, and this enables the bench of experts to make the necessary comparisons and arrive at a ver dict. The successful competitor gets the prize which I have before mentioned, and an abun dance of applause and envy along with it. The negroes have a name for this grave de portment-tournament ; a name taken from the prize contended for. They call it a Cake- Walk.
This Shelley biography is a literary cake- walk. The ordinary forms of speech are ab-
1 8 HOW TO TELL A STORY
sent from it. All the pages, all the para graphs, walk by sedately, elegantly, not to say mincingly, in their Sunday -best, shiny and sleek, perfumed, and with boutonnieres in their button-holes; it is rare to find even a chance sentence that has forgotten to dress. If the book wishes to tell us that Mary Godwin, child of sixteen, had known afflictions, the fact saunters forth in this nobby outfit: " Mary was herself not unlearned in the lore of pain " — meaning by that that she had not always travelled on asphalt ; or, as some authorities would frame it, that she had " been there her self," a form which, while preferable to the book's form, is still not to be recommended. If the book wishes to tell us that Harriet Shelley hired a wet-nurse, that commonplace fact gets turned into a dancing- master, who does his professional bow before us in pumps and knee-breeches, with his fiddle under one arm and his crush-hat under the other, thus : "The beauty of Harriet's motherly relation to her babe was marred in Shelley's eyes by the introduction into his house of a hireling nurse to whom was delegated the mother's tenderest office."
This is perhaps the strangest book that has seen the light since Frankenstein. Indeed, it
IN DEFENCE OF HARRIET SHELLEY 19
is a Frankenstein itself ; a Frankenstein with the original infirmity supplemented by a new one ; a Frankenstein with the reasoning facul ty wanting. Yet it believes it can reason, and is always trying. It is not content to leave a mountain of fact standing in the clear sun shine, where the simplest reader can perceive its form, its details, and its relation to the rest of the landscape, but thinks it must help him examine it and understand it ; so its drifting mind settles upon it with that intent, but al ways with one and the same result : there is a change of temperature and the mountain is hid in a fog. Every time it sets up a premise and starts to reason from it, there is a surprise in store for the reader. It is strangely near sighted, cross-eyed, and purblind. Sometimes when a mastodon walks across the field of its vision it takes it for a rat ; at other times it does not see it at all.
The materials of this biographical fable are facts, rumors, and poetry. They are connect ed together and harmonized by the help of suggestion, conjecture, innuendo, perversion, and semi-suppression.
The fable has a distinct object in view, but this object is not acknowledged in set words. Percy Bysshe Shelley has done something
20 HOW TO TELL A STORY
which in the case of other men is called a grave crime ; it must be shown that in his case it is not that, because he does not think as other men do about these things.
Ought not that to be enough, if the fabulist is serious? Having proved that a crime is not a crime, was it worth while to go on and fasten the responsibility of a crime which was not a crime upon somebody else? What is the use of hunting down and holding to bitter ac count people who are responsible for other people's innocent acts?
Still, the fabulist thinks it a good idea to do that. In his view Shelley's first wife, Harriet, free of all offence as far as we have historical facts for guidance, must be held unforgivably responsible for her husband's innocent act in deserting her and taking up with another woman.
Any one will suspect that this task has its difficulties. Any one will divine that nice work is necessary here, cautious work, wily work, and that there is entertainment to be had in watching the magician do it. There is indeed entertainment in watching him. He arranges his facts, his rumors, and his poems on his table in full view of the house, and shows you that everything is there — no decep-
IN DEFENCE OF HARRIET SHELLEY 21
tion, everything fair and aboveboard. And this is apparently true, yet there is a defect, for some of his best stock is hid in an appen dix-basket behind the door, and you do not come upon it until the exhibition is over and the enchantment of your mind accomplished — as the magician thinks.
There is an insistent atmosphere of candor and fairness about this book which is engag ing at first, then a little burdensome, then a trifle fatiguing, then progressively suspicious, annoying, irritating, and oppressive. It takes one some little time to find out that phrases which seem intended to guide the reader aright are there to mislead him ; that phrases which seem intended to throw light are there to throw darkness ; that phrases which seem intended to interpret a fact are there to mis interpret it ; that phrases which seem intend ed to forestall prejudice are there to create it; that phrases which seem antidotes are poisons in disguise. The naked facts arrayed in the book establish Shelley's guilt in that one epi sode which disfigures his otherwise superla tively lofty and beautiful life ; but the histori an's careful and methodical misinterpretation of them transfers the responsibility to the wife's shoulders — as he persuades himself.
22 HOW TO TELL A STORY
The few meagre facts of Harriet Shelley's life, as furnished by the book, acquit her of offence ; but by calling in the forbidden helps of rumor, gossip, conjecture, insinuation, and innuendo he destroys her character and rehabilitates Shelley's — as he believes. And in truth his unheroic work has not been barren of the re sults he aimed at ; as witness the assertion made to me that girls in the colleges of Amer ica are taught that Harriet Shelley put a stain upon her husband's honor, and that that was what stung him into repurifying himself by deserting her and his child and entering into scandalous relations with a school -girl ac quaintance of his.
If that assertion is true, they probably use a reduction of this work in those colleges, may be only a sketch outlined from it. Such a thing as that could be harmful and mislead ing. They ought to cast it out and put the whole book in its place. It would not de ceive. It would not deceive the janitor.
All of this book is interesting on account of the sorcerer's methods and the attractive ness of some of his characters and the repul- siveness of the rest, but no part of it is so much so as are the chapters wherein he tries to think he thinks he sets forth the causes
IN DEFENCE OF HARRIET SHELLEY 23
which led to Shelley's desertion of his wife in 1814.
Harriet Westbrook was a school-girl sixteen years old. Shelley was teeming with advanced thought. He believed that Christianity was a degrading and selfish superstition, and he had a deep and sincere desire to rescue one of his sisters from it. Harriet was impressed by his various philosophies and looked upon him as an intellectual wonder — which indeed he was. He had an idea that she could give him valu able help in his scheme regarding his sister; therefore he asked her to correspond with him. She was quite willing. Shelley was not think ing of love, for he was just getting over a pas sion for his cousin, Harriet Grove, and just getting well steeped in one for Miss Hitch- ener, a school-teacher. What might happen to Harriet Westbrook before the letter-writing was ended did not enter his mind. Yet an older person could have made a good guess at it, for in person Shelley was as beautiful as an angel, he was frank, sweet, winning, unassum ing, and so rich in unselfishnesses, generosities, and magnanimities that he made his whole generation seem poor in these great qualities by comparison. Besides, he was in distress. His college had expelled him for writing an
24 HOW TO TELL A STORY
atheistical pamphlet and afflicting the rever end heads of the university with it, his rich father and grandfather had closed their purses against him, his friends were cold. Necessar ily, Harriet fell in love with him ; and so deep ly, indeed, that there was no way for Shelley to save her from suicide but to marry her. He believed himself to blame for this state of things, so the marriage took place. He was pretty fairly in love with Harriet, although he loved Miss Hitchener better. He wrote and explained the case to Miss Hitchener after the wedding, and he could not have been franker or more naive and less stirred up about the circumstance if the matter in issue had been a commercial transaction involving thirty-five dollars.
Shelley was nineteen. He was not a youth, but a man. He had never had any youth. He was an erratic and fantastic child during eighteen years, then he stepped into manhood, as one steps over a door-sill. He was curiously mature at nineteen in his ability to do inde pendent thinking on the deep questions of life and to arrive at sharply definite decisions re garding them, and stick to them — stick to them and stand by them at cost of bread, friendships, esteem, respect and approbation.
IN DEFENCE OF HARRIET SHELLEY 25
For the sake of his opinions he was willing to sacrifice all these valuable things, and did sacrifice them ; and went on doing it, too, when he could at any moment have made himself rich and supplied himself with friends and esteem by compromising with his father, at the moderate expense of throwing over board one or two indifferent details of his cargo of principles.
He and Harriet eloped to Scotland and got married. They took lodgings in Edinburgh of a sort answerable to their purse, which was about empty, and there their life was a happy one and grew daily more so. They had only themselves for company, but they needed no additions to it. They were as cozy and con tented as birds in a nest. Harriet sang even ings or read aloud ; also she studied and tried to improve her mind, her husband instructing her in Latin. She was very beautiful, she was modest, quiet, genuine, and, according to her husband's testimony, she had no fine lady airs or aspirations about her. In Matthew Arnold's judgment, she was "a pleasing figure."
The pair remained five weeks in Edinburgh, and then took lodgings in York, where Shel ley's college mate, Hogg, lived. Shelley pres ently ran down to London, and Hogg took
26 HOW TO TELL A STORY
this opportunity to make love to the young wife. She repulsed him, and reported the fact to her husband when he got back. It seems a pity that Shelley did not copy this credit able conduct of hers some time or other when under temptation, so that we might have seen the author of his biography hang the miracle in the skies and squirt rainbows at it.
At the end of the first year of marriage — the most trying year for any young couple, for then the mutual failings are coming one by one to light, and the necessary adjustments are being made in pain and tribulation — Shel ley was able to recognize that his marriage venture had been a safe one. As we have seen, his love for his wife had begun in a rather shallow way and with not much force, but now it was become deep and strong, which entitles his wife to a broad credit mark, one may admit. He addresses a long and lov ing poem to her, in which both passion and worship appear :
Exhibit A
"O thou
Whose dear love gleamed upon the gloomy path Which this lone spirit travelled,
. wilt thou not turn
IN DEFENCE OF HARRIET SHELLEY 27
Those spirit-beaming eyes and look on me, Until I be assured that Earth is Heaven And Heaven is Earth?
Harriet! let death all mortal ties dissolve, But ours shall not be mortal."
Shelley also wrote a sonnet to her in August of this same year in celebration of her birth day :
Exhibit B
" Ever as now with Love and Virtue's glow May thy unwithering soul not cease to burn, Still may thine heart with those pure thoughts
o'erflow
Which force from mine such quick and warm re turn."
Was the girl of seventeen glad and proud and happy? We may conjecture that she was.
That was the year 1812. Another year passed — still happily, still successfully — a child was born in June, 1813, and in Septem ber, three months later, Shelley addresses a poem to this child, lanthe, in which he points out just when the little creature is most par ticularly dear to him :
Exhibit C
" Dearest when most thy tender traits express The image of thy mother's loveliness."
28 HOW TO TELL A STORY
Up to this point the fabulist counsel for Shelley and prosecutor of his young wife has had easy sailing, but now his trouble begins, for Shelley is getting ready to make some un pleasant history for himself, and it will be nec essary to put the blame of it on the wife.
Shelley had made the acquaintance of a charming gray-haired, young-hearted Mrs. Boin- ville, whose face " retained a certain youthful beauty"; she lived at Bracknell, and had a young daughter named Cornelia Turner, who was equipped with many fascinations. Ap parently these people were sufficiently senti mental. Hogg says of Mrs. Boinville :
" The greater part of her associates were odious. I generally found there two or three sentimental young butchers, an eminently philosophical tinker, and sev eral very unsophisticated medical practitioners or med ical students, all of low origin and vulgar and offensive manners. They sighed, turned up their eyes, retailed philosophy, such as it was," etc.
Shelley moved to Bracknell, July 27 (this is still 1813), purposely to be near this unwhole some prairie-dogs' nest. The fabulist says: " It was the entrance into a world more ami able and exquisite than he had yet known."
" In this acquaintance the attraction was mutual " — and presently it grew to be very
'• 3
IN DEFENCE OF H^^IBT SHELLEY 29
mutual indeed, between Shelley and Cornelia Turner, when they got to studying the Italian poets together. Shelley, " responding like a tremulous instrument to every breath of pas sion or of sentiment," had his chance here. It took only four days for Cornelia's attractions to begin to dim Harriet's. Shelley arrived on the 27th of July ; on the 3ist he wrote a son net to Harriet in which " one detects already the little rift in the lover's lute which had seemed to be healed or never to have gaped at all when the later and happier sonnet to lanthe was written" — in September, we remember:
Exhibit D
"EVENING. TO HARRIET
"O thou bright Sun! Beneath the dark blue line Of western distance that sublime descendest, And, gleaming lovelier as thy beams decline, Thy million hues to every vapor lendest, And over cobweb, lawn, and grove, and stream Sheddest the liquid magic of thy light, Till calm Earth, with the parting splendor bright, Shows like the vision of a beauteous dream ; What gazer now with astronomic eye Could coldly count the spots within thy sphere? Such were thy lover, Harriet, could he fly The thoughts of all that makes his passion dear, And turning senseless from thy warm caress Pick flaws in our close-woven happiness."
^O HOW TO TELL A STORY
I cannot find the "rift"; still it may be there. What the poem seems to say, is, that a person would be coldly ungrateful who could consent to count and consider little spots and flaws in such a warm, great, satisfying sun as Harriet is. It is a " little rift which had seemed to be healed, or never to have gaped at all." That is, " one detects" a little rift which perhaps had never existed. How does one do that ? How does one see the invisible ? It is the fabulist's secret; he knows how to detect what does not exist, he knows how to see what is not seeable ; it is his gift, and he works it many a time to poor dead Harriet Shelley's deep damage.
" As yet, however, if there was a speck upon Shelley's happiness it was no more than a speck " — meaning the one which one detects where " it may never have gaped at all " — " nor had Harriet cause for discontent."
Shelley's Latin instructions to his wife had ceased. " From a teacher he had now become a pupil." Mrs. Boinville and her young mar ried daughter Cornelia were teaching him Ital ian poetry ; a fact which warns one to receive with some caution that other statement that Harriet had no " cause for discontent."
Shelley had stopped instructing Harriet in
IN DEFENCE OF HARRIET SHELLEY 31
Latin, as before mentioned. The biographer thinks that the busy life in London some time back, and the intrusion of the baby, account for this. These were hindrances, but were there no others? He is always overlooking a detail here and there that might be valuable in helping us understand a situation. For in stance, when a man has been hard at work at the Italian poets with a pretty woman, hour after hour, and responding like a tremulous instrument to every breath of passion or of sentiment in the meantime, that man is dog- tired when he gets home, and he caiit teach his wife Latin; it would be unreasonable to expect it.
Up to this time we have submitted to hav ing Mrs. Boinville pushed upon us as ostensi bly concerned in these Italian lessons, but the biographer drops her now, of his own accord. Cornelia "perhaps" is sole teacher. Hogg says she was a prey to a kind of sweet melan choly, arising from causes purely imaginary ; she required consolation, and found it in Pe trarch. He also says, " Bysshe entered at once fully into her views and caught the soft infection, breathing the tenderest and sweetest melancholy, as every true poet ought."
Then the author of the book interlards a
32 HOW TO TELL A STORY
most stately and fine compliment to Cornelia, furnished by a man of approved judgment who knew her well " in later years." It is a very good compliment indeed, and she no doubt deserved it in her " later years," when she had for generations ceased to be sentimental and lackadaisical, and was no longer engaged in enchanting young husbands and sowing sor row for young wives. But why is that com pliment to that old gentlewoman intruded there? Is it to make the reader believe she was well-chosen and safe society for a young, sentimental husband? The biographer's de vice was not well planned. That old person was not present — it was her other self that was there, her young, sentimental, melancholy, warm-blooded self, in those early sweet times before antiquity had cooled her off and mossed her back.
" In choosing for friends such women as Mrs. Newton, Mrs. Boinville, and Cornelia Turner, Shelley gave good proof of his insight and discrimination." That is the fabulist's opinion — Harriet Shelley's is not reported.
Early in August, Shelley was in London try ing to raise money. In September he wrote the poem to the baby, already quoted from. In the first week of October Shelley and fam-
IN DEFENCE OF HARRIET SHELLEY 33
ily went to Warwick, then to Edinburgh, ar riving there about the middle of the month.
" Harriet was happy." Why? The author furnishes a reason, but hides from us whether it is history or conjecture ; it is because " the babe had borne the journey well." It has all the aspect of one of his artful devices — flung in in his favorite casual way — the way he has when he wants to draw one's attention away from an obvious thing and amuse it with some trifle that is less obvious but more useful — in a history like this. The obvious thing is, that Harriet was happy because there was much territory between her husband and Cornelia Turner now ; and because the perilous Italian lessons were taking a rest ; and because, if there chanced to be any respondings like a tremulous instrument to every breath of pas sion or of sentiment in stock in these days, she might hope to get a share of them herself; and because, with her husband liberated, now, from the fetid fascinations of that sentimental retreat so pitilessly described by Hogg, who also dubbed it "Shelley's paradise" later, she might hope to persuade him to stay away from it permanently ; and because she might also hope that his brain would cool, now, and his heart become healthy, and both brain and 3
34 HOW TO TELL A STORY
heart consider the situation and resolve that it would be a right and manly thing to stand by this girl-wife and her child and see that they were honorably dealt with, and cherished and protected and loved by the man that had promised these things, and so be made happy and kept so. And because, also — may we con jecture this? — we may hope for the privilege of taking up our cozy Latin lessons again, that used to be so pleasant and brought us so near together — so near, indeed, that often our heads touched, just as heads do over Italian lessons ; and our hands met in casual and unintentional, but still most delicious and thrilling little con tacts and momentary clasps, just as they in evitably do over Italian lessons. Suppose one should say to any young wife : " I find that your husband is poring over the Italian poets and being instructed in the beautiful Italian language by the lovely Cornelia Robinson " — would that cozy picture fail to rise before her mind? would its possibilities fail to suggest themselves to her? would there be a pang in her heart and a blush on her face ? or, on the contrary, would the remark give her pleasure, make her joyous and gay? Why, one needs only to make the experiment — the result will not be uncertain.
IX DEFENCE OF HARRIET SHELLEY 35
However, we learn — by authority of deeply reasoned and searching conjecture — that the baby bore the journey well, and that that was why the young wife was happy. That accounts for two per cent, of the happiness, but it was not right to imply that it accounted for the other ninety-eight also.
Peacock, a scholar, poet, and friend of the Shelleys, was of their party when they went away. He used to laugh at the Boinville menagerie, and " was not a favorite." One of the Boinville group, writing to Hogg, said, " The Shelleys have made an addition to their party in the person of a cold scholar, who, I think, has neither taste nor feeling. This, Shelley will perceive sooner or later, for his warm nature craves sympathy." True, and Shelley will fight his way back there to get it —there will be no way to head him off.
Towards the end of November it was neces sary for Shelley to pay a business visit to Lon~ don, and he conceived the project of leaving Harriet and the baby in Edinburgh with Har riet's sister, Eliza Westbrook, a sensible, prac tical maiden lady about thirty years old, who had spent a great part of her time with the family since the marriage. She was an esti mable woman, and Shelley had had reason to
36 HOW TO TELL A STORY
like her, and did like her ; but along about this time his feeling towards her changed. Part of Shelley's plan, as he wrote Hogg, was to spend his London evenings with the Newtons — mem bers of the Boinville Hysterical Society. But, alas, when he arrived early in December, that pleasant game was partially blocked, for Eliza and the family arrived with him. We are left destitute of conjectures at this point by the biographer, and it is my duty to supply one. I chance the conjecture that it was Eliza who interfered with that game. I think she tried to do what she could towards modifying the Boinville connection, in the interest of her young sister's peace and honor.
If it was she who blocked that game, she was not strong enough to block the next one. Before the month and year were out — no date given, let us call it Christmas — Shelley and family were nested in a furnished house in Windsor, " at no great distance from the Boin- villes" — these decoys still residing atBracknell.
What we need, now, is a misleading conject ure. We get it with characteristic promptness and depravity:
" But Prince Athanase found not the aged Zonoras, the friend of his boyhood, in any wanderings to Wind sor. Dr. Lind had died a year since, and with his
IN DEFENCE OF HARRIET SHELLEY 37
death Windsor must have lost, for Shelley, its chief attraction."
Still, not to mention Shelley's wife, there was Bracknell, at any rate. While Bracknell remains, all solace is not lost. Shelley is rep resented by this biographer as doing a great many careless things, but to my mind this hir ing a furnished house for three months in or der to be with a man who has been dead a year, is the carelessest of them all. One feels for him — that is but natural, and does us hon or besides — yet one is vexed, for all that. He could have written and asked about the aged Zonoras before taking the house. He may not have had the address, but that is nothing — any postman would know the aged Zonoras ; a dead postman would remember a name like that.
And yet, why throw a rag like this to us ravening wolves? Is it seriously supposable that we will stop to chew it and let our prey escape? No, we are getting to expect this kind of device, and to give it merely a sniff for certainty's sake and then walk around it and leave it lying. Shelley was not after the aged Zonoras ; he was pointed for Cornelia and the Italian lessons, for his warm nature was crav ing sympathy.
38 HOW TO TELL A STORY
II
THE year 1813 is just ended now, and we step into 1814.
To recapitulate : how much of Cornelia's society has Shelley had, thus far? Portions of August and September, and four days of July. That is to say, he has had opportunity to enjoy it, more or less, during that brief pe riod. Did he want some more of it ? We must fall back upon history, and then go to conjecturing.
" In the early part of the year 1814, Shelley was a frequent visitor at Bracknell."
" Frequent " is a cautious word, in this au thor's mouth ; the very cautiousness of it, the vagueness of it, provokes suspicion; it makes one suspect that this frequency was more fre quent than the mere common every-day kinds of frequency which one is in the habit of aver aging up with the unassuming term " frequent." I think so because they fixed up a bedroom for him in the Boinville house. One doesn't
IN DEFENCE OF HARRIET SHELLEY 39
need a bedroom if one is only going to run over now and then in a disconnected way to respond like a tremulous instrument to every breath of passion or of sentiment and rub up one's Italian poetry a little.
The young wife was not invited, perhaps. If she was, she most certainly did not come, or she would have straightened the room up ; the most ignorant of us knows that a wife would not endure a room in the condition in which Hogg found this one when he occupied it one night. Shelley was away — why, nobody can divine. Clothes were scattered about, there were books on every side : " Wherever a book could be laid was an open book turned down on its face to keep its place." It seems plain that the wife was not invited. No, not that ; I think she was invited, but said to her self that she could not bear to go there and see another young woman touching heads with her husband over an Italian book and making thrilling hand-contacts with him accidentally. As remarked, he was a frequent visitor there, "where he found an easeful resting-place in the house of Mrs. Boinville — the white-haired Maimuna — and of her daughter, Mrs. Turner." The aged Zonoras was deceased, but the white- haired Maimuna was still on deck, as we see.
40 HOW TO TELL A STORY
"Three charming ladies entertained the mock er (Hogg) with cups of tea, late hours, Wie- land's Agathon, sighs and smiles, and the ce lestial manna of refined sentiment." " Such," says Hogg, " were the delights of Shelley's paradise in Bracknell."
The white-haired Maimuna presently writes to Hogg:
" I will not have you despise home-spun pleasures. Shelley is making a trial of them with us — "
A trial of them. It may be called that. It was March 1 1, and he had been in the house a month. She continues :
Shelley " likes them so well that he is resolved to leave off rambling — "
But he has already left it off. He has been there a month.
" And begin a course of them himself."
But he has already begun it. He has been at it a month. He likes it so well that he has forgotten all about his wife, as a letter of his reveals.
" Seriously, I think his mind and body want rest."
Yet he has been resting both for a month, with Italian, and tea, and manna of sentiment,
IN DEFENCE OF HARRIET SHELLEY 41
and late hours, and every restful thing a young husband could need for the refreshment of weary limbs and a sore conscience, and a nag ging sense of shabbiness and treachery.
" His journeys after what he has never found have racked his purse and his tranquillity. He is resolved to take a littl^ care of the former, in pity to the latter, which I applaud, and shall second with all my might."
But she does not say whether the young wife, a stranger and lonely yonder, wants an other woman and her daughter Cornelia to be lavishing so much inflamed interest on her husband or not. That young wife is always silent — we are never allowed to hear from her. She must have opinions about such things, she cannot be indifferent, she must be approv ing or disapproving, surely she would speak if she were allowed — even to-day and from her grave she would, if she could, I think — but we get only the other side, they keep her silent always.
" He has deeply interested us. In the course of your intimacy he must have made you feel what we now feel for him. He is seeking a house close to us —
Ah ! he is not close enough yet, it seems —
41 and if he succeeds we shall have an additional mo tive to induce you to come among us in the summer."
42 HOW TO TELL A STORY
The reader would puzzle a long time and not guess the biographer's comment upon the above letter. It is this :
"These sound like words of a considerate and ju dicious friend."
That is what he thinks. That is, it is what he thinks he thinks. No, that is not quite it : it is what he thinks he can stupefy a particu larly and unspeakably dull reader into think ing it is what he thinks. He makes that com ment with the knowledge that Shelley is in love with this woman's daughter, and that it is because of the fascinations of these two that Shelley has deserted his wife — for this month, considering all the circumstances, and his new passion, and his employment of the time, amounted to desertion ; that is its rightful name. We cannot know how the wife re garded it and felt about it ; but if she could have read the letter which Shelley was writing to Hogg four or five days later, we could guess her thought and how she felt. Hear him :
" I have been staying with Mrs. Boinville for the last month ; I have escaped, in the society of all that philosophy and friendship combine, from the dismay ing solitude of myself."
IN DEFENCE OF HARRIET SHELLEY 43
It is fair to conjecture that he was feeling ashamed.
" They have revived in my heart the expiring flame of life. I have felt myself translated to a paradise which has nothing of mortality but its transitoriness ; my heart sickens at the view of that necessity which will quickly divide me from the delightful tranquillity of this happy home — for it has become my home.
" Eliza is still with us — not here ! — but will be with me when the infinite malice of destiny forces me to depart."
Eliza is she who blocked that game — the game in London — the one where we were pur posing to dine every night with one of the "three charming ladies" who fed tea and manna and late hours to Hogg at Bracknell.
Shelley could send Eliza away, of course ; could have cleared her out loner acfo if so
£> o
minded, just as he had previously done with a predecessor of hers whom he had first wor shipped and then turned against ; but perhaps she was useful there as a thin excuse for stay ing away himself.
"I am now but little inclined to contest this point. I certainly hate her with all my heart and soul. . . .
" It is a sight which awakens an inexpressible sen sation of disgust and horror, to see her caress my poor
44 HOW TO TELL A STORY
little lanthe, in whom I may hereafter find the con solation of sympathy. I sometimes feel faint with the fatigue of checking the overflowings of my unbounded abhorrence for this miserable wretch. But she is no more than a blind and loathsome worm, that cannot see to sting.
" I have begun to learn Italian again. . . . Cornelia assists me in this language. Did I not once tell you that I thought her cold and reserved ? She is the re verse of this, as she is the reverse of everything bad. She inherits all the divinity of her mother. ... I have sometimes forgotten that I am not an inmate of this delightful home — that a time will come which will cast me again into the boundless ocean of ab horred society.
" I have written nothing but one stanza, which has no meaning, and that I have only written in thought :
" Thy dewy looks sink in my breast ;
Thy gentle words stir poison there ; Thou hast disturbed the only rest
That was the portion of despair. Subdued to duty's hard control,
I could have borne my wayward lot : The chains that bind this ruined soul
Had cankered then, but crushed it not.
" This is the vision of a delirious and distempered dream, which passes away at the cold clear light of morning. Its surpassing excellence and exquisite perfections have no more reality than the color of an autumnal sunset."
Then it did not refer to his wife. That is
IN DEFENCE OF HARRIET SHELLEY 45
plain ; otherwise he would have said so. It is well that he explained that it has no meaning, for if he had not done that, the previous soft references to Cornelia and the way he has come to feel about her now would make us think she was the person who had inspired it while teaching him how to read the warm and ruddy Italian poets during a month.
The biography observes that portions of this letter " read like the tired moaning of a wounded creature." Guesses at the nature of the wound are permissible; we will hazard one.
Read by the light of Shelley's previous his tory, his letter seems to be the cry of a tort ured conscience. Until this time it was a conscience that had never felt a pang or known a smirch. It was the conscience of one who, until this time, had never done a dishonorable thing, or an ungenerous, or cruel, or treacher ous thing, but was now doing all of these, and was keenly aware of it. Up to this time Shel ley had been master of his nature, and it was a nature which was as beautiful and as nearly perfect as any merely human nature may be. But he was drunk, now, with a debasing pas sion, and was not himself. There is nothing in his previous history that is in character with
46 HOW TO TELL A STORY
the Shelley of this letter. He had done boy ish things, foolish things, even crazy things, but never a thing to be ashamed of. He had done things which one might laugh at, but the privilege of laughing was limited always to the thing itself; you could not laugh at the motive back of it — that was high, that was noble. His most fantastic and quixotic acts had a purpose back of them which made them fine, often great, and made the rising laugh seem profanation and quenched it ; quenched it, and changed the impulse to homage. Up to this time he had been loyalty itself, where his obligations lay — treachery was new to him; he had never done an ignoble thing — baseness was new to him ; he had never done an un kind thing — that also was new to him.
This was the author of that letter, this was the man who had deserted his young wife and was lamenting, because he must leave another woman's house which had become a " home " to him, and go away. Is he lamenting mainly because he must go back to his wife and child? No, the lament is mainly for what he is to leave behind him. The physical comforts of the house? No, in his life he had never at tached importance to such things. Then the thing which he grieves to leave is narrowed
IN DEFENCE OF HARRIET SHELLEY 47
down to a person — to the person whose " dewy looks" had sunk into his breast, and whose seducing words had "stirred poison there."
He was ashamed of himself, his conscience was upbraiding him. He was the slave of a degrading love ; he was drunk with his passion, the real Shelley was in temporary eclipse. This is the verdict which his previous history must certainly deliver upon this episode, I think.
One must be allowed to assist himself with conjectures like these when trying to find his way through a literary swamp which has so many misleading finger-boards up as this book is furnished with.
We have now arrived at a part of the swamp where the difficulties and perplexities are go ing to be greater than any we have yet met with — where, indeed, the finger-boards are mul titudinous, and the most of them pointing dil igently in the wrong direction. We are to be told by the biography why Shelley deserted his wife and child and took up with Cornelia Turner and Italian. It was not on account of Cornelia's sighs and sentimentalities and tea and manna and late hours and soft and sweet and industrious enticements; no, it was be cause " his happiness in his home had been wounded and bruised almost to death."
48 HOW TO TELL A STORY
It had been wounded and bruised almost to death in this way :
ist. Harriet persuaded him to set up a car riage.
2d. After the intrusion of the baby, Harriet stopped reading aloud and studying.
3d. Harriet's walks with Ho'gg " commonly conducted us to some fashionable bonnet- shop."
4th. Harriet hired a wet-nurse.
5th. When an operation was being per formed upon the baby, " Harriet stood by, nar rowly observing all that was done, but, to the astonishment of the operator, betraying not the smallest sign of emotion."
6th. Eliza Westbrook, sister-in-law, was still of the household.
The evidence against Harriet Shelley is all in ; there is no more. Upon these six counts she stands indicted of the crime of driving her husband into that sty at Bracknell ; and this crime, by these helps, the biographical prose cuting attorney has set himself the task of proving upon her.
Does the biographer call himself the attor ney for the prosecution? No, only to him self, privately ; publicly he is the passionless, disinterested, impartial judge on the bench.
IN DEFENCE OF HARRIET SHELLEY 49
He holds up his judicial scales before the world, that all may see ; and it all tries to look so fair that a blind person would some times fail to see him slip the false weights in.
Shelley's happiness in his home had been wounded and bruised almost to death, first, because Harriet had persuaded him to set up a carriage. I cannot discover that any evi dence is offered that she asked him to set up a carriage. Still, if she did, was it a heavy offence? Was it unique? Other young wives had committed it before, others have com mitted it since. Shelley had dearly loved her in those London days ; possibly he set up the carnage gladly to please her; affectionate young husbands do such things. When Shel ley ran away with another girl, by-and-by, this girl persuaded him to pour the price of many carriages and many horses down the bottomless well of her father's debts, but this impartial judge finds no fault with that. Once she appeals to Shelley to raise money — neces sarily by borrowing, there was no other way— to pay her father's debts with at a time when Shelley was in danger of being arrested and imprisoned for his own debts ; yet the good judge finds no fault with her even for this.
First and last, Shelley emptied into that
4
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rapacious mendicant's lap a sum which cost him — for he borrowed it at ruinous rates — from eighty to one hundred thousand dollars. But it was Mary Godwin's papa, the supplica tions were often sent through Mary, the good judge is Mary's strenuous friend, so Mary gets no censures. On the Continent Mary rode in her private carriage, built, as Shelley boasts, " by one of the best makers in Bond Street/' yet the good judge makes not even a passing comment on this iniquity. Let us throw out Count No. I against Harriet Shelley as being far-fetched and frivolous.
Shelley's happiness in his home had been wounded and bruised almost to death, second ly, because Harriet's studies "had dwindled away to nothing, Bysshe had ceased to express any interest in them." At what time was this ? It was when Harriet " had fully recovered from the fatigue of her first effort of maternity, . . . and was now in full force, vigor, and effect." Very well, the baby was born two days before the close of June. It took the mother a month to get back her full force, vigor, and effect ; this brings us to July 2/th and the deadly Cornelia. If a wife of eighteen is studying with her hus band and he gets smitten with another wom an, isn't he likely to lose interest in his wife's
IN DEFENCE OF HARRIET SHELLEY 51
studies for that reason, and is not his wife's interest in her studies likely to languish for the same reason ? Would not the mere sight of those books of hers sharpen the pain that is in her heart? This sudden breaking down of a mutual intellectual interest of two years' standing is coincident with Shelley's re-en counter with Cornelia ; and we are allowed to gather from that time forth for nearly two months he did all his studying in that person's society. We feel at liberty to rule out Count No. 2 from the indictment against Harriet.
Shelley's happiness in his home had been wounded and bruised almost to death, thirdly, because Harriet's walks with Hogg commonly led to some fashionable bonnet-shop. I offer no palliation ; I only ask why the dispassion ate, impartial judge did not offer one himself — merely, I mean, to offset his leniency in a similar case or two where the girl who ran away with Harriet's husband was the shopper. There are several occasions where she inter ested herself with shopping — among them be ing walks which ended at the bonnet-shop— yet in none of these cases does she get a word of blame from the good judge, while in one of them he covers the deed with a justifying remark, she doing the shopping that time to
52 HOW TO TELL A STORY
find easement for her mind, her child having died.
Shelley's happiness in his home had been wounded and bruised almost to death, fourth ly, by the introduction there of a wet-nurse. The wet - nurse was introduced at the time of the Edinburgh sojourn, immediately after Shelley had been enjoying the two months of study with Cornelia which broke up his wife's studies and destroyed his personal interest in them. Why, by this time, nothing that Shel ley's wife could do would have been satisfac tory to him, for he was in love with another woman, and was never going to be contented again until he got back to her. If he had been still in love with his wife it is not easily conceivable that he would care much who nursed the baby, provided the baby was well nursed. Harriet's jealousy was assuredly voic ing itself now, Shelley's conscience was assur edly nagging him, pestering him, persecuting him. Shelley needed excuses for his altered attitude towards his wife ; Providence pitied him and sent the wet-nurse. If Providence had sent him a cotton doughnut it would have answered just as well ; all he wanted was some thing to find fault with.
Shelley's happiness in his home had been
IN DEFENCE OF HARRIET SHELLEY 53
wounded and bruised almost to death, fifthly, because Harriet narrowly watched a surgical operation which was being performed upon her child, and, "to the astonishment of the operator," who was watching Harriet instead of attending to his operation, she betrayed " not the smallest sign of emotion." The au thor of this biography was not ashamed to set down that exultant slander. He was appar ently not aware that it was a small business to bring into his court a witness whose name he does not know, and whose character and veracity there is none to vouch for, and allow him to strike this blow at the mother-heart of this friendless girl. The biographer says, " We may not infer from this that Harriet did not feel " — why put it in, then ? — " but we learn that those about her could believe her to be hard and insensible." Who were those who were about her? Her husband? He hated her now, because he was in love elsewhere. Her sister? Of course that is not charged. Peacock? Peacock does not testify. The wet-nurse? She does not testify. If any others were there we have no mention of them. " Those about her " are reduced to one person — her husband. Who reports the cir cumstance? It is Hogg. Perhaps he was
54 HOW TO TELL A STORY
there — we do not know. But if he was, he still got his information at second-hand, as it was the operator who noticed Harriet's lack of emotion, not himself. Hogg is not given to saying kind things when Harriet is his subject. He may have said them the time that he tried to tempt her to soil her honor, but after that he mentions her usually with a sneer. " Among those who were about her" was one witness well equipped to silence all tongues, abolish all doubts, set our minds at rest ; one witness, not called and not callable, whose evidence, if we could but get it, would outweigh the oaths of whole battalions of hostile Hoggs and name less surgeons — the baby. I wish we had the baby's testimony ; and yet if we had it it would not do us any good — a furtive conjecture, a sly insinuation, a pious "if" or two, would be smuggled in, here and there, with a solemn air of judicial investigation, and its positiveness would wilt into dubiety.
The biographer says of Harriet, "If words of tender affection and motherly pride prove the reality of love, then undoubtedly she loved her first-born child." That is, if mere empty words can prove it, it stands proved — and in this way, without committing himself, he gives the reader a chance to infer that there isn't
IN DEFENCE OF HARRIET SHELLEY 55
any extant evidence but words, and that he doesn't take much stock in them. How sel dom he shows his hand ! He is^always lurk- ing behind a non-committal " if " or something of that kind; always gliding and dodging around, distributing colorless poison here and there and everywhere, but always leaving him self in a position to say that his language will be found innocuous if taken to pieces and ex amined. He clearly exhibits a steady and never-relaxing purpose to make Harriet the scapegoat for her husband's first great sin- but it is in the general view that this is re vealed, not in the details. His insidious liter ature is like blue water ; you know what it is that makes it blue, but you cannot produce and verify any detail of the cloud of micro scopic dust in it that does it. Your adversary can dip up a glassful and show you that it is pure white and you cannot deny it ; and ,he can dip the lake dry, glass by glass, and show that every glassful is white, and prove it to any one's eye — and yet that lake was blue and you can swear it. This book is blue — with slander in solution.
Let the reader examine, for example, the paragraph of comment which immediately fol lows the letter containing Shelley's self-expos-
56 HOW TO TELL A STORY
ure which we have been considering. This is it. One should inspect the individual sen tences as they go by, then pass them in pro cession and review the cake-walk as a whole :
" Shelley's happiness in his home, as is evident from this pathetic letter, had been fatally stricken ; it is evident, also, that he knew where duty lay ; he felt that his part was to take up his burden, silently and sorrowfully, and to bear it henceforth with the quiet ness of despair. But we can perceive that he scarcely possessed the strength and fortitude needful for suc cess in such an attempt. And clearly Shelley himself was aware how perilous it was to accept that respite of blissful ease which he enjoyed in the Boinville household ; for gentle voices and dewy looks and words of sympathy could not fail to remind him of an ideal of tranquillity or of joy which could never be his, and which he must henceforth sternly exclude from his imagination."
That paragraph commits the author in no way. Taken sentence by sentence it asserts nothing against anybody or in favor of any body, pleads for nobody, accuses nobody. Taken detail by detail, it is as innocent as moonshine. And yet, taken as a whole, it is a design against the reader ; its intent is to remove the feeling which the letter must leave with him if let alone, and put a different one in its place — to remove a feeling justified by
IN DEFENCE OF HARRIET SHELLEY 57
the letter and substitute one not justified by it. The letter itself gives you no uncertain picture — no lecturer is needed to stand by with a stick and point out its details and let on to explain what they mean. The picture is the very clear and remorsefully faithful picture of a fallen and fettered angel who is ashamed of himself ; an angel who beats his soiled wings and cries, who complains to the woman who enticed him that he could have borne his wayward lot, he could have stood by his duty if it had not been for her beguile- ments ; an angel who rails at the " boundless ocean of abhorred society," and rages at his poor judicious sister-in-law. If there is any dignity about this spectacle it will escape most people.
Yet when the paragraph of comment is taken as a whole, the picture is full of dignity and pathos ; we have before us a blameless and noble spirit stricken to the earth by ma lign powers, but not conquered ; tempted, but grandly putting the temptation away ; en meshed by subtle coils, but sternly resolved to rend them and march forth victorious, at any peril of life or limb. Curtain — slow music.
Was it the purpose of the paragraph to take the bad taste of Shelley's letter out of the read-
58 HOW TO TELL A STORY
er's mouth? If that was not it, good ink was wasted ; without that, it has no relevancy — the multiplication table would have padded the space as rationally.
We have inspected the six reasons which we are asked to believe drove a man of conspicu ous patience, honor, justice, fairness, kindliness, and iron firmness, resolution, and steadfastness, from the wife whom he loved and who loved him, to a refuge in the mephitic paradise of Bracknell. These are six infinitely little reasons ; but there were six colossal ones, and these the counsel for the destruction of Harriet Shelley persists in not considering very important.
Moreover, the colossal six preceded the lit tle six, and had done the mischief before they were born. Let us double-column the twelve ; then we shall see at a glance that each little reason is in turn answered by a retorting reason of a size to overshadow it and make it insig nificant :
1. Harriet sets up carriage. I. CORNELIA TURNER.
2. Harriet stops studying. 2. CORNELIA TURNER.
3. Harriet goes to bonnet-shop. 3. CORNELIA TURNER.
4. Harriet takes a wet-nurse. 4. CORNELIA TURNER.
5. Harriet has too much nerve. 5. CORNELIA TURNER.
6. Detested sister-in-law. 6. CORNELIA TURNER.
IN DEFENCE OF HARRIET SHELLEY 59
As soon as we comprehend that Cornelia Turner and the Italian lessons happened before the little six had been discovered to be griev ances, we understand why Shelley's happiness in his home had been wounded and bruised almost to death, and no one can persuade us into laying it on Harriet. Shelley and Cor nelia are the responsible persons, and we can not in honor and decency allow the cruelties which they practised upon the unoffending wife to be pushed aside in order to give us a chance to waste time and tears over six sen timental justifications of an offence which the six can't justify, nor even respectably assist in justifying.
Six ? There were seven ; but in charity to the biographer the seventh ought not to be exposed. Still, he hung it out himself, and not only hung it out, but thought it was a good point in Shelley's favor. For two years Shelley found sympathy and intellectual food and all that at home ; there was enough for spiritual and mental support, but not enough for luxury ; and so, at the end of the con tented two years, this latter detail justifies him in going bag and baggage over to Cornelia Turner and supplying the rest of his need in the way of surplus sympathy and intellectual
60 HOW TO TELL A STORY
pie unlawfully. By the same reasoning a man in merely comfortable circumstances may rob a bank without sin.
Ill
IT is 1814, it is the i6th of March, Shelley has written his letter, he has been in the Boin- ville paradise a month, his deserted wife is in her husbandless home. Mischief had been wrought. It is the biographer who concedes this. We greatly need some light on Harriet's side of the case now ; we need to know how she enjoyed the month, but there is no way to inform ourselves ; there seems to be a strange absence of documents and letters and diaries on that side. Shelley kept a diary, the approaching Mary Godwin kept a diary, her father kept one, her half-sister by marriage, adoption, and the dispensation of God kept one, and the entire tribe and all its friends wrote and received letters, and the letters were kept and are producible when this biography needs them ; but there are only three or four scraps of Harriet's writing, and no diary. Har riet wrote plenty of letters to her husband — nobody knows where they are, I suppose ; she
IN DEFENCE OF HARRIET SHELLEY 6 1
wrote plenty of letters to other people — ap parently they have disappeared, too. Peacock says she wrote good letters, but apparently in terested people had sagacity enough to mislay them in time. After all her industry she went down into her grave and lies silent there — si lent, when she has so much need to speak. We can only wonder at this mystery, not ac count for it.
No, there is no way of finding out what Harriet's state of feeling was during the month that Shelley was disporting himself in the Bracknell paradise. We have to fall back upon conjecture, as our fabulist does when he has nothing more substantial to work with. Then we easily conjecture that as the days dragged by Harriet's heart grew heavier and heavier under its two burdens — shame and re sentment : the shame of being pointed at and gossiped about as a deserted wife, and resent ment against the woman who had beguiled her husband from her and now kept him in a disreputable captivity. Deserted wives — de serted whether for cause or without cause — find small charity among the virtuous and the dis creet. We conjecture that one after another the neighbors ceased to call ; that one after another they got to being " engaged " when
62 HOW TO TELL A STORY
Harriet called; that finally they one after the other cut her dead on the street ; that after that she stayed in the house daytimes, and brooded over her sorrows, and night-times did the same, there being nothing else to do with the heavy hours and the silence and solitude and the dreary intervals which sleep should have charitably bridged, but didn't.
Yes, mischief had been wrought. The bi ographer arrives at this conclusion, and it is a most just one. Then, just as you begin to half hope he is going to discover the cause of it and launch hot bolts of wrath at the guilty manufacturers of it, you have to turn away disappointed. You are disappointed, and you sigh. This is what he says — the italics are mine:
" However the mischief may have been wrought — and at this day no one can wish to heap blame on any buried head — "
So it is poor Harriet, after all. Stern jus tice must take its course — justice tempered with delicacy, justice tempered with compas sion, justice that pities a forlorn dead girl and refuses to strike her. Except in the back. Will not be ignoble and say the harsh thing, but only insinuate it. Stern justice knows
IN DEFENCE OF HARRIET SHELLEY 63
about the carriage and the wet-nurse and the bonnet -shop and the other dark things that caused this sad mischief, and may not, must not blink them; so it delivers judgment where judgment belongs, but softens the blow by not seeming to deliver judgment at all. To re sume — the italics are mine :
" However the mischief may have been wrought — and at this day no one can wish to heap blame on any buried head — // z's certain that some cause or causes of deep division between Shelley and his wife were 111 operation during tJie early part of the year 1814."
This shows penetration. No deduction could be more accurate than this. There were indeed some causes of deep division. But next comes another disappointing sentence :
"To guess at the precise nature of these causes, in the absence of definite statement, were useless."
Why, he has already been guessing at them for several pages, and we have been trying to outguess him, and now all of a sudden he is tired of it and won't play any more. It is not quite fair to us. However, he will get over this by-and-by, when Shelley commits his next indiscretion and has to be guessed out of it at Harriet's expense.
64 HOW TO TELL A STORY
" We may rest content with Shelley's own words " — in a Chancery paper drawn up by him three years later. They were these: " Delicacy forbids me to say more than that we were disunited by incurable dissensions."
As for me, I do not quite see why we should rest content with anything of the sort. It is not a very definite statement. It does not necessarily mean anything more than that he did not wish to go into the tedious details of those family quarrels. Delicacy could quite properly excuse him from saying, " I was in love with Cornelia all that time ; my wife kept crying and worrying about it and upbraiding me and begging me to cut myself free from a connection which was wronging her and dis gracing us both ; and I being stung by these reproaches retorted with fierce and bitter speeches — for it is my nature to do that when I am stirred, especially if the target of them is a person whom I had greatly loved and re spected before, as witness my various attitudes towards Miss Hitchener, the Gisbornes, Har riet's sister, and others — and finally I did not improve this state of things when I deserted my wife and spent a whole month with the woman who had infatuated me."
No, he could not go into those details, and
IN DEFENCE OF HARRIET SHELLEY 65
we excuse him ; but, nevertheless, we do not rest content with this bland proposition to puff away that whole long disreputable episode with a single meaningless remark of Shelley's.
We do admit that " it is certain that some cause or causes of deep division were in oper ation." We would admit it just the same if the grammar of the statement were as straight as a string, for we drift into pretty indifferent grammar ourselves when we are absorbed in historical work ; but we have to decline to admit that we cannot guess those cause or causes.
But guessing is not really necessary. There is evidence attainable — evidence from the batch discredited by the biographer and set out at the back door in his appendix - basket ; and yet a court of law would think twice before throwing it out, whereas it would be a hardy person who would venture to offer in such a place a good part of the material which is placed before the readers of this book as " evi dence," and so treated by this daring biogra pher. Among some letters (in the appendix- basket) from Mrs. Godwin, detailing the God- winian share in the Shelleyan events of 1814, she tells how Harriet Shelley came to her and her husband, agitated and weeping, to implore
5
66 HOW TO TELL A STORY
them to forbid Shelley the house, and prevent his seeing Mary Godwin.
" She related that last November he had fallen in love with Mrs. Turner and paid her such marked at tentions Mr. Turner, the husband, had carried off his wife to Devonshire."
The biographer finds a technical fault in this ; " the Shelleys were in Edinburgh in No vember." What of that? The woman is re calling a conversation which is more than two months old ; besides, she was probably more intent upon the central and important fact of it than upon its unimportant date. Harriet's quoted statement has some sense in it ; for that reason, if for no other, it ought to have been put in the body of the book. Still, that would not have answered ; even the biogra pher's enemy could not be cruel enough to ask him to let this real grievance, this com pact and substantial and picturesque figure, this rawhead-and-bloody-bones, come striding in there among those pale shams, those rickety spectres labelled WET-NURSE, BONNET-SHOP, and so on — no, the father of all malice could not ask the biographer to expose his pathetic goblins to a competition like that.
The fabulist finds fault with the statement
IN DEFENCE OF HARRIET SHELLEY 67
because it has a technical error in it ; and he does this at the moment that he is furnishing us an error himself, and of a graver sort. He says:
"If Turner carried off his wife to Devonshire he brought her back, and Shelley was staying with her and her mother on terms of cordial intimacy in March, 1814."
We accept the "cordial intimacy" — it was the very thing Harriet was complaining of— but there is nothing to show that it was Tur ner who brought his wife back. The statement is thrown in as if it were not only true, but was proof that Turner was not uneasy. Tur ner's movements are proof of nothing. Nothing but a statement from Turner's mouth would have any value here, and he made none.
Six days after writing his letter Shelley and his wife were together again for a moment — to get remarried according to the rites of the English Church.
Within three weeks the new husband and wife were apart again, and the former was back in his odorous paradise. This time it is the wife who does the deserting. She finds Cor nelia too strong for her, probably. At any rate, she goes away with her baby and sister, and we have a playful fling at her from good
68 HOW TO TELL A STORY
Mrs. Boinville, the " mysterious spinner Mai- muna " ; she whose " face was as a damsel's face, and yet her hair was gray " ; she of whom the biographer has said, " Shelley was indeed caught in an almost invisible thread spun around him, but unconsciously, by this subtle and benignant enchantress." The subtle and benignant enchantress writes to Hogg, April 18: "Shelley is again a widower; his beaute ous half went to town on Thursday."
Then Shelley writes a poem — a chant of grief over the hard fate which obliges him now to leave his paradise and take up with his wife again. It seems to intimate that the paradise is cooling towards him ; that he is warned off by acclamation; that he must not even vent ure to tempt with one last tear his friend Cor nelia's ungentle mood, for her eye is glazed and cold and dares not entreat her lover to stay :
Exhibit E
" Pause not ! the time is past ! Every voice cries
' Away !' Tempt not with one last tear thy friend's ungentle
mood ;
Thy lover's eye, so glazed and cold, dares not en treat thy stay: Duty and dereliction guide thee back to solitude."
IN DEFENCE OF HARRIET SHELLEY 69
Back to the solitude of his now empty home, that is !
"Away! away! to thy sad and silent home; Pour bitter tears on its desolated hearth."
But he will have rest in the grave by-and- by. Until that time comes, the charms of Bracknell will remain in his memory, along with Mrs. Boinville's voice and Cornelia Tur ner's smile :
"Thou in the grave shalt rest — yet, till the phan toms flee Which that house and hearth and garden made
dear to thee erewhile,
Thy remembrance and repentance and deep mus ings are not free
From the music of two voices and the light of one sweet smile."
We cannot wonder that Harriet could not stand it. Any of us would have left. We would not even stay with a cat that was in this condition. Even the Boinvilles could not en dure it; and so, as we have seen, they gave this one notice.
" Early in May, Shelley was in London. He did not yet despair of reconciliation with Harriet, nor had he ceased to love her."
70 HOW TO TELL A STORY
^ Shelley's poems are a good deal of trouble to his biographer. They are constantly in serted as " evidence," and they make much confusion. As soon as one of them has proved one thing, another one follows and proves quite a different thing. The poem just quoted shows that he was in love with Cornelia, but a month later he is in love with Harriet again, and there is a poem to prove it.
" In this piteous appeal Shelley declares that he has now no grief but one — the grief of having known and lost his wife's love."
Exhibit F
" Thy look of love has power to calm The stormiest passion of my soul."
But without doubt she had been reserving her looks of love a good part of the time for ten months, now — ever since he began to lav ish his own on Cornelia Turner at the end of the previous July. He does really seem to have already forgotten Cornelia's merits in one brief month, for he eulogizes Harriet in a way which rules all competition out :
" Thou only virtuous, gentle, kind, Amid a world of hate."
He complains of her hardness, and begs her
IN DEFENCE OF HARRIET SHELLEY 71
to make the concession of a " slight endur ance " — of his waywardness, perhaps — for the sake of " a fellow-being's lasting weal." But the main force of his appeal is in his closing stanza, and is strongly worded :
" O trust for once no erring guide !
Bid the remorseless feeling flee ; Tis malice, 'tis revenge, 'tis pride,
Tis anything but thee ; O deign a nobler pride to prove, And pity if thou canst not love."
This is in May — apparently towards the end of it. Harriet and Shelley were correspond ing all the time. Harriet got the poem — a copy exists in her own handwriting; she be ing the only gentle and kind person amid a world of hate, according to Shelley's own tes timony in the poem, we are permitted to think that the daily letters would presently have melted that kind and gentle heart and brought about the reconciliation, if there had been time — but there wasn't : for in a very few days— in fact, before the 8th of June— Shelley was in love with another woman !
And so — perhaps while Harriet was walking the floor nights, trying to get her poem by heart— her husband was doing a fresh one—
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for the other girl — Mary Wollstonecraft God win — with sentiments like these in it :
Exhibit G
"To spend years thus and be rewarded, As thou, sweet love, requited me When none were near. . . . thy lips did meet Mine tremblingly; . . .
" Gentle and good and mild thou art,
Nor can I live if thou appear Aught but thyself.". . .
And so on. " Before the close of June it was known and felt by Mary and Shelley that each was inexpressibly dear to the other." Yes, Shelley had found this child of sixteen to his liking, and had wooed and won her in the graveyard. But that is nothing ; it was better than wooing her in her nursery, at any rate, where it might have disturbed the other chil dren.
However, she was a child in years only. From the day that she set her masculine grip on Shelley he was to frisk no more. If she had occupied the only kind and gentle Har riet's place in March it would have been a thrilling spectacle to see her invade the Boin- ville rookery and read the riot act. That holi-
• ^ J
IN DEFENCE OF HARRIET SHELLEY 73
day of Shelley's would have been of short duration, and Cornelia's hair would have been as gray as her mother's when the services were over.
Hogg went to the Godwin residence in Skinner Street with Shelley on that 8th of June. They passed through Godwin's little debt-factory of a book-shop and went up-stairs hunting for the proprietor. Nobody there. Shelley strode about the room impatiently, making its crazy floor quake under him. Then a door "was partially and softly opened. A thrilling voice called, * Shelley !' A thrilling voice answered, * Mary !' And he darted out of the room like an arrow from the bow of the far-shooting King. A very young female, fair and fair-haired, pale indeed, and with a pierc ing look, wearing a frock of tartan, an unusual dress in London at that time, had called him out of the room."
This is Mary Godwin, as described by Hogg. The thrill of the voices shows that the love of Shelley and Mary was already upward of a fortnight old ; therefore it had been born with in the month of May — born while Harriet was still trying to get her poem by heart, we think. I must not be asked how I know so much about that thrill ; it is my secret. The biog-
74 HOW TO TELL A STORY
rapher and I have private ways of finding out things when it is necessary to find them out and the customary methods fail.
Shelley left London that day, and was gone ten days. The biographer conjectures that he spent this interval with Harriet in Bath. It would be just like him. To the end of his days he liked to be in love with two women at once. He was more in love with Miss Hitch- ener when he married Harriet than he was with Harriet, and told the lady so with simple and unostentatious candor. He was more in love with Cornelia than he was with Harriet in the end of 1813 and the beginning of 1814, yet he supplied both of them with love poems of an equal temperature meantime ; he loved Mary and Harriet in June, and while getting ready to run off with the one, it is^conjectured that he put in his odd time trying to get rec onciled to the other; by -and -by, while still in love with Mary, he will make love to her half-sister by marriage, adoption, and the visi tation of God, through the medium of clandes tine letters, and she will answer with letters that are for no eye but his own.
When Shelley encountered Mary Godwin he was looking around for another paradise. He had tastes of his own, and there were feat-
IN DEFENCE OF HARRIET SHELLEY 75
ures about the Godwin establishment that strongly recommended it. Godwin was an ad vanced thinker and an able writer. One of his romances is still read, but his philosophical works, once so esteemed, are out of vogue now; their authority was already declining when Shelley made his acquaintance — that is, it was declining with the public, but not with Shelley. They had been his moral and political Bible, and they were that yet. Shel ley the infidel would himself have claimed to be less a work of God than a work of Godwin. Godwin's philosophies had formed his mind and interwoven themselves into it and become a part of its texture ; he regarded himself as Godwin's spiritual son. Godwin was not with out self-appreciation ; indeed, it may be con jectured that from his point of view the last syllable of his name was surplusage. He lived serene in his lofty world of philosophy, far above the mean interests that absorbed smaller men, and only came down to the ground at intervals to pass the hat for alms to pay his debts with, and insult the man that relieved him. Several of his principles were out of the ordinary. For example, he was opposed to marriage. He was not aware that his preach ings from this text were but theory and wind ;
76 HOW TO TELL A STORY
he supposed he was in earnest in imploring people to live together without marrying, until Shelley furnished him a working model of his scheme and a practical example to analyze, by applying the principle in his own family ; the matter took a different and surprising aspect then. The late Matthew Arnold said that the main defect in Shelley's make-up was that he was destitute of the sense of humor. This episode must have escaped Mr. Arnold's at tention.
But we have said enough about the head of the new paradise. Mrs. Godwin is described as being in several ways a terror; and even when her soul was in repose she wore green spectacles. But I suspect that her main un- attractiveness was born of the fact that she wrote the letters that are out in the appendix- basket in the back yard — letters which are an outrage and wholly untrustworthy, for they say some kind things about poor Harriet and tell some disagreeable truths about her hus band ; and these things make the fabulist grit his teeth a good deal.
Next we have Fanny Godwin — a Godwin by courtesy only ; she was Mrs. Godwin's nat ural daughter by a former friend. She was a sweet and winning girl, but she presently
IN DEFENCE OF HARRIET SHELLEY 77
wearied of the Godwin paradise, and poisoned herself.
Last in the list is Jane (or Claire, as she pre ferred to call herself) Clairmont, daughter of Mrs. Godwin by a former marriage. She was very young and pretty and accommodating, and always ready to do what she could to make things pleasant. After Shelley ran off with her part -sister Mary, she became the guest of the pair, and contributed a natural child to their nursery — Allegra. Lord Byron was the father.
We have named the several members and advantages of the new paradise in Skinner Street, with its crazy book- shop underneath. Shelley was all right now, this was a better place than the other; more variety anyway, and more different kinds of fragrance. One could turn out poetry here without any trou ble at all.
The way the new love-match came about was this: Shelley told Mary all his aggrava tions and sorrows and griefs, and about the wet-nurse and the bonnet-shop and the sur geon and the carriage, and the sister-in-law that blocked the London game, and about Cornelia and her mamma, and how they had turned him out of the house after making so
78 HOW TO TELL A STORY
much of him ; and how he had deserted Har riet and then Harriet had deserted him, and how the reconciliation was working along and Harriet getting her poem by heart ; and still he was not happy, and Mary pitied him, for she had had trouble herself. But I am not satisfied with this. It reads too much like statistics. It lacks smoothness and grace, and ' is too earthy and business-like. It has the sordid look of a trades-union procession out on strike. That is not the right form for it. The book does it better ; we will fall back on the book and have a cake-walk :
" It was easy to divine that some restless grief pos sessed him ; Mary herself was not unlearned in the lore of pain. His generous zeal in her father's behalf, his spiritual sonship to Godwin, his reverence for her mother's memory, were guarantees with Mary of his excellence.* The new friends could not lack subjects of discourse, and underneath their words about Mary's mother, and ' Political Justice,' and ' Rights of Wom an,' were two young hearts, each feeling towards the other, each perhaps unaware, trembling in the direc tion of the other. The desire to assuage the suffer ing of one whose happiness has grown precious to us may become a hunger of the spirit as keen as any
* What she was after was guarantees of his excellence. That he stood ready to desert his wife and child was one of them, apparently.
IN DEFENCE OF HARRIET SHELLEY 79
other, and this hunger now possessed Mary's heart ; when her eyes rested unseen on Shelley, it was with a look full of the ardor of a ' soothing pity.' "
Yes, that is better and has more composure. That is just the way it happened. He told her about the wet-nurse, she told him about political justice ; he told her about the dead ly sister-in-law, she told him about her mother; he told her about the bonnet-shop, she mur mured back about the rights of woman ; then he assuaged her, then she assuaged him ; then he assuaged her some more, next she assuaged him some more ; then they both assuaged one another simultaneously; and so they went on by the hour assuaging and assuaging and as suaging, until at last what was the result? They were in love. It will happen so every time.
" He had married a woman who, as he now per suaded himself, had never truly loved him, who loved only his fortune and his rank, and who proved her selfishness by deserting him in his misery."
I think that that is not quite fair to Har riet. We have no certainty that she knew Cornelia had turned him out of the house. He went back to Cornelia, and Harriet may have supposed that he was as happy with her as
8o HOW TO TELL A STORY
ever. Still, it was judicious to begin to lay or the whitewash, for Shelley is going to neec many a coat of it now, and the sooner the reader becomes used to the intrusion of the brush the sooner he will get reconciled to it and stop fretting about it.
After Shelley's (conjectured) visit to Har riet at Bath — 8th of June to iSth — "it seems to have been arranged that Shelley should henceforth join the Skinner Street household each day at dinner."
Nothing could be handier than this ; things will swim along now.
" Although now Shelley was coming to believe that his wedded union with Harriet was a thing of the past, he had not ceased to regard her with affectionate consideration ; he wrote to her frequently, and kept her informed of his whereabouts."
We must not get impatient over these curi ous inharmoniousnesses and irreconcilabilities in Shelley's character. You can see by the biographer's attitude towards them that there is nothing objectionable about them. Shelley was doing his best to make two adoring young creatures happy: he was regarding the one with affectionate consideration by mail, and he was assuaging the other one at home.
IN DEFENCE OF HARRIET SHELLEY 8 1
" Unhappy Harriet, residing at Bath, had perhaps never desired that the breach between herself and her husband should be irreparable and complete."
I find no fault with that sentence except that the "perhaps" is not strictly warranted. It should have been left out. In support — or shall we say extenuation? — of this opinion I submit that there is not sufficient evidence to warrant the uncertainty which it implies. The only "evidence " offered that Harriet was hard and proud and standing out against a recon ciliation is a poem — the poem in which Shel ley beseeches her to " bid the remorseless feel ing flee" and "pity" if she "cannot love." We have just that as " evidence," and out of its meagre materials the biographer builds a cobhouse of conjectures as big as the Coli seum; conjectures which convince him, the prosecuting attorney, but ought to fall far short of convincing any fair-minded jury.
Shelley's love-poems may be very good evi dence, but we know well that they are " good for this day and train only." We are able to believe that they spoke the truth for that one day, but we know by experience that they could not be depended on to speak it the next That very supplication for a rewarming of Harriet's chilled love was followed so sudden-
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82 HOW TO TELL A STORY
ly by the poet's plunge into an adoring pas sion for Mary Godwin that if it had been a check it would have lost its value before a lazy person could have gotten to the bank with it. Hardness, stubbornness, pride, vindictiveness — these may sometimes reside in a young wife and mother of nineteen, but they are not charged against Harriet Shelley outside of that poem, and one has no right to insert them into her character on such shadowy " evidence" as that. Peacock knew Harriet well, and she has a flexible and persuadable look, as painted by him :
" Her manners were good, and her whole aspect and demeanor such manifest emanations of pure and truth ful nature that to be once in her company was to know her thoroughly. She was fond of her husband, and accommodated herself in every way to his tastes. If they mixed in society, she adorned it ; if they lived in retirement, she was satisfied ; if they travelled, she enjoyed the change of scene."
" Perhaps " she had never desired that the breach should be irreparable and complete. The truth is, we do not even know that there was any breach at all at this time. We know that the husband and wife went before the altar and took a new oath on the 24th of March to love and cherish each other until
IN DEFENCE OF HARRIET SHELLEY 83
death — and this may be regarded as a sort of reconciliation itself, and a wiping out of the old grudges. Then Harriet went away, and the sister-in-law removed herself from her so ciety. That was in April. Shelley wrote his " appeal " in May, but the corresponding went right along afterwards. We have a right to doubt that the subject of it was a " reconcili ation," or that Harriet had any suspicion that she needed to' be reconciled and that her hus band was trying to persuade her to it — as the biographer has sought to make us believe, with his Coliseum of conjectures built out of a waste-basket of poetry. For we have " evi dence " now — not poetry and conjecture. When Shelley had been dining daily in the Skinner Street paradise fifteen days and continuing the love-match which was already a fortnight old twenty-five days earlier, he forgot to write Harriet ; forgot it the next day and the next. During four days Harriet got no letter from him. Then her fright and anxiety rose to ex pression-heat, and she wrote a letter to Shel ley's publisher which seems to reveal to us that Shelley's letters to her had been the cus tomary affectionate letters of husband to wife, and had carried no appeals for reconciliation and had not needed to :
84 HOW TO TELL A STORY
"BATH (postmark July 7, 1814).
" MY DEAR SIR, — You will greatly oblige me by giv ing the enclosed to Mr. Shelley. I would not trouble you, but it is now four days since I have heard from him, which to me is an age. -Will you write by return of post and tell me what has become of him ? as I always fancy something dreadful has happened if I do not hear from him. If you tell me that he is well I shall not come to London, but if I do not hear from you or him I shall certainly come, as I cannot endure this dreadful state of suspense. You are his friend and you can feel for me.
" I remain yours truly,
" H. S."
Even without Peacock's testimony that " her whole aspect and demeanor were manifest em anations of a pure and truthful nature," we should hold this to be a truthful letter, a sincere letter, a loving letter ; it bears those marks ; I think it is also the letter of a person accus tomed to receiving letters from her husband frequently, and that they have been of a wel come and satisfactory sort, too, this long time back — ever since the solemn remarriage and reconciliation at the altar most likely.
The biographer follows Harriet's letter with a conjecture. He conjectures that she " would now gladly have retraced her steps." Which means that it is proven that she had steps to
IN DEFENCE OF HARRIET SHELLEY 85
retrace — proven by the poem. Well, if the poem is better evidence than the letter, we must let it stand at that.
Then the biographer attacks Harriet Shel ley's honor — by authority of random and un verified gossip scavengered from a group of people whose very names make a person shud der: Mary Godwin, mistress to Shelley; her part-sister, discarded mistress of Lord Byron ; Godwin, the philosophical tramp, who gathers his share of it from a shadow — that is to say, from a person whom he shirks out of naming. Yet the biographer dignifies this sorry rub bish with the name of " evidence."
Nothing remotely resembling a distinct charge from a named person professing to know is offered among this precious " evi dence."
1. " Shelley believed" so and so.
2. Byron's discarded mistress says that Shel ley told Mary Godwin so and so, and Mary told her.
3. " Shelley said " so and so — and later " ad mitted over and over again that he had been in error."
4. The unspeakable Godwin " wrote to Mr. Baxter" that he knew so and so " from un questionable authority "—name not furnished.
86 HOW TO TELL A STORY
How any man in his right mind could bring himself to defile the grave of a shamefully abused and defenceless girl with these base less fabrications, this manufactured filth, is in conceivable. How any man, in his right mind or out of it, could sit down and coldly try to per suade anybody to believe it, or listen patiently to it, or, indeed, do anything but scoff at it and deride it, is astonishing.
The charge insinuated by these odious slan ders is one of the most difficult of all offences to prove; it is also one which no man has a right to mention even in a whisper about any woman, living or dead, unless he knows it to be true, and not even then unless he can also prove it to be true. There is no justification for the abomination of putting this stuff in the book.
Against Harriet Shelley's good name there is not one scrap of tarnishing evidence, and not even a scrap of evil gossip, that comes from a source that entitles it to a hearing.
On the credit side of the account we have strong opinions from the people who knew her best. Peacock says :
" I feel it due to the memory of Harriet to state my most decided conviction that her conduct as a wife was as pure, as true, as absolutely faultless, as that of any who for such conduct are held most in honor."
IN DEFENCE OF HARRIET SHELLEY 87
Thornton Hunt, who had picked and pub lished slight flaws in Harriet's character, says, as regards this alleged large one :
" There is not a trace of evidence or a whisper of scandal against her before her voluntary departure from Shelley."
Trelawney says :
«• I v the evidence of the lew friends
-w both Shelley and 'his w'fc.- -YiW&'rilCV He ck, and one of the Godwins — that Har-
vas perfectly innocent of all oifence."
What excuse was there for raking up a par cel of foul rumors from malicious and dis credited sources and flinging them at this dead girl's head? Her very defencelessness should have been her protection. The fact that all letters to her or about her, with al most every scrap of her own writing, had been diligently mislaid, leaving her case destitute of a voice, while every pen - stroke which could help her husband's side had been as diligently preserved, should have excused her from being brought to trial. Her witnesses have all dis appeared, yet we see her summoned in her grave-clothes to plead for the life of her char acter, without the help of an advocate, before a disqualified judge and a packed jury.
88 HOW TO TELL A STORY
Harriet Shelley wrote her distressed letter on the /th of July. On the 28th her husband ran away with Mary Godwin and her part-sis ter Claire to the Continent. He deserted his wife when her confinement was approaching. She bore him a child at the end of November, his mistress bore him another one something over two months late*- ^h? truants were back in -London bef. occur
On one occasion, presently, Sheller
pressed for money to support his mistress
that he went to his wife and got some money of his that was in her hands — twenty pounds. Yet the mistress was not moved to gratitude ; for later, when the wife was troubled to meet her engagements, the mistress makes this entry in her diary :
"Harriet sends her creditors here; nasty woman. Now we shall have to change our lodgings."
The deserted wife bore the bitterness and obloquy of her situation two years and a quar ter; then she gave up, and drowned herself. A month afterwards the body was found in the water. Three weeks later Shelley married his mistress.
I must here be allowed to italicize a re-
UNIV.
IN DEFENCE OF HARRIET SHELLEY ^<
mark of the biographer's concerning Harriet Shelley:
" That no act of Shelley s during the two years which immediately preceded her death tended to cause the rash act which brought her life to its close seems certain"
Yet her husband had deserted her and her children, and was living with a concubine all that time ! Why should a person attempt to write biography when the simplest facts have no meaning to him? This book is littered with as crass stupidities as that one — deduc tions by the page which bear no discoverable kinship to their premises.
The biographer throws off that extraordi nary remark without any perceptible disturb ance to his serenity; for he follows it with a sentimental justification of Shelley's conduct which has not a pang of conscience in it, but is silky and smooth and undulating and pious
a cake-walk with all the colored brethren at
their best. There may be people who can read that page and keep their temper, but it is doubtful.
Shelley's life has the one indelible blot upon it, but is otherwise worshipfully noble and beautiful. It even stands out indestructibly gracious and lovely from the ruck of these dis-
9° HOW TO TELL A STORY
astrous pages, in spite of the fact that they expose and establish his responsibility for his forsaken wife's pitiful fate — a responsibility which he himself tacitly admits in a letter to Eliza Westbrook, wherein he refers to his tak ing up with Mary Godwin as an act which Eliza "might excusably regard as the cause of her sister's ruin."
FENIMORE COOPER'S LITERARY OFFENCES
FENIMORE COOPER'S LITERARY OFFENCES
The Pathfinder and The Dccrslayer stand at the head of Cooper's novels as artistic creations. There are others of his works which contain parts as perfect as are to be found in these, and scenes even more thrilling. Not one can be compared with either of them as a finished whole.
The defects in both of these tales are compara tively slight. They were pure works of art. — Prof. Lounsbury.
The five tales reveal an extraordinary fulness of invention.
. . . One of the very greatest characters in fiction, Natty Bumppo. . . .
The craft of the woodsman, the tricks of the trap per, all the delicate art of the forest, were familiar to Cooper from his youth up. — Prof. Brander Matthews.
Cooper is the greatest artist in the domain of ro mantic fiction yet produced by America. — Wilkte Collins.
IT seems to me that it was far from right for the Professor of English Literature in Yale, the Professor of English Literature in Colum-
94 HOW TO TELL A STORY
bia, and Wilkie Collins to deliver opinions on Cooper's literature without having read some of it. It would have been much more deco rous to keep silent and let persons talk who have read Cooper.
Cooper's art has some defects. In one place in Deerslayer, and in the restricted space of two-thirds of a page, Cooper has scored 1 14 offences against literary art out of a possible 115. It breaks the record.
There are nineteen rules governing literary art in the domain of romantic fiction — some say twenty- two. In Dcerslayer Cooper vio lated eighteen of them. These eighteen re quire :
1. That a tale shall accomplish something and arrive somewhere. But the Deer slayer tale accomplishes nothing and arrives in the air.
2. They require that the episodes of a tale shall be necessary parts of the tale, and shall help to develop it. But as the Deerslayer tale is not a tale, and accomplishes nothing and arrives nowhere>the episodes have no rightful place in the work, since there was nothing for them to develop.
3. They require that the personages in a tale shall be alive, except in the case of corpses,
FENIMORE COOPER'S LITERARY OFFENCES 95
and that always the reader shall be able to tell the corpses from the others. But this detail has often been overlooked in the Dcerslaycr tale.
4. They require that the personages in a tale, both dead and alive, shall exhibit a suffi cient excuse for being there. But this detail also has been overlooked in the Dccrslayer tale.
5. They require that when the personages of a tale deal in conversation, the talk shall sound like human talk, and be talk such as human beings would be likely to talk in the given circumstances, and have a discoverable meaning, also a discoverable purpose, and a show of relevancy, and remain in the neigh borhood of the subject in hand, and be inter esting to the reader, and help out the tale, and stop when the people cannot think of any thing more to say. But this requirement has been ignored from the beginning of the Deer- slayer tale to the end of it.
6. They require that when the author de scribes the character of a personage in his tale, the conduct and conversation of that per sonage shall justify said description. But this law gets little or no attention in the Dcerslayer tale, as Natty Bumppo's case will amply prove.
96 HOW TO TELL A STORY
7. They require that when a personage talks like an illustrated, gilt-edged, tree -calf, hand- tooled, seven -dollar Friendship's Offering in the beginning of a paragraph, he shall not talk like a negro minstrel in the end of it. But this rule is flung down and danced upon in the Deerslayer tale.
8. They require that crass stupidities shall not be played upon the reader as " the craft of the woodsman, the delicate art of the for est," by either the author or the people in the tale. But this rule is persistently violated in the Deerslayer tale.
9. They require that the personages of a tale shall confine themselves to possibilities and let miracles alone ; or, if they venture a miracle, the author must so plausibly set it forth as to make it look possible and reason able. But these rules are not respected in the Deerslayer tale.
10. They require that the author shall make the reader feel a deep interest in the person ages of his tale and in their fate ; and that he shall make the reader love the good people in the tale and hate the bad ones. But the reader of the Deerslayer tale dislikes the good people in it, is indifferent to the others, and wishes they would all get drowned together.
FENIMORE COOPER'S LITERARY OFFENCES 07
11. They require that the characters ;
! tale shall be so clearly defined that the reader can tell beforehand what each will Jo in a given emergency. But in the Deer:,layer tale this rule is vacated.
In addition to these large tules there are some little ones. These require that the au thor shall
12. Say what he is proposing to say, not merely come near it.
13. Use the right word, not its second cousin.
14. Eschew surplusage.
15. Not omit necessary details.
16. Avoid slovenliness of form.
17. Use good grammar.
1 8. Employ a simple and straightforward style.
Even these seven are coldly and persistently violated in the Decrslayer tale.
Cooper's gift in the way of invention was not a rich endowment ; but such as it was he liked to work it, he was pleased with the ef fects, and indeed he did some quite sweet things with it. In his little box of stage prop erties he kept six or eight cunning devices, tricks, artifices for his savages and woodsmen to deceive and circumvent each other with, 7
98 HOW TO TELL A STORY
ati£? ^ie was never so happy as when he was working these innocent things and seeing them go. A favorite one was to make a moccasined person trcfad in the tracks of the moccasined enemy, and^bhus hide his own trail. Cooper wore out barrels and barrels of moccasins in working that triav Another stage-property that he pulled out of iiis box pretty frequently was his broken twig, t^e prized his broken twig above all the rest of his effects, and worked it the hardest. It is a restful chapter in any book of his when somebody doesn't step on a dry twig and alarm all the reds and whites for two hundred yards around. Every time a Cooper person is in peril, and absolute silence is worth four dollars a minute, he is sure to step on a dry twig. There may be a hundred handier things to step on, but that wouldn't satisfy Cooper. Cooper requires him to turn out and find a dry twig; and if he can't do it, go and borrow one. In fact, the Leather Stocking Series ought to have been called the Broken Twig Series.
I am sorry there is not room to put in a few dozen instances of the delicate art of the for est, as practised by Natty Bumppo and some of the other Cooperian experts. Perhaps we may venture two or three samples. Cooper
FENIMORE COOPER'S LITERARY OFFENCES 99
was a sailor— a naval officer; yet he gravely tells us how a vessel, driving towards a lee shore in a gale, is steered for a particular spot by her skipper because he knows of an under tow there which will hold her back against the gale and save her. For just pure woodcraft, or sailorcraft, or whatever it is, isn't that neat? For several years Cooper was daily in the so ciety of artillery, and he ought to have noticed that when a cannon-ball strikes the ground it either buries itself or skips a hundred feet or so; skips again a hundred feet or so — and so on, till it finally gets tired and rolls. Now in one place he loses some " females " — as he al ways calls women — in the edge of a wood near a plain at night in a fog, on purpose to give Bumppo a chance to show off the deli cate art of the forest before the reader. These mislaid people are hunting for a fort. They hear a cannon-blast, and a cannon-ball present ly comes rolling into the wood and stops at their feet. To the females this suggests noth ing. The case is very different with the ad mirable Bumppo. I wish I may never know peace again if he doesn't strike out promptly and follow the track of that cannon-ball across the plain through the dense fog and find the fort. Isn't it a daisy ? If Cooper had any real
IOO HOW TO TELL A STORY
knowledge of Nature's ways of doing things, he had a most delicate art in concealing the fact. For instance: one of his acute Indian' experts, Chingachgook (pronounced Chicago, I think), has lost the trail of a person he is tracking through the forest. Apparently that trail is hopelessly lost. Neither you nor I could ever have guessed out the way to find it. It was very different with Chicago. Chi cago was not stumped for long. He turned a running stream out of its course, and there, in the slush in its old bed, were that person's moccasin - tracks. The current did not wash them away, as it would have done in all other like cases — no, even the eternal laws of Nature have to vacate when Cooper wants to put up a delicate job of woodcraft on the reader.
We must be a little wary when Brander Matthews tells us that Cooper's books " reveal an extraordinary fulness of invention." As a rule, I am quite willing to accept Brander Matthews's literary judgments and applaud his lucid and graceful phrasing of them ; but that particular statement needs to be taken with a few tons of salt. Bless your heart, Cooper hadn't any more invention than a horse ; and I don't mean a high-class horse, either; I mean a clothes-horse. It would be
FENIMORE COOPER'S LVfl'RXkY Of"FtVCL^ IOi
very difficult to find a really clever "situation" in Cooper's books, and still more difficult to find one of any kind which he has failed to render absurd by his handling of it. Look at the episodes of "the caves" ; and at the cele brated scuffle between Maqua and those oth ers on the table-land a few days later ; and at Hurry Harry's queer water- transit from the castle to the ark ; and at Deerslayer's half- hour with his first corpse ; and at the quarrel between Hurry Harry and Deerslayer later; ajid at — but choose for yourself ; you can't go amiss.
If Cooper had been an observer his inven tive faculty would have worked better; not more interestingly, but more rationally, more plausibly. Cooper's proudest creations in the way of " situations " suffer noticeably from the absence of the observer's protecting gift. Cooper's eye was splendidly inaccurate. Cooper seldom saw anything correctly. He saw nearly all things as through a glass eye, darkly. Of course a man who cannot see the commonest little every-day matters accurately is working at a disadvantage when he is con structing a " situation." In the Deerslayer tale Cooper has a stream which is fifty feet wide where it flows out of a lake ; it presently
OV SELL A STORY
narrows to twenty as it meanders along for no given reason, and yet when a stream acts like that it ought to be required to explain itself. Fourteen pages later the width of the brook's outlet from the lake has suddenly shrunk thirty feet, and become " the narrowest part of the stream." This shrinkage is not accounted for. The stream has bends in it, a sure indication that it has alluvial banks and cuts them; yet these bends are only thirty and fifty feet long. If Cooper had been a nice and punctilious ob server he would have noticed that the bends were oftener nine hundred feet long than short of it.
Cooper made the exit of that stream fifty feet wide, in the first place, for no particular reason ; in the second place, he narrowed it to less than twenty to accommodate some Ind ians. He bends a "sapling" to the form of an arch over this narrow passage, and conceals six Indians in its foliage. They are " laying " for a settler's scow or ark which is coming up the stream on its way to the lake ; it is being hauled against the stiff current by a rope whose stationary end is anchored in the lake ; its rate of progress cannot be more than a mile an hour. Cooper describes the ark, but pretty obscurely. In the matter of dimen-
FiNIMORE COOPER'S LITERARY OFFENCES 103
sions " it was little more than a modern canal- boat." Let us guess, then, that it was about one hundred and forty feet long. It was of " greater breadth than common." Let us guess, then, that it was about sixteen feet wide. This leviathan had been prowling down bends which were but a third as long^is itself, and scraping between banks where it had only two feet of space to spare on each side. We cannot too much admire this miracle. A low-roofed log dwelling occupies "two -thirds of the ark's length " — a dwelling ninety feet long and six teen feet wide, let us say — a kind of vestibule train. The dwelling has two rooms — each forty-five feet long and sixteen feet wide, let us guess. One of them is the bedroom of the Hutter girls, Judith and Hetty; the other is the parlor in the daytime, at night it is papa's bedchamber. The ark is arriving at the stream's exit now, whose width has been reduced to less than twenty feet to accommodate the Ind ians — say to eighteen. There is a foot to spare on each side of the boat. Did the Indians notice that there was going to be a tight squeeze there? Did they notice that they could make money by climbing down out of that arched sapling and just stepping aboard when the ark scraped by? No ; other Indians
104 HOW TO TELL A STORY
would have noticed these things, but Cooper's Indians never notice anything. Cooper thinks they are marvellous creatures for noticing, but he was almost always in error about his Ind ians. There was seldom a sane one among them.
The ark is one hu^lred and forty feet long ; the dwelling is ninety feet long. The idea of the Indians is to drop softly and secretly from the arched sapling to the dwelling as the ark creeps along under it at the rate of a mile an hour, and butcher the family. It will take the ark a minute and a half to pass under. It will take the ninety foot dwelling a minute to pass under. Now, then, what did the six Indians do? It would take you thirty years to guess, and even then you would have to give it up, I believe. Therefore, I will tell you what the Indians did. Their chief, a person of quite extraordinary intellect for a Cooper Indian, warily watched the canal-boat as it squeezed along under him, and when he had got his cal culations fined down to exactly the right shade, as he judged, he let go and dropped. And missed the house ! That is actually what he did^ He missed the house, and landed in the stern of the scow. It was not much of a fall, yet it knocked him silly. He lay there uncon-
FENIMORE COOPER'S LITERARY OFFENCES 105
scious. If the house had been ninety-seven feet long he would have made the trip. The fault was Cooper's, not his. The error lay in the construction of the house. Cooper was no architect.
There still remained in the roost five Ind ians. The boat has passed under and is now out of their reach. Let me explain what the five did — you would not be able to reason it out for yourself. No. I jumped for the boat, but fell in the water astern of it. Then No. 2 jumped for the boat, but fell in the water still farther astern of it. Then No. 3 jumped for the boat, and fell a good way astern of it. Then No. 4 jumped for the boat, and fell in the water aivay astern. Then even No. 5 made a jump for the boat — for he was a Cooper Ind ian. In the matter of intellect, the difference between a Cooper Indian and the Indian that stands in front of the cigar-shop is not spa cious. The scow episode is really a sublime burst of invention ; but it does not thrill, be cause the inaccuracy of the details throws a sort of air of fictitiousness and general improba bility over it. This comes of Cooper's inade quacy as an observer.
The reader will find some examples of Coop er's high talent for inaccurate observation in
106 HOW TO TELL A STORY
the account of the shooting - match in The Pathfinder.
" A common wrought nail was driven lightly into the target, its head having been first touched with paint."
The color of the paint is not stated — an im portant omission, but Cooper deals freely in im portant omissions. No, after all, it was not an important omission ; for this nail-head is a hun dred yards from the marksmen, and could not be seen by them at that distance, no matter what its color might be. How far can the best eyes see a common house-fly? A hundred yards? It is quite impossible. Very well; eyes that can not see a house-fly that is a hundred yards away cannot see an ordinary nail-head at that dis tance, for the size of the two objects is the same. It takes a keen eye to see a fly or a nail-head at fifty yards — one hundred and fifty feet. Can the reader do it ?
The nail was lightly driven, its head painted, and game called. Then the Cooper miracles began. The bullet of the first marksman chipped an edge of the nail-head; the next man's bullet drove the nail a little way into the target — and removed all the paint. Haven't the miracles gone far enough now? Not to
FENIMORE COOPER'S LITERARY OFFENCES 107
suit Cooper; for the purpose of this whole scheme is to show off his prodigy, Deerslayer- Hawkeye -Long-Rifle -Leather- Stocking- Path- finder-Bumppo before the ladies.
" ' Be all ready to clench it, boys !' cried out Path finder, stepping into his friend's tracks the instant they were vacant. ' Never mind a new nail ; I can see that, though the paint is gone, and what I can see I can hit at a hundred yards, though it were only a mosquito's eye. Be ready to clench !'
" The rifle cracked, the bullet sped its way, and the head of the nail was. buried in the wood, covered by the piece of flattened lead."
There, you see, is a man who could hunt flies with a rifle, and command a ducal salary in a Wild West show to-day if we had him back with us.
The recorded feat is certainly surprising just as it stands; but it is not surprising enough for Cooper. Cooper adds a touch. He has made Pathfinder do this miracle with another man's rifle ; and not only that, but Pathfinder did not have even the advantage of loading it himself. He had everything against him, and yet he made that impossible shot; and not only made it, but did it with ab solute confidence, saying, " Be ready to clench." Now a person like that would have undertaken
I08 HOW TO TELL A STORY
that same feat with a brickbat, and with Coop er to help he would have achieved it, too.
Pathfinder showed off handsomely that day before the ladies. His very first feat was a thing which no Wild West show can touch. He was standing with the group of marksmen, observing — a hundred yards from the target, mind ; one Jasper raised his rifle and drove the centre of the bull's-eye. Then the Quarter master fired. The target exhibited no result this time. There was a laugh. " It's a dead miss," said Major Lundie. Pathfinder waited an impressive moment or two ; then said, in that calm, indifferent, know-it-all way of his, " No, Major, he has covered Jasper's bullet, as will be seen if any one will take the trouble to examine the target."
Wasn't it remarkable ! How could he see that little pellet fly through the air and enter that distant bullet-hole? Yet that is what he did ; for nothing is impossible to a Cooper person. Did any of those people have any deep-seated doubts about this thing? No; for that would imply sanity, and these were all Cooper people.
"The respect for Pathfinder's skill and for his quick ness and accuracy of sight " (the italics are mine) " was so profound and general, that the instant he made this
FENIMORE COOPER'S LITERARY OFFENCES 109
declaration the spectators began to distrust their own opinions, and a dozen rushed to the target in order to ascertain the fact. There, sure enough, it was found that the Quartermaster's bullet had gone through the hole made by Jasper's, and that, too, so accurately as to require a minute examination to be certain of the circumstance, which, however, was soon clearly estab lished by discovering one bullet over the other in the stump against which the target was placed."
They made a " minute" examination ; but never mind, how could they know that there were two bullets in that hole without digging the latest one out ? for neither probe nor eye sight could prove the presence of any more than one bullet. Did they dig? No; as we shall see. It is the Pathfinder's turn now ; he steps out before the ladies, takes aim, and fires.
But, alas ! here is a disappointment ; an in credible, an unimaginable disappointment — for the target's aspect is unchanged ; there is nothing there but that same old bullet-hole !
" ' If one dared to hint at such a thing,' cried Major Duncan, ' I should say that the Pathfinder has also missed the target !' "
As nobody had missed it yet, the " also " was not necessary; but never mind about that, for the Pathfinder is going to speak.
110 HOW TO TELL A STORY
"'No, no, Major,' said he, confidently, ' that would be a risky declaration. I didn't load the piece, and can't say what was in it ; but if it was lead, you will find the bullet driving down those of the Quarter master and Jasper, else is not my name Pathfinder.'
" A shout from the target announced the truth of this assertion."
Is the miracle sufficient as it stands? Not for Cooper. The Pathfinder speaks again, as he " now slowly advances towards the stage occupied by the females":
" ' That's not all, boys, that's not all ; if you find the target touched at all, I'll own to a miss. The Quar termaster cut the wood, but you'll find no wood cut by that last messenger.' "
The miracle is at last complete. He knew — doubtless saw — at the distance of a hundred yards — that his bullet had passed into the hole without fraying the edges. There were now three bullets in that one hole — three bul lets embedded processionally in the body of the stump back of the target. Everybody knew this — somehow or other — and yet no body had dug any of them out to make sure. Cooper is not a close observer, but he is inter esting. He is certainly always that, no mat ter what happens. And he is more interesting
FENIMORE COOPER'S LITERARY OFFENCES III
when he is not noticing what he is about than when he is. This is a considerable merit.
The conversations in the Cooper books have a curious sound in our modern ears. To be lieve that such talk really ever came out of people's mouths would be to believe that there was a time when time was of no value to a person who thought he had something to say ; when it was the custom to spread a two-minute remark out to ten ; when a man's mouth was a rolling-mill, and busied itself all day long in turning four-foot pigs of thought into thirty-foot bars of conversational railroad iron by attenuation ; when subjects were sel dom faithfully stuck to, but the talk wandered all around and arrived nowhere; when conver sations consisted mainly of irrelevances, with here and there a relevancy, a relevancy with an embarrassed look, as not being able to ex plain how it got there.
Cooper was certainly not a master in the construction of dialogue. Inaccurate observa tion defeated him here as it defeated him in so many other enterprises of his. He even failed to notice that the man who talks cor rupt English six days in the week must and will talk it on the seventh, and can't help him self. In the Deer slayer story he lets Deer-
112 HOW TO TELL A STORY
slayer talk the showiest kind of book talk sometimes, and at other times the basest of base dialects. For instance, when some one asks him if he has a sweetheart, and if so, where she abides, this is his majestic answer :
" ' She's in the forest — hanging from the boughs of the trees, in a soft rain — in the dew on the open grass — the clouds that float about in the blue heavens — the birds that sing in the woods — the sweet springs where I slake ray thirst — and in all the other glorious gifts that come from God's Providence !' "
And he preceded that, a little before, with this:
" ' It consarns me as all things that touches a fri'nd consarns a fri'nd.' "
And this is another of his remarks :
"'If I was Injin born, now, I might tell of this, or carry in the scalp and boast of the expl'ite afore the whole tribe; or if my inimy had only been a bear'" — and so on.
We cannot imagine such a thing as a vet eran Scotch Commander-in-Chief comporting himself in the field like a windy melodramatic actor, but Cooper could. On one occasion Alice and Cora were being chased by the French through a fog in the neighborhood of their father's fort :
FENIMORE COOPER'S LITERARY OFFENCES 113
"'Point de quarticr aux coquins !' cried an eager pursuer, who seemed to direct the operations of the enemy.
" ' Stand firm and be ready, my gallant 6oths !' sud denly exclaimed a voice above them ; ' wait to see the enemy ; fire low, and sweep the glacis.'
'"Father! father !' exclaimed a piercing cry from out the mist ; ' it is I ! Alice ! thy own Elsie ! spare, O ! save your daughters !'
" ' Hold !' shouted the former speaker, in the awful tones of parental agony, the sound reaching even to the woods, and rolling back in solemn echo. ' Tis she ! God has restored me my children ! Throw open the sally-port; to the field, 6oths, to the field; pull not a trigger, lest ye kill my lambs ! Drive off these dogs of France with your steel.' "
Cooper's word -sense was singularly dull. When a person has a poor ear for music he will flat and sharp right along without know ing it. He keeps near the tune, but it is not the tune. When a person has a poor ear for words, the result is a literary flatting and sharping ; you perceive what he is intending to say, but you also perceive that he doesn't say it. This is Cooper. He was not a word- musician. His ear was satisfied with the ap proximate word. I will furnish some circum stantial evidence in support of this charge. My instances are gathered from half a dozen s
114 HOW TO TELL A STORY
pages of the tale called Deerslayer. He uses " verbal," for " oral " ; " precision," for " facili ty " ; " phenomena," for " marvels " ; " necessa ry," for " predetermined " ; " unsophisticated," for " primitive " ; " preparation," for " expect ancy " ; " rebuked," for " subdued " ; " depend ant on," for " resulting from"; " fact," for " condition"; "fact," for "conjecture"; "pre caution," for " caution " ; " explain," for " de termine " ; " mortified," for " disappointed " ; " meretricious," for " factitious " ; "materially," for " considerably " ; " decreasing," for " deep ening " ; " increasing," for " disappearing " ; " embedded," for " enclosed " ; " treacherous," for " hostile " ; " stood," for " stooped " ; " soft ened," for " replaced " ; " rejoined," for " re marked "; "situation," for "condition"; "dif ferent," for "differing"; "insensible," for " unsentient " ; " brevity," for " celerity " ; " dis trusted," for "suspicious"; "mental imbecili ty," for "imbecility"; " eyes," for "sight"; " counteracting," for " opposing " ; " funeral obsequies," for " obsequies."
There have been daring people in the world who claimed that Cooper could write Eng lish, but they are all dead now — all dead but Lounsbury. I don't remember that Louns- bury makes the claim in so many words, still
FENIMORE COOPER'S LITERARY OFFENCES 115
he makes it, for he says that Deer slayer is a " pure work of art." Pure, in that connec tion, means faultless — faultless in all details — and language is a detail. If Mr. Lounsbury had only compared Cooper's English with the English which he writes himself — but it is plain that he didn't ; and so it is likely that he imagines until this day that Cooper's is as clean and compact as his own. Now I feel sure, deep down in my heart, that Cooper wrote about the poorest English that exists in our language, and that the English of Deer- slayer is the very worst that even Cooper ever wrote.
I may be mistaken, but it does seem to me that Deerslaycr is not a work of art in any sense ; it does seem to me that it is destitute of every detail that goes to the making of a work of art ; in truth, it seems to me that Dccrslayer is just simply a literary delirium tremens.
A work of art ? It has no invention ; it has no order, system, sequence, or result ; it has no lifelikeness, no thrill, no stir, no seeming of reality; its characters are confusedly drawn, and by their acts and words they prove that they are not the sort of people the author claims that they are; its humor is pathetic;
Il6 HOW TO TELL A STORY
its pathos is funny ; its conversations are— oh ! indescribable ; its love-scenes odious ; its Eng lish a crime against the language.
Counting these out, what is left is Art. I think we must all admit that.
TRAVELLING WITH A REFORMER
TRAVELLING WITH A REFORMER
LAST spring I went out to Chicago to see the Fair, and although I did not see it my trip was not wholly lost — there were compen sations. In New York I was introduced to a major in the regular army who said he was going to the Fair, and we agreed to go to gether. I had to go to Boston first, but that did not interfere ; he said he would go along, and put in the time. He was a handsome man, and built like a gladiator. But his ways were gentle, and his speech was soft and per suasive. He was companionable, but exceed ingly reposeful. Yes, and wholly destitute of the sense of humor. He was full of interest in everything that went on around him, but his serenity was indestructible ; nothing dis turbed him, nothing excited him.
But before the day was done I found that deep down in him somewhere he had a pas sion, quiet as he was — a passion for reforming petty public abuses. He stood for citizenship
120 HOW TO TELL A STORY
— it was his hobby. His idea was that every citizen of the republic ought to consider him self an unofficial policeman, and keep unsala- ried watch and ward :over the laws and their execution. He thought that the only effec tive way of preserving and protecting public rights was for each citizen to do his share in preventing or punishing such infringements of them as came under his personal notice.
It was a good scheme, but I thought it would keep a body in trouble all the time ; it seemed to me that one would be always trying to get offending little officials discharged, and perhaps getting laughed at for all reward. But he said no, I had the wrong idea ; that there was no occasion to get anybody discharged ; that in fact you mustn't get anybody dis charged ; that that would itself be a failure ; no, one must reform the man — reform him and make him useful where he was.
" Must one report the offender and then beg his superior not to discharge him, but repri mand him and keep him ?"
" No, that is not the idea ; you don't report him at all, for then you risk his bread and but ter. You can act as if you are going to report him — when nothing else will answer. But that's an extreme case. That is a sort of
TRAVELLING WITH A REFORMER 121
force, and force is bad. Diplomacy is the ef fective thing. Now if a man has tact — if a man will exercise diplomacy—
For two minutes we had been standing at a telegraph wicket, and during all this time the Major had been trying to get the attention of one of the young operators, but they were all busy skylarking. The Major spoke now, and asked one of them to take his telegram. He got for reply :
" I reckon you can wait a minute, can't you?" and the skylarking went on.
The Major said yes, he was not in a hurry. Then he wrote another telegram :
"President Western Union Tel. Co.:
"Come and dine with me this evening. I can tell you how business is conducted in one of your branches."
Presently the young fellow who had spoken so pertly a little before reached out and took the telegram, and when he read it he lost color and began to apologize and explain. He said he would lose his place if this deadly telegram was sent, and he might never get another. If he could be let off this time he would give no cause of complaint again. The compromise was accepted.
122 HOW TO TELL A STORY
As we walked away, the Major said : " Now, you see, that was diplomacy — and you see how it worked. It wouldn't do any good to bluster, the way people are always doing — that boy can always give you as good as you send, and you'll come out de feated and ashamed of yourself pretty nearly always. But you see he stands no chance against diplomacy. Gentle words and diplo macy — those are the tools to work with."
" Yes, I see ; but everybody wouldn't have had your opportunity. It isn't everybody that is on those familiar terms with the presi dent of the Western Union."
" Oh, you misunderstand. I don't know the president — I only use him diplomatically. It is for his good and for the public good. There's no harm in it."
I said, with hesitation and diffidence : " But is it ever right or noble to tell a lie?" He took no note of the delicate self-right eousness of the question, but answered, with undisturbed gravity and simplicity :
" Yes,, sometimes. Lies told to inju»re a per son, and lies told to profit yourself are not justifiable, but lies told to help another person, and lies told in the public interest — oh, well,, that is quite another matter. Anybody knows
TRAVELLING WITH A REFORMER 123
that. But never mind about the methods: you see the result. That youth is going to be useful now, and well-behaved. He had a good face. He was worth saving. Why, he was worth saving on his mother's account if not his own. Of course, he has a mother — sisters, too. Damn these people who are always for getting that ! Do you know, I've never fought a duel in my life — never once — and yet have been challenged, like other people. I could always see the other man's unoffending wom en folks or his little children standing be tween him and me. They hadn't done any thing — I couldn't break their hearts, you know."
He corrected a good many little abuses in the course of the day, and always without friction — always with a fine and dainty " diplo macy " which left no sting behind ; and he got such happiness and such contentment out of these performances that I was obliged to envy him his trade — and perhaps would have adopt ed it if I could have managed the necessary deflections from fact as confidently with my mouth as I believe I could with a pen, behind the shelter of print, after a little practice.
Away late that night we were coming up town in a horse -car when three boisterous
124 HOW TO TELL A STORY
roughs got aboard, and began to fling hilari ous obscenities and profanities right and left among the timid passengers, some of whom were women and children. Nobody resisted or retorted ; the conductor tried soothing words and moral suasion, but the roughs only called him names and laughed at him. Very soon I saw that the Major realized that this was a matter which was in his line ; evidently he was turning over his stock of diplomacy in his mind and getting ready. I felt that the first diplomatic remark he made in this place would bring down a land-slide of ridicule upon him and maybe something worse ; but before I could whisper to him and check him he had begun, and it was too late. He said, in a level and dispassionate tone:
" Conductor, you must put these swine out. I will help you."
I was not looking for that. In a flash the three roughs plunged at him. But none of them arrived. He delivered three such blows as one could not expect to encounter outside the prize-ring, and neither of the men had life enough left in him to get up from where he fell. The Major dragged them out and threw them off the car, and we got under way again.
I was astonished ; astonished to see a lamb
'
fl TJNJV
TRAVELLING WITH A\ REFORMER 125
X; ^^^
act so ; astonished at the strength displayed, and the clean and comprehensive result; as tonished at the brisk and business-like style of the whole thing. The situation had a humor ous side to it, considering how much I had been hearing about mild persuasion and gen tle diplomacy all day from this pile-driver, and I would have liked to call his attention to that feature and do some sarcasms about it ; but when I looked at him I saw that it would be of no use — his placid and contented face had no ray of humor in it ; he would not have un derstood. When we left the car, I said :
"That was a good stroke of diplomacy — three good strokes of diplomacy, in fact."
"That? That wasn't diplomacy. You are quite in the wrong. Diplomacy is a wholly different thing. One cannot apply it to that sort, they would not understand it. No, that was not diplomacy ; it was force."
" Now that you mention it, I — yes, I think perhaps you are right."
"Right? Of course I am right. It was just force."
" I think, myself, it had the outside aspect of it. Do you often have to reform people in that way?"
" Far from it. It hardly ever happens. Not
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oftener than once in half a year, at the out side."
" Those men will get well?"
"Get well? Why, certainly they will. They are not in any danger. I know how to hit and where to hit. You noticed that I did not hit them under the jaw. That would have killed them."
I believed that. I remarked — rather wittily, as I thought — that he had been a lamb all day, but now had all of a sudden developed into a ram — battering-ram; but with dulcet frankness and simplicity he said no, a batter ing-ram was quite a different thing and not in use now. This was maddening, and I came near bursting out and saying he had no more appreciation of wit than a jackass — in fact, I had it right on my tongue, but did not say it, knowing there was no hurry and I could say it just as well some other time over the telephone.
We started to Boston the next afternoon. The smoking -compartment in the parlor -car was full, and we went into the regular smoker. Across the aisle in the front seat sat a meek, farmer-looking old man with a sickly pallor in his face, and he was holding the door open with his foot to get the air. Presently a big
TRAVELLING WITH A REFORMER 127
brakeman came rushing through, and when he got to the door he stopped, gave the farmer an ugly scowl, then wrenched the door to with such energy as to almost snatch the old man's boot off. Then on he plunged about his busi ness. Several passengers laughed, and the old gentleman looked pathetically shamed and grieved.
After a little the conductor passed along, and the Major stopped him and asked him a ques tion in his habitually courteous way:
" Conductor, where does one report the mis conduct of a brakeman? Does one report to you?"
"You can report him at New Haven if you want to. What has he been doing?"
The Major told the story. The conductor seemed amused. He said, with just a touch of sarcasm in his bland tones :
"As I understand you, the brakeman didn't say anything."
" No, he didn't say anything."
" But he scowled, you say."
"Yes."
" And snatched the door loose in a rough way."
"Yes."
"That's the whole business, is it?"
128 HOW TO TELL A STORY
"Yes, that is the whole of it."
The conductor smiled pleasantly, and said :
" Well, if you want to report him, all right, but I don't quite make out what it's going to amount to. You'll say — as I understand you — that the brakeman insulted this old gentle man. They'll ask you what he said. You'll say he didn't say anything at all. I reckon they'll say, how are you going to make out an insult when you acknowledge yourself that he didn't say a word."
There was a murmur of applause at the con ductor's compact reasoning, and it gave him pleasure — you could see it in his face. But the Major was not disturbed. He said :
" There — now you have touched upon a cry ing defect in the complaint-system. The rail way officials — as the public think and as you also seem to think — are not aware that there are any kind of insults except spoken ones. So nobody goes to headquarters and reports insults of manner, insults of gesture, look, and "so forth ; and yet these are sometimes harder to bear than any words. They are bitter hard to bear because there is nothing tangible to take hold of ; and the insulter can always say, if called before the railway officials, that he never dreamed of intending any offence. It
TRAVELLING WITH A REFORMER 129
seems to me that the officials ought to special ly and urgently request the public to report unwordcd affronts and incivilities."
The conductor laughed, and said :
" Well, that would be trimming it pretty fine, sure !"
" But not too fine, I think. I will report this matter at New Haven, and I have an idea that I'll be thanked for it."
The conductor's face lost something of its complacency; in fact, it settled to a quite sober cast as the owner of it moved away. I said :
"You are not really going to bother with that trifle, are you ?"
" It isn't a trifle. Such things ought always to be reported. It is a public duty, and no citizen has a right to shirk it. But I sha'n't have to report this case."
"Why?"
" It won't be necessary. Diplomacy will do the business. You'll see."
Presently the conductor came on his rounds again, and when he reached the Major he leaned over and said :
"That's all right. You needn't report him. He's responsible to me, and if he does it again I'll give him a talking to."
The Major's response was cordial : 9
130 HOW TO TELL A STORY
" Now that is what I like ! You mustn't think that I was moved by any vengeful spirit, for that wasn't the case. It was duty — just a sense of duty, that was all. My brother-in- law is one of the directors of the road, and when he learns that you are going to reason with your brakeman the very next time he brutally insults an unoffending old man it will please him, you may be sure of that."
The conductor did not look as joyous as one might have thought he would, but on the contrary looked sickly and uncomfortable. He stood around a little ; then said :
"/ think something ought to be done to him now. I'll discharge him."
" Discharge him ? What good would that do ? Don't you think it would be better wis dom to teach him better ways and keep him?"
" Well, there's something in that. What would you suggest?"
" He insulted the old gentleman in presence of all these people. How would it do to have him come and apologize in their presence?"
" I'll have him here right off. And I want to say this : If people would do as you've done, and report such things to me instead of keep ing mum and going off and blackguarding the
TRAVELLING WITH A REFORMER 131
road, you'd see a different state of things pret ty soon. I'm much obliged to you."
The brakeman came and apologized. After he was gone the Major said :
" Now, you see how simple and easy that was. The ordinary citizen would have accom plished nothing— the brother-in-law of a di rector can accomplish anything he wants to."
" But are you really the brother-in-law of a director?"
" Always. Always when the public inter ests require it. I have a brother-in-law on all the boards — everywhere. It saves me a world of trouble."
" It is a good wide relationship."
" Yes. I have over three hundred of them."
" Is the relationship never doubted by a conductor?"
" I have never met with a case. It is the honest truth — I never have."
" Why didn't you let him go ahead and dis charge the brakeman, in spite of your favorite policy? You know he deserved it."
The Major answered with something which really had a sort of distant resemblance to im patience :
" If you would stop and think a moment you wouldn't ask such a question as that. Is
132 HOW TO TELL A STORY
a brakeman a dog, that nothing but dog's methods will do for him? He is a man, and has a man's fight for life. And he always has a sister, or a mother, or wife and children to support. Always — there are no exceptions. When you take his living away from him you take theirs away too — and what have they done to you? Nothing. And where is the profit in discharging an uncourteous brake man and hiring another just like him? It's unwisdom. Don't you see that the rational thing to do is to reform the brakeman and keep him? Of course it is."
Then he quoted with admiration the con duct of a certain division superintendent of the Consolidated road, in a case where a switch man of two years' experience was negligent once and threw a train off the track and killed several people. Citizens came in a passion to urge the man's dismissal, but the superintend ent said :
" No, you are wrong. He has learned his lesson, he will throw no more trains off the track. He is twice as valuable as he was be fore. I shall keep him."
We had only one more adventure on the trip. Between Hartford and Springfield the train-boy came shouting in with an armful of
TRAVELLING WITH A REFORMER 133
literature and dropped a sample into a slum bering gentleman's lap, and the man woke up with a start. He was very angry, and he and a couple of friends discussed the outrage with much heat. They sent for the parlor-car con ductor and described the matter, and were de termined to have the boy expelled from his situation. The three complainants were wealthy Holyokc merchants, and it was evident that the conductor stood in some awe of them. He tried to pacify them, and explained that the boy was not under his authority, but under that of one of the news companies ; but he ac complished nothing.
Then the Major volunteered some testimony for the defence. He said :
" I saw it all. You gentlemen have not meant to exaggerate the circumstances, but still that is what you have done. The boy has done nothing more than all train-boys do. If you want to get his ways softened down and his manners reformed, I am with you and ready to help, but it isn't fair to get him discharged without giving him a chance."
But they were angry, and would hear of no compromise. They were well acquainted with the president of the Boston & Albany, they said, and would put everything aside
134 HOW TO TELL A STORY
next day and go up to Boston and fix that boy.
The Major said he would be on hand too, and would do what he could to save the boy. One of the gentlemen looked him over, and said :
" Apparently it is going to be a matter of who can wield the most influence with the president. Do you know Mr. Bliss personally?"
The Major said, with composure :
"Yes; he is my uncle."
The effect was satisfactory. There was an awkward silence for a minute or more ; then the hedging and the half-confessions of over- haste and exaggerated resentment began, and soon everything was smooth and friendly and sociable, and it was resolved to drop the mat ter and leave the boy's bread-and-butter un molested.
It turned out as I had expected : the presi dent of the road was not the Major's uncle at all — except by adoption, and for this day and train only.
We got into no episodes on the return jour ney. Probably it was because we took a night train and slept all the way.
We left New York Saturday night by the Pennsylvania road. After breakfast the next
TRAVELLING WITH A REFORMER 135
morning we went into the parlor-car, but found it a dull place and dreary. There were but few people in it and nothing going on. Then we went into the little smoking-compartment of the same car and found three gentlemen in there. Two of them were grumbling over one of the rules of the road — a rule which forbade card-playing on the trains on Sunday. They had started an innocent game of high-low-jack and been stopped. The Major was interested. He said to the third gentleman :
44 Did you object to the game?"
" Not at all. I am a Yale professor and a religious man, but my prejudices are not ex tensive."
Then the Major said to the others :
" You are at perfect liberty to resume your game, gentlemen ; no one here objects."
One of them declined the risk, but the other one said he would like to begin again if the Major would join him. So they spread an overcoat over their knees and the game pro ceeded. Pretty soon the parlor-car conductor arrived, and said, brusquely :
" There, there, gentlemen, that won't do. Put up the cards — it's not allowed."
The Major was shuffling. He continued to shuffle, and said :
136 HOW TO TELL A STORY
" By whose order is it forbidden ?"
" It's my order. I forbid it."
The dealing began. The Major asked :
" Did you invent the idea?"
"What idea?"
"The idea of forbidding card -playing on Sunday."
" No — of course not."
"Who did?"
" The company."
" Then it isn't your order, after all, but the company's. Is that it ?"
" Yes. But you don't stop playing ; I have to require you to stop playing immediately."
" Nothing is gained by hurry, and often much is lost. Who authorized the company to issue such an order?"
" My dear sir, that is a matter of no conse quence to me, and — "
" But you forget that you are not the only person concerned. It may be a matter of consequence to me. It is indeed a matter of very great importance to me. I cannot vio late a legal requirement of my country with out dishonoring myself; I cannot allow any man or corporation to hamper my liberties with illegal rules — a thing which railway com panies are always trying to do — without dis-
TRAVELLING WITH A REFORMER 137
honoring my citizenship. So I come back to that question : By whose authority has the company issued this order?"
" I don't knoiv. That's their affair."
" Mine, too. I doubt if the company has any right to issue such a rule. This road runs through several States. Do you know what State we are in now, and what its laws are in matters of this kind?"
" Its laws do not concern me, but the com pany's orders do. It is my duty to stop this game, gentlemen, and it must be stopped."
" Possibly ; but still there is no hurry. In hotels they post certain rules in the rooms, but they always quote passages from the State law as authority for these requirements. I see nothing posted here of this sort. Please produce your authority and let us arrive at a decision, for you see yourself that you are marring the game."
" I have nothing of the kind, but I have my orders, and that is sufficient. They must be obeyed."
" Let us not jump to conclusions. It will be better all around to examine into the mat ter without heat or haste, and see just where we stand before either of us makes a mistake — for the curtailing of the liberties of a citizen
138 HOW TO TELL A STORY
of the United States is a much more serious matter than you and the railroads seem to think, and it cannot be done in my person until the curtailer proves his right to do so. Now—"
" My dear sir, will you put down those cards?"
" All in good time, perhaps. It depends. You say this order must be obeyed. Must. It is a strong word. You see yourself how strong it is. A wise company would not arm you with so drastic an order as this, of course, without appointing a penalty for its infringe ment. Otherwise it runs the risk of being a dead letter and a thing to laugh at. What is the appointed penalty for an infringement of this law?"
" Penalty? I never heard of any."
"Unquestionably you must be mistaken. Your company orders you to come here and rudely break up an innocent amusement, and furnishes you no way to enforce the order? Don't you see that that is nonsense? What do you do when people refuse to obey this order? Do you take the cards away from them ?"
"No."
" Do you put the offender off at the next station ?"
TRAVELLING WITH A REFORMER 139
"Well, no— of course we couldn't if he had a ticket."
" Do you have him up before a court?"
The conductor was silent and apparently troubled. The Major started a new deal, and said :
" You see that you are helpless, and that the company has placed you in a foolish position. You are furnished with an arrogant order, and you deliver it in a blustering way, and when you come to look into the matter you find you haven't any way of enforcing obedience."
The conductor said, with chill dignity :
" Gentlemen, you have heard the order, and my duty is ended. As to obeying it or not, you will do as you think fit." And he turned to leave.
" But wait. The matter is not yet finished. I think. you are mistaken about your duty be ing ended ; but if it really is, I myself have a duty to perform yet."
" How do you mean ?"
" Are you going to report my disobedience at headquarters in Pittsburg?"
" No. What good would that do ?"
" You must report me, or I will report you."
" Report me for what?"
140 HOW TO TELL A STORY
" For disobeying the company's orders in not stopping this game. As a citizen it is my duty to help the railway companies keep their servants to their work."
" Are you in earnest?"
"Yes, I am in earnest. I have nothing against you as a man, but I have this against you as an officer — that you have not carried out that order, and if you do not report me I must report you. And I will."
The conductor looked puzzled, and was thoughtful a moment ; then he burst out with :
" I seem to be getting myself into a scrape! It's all a muddle ; I can't make head or tail of it ; it's never happened before ; they always knocked under and never said a word, and so / never saw how ridiculous that stupid order with no penalty is. / don't want to report anybody, and I don't want to be reported — why, it might do me no end of harm ! Now do go on with the game — play the whole day if you want to — and don't let's have any more trouble about it !"
<; No, I only sat down here to establish this gentleman's rights — he can have his place now. But before you go won't you tell me what you think the company made this rule for? Can you imagine an excuse for it? I
TRAVELLING WITH A REFORMER 141
mean a rational one — an excuse that is not on its face silly, and the invention of an idiot?"
" Why, surely I can. The reason it was made is plain enough. It is to save the feel ings of the other passengers — the religious ones among them, I mean. They would not like it, to have the Sabbath desecrated by card- playing on the train."
" I just thought as much. They are willing to desecrate it themselves by travelling on Sunday, but they are not willing that other people —
" By gracious, you've hit it ! I never thought of that before. The fact is, it is a silly rule when you come to look into it."
At this point the train -conductor arrived, and was going to shut down the game in a very high-handed fashion, but the parlor-car conductor stopped him and took him aside to explain. Nothing more was heard of the mat ter.
I was ill in bed eleven days in Chicago and got no glimpse of the Fair, for I was obliged to return east as soon as I was able to travel. The Major secured and paid for a state-room in a sleeper the day before we left, so that I could have plenty of room and be comfortable; but when we arrived at the station a mistake
142 HOW TO TELL A STORY
had been made and our car had not been put on. The conductor had reserved a section for us — it was the best he could do, he said. But the Major said we were not in a hurry, and would wait for the car to be put on. The conductor responded, with pleasant irony :
" It may be that you are not in a hurry, just as you say, but we are. Come, get aboard, gentlemen, get aboard — don't keep us wait ing."
But the Major would not get aboard him self nor allow me to do it. He wanted his car, and said he must have it. This made the hurried and perspiring conductor impatient, and he said :
" It's the best we can do — we can't do im possibilities. You will take the section or go without. A mistake has been made and can't be rectified at this late hour. It's a thing that happens now and then, and there is nothing for it but to put up with it and make the best of it. Other people do."
" Ah, that is just it, you see. If they had stuck to their rights and enforced them you wouldn't be trying to trample mine under foot in this bland way now. I haven't any disposition to give you unnecessary trouble, but it is my duty to protect the next man from
TRAVELLING WITH A REFORMER 143
this kind of imposition. So I must have my car. Otherwise I will wait in Chicago and sue the company for violating its con tract."
" Sue the company? — for a thing like that !"
" Certainly."
" Do you really mean that?"
" Indeed, I do."
The conductor looked the Major over won- deringly, and then said :
"It beats me — it's bran-new — I've never struck the mate to it before. But I swear I think you'd do it. Look here, I'll send for the station-master."
When the station-master came he was a good deal annoyed — at the Major, not at the person who had made the mistake. He was rather brusque, and took the same position which the conductor had taken in the begin ning ; but he failed to move the soft-spoken artilleryman, who still insisted that he must have his car. However, it was plain that there was only one strong side in this case, and that that side was the Major's. The station-mas ter banished his annoyed manner, and became pleasant and even half-apologetic. This made a good opening for a compromise, and the Major made a concession. He said he would
144 HOW TO TELL A STORY
give up the engaged state-room, but he must have a state-room. After a deal of ransacking, one was found whose owner was persuadable ; he exchanged it for our section, and we got away at last. The conductor called on us in the evening, and was kind and courteous and obliging, and we had a long talk and got to be good friends. He said he wished the public would make trouble oftener — it would have a good effect. He said that the railroads could not be expected to do their whole duty by the traveller unless the traveller would take some interest in the matter himself.
I hoped that we were done reforming for the trip now, but it was not so. In the hotel- car, in the morning, the Major called for broiled chicken. The waiter said :
" It's not in the bill of fare, sir ; we do not serve anything but what is in the bill."
" That gentleman yonder is eating a broiled chicken."
"Yes, but that is different. He is one of the superintendents of the road."
" Then all the more must I have broiled chicken. I do not like these discriminations. Please hurry — bring me a broiled chicken."
The waiter brought the steward, who ex plained in a low and polite voice that the
TRAVELLING WITH A REFORMER 145
thing was impossible — it was against the rule, and the rule was rigid.
" Very well, then, you must either apply it impartially or break it impartially. You must take that gentleman's chicken away from him or bring me one."
The steward was puzzled, and did not quite know what to do. He began an incoherent argument, but the conductor came along just then, and asked what the difficulty was. The steward explained that here was a gentleman who was insisting on having a chicken when it was dead against the rule and not in the bill. The conductor said:
" Stick by your rules — you haven't any op tion. Watt a moment — is this the gentleman ?" Then he laughed and said : " Never mind your rules — it's my advice, and sound; give him anything he wants — don't get him started on his rights. Give him whatever he asks for; and if you haven't got it, stop the train and get it."
The Major ate the chicken, but said he did it from a sense of duty and to establish a prin ciple, for he did not like chicken.
I missed the Fair it is true, but I picked up some diplomatic tricks which I and the reader may find handy and useful as we go along.
PRIVATE HISTORY OF THE -JUMPING FROG" STORY
PRIVATE HISTORY OF THE "JUMPING FROG " STORY
FIVE or six years ago a lady from Finland asked me to tell her a story in our negro dia lect, so that she could get an idea of what that variety of speech was like. I told her one of Hopkinson Smith's negro stories, and gave her a copy of Harper s Monthly containing it. She translated it for a Swedish newspaper, but by an oversight named me as the author of it instead of Smith. I was very sorry for that, because I got a good lashing in the Swedish press, which would have fallen to his share but for that mistake; for it was shown that Boc caccio had told that very story, in his curt and meagre fashion, five hundred years before Smith took hold of it and made a good and tellable thing out of it.
I have always been sorry for Smith. But my own turn has come now. A few weeks ago Professor Van Dyke, of Princeton, asked this question:
150 HOW TO TELL A STORY
" Do you know how old your Jumping Frog story is ?"
And I answered:
" Yes — forty -five years. The thing hap pened in Calaveras County in the spring of
1849."
" No ; it happened earlier — a couple of thousand years earlier; it is a Greek story."
I was astonished — and hurt. I said :
" I am willing to be a literary thief if it has been so ordained ; I am even willing to be caught robbing the ancient dead alongside of Hopkinson Smith, for he is my friend and a good fellow, and I think would be as honest as any one if he could do it without occasion ing remark ; but I am not willing to antedate his crimes by fifteen hundred years. I must ask you to knock off part of that."
But the professor was not chaffing ; he was in earnest, and could not abate a century. He named the Greek author, and offered to get the book and send it to me and the college text -book containing the English translation also. I thought I would like the translation best, because Greek makes me tired. January 3<Dth he sent me the English version, and I will presently insert it in this article. It is my Jumping Frog tale in every essential. It
PRIVATE HISTORY OF "JUMPING FROG " STORY { £
is not strung out as I have strung it out, but it is all there.
To me this is very curious and interesting. Curious for several reasons. For instance :
I heard the story told by a man who was not telling it to his hearers as a thing new to them, but as a thing which they had witnessed and would remember. He was a dull person, and ignorant ; he had no gift as a story-teller, and no invention ; in his mouth this episode was merely history — history and statistics; and the gravest sort of history, too ; he was entirely serious, for he was dealing with what to him were austere facts, and they interested him solely because they were facts ; he was drawing on his memory, not his mind ; he saw no humor in his tale, neither did his listeners ; neither he nor they ever smiled or laughed ; in my time I have not attended a more solemn conference. To him and to his fellow gold- miners there were just two things in the story that were worth considering. One was the smartness of its hero, Jim Smiley, in taking the stranger in with a loaded frog; and the other was Smiley's deep knowledge of a frog's nature — for he knew (as the narrator asserted and the listeners conceded) that a frog likes shot and is always ready to eat it. Those men
152 HOW TO TELL A STORY
discussed those two points, and those only. They were hearty in their admiration of them, and none of the party was aware that a first- rate story had been told in a first-rate way, and that it was brimful of a quality whose presence they never suspected — humor.
Now, then, the interesting question is, did the frog episode happen in Angel's Camp in the spring of '49, as told in my hearing that day in the fall of 1865? I am perfectly sure that it did. I am also sure that its duplicate happened in Bceotia a couple of thousand years ago. I think it must be a case of history actually repeating itself, and not a case of a good story floating down the ages and surviv ing because too good to be allowed to perish.
I would now like to have the reader exam ine the Greek story and the story told by the dull and solemn Californian, and observe how exactly alike they are in essentials.
{Translation^
THE ATHENIAN AND THE FROG.*
An Athenian once fell in with a Boeotian who was sitting by the road-side looking at a frog. Seeing the other approach, the Boeotian said his was a remarka-
* Sidgwick, Greek Prose Composition, page 116.
PRIVATE HISTORY OF "JUMPING FROG " STORY 153
ble frog, and asked if he would agree to start a con test of frogs, on condition that lie whose frog jumped farthest should receive a large sum of money. The Athenian replied that he would if the other would fetch him a frog, for the lake was near. To this he agreed, and when he was gone the Athenian took the frog, and, opening its mouth, poured some stones into its stomach, so that it did not indeed seem larger than before, but could not jump. The Boeotian soon returned with the other frog, and the contest began. The second frog first was pinched, and jumped moder ately ; then they pinched the Boeotian frog. And he gathered himself for a leap, and used the utmost effort, but he could not move his body the least. So the Athenian departed with the money. When he was gone the Boeotian, wondering what was the matter with the frog, lifted him up and examined him. And being turned upside down, he opened his mouth and vomited out the stones.
And here is the way it happened in Cali fornia :
FROM "THE CELEBRATED JUMPING FROG OF CALA- VERAS COUNTY."
Well, thish-yer Smiley had rat-tarriers, and chicken cocks, and tom-cats, and all them kind of things, till you couldn't rest, and you couldn't fetch nothing for him to bet on but he'd match you. He ketched a frog one day, and took him home, and said he cal'lated to educate him ; and so he never done nothing for three months but set in his back yard and learn that
154 HOW TO TELL A STORY
frog to jump. And you bet you he did learn him, too. He'd give him a little punch behind, and the next minute you'd see that frog whirling in the air like a doughnut — see him turn one summerset, or maybe a couple if he got a good start, and come down flat- footed and all right, like a cat. He got him up so in the matter of ketching flies, and kep' him in practice so constant, that he'd nail a fly every time as fur as he could see him. Smiley said all a frog wanted was education, and he could do 'most anything — and I believe him. Why, I've seen him set Dan'l Webster down here on this floor — Dan'l Webster was the name of the frog — and sing out " Flies, Dan'l, flies !" and quicker'n you could wink he'd spring straight up and snake a fly off'n the counter there, and flop down on the floor ag'in as solid as a gob of mud, and fall to scratching the side of his head with his hind foot as indifferent as if he hadn't no idea he'd been doin' any more'n any frog might do. You never see a frog so modest and straightfor'ard as he was, for all he was so gifted. And when it come to fair and square jump ing on a dead level, he could get over more ground at one straddle than any animal of his breed you ever see. Jumping on a dead level was his strong suit, you understand ; and when it came to that, Smiley would ante up money on him as long as he had a red. Smiley was monstrous proud of his frog, and well he might be, for fellers that had travelled and been every- wheres all said he laid over any frog that ever they see.
Well, Smiley kep' the beast in a little lattice box, and he used to fetch him down-town sometimes and lay for a bet. One day a feller — a stranger in the
PRIVATE HISTORY OF "JUMPING FROG " STORY 155
camp, he was— come acrost him with his box, and
says:
" What might it be that you've got in the box ?"
And Smiley says, sorter indifferent-like, " It might be a parrot, or it might be a canary, maybe, but it ain't — it's only just a frog."
And the feller took it, and looked at it careful, and turned it round this way and that, and says, " H'm— so 'tis. Well, what's he good for ?"
" Well," Smiley says, easy and careless, " he's good enough for one thing, I should judge— he can outjump any frog in Calaveras County."
The feller took the box again and took another long, particular look, and give it back to Smiley and says, very deliberate, " Well," he says, " I don't see no p'ints about that frog that's any bctter'n any other frog."
" Maybe you don't," Smiley says. " Maybe you understand frogs and maybe you don't understand 'em ; maybe you've had experience, and maybe you ain't only a amature, as it were. Anyways, I've got my opinion, and I'll resk forty dollars that he can out- jump any frog in Calaveras County."
And the feller studies a minute, and then says, kind er sad like, "Well, I'm only a stranger here, and I ain't got no frog, but if I had a frog I'd bet you."
And then Smiley says : " That's all right— that's all right— if you'll hold my box a minute, I'll go and get you a frog." And so the feller took the box and put up his forty dollars along with Smiley's and set down to wait.
So he set there a good while thinking and thinking to hisself, and then he got the frog out and prized his
HOW TO TELL A STORY
mouth open and took a teaspoon and filled him full of quail shot — filled him pretty near up to his chin — and set him on the floor. Smiley he went to the swamp and slopped around in the mud for a long time, and finally he ketched a frog and fetched him in and give him to this feller, and says :
" Now, if you're ready, set him alongside of Dan'l, with his fore-paws just even with DanTs, and I'll give the word." Then he says, " One — two — three— -git!" and him and the feller touched up the frogs from be hind, and the new frog hopped off lively; but Dan'l give a heave, and hysted up his shoulders — so — like a Frenchman, but it warn't no use — he couldn't budge ; he was planted as solid as a church, and he couldn't no more stir than if he was anchored out. Smiley was a good deal surprised, and he was disgusted, too, but he didn't have no idea what the matter was, of course.
The feller took the money and started away ; and when he was going out at the door he sorter jerked his thumb over his shoulder — so — at Dan'l, and says again, very deliberate: "Well," he says, "/ don't see no p'ints about that frog that's any better'n any other frog."
Smiley he stood scratching his head and looking down at Dan'l a long time, and at last he says, " I do wonder what in the nation that frog throw'd off for — I wonder if there ain't something the matter with him — he 'pears to look mighty baggy, somehow." And he ketched Dan'l by the nap of the neck, and hefted him, and says, " Why, blame my cats if he don't weigh five pound !" and turned him upside down, and he belched out a double handful of shot. And then
PRIVATE HISTORY OF "JUMPING FROG " STORY 157
he see how it was, and he was the maddest man — he set the frog down and took out after that feller, but he never ketched him.
The resemblances are deliciously exact. There you have the wily Boeotian and the wily Jim Smiley waiting — two thousand years apart — and waiting, each equipped with his frog and "laying" for the stranger. A contest is proposed — for money. The Athenian would take a chance " if the other would fetch him a frog " ; the Yankee says : " I'm only a stran ger here, and I ain't got no frog ; but if I had a frog I'd bet you." The wily Boeotian and the wily Californian, with that vast gulf of two thousand years between, retire eagerly and go frogging in the marsh ; the Athenian and the Yankee remain behind and work a base ad vantage, the one with pebbles, the other with shot. Presently the contest began. In the one case " they pinched the Boeotian frog " ; in the other, " him and the feller touched up the frogs from behind." The Boeotian frog " gathered himself for a leap " (you can just see him !), but " could not move his body in the least " ; the Californian frog " give a heave, but it warn't no use — he couldn't budge." In both the ancient and the modern cases the strangers departed with the money. The Boeo-
158 HOW TO TELL A STORY
tian and the Californian wonder what is the matter with their frogs ; they lift them and examine ; they turn them upside down and out spills the informing ballast.
Yes, the resemblances are curiously exact. I used to tell the story of the Jumping Frog in San Francisco, and presently Artemus Ward came along and wanted it to help fill out a lit tle book which he was about to publish ; so I wrote it out and sent it to his publisher, Carleton ; but Carleton thought the book had enough matter in it, so he gave the story to Henry Clapp as a present, and Clapp put it in his Saturday Press, and it killed that paper with a suddenness that was beyond praise. At least the paper died with that issue, and none but envious people have ever tried to rob me of the honor and credit of killing it. The " Jumping Frog " was the first piece of writ ing of mine that spread itself through the newspapers and brought me into public notice. Consequently, the Saturday Press was a cocoon and I the worm in it ; also, I was the gay-col ored literary moth which its death set free. This simile has been used before.
Early in '66 the " Jumping Frog" was is- sued in book form, with other sketches of mine. A year or two later Madame Blanc translated
PRIVATE HISTORY OF "JUMPING FROG " STORY 159
it into French and published it in the Revue des Deux Mondes, but the result was not what should have been expected, for the Revue struggled along and pulled through, and is alive yet. I think the fault must have been in the translation. I ought to have translated it myself. I think so because I examined into the matter and finally retranslated the sketch from the French back into English, to see what the trouble was ; that is, to see just what sort of a focus the French people got upon it. Then the mystery was explained. In French the story is too confused, and chaotic, and unreposeful, and ungrammatical, and insane; consequently it could only cause grief and sickness — it could not kill. A glance at my re-translation will show the reader that this must be true.
[My Retranslating THE FROG JUMPING OF THE COUNTY OF CALAVERAS.
Eh bien ! this Smiley nourished some terriers a rats, and some cocks of combat, and some cats, and all sort of things ; and with his rage of betting one no had more of repose. He trapped one day a frog and him imported with him (et 1'emporta chez lui) saying that he pretended to make his education. You me believe if you will, but during three months he not has noth ing done but to him apprehend to jump (apprendre a sauter) in a court retired of her mansion (de sa maison).
l6o HOW TO TELL A STORY
And I you respond that he have succeeded. He him gives a small blow by behind, and the instant after you shall see the frog turn in the air like a grease- biscuit, make one summersault, sometimes two, when she was well started, and re-fall upon his feet like a cat. He him had accomplished in the art of to gob ble the flies (gober des mouches), and him there exer cised continually— so well that a fly at the most far that she appeared was a fly lost. Smiley had custom to say that all which lacked to a frog it was the edu cation, but with the education she could do nearly all — and I him believe. Tenez, I him have seen pose Daniel Webster there upon this plank — Daniel Webster was the name of the frog — and to him sing, "Some flies, Daniel, some flies !" — in a flash of the eye Daniel had bounded and seized a fly here upon the counter, then jumped anew at the earth, where he rested truly to himself scratch the head with his behind-foot, as if he no had not the least idea of his superiority. Never you not have seen frog as modest, as natural, sweet as she was. And when he himself agitated to jump purely and simply upon plain earth, she does more ground in one jump than any beast of his species than you can know.
To jump plain — this was his strong. When he him self agitated for that Smiley multiplied the bets upon her as long as there to him remained a red. It must to know, Smiley was monstrously proud of his frog, and he of it was right, for some men who were trav elled, who had all seen, said that they to him would be injurious to him compare to another frog. Smiley guarded Daniel in a little box latticed which he car ried bytimes to the village for some bet.
PRIVATE HISTORY OF "JUMPING FROG " STORY l6l
One day an individual stranger at the camp him ar rested with his box and him said :
" What is this that you have then shut up there within ?"
Smiley said, with an air indifferent:
" That could be a paroquet, or a syringe (ou un serin\ but this no is nothing of such, it not is but a frog."
The individual it took, it regarded with care, it turned from one side and from the other, then he said :
"Ticns ! in effect ! — At what is she good ?"
" My God !" respond Smiley, always with an air dis engaged, " she is good for one thing, to my notice (d mon avis), she can batter in jumping (elle pent batter en saittant) all frogs of the county of Calaveras."
The individual re-took the box, it examined of new longly, and it rendered to Smiley in saying with an air deliberate :
"Eh bicn! I no saw not that that frog had nothing of better than each frog." (Je ne vozs pas que cette grcnouille ait rien de micux quaucune grenouille). [If that isn't grammar gone to seed, then I count myself no judge. — M. T.]
"Possible that you not it saw not," said Smiley, " possible that you — you comprehend frogs ; possible that you not you there comprehend nothing; possible that you had of the experience, and possible that you not be but an amateur. Of all manner (De toute ma- m'cre) I bet forty dollars that she batter in jumping no matter which frog of the county of Calaveras."
The individual reflected a second, and said like sad :
" I not am but a stranger here, I no have not a frog ; but if I of it had one, I would embrace the bet." ii
HOW TO TELL A STORY
" Strong, well !" respond Smiley ; " nothing of more facility. If you will hold my box a minute, I go you to search a frog (firai vous chercher)."
Behold, then, the individual, who guards the box, who puts his forty dollars upon those of Smiley, and who attends (et qui attend}. He attended enough longtimes, reflecting all solely. And figure you that he takes Daniel, him opens the mouth by force and with a teaspoon him fills with shot of the hunt, even him fills jus-t to the chin, then he him puts by the earth. Smiley during these times was at slopping in a swamp. Finally he trapped (attrape) a frog, him car ried to that individual, and said :
" Now if you be ready, put him all against Daniel, with their before-feet upon the same line, and I give the signal " — then he added : " One, two, three — ad vance !"
Him and the individual touched their frogs by be hind, and the frog new put to jump smartly, but Dan iel himself lifted ponderously, exalted the shoulders thus, like a Frenchman — to what good ? he could not budge, he is planted solid like a church, he not ad vance no more than if one him had put at the anchor.
Smiley was surprised and disgusted, but he not him self doubted not of the turn being intended (mats il ne se doutait pas du tour bien entendii). The individual empocketed the silver, himself with it went, and of it himself in going is that he no gives not a jerk of thumb over the shoulder — like that — at the poor Daniel, in saying with his air deliberate — (L'individu empoche V argent s'en va et en sen allant est ce qiiil ne donne pas un coup de pouce par-dessus Fepaule, comme $a, au pauvre Daniel, en dtsant de son air
PRIVATE HISTORY OF "JUMPING FROG " STORY 163
" Eh bicn ! / no see not that that frog has nothing of better than another"
Smiley himself scratched longtimes the head, the eyes fixed upon Daniel, until that which at last he said :
" I me demand how the devil it makes itself that this beast has refused. Is it that she had something ? One would believe that she is stuffed."
He grasped Daniel by the skin of the neck, him lifted and said :
" The wolf me bite if he no weigh not five pounds."
He him reversed and the unhappy belched two handfuls of shot (et lemalhcitreux, etc.). — When Smiley recognized how it was, he was like mad. He deposited his frog by the earth and ran after that individual, but he not him caught never.
It may be that there are people who can translate better than I can, but I am not ac quainted with them.
So ends the private and public history of the Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, an in cident which has this unique feature about it —that it is both old and new, a "chestnut" and not a " chestnut " ; for it was original when it happened two thousand years ago, and was again original when it happened in California in our own time.
MENTAL TELEGRAPHY AGAIN
MENTAL TELEGRAPHY AGAIN
I HAVE three or four curious incidents to tell about. They seem to come under the head of what I named " Mental Telegraphy " in a paper written seventeen years ago, and published long afterwards.*
Several years ago I made a campaign on the platform with Mr. George W. Cable. In Mon treal we were honored with a reception. It began at two in the afternoon in a long draw ing-room in the Windsor Hotel. Mr. Cable and I stood at one end of this room, and the ladies and gentlemen entered it at the other end, crossed it at that end, then came up the long left-hand side, shook hands with us, said a word or two, and passed on, in the usual way. My sight is of the telescopic sort, and I presently recognized a familiar face among the throng of strangers drifting in at the dis-
*The paper entitled " Mental Telegraphy," which origin ally appeared in HARPER'S MAGAZINE for December 1893, is included in the volume entitled The American Claimant, and Other Stories and Sketches.
1 68 HOW TO TELL A STORY
tant door, and I said to myself, with surprise and high gratification, " That is Mrs. R. ; I had forgotten that she was a Canadian." She had been a great friend of mine in Carson City, Nevada, in the early days. I had not seen her or heard of her for twenty years ; I had not been thinking about her ; there was noth ing to suggest her to me, nothing to bring her to my mind ; in fact, to me she had long ago ceased to exist, and had disappeared from my consciousness. But I knew her instantly; and I saw her so clearly that I was able to note some of the particulars of her dress, and did note them, and they remained in my mind. I was impatient for her to come. In the midst of the hand-shakings I snatched glimpses of her and noted her progress with the slow- moving file across the end of the room ; then I saw her start up the side, and this gave me a full front view of her face. I saw her last when she was within twenty-five feet of me. For an hour I kept thinking she must still be in the room somewhere and would come at last, but I was disappointed.
When I arrived in the lecture-hall that even ing some one said : " Come into the waiting- room ; there's a friend of yours there who wants to see you. You'll not be introduced —
MENTAL TELEGRAPHY AGAIN 169
you are to do the recognizing without help if you can."
I said to myself : " It is Mrs. R. ; I sha'n't have any trouble."
There were perhaps ten ladies present, all seated. In the midst of them was Mrs. R., as I had expected. She was dressed exactly as she was when I had seen her in the afternoon. I went forward and shook hands with her and called her by name, and said :
" I knew you the moment you appeared at the reception this afternoon."
She looked surprised, and said : " But I was not at the reception. I have just arrived from Quebec, and have not been in town an hour."
It was my turn to be surprised now. I said : " I can't help it. I give you my word of honor that it is as I say. I saw you at the recep tion, and you were dressed precisely as you are now. When they told me a moment ago that I should find a friend in this room, your image rose before me, dress and all, just as I had seen you at the reception."
Those are the facts. She was not at the re ception at all, or anywhere near it ; but I saw her there nevertheless, and most clearly and unmistakably. To that I could make oath.
1 70 HOW TO TELL A STORY
How is one to explain this? I was not thinking of her at the time ; had not thought of her for years. But she had been thinking of me, no doubt ; did her thoughts flit through leagues of air to me, and bring with it that clear and pleasant vision of herself? I think so. That was and remains my sole experience in the matter of apparitions — I mean appari tions that come when one is (ostensibly) awake. I could have been asleep for a moment ; the apparition could have been the creature of a dream. Still, that is nothing to the point; the feature of interest is the happening of the thing just at that time, instead of at an earlier or later time, which is argument that its origin lay in thought-transference.
My next incident will be set aside by most persons as being merely a " coincidence," I suppose. Years ago I used to think some times of making a lecturing trip through the antipodes and the borders of the Orient, but always gave up the idea, partly because of the great length of the journey and partly be cause my wife could not well manage to go with me. Towards the end of last January that idea, after an interval of years, came sud denly into my head again — forcefully, too, and without any apparent reason. Whence came
MENTAL TELEGRAPHY AGAIN 17 1
it? What suggested it? I will touch upon that presently.
I was at that time where I am now — in Paris. I wrote at once to Henry M. Stanley (London), and asked him some questions about his Australian lecture tour, and inquired who had conducted him and what were the terms. After a day or two his answer came. It began :
" The lecture agent for Australia and New Zealand \sflar excellence Mr. R. S. Smythe, of Melbourne."
He added his itinerary, terms, sea expenses, and some other matters, and advised me to write Mr. Smythe, which I did — February 3d. I began my letter by saying in substance that while he did not know me personally we had a mutual friend in Stanley, and that would an swer for an introduction. Then I proposed my trip, and asked if he would give me the same terms which he had given Stanley.
I mailed my letter to Mr. Smythe February 6th, and three days later I got a letter from the selfsame Smythe, dated Melbourne, Decem ber i /th. I would as soon have expected to get a letter from the late George Washington. The letter began somewhat as mine to him had begun — with a self-introduction :
172 HOW TO TELL A STORY
" DEAR MR. CLEMENS,— It is so long since Archibald Forbes and I spent that pleasant afternoon in your comfortable house at Hartford that you have probably quite forgotten the occasion."
In the course of his letter this occurs :
"I am willing to give you" [here he named the terms which he had given Stanley] " for an antipodean tour to last, say, three months."
Here was the single essential detail of my letter answered three days after I had mailed my inquiry. I might have saved myself the trouble and the postage — and a few years ago I would have done that very thing, for I would have argued that my sudden and strong impulse to write and ask some questions of a stranger on the under side of the globe meant that the impulse came from that stranger, and that he would answer my questions of his own motion if I would let him alone.
Mr. Smythe's letter probably passed under my nose on its way to lose three weeks trav elling to America and back, and gave me a whiff of its contents as it went along. Letters often act like that. Instead of the thought coming to you in an instant from Australia, the (apparently) unsentient letter imparts it to you as it glides invisibly past your elbow in the mail-bag.
(( UJ\
EGRAPHY AC
MENTAL TELEGRAPHY AGAIN 173
Next incident. In the following month — March — I was in America. I spent a Sunday at Irvington- on -the- Hudson with Mr. John Brisben Walker, of the Cosmopolitan magazine. We came into New York next morning, and went to the Century Club for luncheon. He said some praiseful things about the character of the club and the orderly serenity and pleas antness of its quarters, and asked if I had never tried to acquire membership in it. I said I had not, and that New York clubs were a con tinuous expense to the country members with out being of frequent use or benefit to them.
"And now I've got an idea!" said I. " There's the Lotos — the first New York club I was ever a member of — my very earliest love in that line. I have been a member of it for considerably more than twenty years, yet have seldom had a chance to look in and see the boys. They turn gray and grow old while I am not watching. And my dues go on. I am going to Hartford this afternoon for a day or two, but as soon as I get back I will go to John Elderkin very privately and say: ' Remember the veteran and confer distinction upon him, for the sake of old times. Make me an honorary member and abolish the tax. If you haven't any such thing as honorary
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membership, all the better — create it for my honor and glory.' That would be a great thing ; I will go to John Elderkin as soon as I get back from Hartford."
I took the last express that afternoon, first telegraphing Mr. F. G. Whitmore to come and see me next day. When he came he asked:
" Did you get a letter from Mr. John Elder- kin, secretary of the Lotos Club, before you left New York ?"
"No."
"Then it just missed you. If I had known you were coming I would have kept it. It is beautiful, and will make you proud. The Board of Directors, by unanimous vote, have made you a life member, and squelched those dues ; and you are to be on hand and receive your distinction on the night of the 3Oth, which is the twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of the club, and it will not surprise me if they have some great times there."
What put the honorary membership in my head that day in the Century Club? for I had never thought of it before. I don't know what brought the thought to me at that particular time instead of earlier, but I am well satisfied that it originated with the Board of Directors, and had been on its way to my brain through
MENTAL TELEGRAPHY AGAIN 175
the air ever since the moment that saw their vote recorded.
Another incident. I was in Hartford two or three days as a guest of the Rev. Joseph H. Twichell. I have held the rank of Honorary Uncle to his children for a quarter of a cen tury, and I went out with him in the trolley- car to visit one of my nieces, who is at Miss Porter's famous school in Farmington. The distance is eight or nine miles. On the way, talking, I illustrated something with an anec dote. This is the anecdote :
Two years and a half ago I and the family arrived at Milan on our way to Rome, and stopped at the Continental. After dinner I went below and took a seat in the stone-paved court, where the customary lemon-trees stand in the customary tubs, and said to myself, " Now this is comfort, comfort and repose, and nobody to disturb it ; I do not know anybody in Milan."
Then a young gentleman stepped up and shook hands, which damaged my theory. He said, in substance :
" You won't remember me, Mr. Clemens, but I remember you very well. I was a cadet at West Point when you and Rev. Joseph H. Twichell came there some years ago and talked
176 HOW TO TELL A STORY
to us on a Hundredth Night. I am a lieu tenant in the regular army now, and my name is H. I am in Europe, all alone, for a modest little tour; my regiment is in Arizona."
We became friendly and sociable, and in the course of the talk he told me of an adventure which had befallen him — about to this effect :
" I was at Bellagio, stopping at the big hotel there, and ten days ago I lost my letter of credit. I did not know what in the world to do. I was a stranger; I knew no one in Europe ; I hadn't a penny in my pocket ; I couldn't even send a telegram to London to get my lost letter replaced ; my hotel bill was a week old, and the presentation of it immi nent — so imminent that it could happen at any moment now. I was so frightened that my wits seemed to leave me. I tramped and tramped, back and forth, like a crazy person. If anybody approached me I hurried away, for no matter what a person looked like, I took him for the head waiter with the bill.
" I was at last in such a desperate state that I was ready to do any wild thing that promised even the shadow of help, and so this is the insane thing that I did. I saw a family lunch ing at a small table on the veranda, and recog nized their nationality — Americans — father,
MENTAL TELEGRAPHY AGAIN 177
mother, and several young daughters — young, tastefully dressed, and pretty — the rule with our people. I went straight there in my ci vilian costume, named my name, said I was a lieutenant in the army, and told my story and asked for help.
"What do you suppose the gentleman did? But you would not guess in twenty years. He took out a handful of gold coin and told me to help myself— freely. That is what he did."
The next morning the lieutenant told me his new letter of credit had arrived in the night, so we strolled to Cook's to draw money to pay back the benefactor with. We got it, and then went strolling through the great ar cade. Presently he said, " Yonder they are ; come and be introduced." I was introduced to the parents and the young ladies; then we separated, and I never saw him or them any m —
" Here we are at Farmington," said Twichell, interrupting.
We left the trolley-car and tramped through the mud a hundred yards or so to the school, talking about the time we and Warner walked out there years ago, and the pleasant time we had.
We had a visit with my niece in the parlor,
12
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then started for the trolley again. Outside the house we encountered a double rank of twenty or thirty of Miss Porter's young ladies arriving from a walk, and we stood aside, os tensibly to let them have room to file past, but really to look at them. Presently one of them stepped out of the rank and said :
"You don't know me, Mr. Twichell, but I know your daughter, and that gives me the privilege of shaking hands with you."
Then she put out her hand to me, and said :
"And I wish to shake hands with you too, Mr. Clemens. You don't remember me, but you were introduced to me in the arcade in Milan two years and a half ago by Lieuten ant H."
What had put that story into my head after all that stretch of time? Was it just the proximity of that young girl, or was it merely an odd accident?
WHAT PAUL BOURGET THINKS OF US
WHAT PAUL BOURGET THINKS OF US
HE reports the American joke correctly. In Boston they ask, How much does he know? in New York, How much is he worth ? in Phil adelphia, Who were his parents ? And when an alien observer turns his telescope upon us — advertisedly in our own special interest — a natural apprehension moves us to ask, What is the diameter of his reflector?
I take a great interest in M. Bourget's chap ters, for I know by the newspapers that there are several Americans who are expecting to get a whole education out of them ; several who foresaw, and also foretold, that our long night was over, and a light almost divine about to break upon the land.
"His utterances concerning us are bound to be weigh ty and well timed''
"He gives us an object-lesson which should be thought fully and profitably studied"
These well-considered and important ver-
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diets were of a nature to restore public confi dence, which had been disquieted by question ings as to whether so young a teacher would be qualified to take so large a class as 70,000,- ooo, distributed over so extensive a school- house as America, and pull it through without assistance.
I was even disquieted myself, although I am of a cold, calm temperament, and not easily disturbed. I feared for my country. And I was not wholly tranquillized by the verdicts rendered as above. It seemed to me that there was still room for doubt. In fact, in looking the ground over I became more dis turbed than I was before. Many worrying questions came up in my mind. Two were prominent. Where had the teacher gotten his equipment ? What was his method ?
He had gotten his equipment in France.
Then as to his method : I saw by his own intimations that he was an Observer, and had a System — that used by naturalists and other scientists. The naturalist collects many bugs and reptiles and butterflies and studies their ways a long time patiently. By this means he is presently able to group these creatures into families and subdivisions of families by nice shadings of differences observable in their char-
WHAT PAUL BOURGET THINKS OF US 183
acters. Then he labels all those shaded bugs and things with nicely descriptive group names, and is now happy, for his great work is com pleted, and as a result he intimately knows every bug and shade of a bug there, inside and out. It may be true, but a person who was not a naturalist would feel safer about it if he had the opinion of the bug. I think it is a pleasant System, but subject to error.
The Observer of Peoples has to be a Classi fier, a Grouper, a Deducer, a Generalizer, a Psychologizer ; and, first and last, a Thinker. He has to be all these, and when he is at home, observing his own folk, he is often able to prove competency. But history has shown that when he is abroad observing unfamiliar peoples the chances are heavily against him. He is then a naturalist observing a bug, with no more than a naturalist's chance of being able to tell the bug anything new about itself, and no more than a naturalist's chance of be ing able to teach it any new ways which it will prefer to its own.
To return to that first question. M.Bourget, as teacher, would simply be France teaching America. It seemed to me that the outlook was dark — almost Egyptian, in fact. What would the new teacher, representing France,
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teach us? Railroading? No. France knows nothing valuable about railroading. Steam- shipping? No. France has no superiorities over us in that matter. Steamboating? No. French steamboating is still of Fulton's date — 1809. Postal service ? No. France is a back number there. Telegraphy ? No, we taught her that ourselves. Journalism ? No. Mag- azining? No, that is our own specialty. Gov ernment ? No ; Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, Nobility, Democracy, Adultery — the system is too variegated for our climate. Religion? No, not variegated enough for our climate. Morals? No, we cannot rob the poor to en rich ourselves. Novel- writing? No. M. Bourget and the others know only one plan, and when that is expurgated there is nothing left of the book.
I wish I could think what he is going to teach us. Can it be Deportment? But he experimented in that at Newport and failed to give satisfaction, except to a few. Those few are pleased. They are enjoying their joy as well as they can. They confess their hap piness to the interviewer. They feel pretty striped, but they remember with reverent rec ognition that they had sugar between the cuts. True, sugar with sand in it, but sugar. And
WHAT PAUL BOURGET THINKS OF US 185
true, they had some trouble to tell which was sugar and which was sand, because the sugar itself looked just like the sand, and also had a gravelly taste ; still, they knew that the sugar was there, and would have been very good sugar indeed if it had been screened. Yes, they are pleased ; not noisily so, but pleased ; invaded, or streaked, as one may say, with lit tle recurrent shivers of joy — subdued joy, so to speak, not the overdone kind. And they commune together, these, and massage each other with comforting sayings, in a sweet spirit of resignation and thankfulness, mixing these elements in the same proportions as the sugar and the sand, as a memorial, and saying, the one to the other and to the interviewer : " It was severe — yes, it was bitterly severe ; but oh, how true it was ; and it will do us so much good !"
If it isn't Deportment, what is left? It was at this point that I seemed to get on the right track at last. M. Bourget would teach us to know ourselves ; that was it: he \vould reveal us to ourselves. That would be an education. He would explain us to ourselves. Then we should understand ourselves ; and after that be able to go on more intelligently.
It seemed a doubtful scheme. He could
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explain us to /myself — that would be easy. That would be the same as the naturalist ex plaining the bug to himself. But to explain the bug to the bug — that is quite a different matter. The bug may not know himself per fectly, but he knows himself better than the naturalist can know him, at any rate.
-A foreigner can photograph the exteriors of a nation, but I think that that is as far as he can get. I think that no foreigner can report its interior — its soul, its life, its speech, its thought. I think that a knowledge of these things is acquirable in only one way ; not two or four or six — absorption; years and years of unconscious absorption ; years and years of intercourse with the life concerned ; of living it, indeed ; sharing personally in its shames and prides, its joys and griefs, its loves and hates, its prosperities and reverses, its shows and shabbinesses, its deep patriotisms, its whirl winds of political passion, its adorations — of flag, and heroic dead, and the glory of the na tional name. Observation? Of what real value is it? One learns peoples through the heart, not the eyes or the intellect.
There is only one expert who is qualified to examine the souls and the life of a people and make a valuable report — the native novelist.
WHAT PAUL BOURGET THINKS OF US 187
This expert is so rare that the most populous country can never have fifteen conspicuously and confessedly competent ones in stock at one time. This native specialist is not quali fied to begin work until he has been absorb ing during twenty-five years. How much of his competency is derived from conscious " ob servation"? The amount is so slight that it counts for next to nothing in the equipment. Almost the whole capital of the novelist is the slow accumulation of unconscious observation — absorption. The native expert's intentional observation of manners, speech, character, and ways of life can have value, for the native knows what they mean without having to cipher out the meaning. But I should be as tonished to see a foreigner get at the right meanings, catch the elusive shades of these subtle things. Even the native novelist be comes a foreigner, with a foreigner's limita tions, when he steps from the State whose life is familiar to him into a State whose life he has not lived. Bret Harte got his California and his Californians by unconscious absorp tion, and put both of them into his tales alive. But when he came from the Pacific to the At lantic and tried to do Newport life from study — conscious observation — his failure was abso-
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lutely monumental. Newport is a disastrous place for the unacclimated observer, evidently. To return to novel-building. Does the na tive novelist try to generalize the nation ? No, he lays plainly before you the ways and speech and life of a few people grouped in a certain place — his own place — and that is one book. In time he and his brethren will report to you the life and the people of the whole nation — the life of a group in a New England village ; in a New York village ; in a Texan village ; in an Oregon village ; in villages in fifty States andTerritories; then the farm-life in fifty States and Territories ; a hundred patches of life and groups of people in a dozen widely separated cities. And the Indians will be attended to ; and the cowboys ; and the gold and silver miners ; and the negroes ; and the Idiots and Congressmen ; and the Irish, the Germans, the Italians, the Swedes, the French, the China men, the Greasers ; and the Catholics, the Methodists, the Presbyterians, the Congrega- tionalists, the Baptists, the Spiritualists, the Mormons, the Shakers, the Quakers, the Jews, the Campbellites, the infidels, the Christian Scientists, the Mind-Curists, the Faith-Curists, the train-robbers, the White Caps, the Moon shiners. And when a thousand able novels
WHAT PAUL BOURGET THINKS OF US 189
have been written, there you have the soul of the people, the life of the people, the speech of the people ; and not anywhere else can these be had. And the shadings of character, man ners, feelings, ambitions, will be infinite.
" The nature of a people is always of a similar shade in its vices and its virtues, in its frivolities and in its labor. // is this physiognomy which it is necessary to discover, and every document is good, from the hall of a casino to the church, from the foibles of a fash ionable woman to the suggestions of a revolutionary leader. I am therefore quite sure that this American soul, the principal interest and the great object of my voyage, appears behind the records of Newport for those who choose to see it." — M. Paul B our get.
[The italics are mine.] It is a large con tract which he has undertaken. " Records " is a pretty poor word there, but I think the use of it is due to hasty translation. In the original the word is fastes. I think M. Bour- get meant to suggest that he expected to find the great "American soul" secreted behind the ostentations of Newport ; and that he was going to get it out and examine it, and gener alize it, and psychologize it, and make it reveal to him its hidden vast mystery : " the nature of the people" of the United States of Amer ica. We have been accused of being a nation
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addicted to inventing wild schemes. I trust that we shall be allowed to retire to second place now.
There isn't a single human characteristic that can be safely labelled " American." There isn't a single human ambition, or religious trend, or drift of thought, or peculiarity of ed ucation, or code of principles, or breed of folly, or style of conversation, or preference for a particular subject for discussion, or form of legs or trunk or head or face or expression or complexion, or gait, or dress, or manners, or disposition, or any other human detail, inside or outside, that can rationally be generalized as " American."
Whenever you have found what seems to be an " American" peculiarity, you have only to cross a frontier or two, or go down or up in the social scale, and you perceive that it has disappeared. And you can cross the Atlantic and find it again. There may be a Newport religious drift or sporting drift, or conversa tional style or complexion, or cut of face, but there are entire empires in America, north, south, east, and west, where you could not find your duplicates. It is the same with everything else which one might propose to call "American." M. Bourget thinks he has
WHAT PAUL DOURGET THINKS OF US 19 1
found the American Coquette. If he had really found her he would also have found, I am sure, that she was not new, that she exists in other lands in the same forms, and with the same frivolous heart and the same ways and impulses. I think this because I have seen our coquette; I have seen her in life; better still, I have seen her in our novels, and seen her twin in foreign novels. I wish M. Bourget had seen ours. He thought he saw her. And so he applied his System to her. She was a Species. So he gathered a number of samples of what seemed to be her, and put them under his glass, and divided them into groups which he calls " types," and labelled them in his usual scientific way with " formulas " —brief sharp descriptive flashes that make a person blink, sometimes, they are so sudden and vivid. As a rule they are pretty far-fetched, but that is not an important matter; they surprise, they compel admiration, and I notice by some of the comments which his efforts have called forth that they deceive the unwary. Here are a few of the coquette variants which he has grouped and labelled :
THE COLLECTOR.
THE EQUILIBREE.
THE PROFESSIONAL BEAUTY.
IQ2 HOW TO TELL A STORY
THE BLUFFER.
THE GIRL-BOY.
If he had stopped with describing these characters we should have been obliged to be lieve that they exist ; that they exist, and that he has seen them and spoken with them. But he did not stop there; he went further and furnished to us light-throwing samples of their behavior, and also light- throwing samples of their speeches. He entered those things in his note-book without suspicion, he takes them out and delivers them to the world with a candor and simplicity which show that he be lieved them genuine. They throw altogether too much light. They reveal to the native the origin of his find. I suppose he knows how he came to make that novel and capti vating discovery, by this time. If he does not, any American can tell him — any Ameri can to whom he will show his anecdotes. It was " put up " on him, as we say. It was a jest — to be plain, it was a series of frauds. To my mind it was a poor sort of jest, witless and contemptible. The players of it have their reward, such as it is ; they have exhibited the fact that whatever they may be they are not ladies. M. Bourget did not discover a type of coquette ; he merely discovered a type of prac-
WHAT PAUL BOURGET THINKS OF US 193
tical joker. One may say the type of practical joker, for these people are exactly alike all over the world. Their equipment is always the same : a vulgar mind, a puerile wit, a cruel disposition as a rule, and always the spirit of treachery.
In his Chapter IV. M. Bourget has two or three columns gravely devoted to the collating and examining and psychologizing of these sorry little frauds. One is not moved to laugh. There is nothing funny in the situation ; it is only pathetic. The stranger gave those people his confidence, and they dishonorably treated him in return.
But one must be allowed to suspect that M. Bourget was a little to blame himself. Even a practical joker has some little judgment. He has to exercise some degree of sagacity in selecting his prey if he would save himself from getting into trouble. In my time I have seldom seen such daring things marketed at any price as these conscienceless folk have worked off at par on this confiding observer. It compels the conviction that there was some thing about him that bred in those speculators a quite unusual sense of safety, and encouraged them to strain their powers in his behalf. They seem to have satisfied themselves that all he is
UNIVEI
194 HOW TO TELL A STORY
wanted was " significant " facts, and that he was not accustomed to examine the source whence they proceeded. It is plain that there was a sort of conspiracy against him almost from the start — a conspiracy to freight him up with all the strange extravagances those peo ple's decayed brains could invent.
The lengths to which they went are next to incredible. They told him things which surely would have excited any one else's suspicion, but they did not excite his. Consider this :
" There is not in all the United States an entirely nude statue"
If an angel should come down and say such a thing about heaven, a reasonably cautious observer would take that angel's number and inquire a little further before he added it to his catch. What does the present observer do ? Adds it. Adds it at once. Adds it, and labels it with this innocent comment:
" This small fact is strangely significant"
It does seem to me that this kind of observ ing is defective.
Here is another curiosity which some liberal person made him a present of. I should think it ought to have disturbed the deep slumber
WHAT PAUL BOURGET THINKS OF US 195
of his suspicion a little, but it didn't. It was a note from a fog-horn for strenuousness, it seems to me, but the doomed voyager did not catch it. If he had but caught it, it would have saved him from several disasters :
" If the American knows that you are travelling to take notes, he is interested in it, and at the same time rejoices in it, as in a tribute."
Again, this is defective observation. It is human to like to be praised ; one can even notice it in the French. But it is not human to like to be ridiculed, even when it comes in the form of a "tribute." I think a little psy chologizing ought to have come in there. Something like this: A dog does not like to be ridiculed, a redskin does not like to be ridi culed, a negro does not like to be ridiculed, a Chinaman does not like to be ridiculed; let us deduce from these significant facts this for mula : the American's grade being higher than these, and the chain of argument stretching unbroken all the way up to him, there is room for suspicion that the person who said the American likes to be ridiculed, and regards it as a tribute, is not a capable observer.
I feel persuaded that in the matter of psy chologizing, a professional is too apt to yield
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to the fascinations of the loftier regions of that great art, to the neglect of its lowlier walks. Every now and then, at half-hour intervals, M. Bourget collects a hatful of airy inaccuracies and dissolves them in a panful of assorted ab stractions, and runs the charge into a mould and turns you out a compact principle which will explain an American girl, or an Ameri can woman, or why new people yearn for old things, or any other impossible riddle which a person wants answered.
It seems to be conceded that there are a few human peculiarities that can be generalized and located here and there in the world and named by the name of the nation where they are found. I wonder what they are. Per haps one of them is temperament. One speaks of French vivacity and German gravity and English stubbornness. There is no American temperament. The nearest that one can come at it is to say there are two — the composed Northern and the impetuous Southern ; and both are found in other countries. Morals? Purity of women may fairly be called universal with us, but that is the case in some other countries. We have no monopoly of it ; it cannot be named American. I think that there is but a single specialty with us, only
WHAT PAUL BOURGET THINKS OF US 197
one thing that can be called by the wide name " American." That is the national devotion to ice-water. All Germans drink beer, but the British nation drinks beer, too ; so neither of those peoples is the beer-drinking nation. I suppose we do stand alone in having a drink that nobody likes but ourselves. When we have been a month in Europe we lose our craving for it, and we finally tell the hotel folk that they needn't provide it any more. Yet we hardly touch our native shore again, winter or summer, before we are eager for it. The reasons for this state of things have not been psychologized yet. I drop the hint and say no more.
It is my belief that there are some " nation al " traits and things scattered about the world that are mere superstitions, frauds that have lived so long that they have the solid look of facts. One of them is the dogma that the French are the only chaste people in the world. Ever since I arrived in France this last time I have been accumulating doubts about that ; and before I leave this sunny land again I will gather in a few random statistics and psychol ogize the plausibilities out of it. If people are to come over to America and find fault with our girls and our women, and psycholo-
198 HOW TO TELL A STORY
gize every little thing they do, and try to teach them how to behave, and how to culti vate themselves up to where one cannot tell them from the French model, I intend to find out whether those missionaries are qualified or not. A nation ought always to examine into this detail before engaging the teacher for good. This last one has let fall a remark which renewed those doubts of mine when I read it :
" In our high Parisian existence, for instance, we find applied to arts and luxury, and to debauchery, all the powers and all the weaknesses of the French soul."
You see, it amounts to a trade with the French soul ; a profession ; a science ; the se rious business of life, so to speak, in our high Parisian existence. I do not quite like the look of it. I question if it can be taught with profit in our country, except of course to those pathetic, neglected minds that are waiting there so yearningly for the education which M. Bourget is going to furnish them from the serene summits of our high Parisian life.
I spoke a moment ago of the existence of some superstitions that have been parading the world as facts this long time. For in stance, consider the Dollar. The world seems
WHAT PAUL BOURGET THINKS OF US 199
to think that the love of money is " Ameri can "; and that the mad desire to get sudden ly rich is " American." I believe that both of these things are merely and broadly human, not American monopolies at all. The love of money is natural to all nations, for money is a good and strong friend. I think that this love has existed everywhere, ever since the Bible called it the root of all evil.
I think that the reason why we Americans seem to be so addicted to trying to get rich suddenly is merely because the opportunity to make promising efforts in that direction has offered itself to us with a frequency out of all proportion to the European experience. For eighty years this opportunity has been offering itself in one new town or region after another straight westward, step by step, all the way from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific. When a mechanic could buy ten town lots on tolera bly long credit for ten months' savings out of his wages, and reasonably expect to sell them in a couple of years for ten times what he gave for them, it was human for him to try the venture, and he did it no matter what his nationality was. He would have done it in Europe or China if he had had the same chance.
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In the flush times in the silver regions a cook or any other humble worker stood a very good chance to get rich out of a trifle of money risked in a stock deal ; and that person promptly took that risk, no matter what his or her nationality might be. I was there, and saw it.
But these opportunities have not been plen ty in our Southern States ; so there you have a prodigious region where the rush for sudden wealth is almost an unknown thing — and has been, from the beginning.
Europe has offered few opportunities for poor Tom, Dick, and Harry ; but when she has offered one, there has been no noticeable difference between European eagerness and American. England saw this in the wild days of the Railroad King; France saw it in 1720 — time of Law and the Mississippi Bubble. I am sure I have never seen in the gold and silver mines any madness, fury, frenzy to get suddenly rich which was even remotely com parable to that which raged in France in the Bubble day. If I had a cyclopaedia here I could turn to that memorable case, and sat isfy nearly anybody that the hunger for the sudden dollar is no more " American " than it is French. And if I could furnish an Ameri-
WHAT PAUL BOURGET THINKS OF US 2OI
can opportunity to staid Germany, I think I could wake her up like a house afire.
But I must return to the Generalizations, Psychologizings, Deductions. When M. Bour- get is exploiting these arts, it is then that he is peculiarly and particularly himself. His ways are wholly original when he encounters a trait or a custom which is new to him. Another person would merely examine the find, verify it, estimate its value, and let it go ; but that is not sufficient for M. Bourget : he always wants to know why that thing exists, he wants to know how it came to happen ; and he will not let go of it until he has found out. And in every instance he will find that reason where no one but himself would have thought of looking for it. He does not seem to care for a reason that is not picturesquely located; one might almost say picturesquely and impossibly located.
He found out that in America men do not try to hunt down young married women. At once, as usual, he wanted to know why. Any one could have told him. He could have divined it by the lights thrown by the novels of the country. But no, he preferred to find out for himself. He has a trustfulness as re gards men and facts which is fine and unusual ;
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he is not particular about the source of a fact, he is not particular about the character and standing of the fact itself ; but when it comes to pounding out the reason for the existence of the fact, he will trust no one but himself.
In the present instance here was his fact: American young married women are not pur sued by the corruptor ; and here was the ques tion : What is it that protects her ?
It seems quite unlikely that that problem could have offered difficulties to any but a trained philosopher. Nearly any person would have said to M. Bourget : " Oh, that is very simple. It is very seldom in America that a marriage is made on a commercial basis; our marriages, from the beginning, have been made for love ; and where love is there is no room for the corruptor."
Now, it is interesting to see the formidable way in which M. Bourget went at that poor, humble little thing. He moved upon it in column — three columns — and with artillery.
" Two reasons of a very different kind ex plain " — that fact.
And now that I have got so far, I am al most afraid to say what his two reasons are, lest I be charged with inventing them. But I will not retreat now; I will condense them
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and print them, giving my word that I am honest, and not trying to deceive any one.
1. Young married women are protected from the approaches of the seducer in New Eng land and vicinity by the diluted remains of a prudence created by a Puritan law of two hun dred years ago, which for a while punished adultery with death.
2. And young married women of the other forty or fifty States are protected by laws which afford extraordinary facilities for di vorce.
If I have not lost my mind I have accurate ly conveyed those two Vesuvian irruptions of philosophy. But the reader can consult Chap ter IV. of Outre-Mer and decide for himself. Let us examine this paralyzing Deduction or Explanation by the light of a few sane facts.
1. This universality of " protection " has ex isted in our country from the beginning; be fore the death penalty existed in New Eng land, and during all the generations that have dragged by since it was annulled.
2. Extraordinary facilities for divorce are of such recent creation that any middle-aged American can remember a time when such things had not yet been thought of.
Let us suppose that the first easy divorce
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law went into effect forty years ago, and got noised around and fairly started in business thirty -five years ago, when we had, say, 25,- 000,000 of white population. Let us suppose that among 5,000,000 of them the young mar ried women were " protected " by the surviv ing shudder of that ancient Puritan scare — what is M. Bourget going to do about those who lived among the 20,000,000 ? They were clean in their morals, they were pure, yet there was no easy divorce law to protect them.
Awhile ago I said that M. Bourget's method of truth-seeking — hunting for it in out-of-the- way places — was new ; but that was an error. I remember that when Leverrier discovered the Milky Way, he and the other astronomers began to theorize about it in substantially the same fashion which M. Bourget employs in his reasonings about American social facts and their origin. Leverrier advanced the hypoth esis that the Milky Way was caused by gase ous protoplasmic emanations from the field of Waterloo, which, ascending to an altitude de- terminable by their own specific gravity, be came luminous through the development and exposure — by the natural processes of animal decay — of the phosphorus contained in them.
This theory was warmly complimented by
WHAT PAUL BOURGET THIN
Ptolemy, who, however, after much thought and research, decided that he could not accept it as final. His own theory was that the Milky Way was an emigration of lightning-bugs; and he supported and reinforced this theorem by the well-known fact that the locusts do like that in Egypt.
Giordano Bruno also was outspoken in his praises of Leverrier's important contribution to astronomical science, and was at first in clined to regard it as conclusive ; but later, conceiving it to be erroneous, he pronounced against it, and advanced the hypothesis that the Milky Way was a detachment or corps of stars which became arrested and held in sus pense suspcnsorum by refraction of gravitation while on the march to join their several con stellations ; a proposition for which he was afterwards burned at the stake in Jacksonville, Illinois.
These were all brilliant and picturesque theories, and each was received with enthusi asm by the scientific world ; but when a New England farmer, who was not a thinker, but only a plain sort of person who tried to ac count for large facts in simple ways, came out with the opinion that the Milky Way was just common, ordinary stars, and was put where it
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was because God "wanted to hev it so," the admirable idea fell perfectly flat.
As a literary artist, M. Bourget is as fresh and striking as he is as a scientific one. He says, " Above all, I do not believe much in an ecdotes." Why? "In history they are all false" — a sufficiently broad statement — "in literature all libellous" — also a sufficiently sweeping statement, coming from a critic who notes that we are a people who are peculiarly extravagant in our language — " and when it is a matter of social life, almost all biassed." It seems to amount to stultification, almost. He has built two or three breeds of American coquettes out of anecdotes — mainly " biassed " ones, I suppose ; and, as they occur " in liter ature," furnished by his pen, they must be " all libellous." Or did he mean not in liter ature or anecdotes about literature or literary people ? I am not able to answer that. Per haps the original would be clearer, but I have only the translation of this instalment by me. I think the remark had an intention ; also that this intention was booked for the trip; but that either in the hurry of the remark's de parture it got left, or in the confusion of chang ing cars at the translator's frontier it got side tracked.
WHAT PAUL BOURGET THINKS OF US 207
" But on the other hand I believe in statis tics; and those on divorces appear to me to be most conclusive." And he sets himself the task of explaining — in a couple of columns — the process by which Easy-Divorce conceived, invented, originated, developed, and perfected an empire-embracing condition of sexual purity in the States. In 40 years. No, he doesn't state the interval. With all his passion for statistics he forgot to ask how long it took to produce this gigantic miracle.
I have followed his pleasant but devious trail through those columns, but I was not able to get hold of his argument and find out what it was. I was not even able to find out where it left off. It seemed to gradually dis solve and flow off into other matters. I fol lowed it with interest, for I was anxious to learn how easy-divorce eradicated adultery in America, but I was disappointed ; I have no idea yet how it did it. I only know it didn't. But that is not valuable ; I knew it before.
Well, humor is the great thing, the saving thing, after all. The minute it crops up, all our hardnesses yield, all our irritations and re sentments flit away, and a sunny spirit takes their place. And so, when M. Bourget said that bright thing about our grandfathers, I
208 HOW TO TELL A STORY
broke all up. I remember exploding its Amer ican countermine once, under that grand hero, Napoleon. He was only First Consul then, and I was Consul -General — for the United States, of course ; but we were very intimate, notwithstanding the difference in rank, for I waived that. One day something offered the opening, and he said :
" Well, General, I suppose life can never get entirely dull to an American, because when ever he can't strike up any other way to put in his time he can always get away with a few years trying to find out who his grandfather was !"
I fairly shouted, for I had never heard it sound better; and then I was back at him as quick as a flash :
" Right, your Excellency ! But I reckon a Frenchman's got his little stand-by for a dull time, too ; because when all other interests fail he can turn in and see if he can't find out who his father was !"
Well, you should have heard him just whoop, and cackle, and carry on ! He reached up and hit me one on the shoulder, and says :
"Land, but it's good! It's im-mensely good ! I'George, I never heard it said so good in my life before ! Say it again."
WHAT PAUL BOURGET THINKS OF US 2OQ
So I said it again, and he said his again, and I said mine again, and then he did, and then I did, and then he did, and we kept on doing it, and doing it, and I never had such a good time, and he said the same. In my opinion there isn't anything that is as killing as one of those dear old ripe pensioners if you know how to snatch it out in a kind of a fresh sort of original way.
But I wish M. Bourget had read more of our novels before he came. It is the only way to thoroughly understand a people. When I found I was coming to Paris, I read La Terre.
A LITTLE NOTE TO M. PAUL BOURGET
A LITTLE NOTE TO M. PAUL BOURGET
[The preceding squib was assailed in the North American Review in an article entitled " Mark Twain and Paul Bourget," by Max O'Rell. The following little note is a Rejoinder to that article. It is possi ble that the position assumed here— that M. Bourget dictated the O'Rell article himself— is untenable.]
You have every right, my dear M. Bourget, to retort upon me by dictation, if you prefer that method to writing at me with your pen ; but if I may say it without hurt — and certain ly I mean no offence — I believe you would have acquitted yourself better with the pen. With the pen you are at home ; it is your nat ural weapon ; you use it with grace, eloquence, charm, persuasiveness, when men are to be convinced, and with formidable effect when they have earned a castigation. But I am sure I see signs in the above article that you are either unaccustomed to dictating or are out of practice. If you will re-read it you will notice, yourself, that it lacks definiteness ; that
214 HOW TO TELL A STORY
it lacks purpose ; that it lacks coherence; that it lacks a subject to talk about ; that it is loose and wabbly ; that it wanders around ; that it loses itself early and does not find itself any more. There are some other defects, as you will notice, but I think I have named the main ones. I feel sure that they are all due to your lack of practice in dictating.
Inasmuch as you had not signed it I had the impression at first that you had not dic tated it. But only for a moment. Certain quite simple and definite facts reminded me that the article had to come from you, for the reason that it could not come from any one else without a specific invitation from you or from me. I mean, it could not except as an intru sion, a transgression of the law which forbids strangers to mix into a private dispute be tween friends, unasked.
Those simple and definite facts were these : I had published an article in this magazine, with you for my subject ; just you yourself; I stuck strictly to that one subject, and did not interlard any other. No one, of course, could call me to account but you alone, or your au thorized representative. I asked some ques tions — asked them of myself. I answered them myself. My article was thirteen pages
A LITTLE NOTE TO M. PAUL BOURGET 215
long, and all devoted to you ; devoted to you, and divided up in this way: one page of guesses as to what subjects you would instruct us in, as teacher; one page of doubts as to the effectiveness of your method of examining us and our ways ; two or three pages of criti cism of your method, and of certain results which it furnished you ; two or three pages of attempts to show the justness of these same criticisms; half a dozen pages made up of slight fault-findings with certain minor details of your literary workmanship, of extracts from your Outre-Mcr and comments upon them ; then I closed with an anecdote. I repeat— for certain reasons — that / closed with an anec dote.
When I was asked by this magazine if I wished to "answer" a " reply " to that article of mine, I said " yes," and waited in Paris for the proof-sheets of the " reply " to come. I already knew, by the cablegram, that the " re ply " would not be signed by you, but upon reflection I knew it would be dictated by you, because no volunteer would feel himself at liberty to assume your championship in a pri vate dispute, unasked, in view of the fact that you are quite well able to take care of your matters of that sort yourself and are not in
2l6 HOW TO TELL A STORY
need of any one's help. No, a volunteer could not make such a venture. It would be too immodest. Also too gratuitously generous. And a shade too self-sufficient. No, he could not venture it. It would look like too much anxiety to get in at a feast where no plate had been provided for him. In fact he could not get in at all, except by the back way and with a false key ; that is to say, a pretext — a pretext invented for the occasion by putting into my mouth words which I did not use, and by wresting sayings of mine from their plain and true meaning. Would he resort to methods like those to get in ? No ; there are no people of that kind. So then I knew for a certainty that you dictated the Reply your self. I knew you did it to save yourself man ual labor.
And you had the right, as I have already said; and I am content — perfectly content. Yet it would have been little trouble to you, and a great kindness to me, if you had written your Reply all out with your own capable hand.
Because then it would have replied — and that is really what a Reply is for. Broadly speaking, its function is to refute — as you will easily concede. That leaves something for the other person to take hold of: he has a
A LITTLE NOTE TO M. PAUL BOURGET 2 17
chance to reply to the Reply, he has a chance to refute the refutation. This would have hap pened if you had written it out instead of dic tating. Dictating is nearly sure to unconcen- trate the dictator's mind, when he is out of practice, confuse him, and betray him into us ing one set of literary rules when he ought to use a quite different set. Often it betrays him into employing the RULES FOR CONVERSA TION BETWEEN A SHOUTER AND A DEAF PER SON — as in the present case — when he ought to employ the RULES FOR CONDUCTING DIS CUSSION WITH A FAULT-FINDER. The great foundation-rule and basic principle of discus sion with a fault-finder is relevancy and con centration upon the subject ; whereas the great foundation-rule and basic principle governing conversation between a shouter and a deaf person is irrelevancy and persistent desertion of the topic in hand. If I may be allowed to illustrate by quoting example IV., section 7, from chapter ix. of " Revised Rules for Con ducting Conversation between a Shouter and a Deaf Person," it will assist us in getting a clear idea of the difference between the two sets of rules :
Shouter. Did you say his name is WETH- ERBY?
2l8 HOW TO TELL A STORY
Deaf Person. Change ? Yes, I think it will. Though if it should clear off I —
Shouter. It's his NAME I want— his NAME.
Deaf Person. Maybe so, maybe so ; but it will only be a shower, I think.
Shouter. No, no, no ! — you have quite mis- underSTOOD me. If—
Deaf Person. Ah ! GOOD morning ; I am sorry you must go. But call again, and let me continue to be of assistance to you in every way I can.
You see, it is a perfect kodak of the article you have dictated. It is really curious and interesting when you come to compare it with yours ; in detail, with my former article to which it is a Reply in your hand. I talk twelve pages about your American instruction projects, and your doubtful scientific system, and your painstaking classification of non-ex istent things, and your diligence and zeal and sincerity, and your disloyal attitude towards anecdotes, and your undue reverence for un safe statistics and for facts that lack a pedi gree ; and you turn around and come back at me with eight pages of weather.
I do not see how a person can act so. It is good of you to repeat, with change of lan guage, in the bulk of your rejoinder, so much
A LITTLE NOTE TO M. PAUL BOURGET 219
of my own article, and adopt my sentiments, and make them over, and put new buttons on ; and I like the compliment, and am frank to say so ; but agreeing with a person cripples controversy and ought not to be allowed. It is weather ; and of almost the worst sort. It pleases me greatly to hear you discourse with such approval and expansiveness upon my text:
"A foreigner can photograph the exteriors of a nation, but I think that is as far as he can get. I think that no foreigner can report its interior ;"* which is a quite clear way of saying that a foreigner's report is only valu able when it restricts itself to impressions. It pleases me to have you follow my lead in that glowing way, but it leaves me nothing to com bat. You should give me something to deny and refute ; I would do as much for you.
It pleases me to have you playfully warn the public against taking one of your books
*And you say: "A man of average intelligence, who has passed six months among a people, cannot express opinions that are worth jotting down, but he can form impressions that are worth repeating. For my part, I think that foreigners' impressions are more interesting than native opinions. After all, such impressions merely mean ' how the country struck the foreigner.' "
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seriously."" Because I used to do that cun ning thing myself in earlier days. I did it in a prefatory note to a book of mine called Tom
Sawyer.
NOTICE
Persons attempting to find a motive in this narra tive will be prosecuted ; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished ; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.
BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR
PER G. G., CHIEF OF ORDNANCE.
The kernel is the same in both prefaces, you see — the public must not take us too seriously. If we remove that kernel we remove the life- principle, and the preface is a corpse. Yes, it pleases me to have you use that idea, for it is a high compliment. But it leaves me nothing to combat ; and that is damage to me.
Am I seeming to say that your Reply is not a reply at all, M. Bourget ? If so, I must modi fy that; it is too sweeping. For you have furnished a general answer to my inquiry as
* When I published Jonathan and his Continent, I wrote in a preface addressed to Jonathan : " If ever you should in sist in seeing in this little volume a serious study of your coun try and of your countrymen, I warn you that your world-wide fame for humor will be exploded."
A LITTLE NOTE TO M. PAUL BOURGET 221
to what France — through you — can teach us.* It is a good answer. It relates to manners, customs, and morals — three things concern ing which we can never have exhaustive and determinate statistics, and so the verdicts de-
*" What could France teach America?" exclaims Mark Twain. France can teach America all the higher pursuits of life, and there is more artistic feeling and refinement in a street of French working-men than in many avenues inhabited by American millionaires. She can teach her, not perhaps how to work, but how to rest, how to live, how to be happy. She can teach her that the aim of life is not money-making, but that money-making is only a means to obtain an end. She can teach her that wives are not expensive toys, but use ful partners, friends, and confidants, who should always keep men under their wholesome influence by their diplomacy, their tact, their common-sense, without bumptiousness. These qualities, added to the highest standard of morality (not an gular and morose, but cheerful morality), are conceded to Frenchwomen by whoever knows something of French life outside of the Paris boulevards, and Mark Twain's ill-natured sneer can not even so much as stain them.
I might tell Mark Twain that in France a man who was seen tipsy in his club would immediately see his name can celled from membership. A man who had settled his fortune on his wife to avoid meeting his creditors would be refused admission into any decent society. Many a Frenchman has blown his brains out rather than declare himself a bankrupt. Now would Mark Twain remark to this : " An American is not such a fool : when a creditor stands in his way he closes his doors, and reopens them the following day. When he has been a bankrupt three times he can retire from business?"
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livered upon them must always lack conclu- siveness and be subject to revision ; but you have stated the truth, possibly, as nearly as any one could do it, in the circumstances. But why did you choose a detail of my question which could be answered only with vague hearsay evidence, and go right by one which could have been answered with deadly facts? — facts in everybody's reach, facts which none can dispute. I asked what France could teach us about government. I laid myself pretty wide open, there ; and I thought I was hand somely generous, too, when I did it. France can teach us how to levy village and city taxes which distribute the burden with a nearer ap proach, to perfect fairness than is the case in any other land ; and she can teach us the wis est and surest system of collecting them that exists. She can teach us how to elect a Pres ident in a sane way ; and also how to do it without throwing the country into earthquakes and convulsions that cripple and embarrass business, stir up party hatred in the hearts of men, and make peaceful people wish the term extended to thirty years. France can teach us — but enough of that part of the question. And what else can France teach us? She can teach us all the fine arts — and does. She
A LITTLE NOTE TO M. PAUL BOURGET 223
throws open her hospitable art academies, and says to us, " Come " — and we come, troops and troops of our young and gifted ; and she sets over us the ablest masters in the world and bearing the greatest names ; and she teaches us all that we are capable of learning, and per suades us and encourages us with prizes and honors, much as if we were somehow children of her own ; and when this noble education is finished and we are ready to carry it home and spread its gracious ministries abroad over our nation, and we come with homage and gratitude and ask France for the bill — there is nothing to pay. And in return for this impe rial generosity, what does America do ? She charges a duty on French works of art !
I wish I had your end of this dispute; I should have something worth talking about. If you would only furnish me something to argue, something to refute — but you persist ently won't. You leave good chances unutil ized and spend your strength in proving and establishing unimportant things. For instance, you have proven and established these eight facts here following — a good score as to num ber, but not worth while :
Mark Twain is —
I. " Insulting."
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2. (Sarcastically speaking) "This refined humorist."
3. Prefers the manure-pile to the violets.
4. Has uttered " an ill-natured sneer."
5. Is " nasty."
6. Needs a " lesson in politeness and good manners."
7. Has published a " nasty article."
8. Has made remarks " unworthy of a gen tleman."*
These are all true, but really they are not valuable ; no one cares much for such finds. In our American magazines we recognize this and suppress them. We avoid naming them. American writers never allow themselves to
* " It is more funny than his" (Mark Twain's) "anecdote, and would have been less insulting."
A quoted remark of mine " is a gross insult to a nation friendly to America."
" He has read La Terre, this refined humorist."
' ' When Mark Twain visits a garden ... he goes in the far-away corner where the soil is prepared."
" Mark Twain's ill-natured sneer cannot so much as stain them " (the Frenchwomen).
"When he" (Mark Twain) "takes his revenge he is un kind, unfair, bitter, nasty."
" But not even your nasty article on my country, Mark," etc.
"Mark might certainly have derived from it"(M. Bour- get's book) " a lesson in politeness and good manners."
A quoted remark of mine is ' ' unworthy of a gentleman. "
A LITTLE NOTE TO M. PAUL BOURGET 225
name them. It would look as if they were in a temper, and we hold that exhibitions of temper in public are not good form — except in the very young and inexperienced. And even if we had the disposition to name them, in order to fill up a gap when we were short of ideas and arguments, our magazines would not allow us to do it, because they think that such words sully their pages. This present magazine is particularly strenuous about it. Its note to me announcing the forwarding of your proof-sheets to France closed thus — for your protection :
" It is needless to ask you to avoid any tiling tJiat he might consider as personal."
It was well enough, as a measure of pre caution, but really it was not needed. You can trust me implicitly, M. Bourget ; I shall never call you any names in print which I should be ashamed to call you with your un offending and dearest ones present.
Indeed, we are reserved, and particular in America to a degree which you would con sider exaggerated. For instance, we should not write notes like that one of yours to a lady for a small fault — or a large one.* We
* When M. Paul Bourget indulges in a little chaffing at the expense of the Americans, "who can always get away 15
226 HOW TO TELL A STORY
should not think it kind. No matter how much we might have associated with kings and nobilities, we should not think it right to crush her with it and make her ashamed
with a few years' trying to find out who their grandfathers were," he merely makes an allusion to an American foible ; but, forsooth, what a kind man, what a humorist Mark Twain is when he retorts by calling France a nation of bastards ! How the Americans of culture and refinement will admire him for thus speaking in their name !
Snobbery. ... I could give Mark Twain an example of the American specimen. It is a piquant story. I never pub lished it because I feared my readers might think that I was giving them a typical illustration of American character instead of a rare exception.
I was once booked by my manager to give a causcrie in the drawing -room of a New York millionaire. I accepted with reluctance. I do not like private engagements. At five o'clock on the day the causene was to be given, the lady sent to my manager to say that she would expect me to arrive at nine o'clock and to speak for about an hour. Then she wrote a postscript. Many women are unfortunate there. Their minds are full of after-thoughts, and the most impor tant part of their letters is generally to be found after their signature. This lady's P. S. ran thus: "I suppose he will not expect to be entertained after the lecture."
I fairly shouted, as Mark Twain would say, and then, in dulging myself in a bit of snobbishness, I was back at her as quick as a flash —
"Dear Madam: As a literary man of some reputation, I have many times had the pleasure of being entertained by the members of the old aristocracy of France. I have also many
A LITTLE NOTE TO M. PAUL BOURGET 22 7
of her lowlier walk in life ; for we have a say ing, "Who humiliates my mother includes his own."
Do I seriously imagine you to be the au thor of that strange letter, M. Bourget? In deed I do not. I believe it to have been surreptitiously inserted by your amanuensis when your back was turned. I think he did it with a good motive, expecting it to add force and piquancy to your article, but it does not reflect your nature, and I know it will grieve you when you see it. I also think he inter larded many other things which you will dis approve of when you see them. I am certain that all the harsh names discharged at me
times had the pleasure of being entertained by the members of the old aristocracy of England. If it may interest you, I can even tell you that I have several times had the honor of being entertained by royalty ; but my ambition has never been so wild as to expect that one day I might be entertained by the aristocracy of New York. No, I do not expect to be entertained by you, nor do I want you to expect me to en tertain you and your friends to-night, for I decline to keep the engagement."
Now, I could fill a book on America with reminiscences of this sort, adding a few chapters on bosses and boodlers, on New York chronique scandaleuse, on the tenement houses of the large cities, on the gambling-hells of Denver, and the dens of San Francisco, and what not ! But not even your nasty article on my country, Mark, will make me do it.
228 HOW TO TELL A STORY
come from him, not you. No doubt you could have proved me entitled to them with as lit tle trouble as it has cost him to do it, but it would have been your disposition to hunt game of a higher quality.
Why, I even doubt if it is you who furnish me all that excellent information about Bal zac and those others.* All this in simple jus tice to you — and to me ; for, to gravely accept those interlardings as yours would be to wrong your head and heart, and at the same time
* " Now the style of M. Bourget and many other French writers is apparently a closed letter to Mark Twain ; but let us leave that alone. Has he read Erckmann-Chatrian, Vic tor Hugo, Lamartine, Edmond About, Cherbuliez, Renan? Has he read Gustave Droz's Monsieur, Madame, et Be'be1, and those books which leave for a long time a perfume about you ? Has he read the novels of Alexandre Dumas, Eugene Sue, George Sand, and Balzac ? Has he read Victor Hugo's Les Mise'rables and Notre Dame de Paris ? Has he read or heard the plays of Sandeau, Augier, Dumas, and Sardou, the works of those Titans of modern literature, whose names will be household words all over the world for hundreds of years to come ? He has read La Terre—ihis kind-hearted, refined humorist ! When Mark Twain visits a garden does he smell the violets, the roses, the jasmine, or the honeysuckle ? No, he goes in the far-away corner where the soil is prepared. Hear what he says: "I wish M. Paul Bourget had read more of our novels before he came. It is the only way to thoroughly understand a people. When I found I was com ing to Paris I read La Terre"
A LITTLE NOTE TO M. PAUL BOURGET 229
convict myself of being equipped with a va cancy where my penetration ought to be lodged.
And now finally I must uncover the secret pain, the wee sore from which the Reply grew — the anecdote which closed my recent article — and consider how it is that this pimple has spread to these cancerous dimensions. If any but you had dictated the Reply, M. Bourget, I would know that that anecdote was twisted around and its intention magnified some hun dreds of times, in order that it might be used as a pretext to creep in the back way. But I accuse you of nothing — nothing but error. When you say that I " retort by calling France a nation of bastards," it is an error. And not a small one, but a large one. I made no such remark, nor anything resembling it. More over, the magazine would not have allowed me to use so gross a word as that.
You told an anecdote. A funny one — I admit that. It hit a foible of our American aristocracy, and it stung me — I admit that ; it stung me sharply. It was like this : You found some ancient portraits of French kings in the gallery of one of our aristocracy, and you said :
"He has the Grand Monarch, but where is
230 HOW TO TELL A STORY
the portrait of his grandfather ?" That is, the American aristocrat's grandfather.
Now that hits only a few of us, I grant — just the upper crust only — but it hits exceed ingly hard.
I wondered if there was any way of getting back at you. In one of your chapters I found this chance :
" In our high Parisian existence, for in stance, we find applied to arts and luxury, and to debauchery, all the powers and all the weaknesses of the French soul."
You see? Your " higher Parisian" class — not everybody, not the nation, but only the top crust of the nation — applies to debauchery all the powers of its soul.
I argued to myself that that energy must produce results. So I built an anecdote out of your remark. In it I make Napoleon Bona parte say to me — but see for yourself the anecdote (ingeniously clipped and curtailed) in paragraph eleven of your Reply.*
* So, I repeat, Mark Twain does not like M. Paul Bour- get's book. So long as he makes light fun of the great French writer he is at home, he is pleasant, he is the American humor ist we know. When he takes his revenge (and where is the reason for taking a revenge ?) he is unkind, unfair, bitter, nasty.
A LITTLE NOTE TO M. PAUL BOURGET 231
Now then, your anecdote about the grand fathers hurt me. Why? Because it had point. It wouldn't have hurt me if it hadn't had point. You wouldn't have wasted space on it if it hadn't had point.
My anecdote has hurt you. Why ? Be-
For example :
See his answer to a Frenchman who jokingly remarks to him :
" I suppose life can never get entirely dull to an American, because whenever he can't strike up any other way to put in his time, he can always get away with a few years trying to find out who his grandfather was."
Hear the answer :
" I reckon a Frenchman's got his little standby for a dull time, too ; because when all other interests fail, he can turn in and see if he can't find out who his father was ?"
The first remark is a good-humored bit of chaffing on American snobbery. I may be utterly destitute of humor, but I call the second remark a gratuitous charge of immoral ity hurled at the French women — a remark unworthy of a man who has the ear of the public, unworthy of a gentleman, a gross insult to a nation friendly to America, a nation that helped Mark Twain's ancestors in their struggle for liberty, a nation where to-day it is enough to say that you are American to see every door open wide to you.
If Mark Twain was hard up in search of a French " chest nut," I might have told him the following little anecdote. It is more funny than his, and would have been less insulting : Two little street boys are abusing each other. " Ah, hold your tongue," says one, " you ain't got no father."
"Ain't got no father !" replies the other ; " I've got more fathers than you."
232 HOW TO TELL A STORY
cause it had point, I suppose. It wouldn't have hurt you if it hadn't had point. I judged from your remark about the diligence and industry of the high Parisian upper crust that it would have some point, but really I had no idea what a gold-mine I had struck. I never suspected that the point was going to stick into the entire nation ; but of course you know your nation better than I do, and if you think it punct ures them all, I have to yield to your judgment. But you are to blame, your own self. Your re mark misled me. I supposed the industry was confined to that little unnumerous upper layer.
Well, now that the unfortunate thing has been done, let us do what we can to undo it. There must be a way, M. Bourget, and I am willing to do anything that will help ; for I am as sorry as you can be yourself.
I will tell you what I think will be the very thing. We will swap anecdotes. I will take your anecdote and you take mine. I will say to the dukes and counts and princes of the ancient nobility of France : " Ha, ha ! You must have a pretty hard time trying to find out who your grandfathers were?"
They will merely smile indifferently and not feel hurt, because they can trace their lineage back through centuries.
A LITTLE NOTE TO M. PAUL BOURGET 233
And you will hurl mine at every individual in the American nation, saying :
" And you must have a pretty hard time trying to find out who your fathers were."
They will merely smile indifferently, and not feel hurt, because they haven't any difficulty in finding their fathers.
Do you get the idea? The whole harm in the anecdotes is in the point, you see ; and when we swap them around that way, they Jurct'tit any.
That settles it perfectly and beautifully, and I am, Jlffad I thought of it. I am very glad J,'M. Bourget ; for it was just that little wee thing that caused the whole difficulty and made you dictate the Reply, and your aman uensis call me all those hard names which the magazines dislike so. And I did it all in fun, too, trying to cap your funny anecdote with another one — on the give-and-take principle, you know — which is American. 7 didn't know that with the French it was all give and no take, and you didn't tell me. But now that I have made everything comfortable again, and fixod both anecdotes so they can never have any point any more, I know you will forgive me.
THE END
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