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••>      TKc     &*&% 

PONSffilLIpES 

:V'  **      A  4  ^..."•*?\       ^, 

.     or  the     &^ 

OVELIST  T 


Frevi\k  Norris 


Vt\ 

tf 


VICTORIA  UNIVERSITY 
.IRRftRY 


[QRIA  UNIVERSITY 
UBRARY 


THE  RESPONSIBILITIES   OF 
THE  NOVELIST 


BOOKS  BY 
FRANK  NORRIS 

A  DEAL  IN  WHEAT,    And   Other  Stories  of 
the  New  and  Old  West 

THE  RESPONSIBILITIES  OF  THE  NOVELIST 

THE  PIT  ) 

}  "  The  Epic  of  the  Wheat " 
THE  OCTOPUS  ) 

A  MAN'S  WOMAN 

McTEAGUE 

BLIX 

MORAN  OF  THE  LADY  LETTY 


THE  RESPONSIBILITIES 
OF  THE   NOVELIST 

AND  OTHER  LITERARY 
ESSAYS 


BY 

FRANK  NORRIS 


LONDON 

GRANT  RICHARDS 
1903 


PNso 


JUN    71965 


<  / 


.  J5. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist  .  i 
The  True  Reward  of  the  Novelist  .  .13 
The  Novel  with  a  "  Purpose"  .  .  .  23 
Story-Tellers  vs.  Novelists  .  .  -35 
The  Need  of  a  Literary  Conscience  .  .47 

A  Neglected  Epic 57 

The  Frontier  Gone  at  Last  .  .  .67 
The  Great  American  Novelist  .  .  .83 
New  York  as  a  Literary  Centre  .  .91 
The  American  Public  ancf  ''Popular" 

Fiction        ......   101 

Child  Stories  for  Adults      .         .         .         .109 

Newspaper  Criticismgi  and  American 

Fiction 117 

Novelists  to  Order — While*  You  Wait  .  125 
The  "Nature"  Revival  in  Literature  .  135 
The  Mechanics  of  Fiction  ?  .  .  .145 
Fiction  Writing  as  a  Business  .  .  .155 
The  "Volunteer  Manuscript"  .  .  .167 
Retail  Bookseller:  Literary  Dictator  .  181 


CONTENTS—  Continued 

PAGE 

An  American  School  of  Fiction?         .  .191 

Novelists  of  the  Future     .         .         .  .201 

A  Plea  for  Romantic  Fiction      .         .  .211 

A  Problem  in  Fiction        ,         .         .  .221 
Why  Women  Should  Write  the  Best  Novels  229 

Simplicity  in  Art      •    ...       .         .         .  .239 

Salt  and  Sincerity      .         .         .         .  .249 

Bibliography,  Essays,  Articles,  Letters  .  305 

Short   Stories     .         .  ••               .         .  .  307 

Poems  Published        .         .         .         .  .310 

Books  Published        .        .        .         .  .310 


THE  RESPONSIBILITIES   OF 
THE  NOVELIST 


THE  RESPONSIBILITIES  OF 
THE  NOVELIST 

IT  is  not  here  a  question  of  the  "unarrived," 
the  " unpublished" ;  these  are  the  care-free 
irresponsibles  whose  hours  are  halcyon  and 
whose  endeavours  have  all  the  lure,  all  the 
recklessness  of  adventure.  They  are  not  recog- 
nized; they  have  made  no  standards  for 
themselves,  and  if  they  play  the  saltimbanque 
and  the  charlatan  nobody  cares  and  nobody 
(except  themselves)  is  affected. 

But  the  writers  in  question  are  the  successful 
ones  who  have  made  a  public  and  to  whom 
some  ten,  twenty  or  a  hundred  thousand 
people  are  pleased  to  listen.  You  may  believe 
if  you  choose  that  the  novelist,  of  all  workers, 
is  independent — that  he  can  write  what  he 
pleases,  and  that  certainly,  certainly  he  should 
never  "write  down  to  his  readers" — that  he 
should  never  consult  them  at  all. 

On  the  contrary,  I  believe  it  can  be  proved 
that  the  successful  novelist  should  be  more 
than  all  others  limited  in  the  nature  and  charac- 
ter of  his  work  more  than  all  others  he  should 

3 


4          The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

be  careful  of  what  he  says ;  more  than  all  others 
he  should  defer  to  his  audience;  more  than  all 
others — more  even  than  the  minister  and  the 
editor — he  should  feel  "his  public"  and  watch 
his  every  word,  testing  carefully  his  every 
utterance,  weighing  with  the  most  relentless 
precision  his  every  statement;  in  a  word,  pos- 
sess a  sense  of  his  responsibilities. 

For  the  novel  is  the  great  expression  of  mod- 
ern life.  Each  form  of  art  has  had  its  turn  at 
reflecting  and  expressing  its  contemporaneous 
thought.  Time  was  when  the  world  looked  to 
the  architects  of  the  castles  and  great  cathedrals 
to  truly  reflect  and  embody  its  ideals.  And 
the  architects — serious,  earnest  men — produced 
such  "  expressions  of  contemporaneous  thought" 
as  the  Castle  of  Coucy  and  the  Church  of 
Notre  Dame.  Then  with  other  times  came 
other  customs,  and  the  painters  had  their  day. 
The  men  of  the  Renaissance  trusted  Angelo 
and  Da  Vinci  and  Velasquez  to  speak  for  them, 
and  trusted  not  in  vain.  Next  came  the  age  of 
drama.  Shakespeare  and  Marlowe  found  the 
value  of  x  for  the  life  and  the  times  in  which 
they  lived.  Later  on  contemporary  life  had 
been  so  modified  that  neither  painting,  archi- 
tecture nor  drama  was  the  best  vehicle  of 
expression,  the  day  of  the  longer  poems  arrived, 
and  Pope  and  Dry  den  spoke  for  their  fellows. 


The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist         5 

Thus  the  sequence  Each  age  speaks  with 
its  own  peculiar  organ,  and  has  left  the  Word 
for  us  moderns  to  read  and  unders  and.  The 
Castle  of  Coucy  and  the  Church  of  Notre  Dame 
are  the  spoken  words  of  the  Middle  Ages.  The 
Renaissance  speaks — and  intelligib  y — to  us 
through  the  sibyls  of  the  Sistine  chapel  and  the 
Mona  Lisa.  " Macbeth"  and  " Tamerlane" 
resume  the  whole  spirit  of  the  Elizabethan  age, 
while  the  "Rape  of  the  Lock"  is  a  wireless 
message  to  us  straight  from  the  period  of  the 
Restoration. 

To-day  is  the  day  of  the  novel.  In  no  other 
day  and  by  no  other  vehicle  is  contempora- 
neous life  so  adequately  expressed;  and  the 
critics  of  the  twenty-second  century,  reviewing 
our  times,  striving  to  reconstruct  our  civiliza- 
tion, will  look  not  to  the  painters,  not  to  the 
architects  nor  dramatists,  but  to  the  novelists 
to  find  our  idiosyncrasy. 

I  think  this  is  true.  I  think  if  the  matter 
could  in  any  way  be  statisticized,  the  figures 
would  bear  out  the  assumption.  There  is  no 
doubt  the  novel  will  in  time  "go  out"  of  popu- 
lar favour  as  irrevocably  as  the  long  poem  has 
gone,  and  for  the  reason  that  it  is  no  longer 
the  right  mode  of  expression. 

It  is  interesting  to  speculate  upon  what  will 
take  its  place.  Certainly  the  coming  civiliza- 


6          The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

tion  will  revert  to  no  former  means  of  expressing 
its  thought  or  its  ideals.  Possibly  music  will 
be  the  interpreter  of  the  life  of  the  twenty-first 
and  twenty-second  centuries.  Possibly  one 
may  see  a  hint  of  this  in  the  characterization 
of  Wagner's  operas  as  the  "  Music  of  the  Future." 

This,  however,  is  parenthetical  and  beside 
the  mark.  Remains  the  fact  that  to-day  is  the 
day  of  the  novel.  By  this  one  does  not  mean 
that  the  novel  is  merely  popular.  If  the  novel 
was  not  something  more  than  a  simple  diver- 
sion, a  means  of  whiling  away  a  dull  evening, 
a  long  railway  journey,  it  would  not,  believe 
me,  remain  in  favour  another  day. 

If  the  novel,  then,  is  popular,  it  is  popular 
with  a  reason,  a  vital,  inherent  reason ;  that  is 
to  say,  it  is  essential.  Essential — to  resume 
once  more  the  proposition — because  it  expresses 
modern  life  better  than  architecture,  better 
than  painting,  better  than  poetry,  better  than 
music.  It  is  as  necessary  to  the  civilization 
of  the  twentieth  century  as  the  violin  is  neces- 
sary to  Kubelik,  as  the  piano  is  necessary  to 
Paderewski,  as  the  plane  is  necessary  to  the 
carpenter,  the  sledge  to  the  blacksmith,  the 
chisel  to  the  mason.  It  is  an  instrument,  a 
tool,  a  weapon,  a  vehicle.  It  is  that  thing 
which,  in  the  hand  of  man,  makes  him  civilized 
and  no  longer  savage,  because  it  gives  him  a 


The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist          7 

power  of  durable,  permanent  expression.  So 
much  for  the  novel — the  instrument. 

Because  it  is  so  all-powerful  to-day,  the 
people  turn  to  him  who  wields  this  instrument 
with  every  degree  of  confidence.  They  expect 
— and  rightly — that  results  shall  be  commen- 
surate with  means.  The  unknown  archer  who 
grasps  the  bow  of  Ulysses  may  be  expected  by 
the  multitude  to  send  his  shaft  far  and  true. 
If  he  is  not  true  nor  strong  he  has  no  business 
with  the  bow.  The  people  give  heed  to  him 
only  because  he  bears  a  great  weapon.  He 
himself  knows  before  he  shoots  whether  or  no 
he  is  worthy. 

It  is  all  very  well  to  jeer  at  the  People  and  at 
the  People's  misunderstanding  of  the  arts,  but 
the  fact  is  indisputable  that  no  art  that  is  not 
in  the  end  understood  by  the  People  can  live 
or  ever  did  live  a  single  generation.  In  the 
larger  view,  in  the  last  analysis,  the  People 
pronounce  the  final  judgment.  The  People, 
despised  of  the  artist,  hooted,  caricatured  and 
vilified,  are  after  all,  and  in  the  main,  the  real 
seekers  after  Truth.  Who  is  it,  after  all,  whose 
interest  is  liveliest  in  any  given  work  of  art? 
It  is  not  now  a  question  of  esthetic  interest — 
that  is,  the  artist's,  the  amateur's,  the  cogno- 
scente's. It  is  a  question  of  vital  interest.  Say 
what  you  will,  Maggie  Tulliver — for  instance 


8          The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

— is  far  more  a  living  being  for  Mrs.  Jones  across 
the  street  than  she  is  for  your  sensitive,  fastidi- 
ous, keenly  critical  artist,  litterateur,  or  critic. 
The  People — Mrs.  Jones  and  her  neighbours — 
take  the  life  history  of  these  fictitious  charac- 
ters, these  novels,  to  heart  with  a  seriousness 
that  the  esthetic  cult  have  no  conception  of. 
The  cult  consider  them  almost  solely  from  their 
artistic  sides.  The  People  take  them  into  their 
innermost  lives.  Nor  do  the  People  discrimi- 
nate. Omnivorous  readers  as  they  are  to-day, 
they  make  little  distinction  between  Maggie 
Tulliver  and  the  heroine  of  the  last  "popular 
novel."  They  do  not  stop  to  separate  true 
from  false ;  they  do  not  care. 

How  necessary  it  becomes,  then,  for  those 
who,  by  the  simple  art  of  writing,  can  invade 
the  heart's  heart  of  thousands,  whose  novels 
are  received  with  such  measureless  earnestness 
— how  necessary  it  becomes  for  those  who 
wield  such  power  to  use  it  rightfully.  Is  it  not 
expedient  to  act  fairly?  Is  it  not  in  Heaven's 
name  essential  that  the  People  hear,  not  a  lie, 
but  the  Truth? 

If  the  novel  were  not  one  of  the  most  impor- 
tant factors  of  modern  life ;  if  it  were  not  the 
completest  expression  of  our  civilization ;  if  its 
influence  were  not  greater  than  all  the  pulpits, 
than  all  the  newspapers  between  the  oceans,  it 


The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist         9 

would  not  be  so  important  that  its  message 
should  be  true. 

But  the  novelist  to-day  is  the  one  who  reaches 
the  greatest  audience.  Right  or  wrong,  the 
People  turn  to  him  the  moment  he  speaks,  and 
what  he  says  they  believe. 

For  the  Million,  Life  is  a  contracted  affair,  is 
bounded  by  the  walls  of  the  narrow  channel  of 
affairs  in  which  their  feet  are  set.  They  have 
no  horizon.  They  look  to-day  as  they  never 
have  looked  before,  as  they  never  will  look 
again,  to  the  writer  of  fiction  to  give  them  an 
idea  of  life  beyond  their  limits,  and  they  believe 
him  as  they  never  have  believed  before  and 
never  will  again. 

This  being  so,  is  it  not  difficult  to  understand 
how  certain  of  these  successful  writers  of  fiction 
— these  favoured  ones  into  whose  hands  the 
gods  have  placed  the  great  bow  of  Ulysses — can 
look  so  frivolously  upon  their  craft  ?  It  is  not 
necessary  to  specify.  One  speaks  of  those 
whose  public  is  measured  by  "one  hundred 
and  fifty  thousand  copies  sold."  We  know 
them,  and  because  the  gods  have  blessed  us 
with  wits  beyond  our  deserving  we  know  their 
work  is  false.  But  what  of  the  "hundred  and 
fifty  thousand"  who  are  not  discerning  and 
who  receive  this  falseness  as  Truth,  who 
believe  this  topsy-turvy  picture  of  Life 


io        The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

beyond  their  horizons  is  real  and  vital  and 
sane? 

There  is  no  gauge  to  measure  the  extent  of 
this  malignant  influence.  Public  opinion  is 
made  no  one  can  say  how,  by  infinitesimal 
accretions,  by  a  multitude  of  minutest  elements. 
Lying  novels,  surely,  surely  in  this  day  and  age 
of  indiscriminate  reading,  contribute  to  this 
more  than  all  other  influences  of  present-day 
activity. 

The  Pulpit,  the  Press  and  the  Novel — these 
indisputably  are  the  great  moulders  of  public 
opinion  and  public  morals  to-day.  But  the 
Pulpit  speaks  but  once  a  week ;  the  Press  is  read 
with  lightning  haste  and  the  morning  news  is 
waste-paper  by  noon.  But  the  novel  goes  into 
the  home  to  stay.  It  is  read  word  for  word ;  is 
talked  about,  discussed ;  its  influence  penetrates 
every  chink  and  corner  of  the  family. 

Yet  novelists  are  not  found  wanting  who 
write  for  money.  I  do  not  think  this  is  an 
unfounded  accusation.  I  do  not  think  it  asking 
too  much  of  credulity.  This  would  not  matter 
if  they  wrote  the  Truth  But  these  gentlemen 
who  are  "in  literature  for  their  own  pocket 
every  time"  have  discovered  that  for  the 
moment  the  People  have  confounded  the  Wrong 
with  the  Right,  and  prefer  that  which  is  a  lie 
to  that  which  is  true.  "Very  well,  then,"  say 


The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist        1 1 

these  gentlemen.  "If  they  want  a  lie  they 
shall  have  it;"  and  they  give  the  People  a  lie 
in  return  for  royalties. 

The  surprising  thing  about  this  is  that  you 
and  I  and  all  the  rest  of  us  do  not  consider  this 
as  disreputable — do  not  yet  realize  that  the 
novelist  has  responsibilities.  We  condemn  an 
editor  who  sells  his  editorial  columns,  and  we 
revile  the  pulpit  attainted  of  venality.  But 
the  venal  novelist — he  whose  influence  is  greater 
than  either  the  Press  or  Pulpit — him  we  greet 
with  a  wink  and  the  tongue  in  the  cheek. 

This  should  not  be  so.  Somewhere  the 
protest  should  be  raised,  and  those  of  us  who 
see  the  practice  of  this  fraud  should  bring  home 
to  ourselves  the  realization  that  the  selling  of 
one  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  books  is  a 
serious  business.  The  People  have  a  right  to 
the  Truth  as  they  have  a  right  to  life,  liberty 
and  the  pursuit  of  happiness.  It  is  not  right 
that  they  be  exploited  and  deceived  with  false 
views  of  life,  false  characters,  false  sentiment, 
false  morality,  false  history,  false  philosophy, 
false  emotions,  false  heroism,  false  notions  of 
self-sacrifice,  false  views  of  religion,  of  duty,  of 
conduct  and  of  manners. 

The  man  who  can  address  an  audience  of 
one  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  people  who — 
unenlightened — believe  what  he  says,  has  a 


12        The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

heavy  duty  to  perform,  and  tremendous  respon- 
sibilities to  shoulder;  and  he  should  address 
himself  to  his  task  not  with  the  flippancy  of  a 
catch-penny  juggler  at  the  county  fair,  but  with 
earnestness,  with  soberness,  with  a  sense  of  his 
limitations,  and  with  all  the  abiding  sincerity 
that  by  the  favour  and  mercy  of  the  gods 
may  be  his. 


THE  TRUE  REWARD  OF  THE  NOVELIST 


THE  TRUE  REWARD  OF  THE  NOVELIST 

NOT  that  one  quarrels  with  the  historical 
novel  as  such;  not  that  one  does  not 
enjoy  good  fiction  wherever  found,  and  in  what- 
ever class.  It  is  the  method  of  attack  of  the 
latter-day  copyists  that  one  deplores — their 
attitude,  the  willingness  of  so  very,  very  many 
of  them  to  take  off  the  hat  to  Fashion,  and  then 
hold  the  same  hat  for  Fashion  to  drop  pennies  in. 

Ah,  but  the  man  must  be  above  the  work  or 
the  work  is  worthless,  and  the  man  better  off  at 
some  other  work  than  that  of  producing  fiction. 
The  eye  never  once  should  wander  to  the 
gallery,  but  be  always  with  single  purpose 
turned  inward  upon  the  work,  testing  it  and 
retesting  it  that  it  rings  true 

What  one  quarrels  with  is  the  perversion  of  a 
profession,  the  detestable  trading  upon  another 
man's  success.  No  one  can  find  fault  with 
those  few  good  historical  novels  that  started 
the  fad.  There  was  good  workmanship  in 
these,  and  honesty.  But  the  copyists,  the 
fakirs — they  are  not  novelists  at  all,  though 
they  write  novels  that  sell  by  the  hundreds  of 


1 6        The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

thousands.  They  are  business  men.  They 
find  out — no,  they  allow  some  one  else  to  find 
out — what  the  public  wants,  and  they  give  it 
to  the  public  cheap,  and  advertise  it  as  a  new 
soap  is  advertised.  Well,  they  make  money; 
and,  if  that  is  their  aim — if  they  are  content  to 
prostitute  the  good  name  of  American  literature 
for  a  sliding  scale  of  royalties — let's  have  done 
with  them.  They  have  their  reward.  But  the 
lamentable  result  will  be  that  these  copyists 
will  in  the  end  so  prejudice  the  people  against 
an  admirable  school  of  fiction — the  school  of 
Scott — that  for  years  to  come  the  tale  of  historic 
times  will  be  discredited  and  many  a  great 
story  remain  unwritten,  and  many  a  man  of 
actual  worth  and  real  power  hold  back  in  the 
ranks  for  very  shame  of  treading  where  so 
many  fools  have  rushed  in. 

For  the  one  idea  of  the  fakir — the  copyist — 
and  of  the  public  which  for  the  moment  listens 
to  him,  is  Clothes,  Clothes,  Clothes,  first,  last 
and  always  Clothes.  Not  Clothes  only  in  the 
sense  of  doublet  and  gown,  but  Clothes  of 
speech,  Clothes  of  manner,  Clothes  of  customs. 
Hear  them  expatiate  over  the  fashion  of  wear- 
ing a  cuff,  over  a  trick  of  speech,  over  the  archi- 
tecture of  a  house,  the  archeology  of  armour 
and  the  like.  It  is  all  well  enough  in  its  way, 
but  so  easily  dispensed  with  if  there  be  flesh  and 


The  True  Reward  of  the  Novelist         17 

blood  underneath.  Veronese  put  the  people 
of  his  "Marriage  at  Cana"  into  the  clothes  of 
his  contemporaries.  Is  the  picture  any  less  a 
masterpiece  ? 

Do  these  Little  People  know  that  Scott's 
archeology  was  about  one  thousand  years 
"out"  in  Ivanhoe,  and  that  to  make  a  paral- 
lel we  must  conceive  of  a  writer  describing 
Richelieu — say — in  small  clothes  and  a  top  hat  ? 
But  is  it  not  Richelieu  we  want,  and  Ivanhoe, 
not  their  clothes,  their  armour?  And  in  spite 
of  his  errors  Scott  gave  us  a  real  Ivanhoe.  He 
got  beneath  the  clothes  of  an  epoch  and  got 
the  heart  of  it,  and  the  spirit  of  it  (different 
essentially  and  vitally  from  ours  or  from  every 
other,  the  spirit  of  feudalism) ;  and  he  put  forth 
a  masterpiece. 

The  Little  People  so  very  precise  in  the 
matter  of  buttons  and  "bacinets"  do  not  so. 
Take  the  clothes  from  the  people  of  their 
Romances  and  one  finds  only  wooden  manikins. 
Take  the  clothes  from  the  epoch  of  which  they 
pretend  to  treat  and  what  is  there  beneath  ?  It 
is  only  the  familiar,  well-worn,  well-thumbed 
nineteenth  or  twentieth  century  after  all.  As 
well  have  written  of  Michigan  Avenue,  Chicago, 
as  "La  Rue  de  la  Harpe,"  "The  Great  North 
Road"  or  the  "Appian  Way." 

It  is  a  masquerade,  the  novel  of  the  copyists ; 


1 8       The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

and  the  people  who  applaud  them — are  they 
not  the  same  who  would  hold  persons  in 
respect  because  of  the  finery  of  their  bodies? 
A  poor  taste,  a  cheap  one ;  the  taste  of  serving- 
men,  the  literature  of  chambermaids. 

To  approach  the  same  subject  by  a  different 
radius:  why  must  the  historical  novel  of  the 
copyist  always  be  conceived  of  in  the  terms 
of  Romance  ?  Could  not  the  formula  of  Real- 
ism be  applied  at  least  as  well,  not  the  Realism 
of  mere  externals  (the  copyists  have  that),  but 
the  Realism  of  motives  and  emotions  ?  What 
would  we  not  give  for  a  picture  of  the  fifteenth 
century  as  precise  and  perfect  as  one  of  Mr. 
James's  novels?  Even  if  that  be  impossible, 
the  attempt,  even  though  half-way  successful, 
would  be  worth  while,  would  be  better  than 
the  wooden  manikin  in  the  tin-pot  helmet  and 
baggy  hose.  At  least  we  should  get  some- 
where, even  if  no  farther  than  Mr.  Kingsley 
took  us  in  "Hereward,"  or  Mr.  Blackmore  in 
"Lorna  Doone." 

How  about  the  business  life  and  the  student 
life,  and  the  artizan  life  and  the  professional 
life,  and  above  all,  the  home  life  of  historic 
periods  ?  Great  Heavens !  There  was  some- 
thing else  sometimes  than  the  soldier  life. 
They  were  not  always  cutting  and  thrusting,  not 
always  night-riding,  escaping,  venturing,  posing. 


The  True  Reward  of  the  Novelist         19 

Or  suppose  that  cut-and-thrust  must  be  the 
order  of  the  day,  where  is  the  "man  behind," 
and  the  heart  in  the  man  and  the  spirit  in  the 
heart  and  the  essential  vital,  elemental,  all- 
important  true  life  within  the  spirit  ?  We  are 
all  Anglo-Saxons  enough  to  enjoy  the  sight  of 
a  fight,  would  go  a  block  or  so  out  of  the  way 
to  see  one,  or  be  a  dollar  or  so  out  of  pocket. 
But  let  it  not  be  these  jointed  manikins  worked 
with  a  thread.  At  least  let  it  be  Mr.  Robert 
Fitzsimmons  or  Mr.  James  Jeffries. 

Clothes,  paraphernalia,  panoply,  pomp  and 
circumstance,  and  the  copyist's  public  and  the 
poor  bedeviled,  ink-corroded  hack  of  an  over- 
driven, underpaid  reviewer  on  an  inland  paper 
speak  of  the  "vivid  colouring"  and  "the  fine 
picture  of  a  bygone  age" — it  is  easy  to  be 
vivid  with  a  pot  of  vermilion  at  the  elbow. 
Any  one  can  scare  a  young  dog  with  a  false- 
face  and  a  roaring  voice,  but  to  be  vivid  and 
use  grays  and  browns,  to  scare  the  puppy  with 
the  lifted  finger,  that's  something  to  the  point. 

The  difficult  thing  is  to  get  at  the  life  imme- 
diately around  you — the  very  life  in  which  you 
move.  No  romance  in  it?  No  romance  in 
you,  poor  fool.  As  much  romance  on  Michigan 
Avenue  as  there  is  realism  in  King  Arthur's 
court.  It  is  as  you  choose  to  see  it.  The 
important  thing  to  decide  is,  which  formula  is 


20       The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

the  best  to  help  you  grip  the  Real  Life  of  this 
or  any  other  age.  Contemporaries  always 
imagine  that  theirs  is  the  prosaic  age,  and  that 
chivalry  and  the  picturesque  died  with  their 
forbears.  No  doubt  Merlin  mourned  for  the 
old  time  of  romance.  Cervantes  held  that 
romance  was  dead.  Yet  most  of  the  historical 
romances  of  the  day  are  laid  in  Cervantes' s 
time,  or  even  after  it. 

Romance  and  Realism  are  constant  qualities 
of  every  age,  day  and  hour.  They  are  here 
to-day.  They  existed  in  the  time  of  Job. 
They  will  continue  to  exist  till  the  end  of  time, 
not  so  much  in  things  as  in  point  of  view  of  the 
people  who  see  things. 

The  difficulty,  then,  is  to  get  at  the  immediate 
life — immensely  difficult,  for  you  are  not  only 
close  to  the  canvas,  but  are  yourself  part  of 
the  picture. 

But  the  historic  age  is  almost  done  to  hand. 
Let  almost  any  one  shut  himself  in  his  closet 
with  a  history  and  Violet  LeDuc's  Dictionaire 
du  Mobilier  and,  given  a  few  months'  time,  he 
can  evolve  an  historical  novel  of  the  kind  called 
popular.  He  need  not  know  men — just  clothes 
and  lingo,  the  "  what-ho-without-there  "  gabble. 
But  if  he  only  chose  he  could  find  romance  and 
adventure  in  Wall  Street  or  Bond  Street.  But 
romance  there  does  not  wear  the  gay  clothes 


The  True  Reward  of  the  Novelist         21 

and  the  showy  accouterments,  and  to  discover 
it — the  real  romance  of  it — means  hard  work 
and  close  study,  not  of  books,  but  of  people 
and  actualities. 

Not  only  this,  but  to  know  the  life  around 
you  you  must  live — if  not  among  people,  then 
in  people.  You  must  be  something  more  than 
a  novelist  if  you  can,  something  more  than  just 
a  writer.  There  must  be  that  nameless  sixth 
sense  or  sensibility  in  you  that  great  musicians 
have  in  common  with  great  inventors  and  great 
scientists;  the  thing  that  does  not  enter  into 
the  work,  but  that  is  back  of  it ;  the  thing  that 
would  make  of  you  a  good  man  as  well  as  a 
good  novelist ;  the  thing  that  differentiates  the 
mere  business  man  from  the  financier  (for  it 
is  possessed  of  the  financier  and  poet  alike — 
so  only  they  be  big  enough). 

It  is  not  genius,  for  genius  is  a  lax,  loose  term 
so  flippantly  used  that  its  expressiveness  is 
long  since  lost.  It  is  more  akin  to  sincerity. 
And  there  once  more  we  halt  upon  the  great 
word — sincerity,  sincerity,  and  again  sincerity. 
Let  the  writer  attack  his  historical  novel  with 
sincerity  and  he  cannot  then  do  wrong.  He 
will  see  then  the  man  beneath  the  clothes,  and 
the  heart  beneath  both,  and  he  will  be  so 
amazed  at  the  wonder  of  that  sight  that  he  will 
forget  the  clothes.  His  public  will  be  small, 


22       The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

perhaps,  but  he  will  have  the  better  reward  of 
the  knowledge  of  a  thing  well  done.  Royalties 
on  editions  of  hundreds  of  thousands  will  not 
pay  him  more  to  his  satisfaction  than  that. 
To  make  money  is  not  the  province  of  a  novelist. 
If  he  is  the  right  sort,  he  has  other  responsibili- 
ties, heavy  ones.  He  of  all  men  cannot  think 
only  of  himself  or  for  himself.  And  when  the 
last  page  is  written  and  the  ink  crusts  on  the 
pen-point  and  the  hungry  presses  go  clashing 
after  another  writer,  the  "new  man"  and  the 
new  fashion  of  the  hour,  he  will  think  of  the 
grim  long  grind  of  the  years  of  his  life  that  he 
has  put  behind  him  and  of  his  work  that  he  has 
built  up  volume  by  volume,  sincere  work, 
telling  the  truth  as  he  saw  it,  independent  of 
fashion  and  the  gallery  gods,  holding  to  these 
with  gripped  hands  and  shut  teeth — he  will 
think  of  all  this  then,  and  he  will  be  able  to  say : 
"I  never  truckled;  I  never  took  off  the  hat  to 
Fashion  and  held  it  out  for  pennies.  By  God, 
I  told  them  the  truth.  They  liked  it  or  they 
didn't  like  it.  What  had  that  to  do  with  me  ? 
I  told  them  the  truth;  I  knew  it  for  the  truth 
then,  and  I  know  it  for  the  truth  now." 

And  that  is  his  reward — the  best  that  a 
man  may  know ;  the  only  one  really  worth  the 
striving  for. 


THE  NOVEL  WITH  A  "  PURPOSE 


THE  NOVEL  WITH  A  "PURPOSED 

A  FTER  years  of  indoctrination  and  expos- 
-*-  *•  tulation  on  the  part  of  the  artists,  the 
people  who  read  appear  at  last  to  have  grasped 
this  one  precept — "the  novel  must  not  preach," 
but  "the  purpose  of  the  story  must  be  subordi- 
nate to  the  story  itself."  It  took  a  very  long 
time  for  them  to  understand  this,  but  once  it 
became  apparent  they  fastened  upon  it  with  a 
tenacity  comparable  only  to  the  tenacity  of  the 
American  schoolboy  to  the  date  "1492."  "  The 
novel  must  not  preach,"  you  hear  them  say. 

As  though  it  were  possible  to  write  a  novel 
without  a  purpose,  even  if  it  is  only  the  pur- 
pose to  amuse.  One  is  willing  to  admit  that 
this  savours  a  little  of  quibbling,  for  "pur- 
pose" and  purpose  to  amuse  are  two  different 
purposes.  But  every  novel,  even  the  most  friv- 
olous, must  have  some  reason  for  the  writing 
of  it,  and  in  that  sense  must  have  a  "purpose." 

Every  novel  must  do  one  of  three  things — 
it  must  (i)  tell  something,  (2)  show  something, 
°r  (3)  prove  something.  Some  novels  do  all 
three  of  these;  some  do  only  two;  all  must  do 
at  least  one. 

25 


26       The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

The  ordinary  novel  merely  tells  something, 
elaborates  a  complication,  devotes  itself  pri- 
marily to  things.  In  this  class  comes  the 
novel  of  adventure,  such  as  "The  Three 
Musketeers." 

The  second  and  better  class  of  novel  shows 
something,  exposes  the  workings  of  a  temper- 
ament, devotes  itself  primarily  to  the  minds 
of  human  beings.  In  this  class  falls  the  novel 
of  character,  such  as  "Romola." 

The  third,  and  what  we  hold  to  be  the  best 
class,  proves  something,  draws  conclusions 
from  a  whole  congeries  of  forces,  social  ten- 
dencies, race  impulses,  devotes  itself  not  to 
a  study  of  men  but  of  man.  In  this  class  falls 
the  novel  with  the  purpose,  such  as  "Les 
Miserables." 

And  the  reason  we  decide  upon  this  last  as 
the  highest  form  of  the  novel  is  because  that, 
though  setting  a  great  purpose  before  it  as  its 
task,  it  nevertheless  includes,  and  is  forced  to 
include,  both  the  other  classes.  It  must  tell 
something,  must  narrate  vigorous  incidents 
and  must  show  something,  must  penetrate 
deep  into  the  motives  and  character  of  type- 
men,  men  who  are  composite  pictures  of  a 
multitude  of  men.  It  must  do  this  because 
of  the  nature  of  its  subject,  for  it  deals  with 
elemental  forces,  motives  that  stir  whole 


The  Novel  with  a  "Purpose"  27 

nations.  These  cannot  be  handled  as  abstrac- 
tions in  fiction.  Fiction  can  find  expression 
only  in  the  concrete.  The  elemental  forces, 
then,  contribute  to  the  novel  with  a  purpose 
to  provide  it  with  vigorous  action.  In  the 
novel,  force  can  be  expressed  in  no  other  way. 
The  social  tendencies  must  be  expressed  by 
means  of  analysis  of  the  characters  of  the  men 
and  women  who  compose  that  society,  and 
the  two  must  be  combined  and  manipulated 
to  evolve  the  purpose — to  find  the  value  of  x. 

The  production  of  such  a  novel  is  probably 
the  most  arduous  task  that  the  writer  of  fiction 
can  undertake.  Nowhere  else  is  success  more 
difficult ;  nowhere  else  is  failure  so  easy.  Unskil- 
fully treated,  the  story  may  dwindle  down  and 
degenerate  into  mere  special  pleading,  and  the 
novelist  become  a  polemicist,  a  pamphleteer, 
forgetting  that,  although  his  first  consideration 
is  to  prove  his  case,  his  means  must  be  living 
human  beings,  not  statistics,  and  that  his  tools 
are  not  figures,  but  pictures  from  life  as  he  sees 
it.  The  novel  with  a  purpose  is,  one  contends, 
a  preaching  novel.  But  it  preaches  by  telling 
things  and  showing  things.  Only,  the  author 
selects  from  the  great  storehouse  of  actual 
life  the  things  to  be  told  and  the  things  to  be 
shown,  which  shall  bear  upon  his  problem,  his 
purpose.  The  preaching,  the  moralizing,  is 


28       The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

the  result  not  of  direct  appeal  by  the  writer, 
but  is  made — should  be  made— to  the  reader 
by  the  very  incidents  of  the  story. 

But  here  is  presented  a  strange  anomaly,  a 
distinction  as  subtle  as  it  is  vital.  Just  now 
one  has  said  that  in  the  composition  of  the  kind 
of  novel  under  consideration  the  purpose  is 
for  the  novelist  the  all-important  thing,  and 
yet  it  is  impossible  to  deny  that  the  story,  as 
a  mere  story,  is  to  the  story-writer  the  one 
great  object  of  attention.  How  reconcile  then 
these  two  apparent  contradictions? 

For  the  novelist,  the  purpose  of  his  novel, 
the  problem  he  is  to  solve,  is  to  his  story  what 
the  keynote  is  to  the  sonata.  Though  the 
musician  cannot  exaggerate  the  importance  of 
the  keynote,  yet  the  thing  that  interests  him 
is  the  sonata  itself.  The  keynote  simply 
coordinates  the  music,  systematizes  it,  brings 
all  the  myriad  little  rebellious  notes  under  a 
single  harmonious  code. 

Thus,  too,  the  purpose  in  the  novel.  It  is 
important  as  an  end  and  also  as  an  ever- 
present  guide.  For  the  writer  it  is  as  important 
only  as  a  note  to  which  his  work  must  be 
attuned.  The  moment,  however,  that  the 
writer  becomes  really  and  vitally  interested  in 
his  purpose  his  novel  fails. 

Here  is  the  strange  anomaly.     Let  us  suppose 


The  Novel  with  a  "Purpose"  29 

that  Hardy,  say,  should  be  engaged  upon  a 
story  which  had  for  purpose  to  show  the  injus- 
tices under  which  the  miners  of  Wales  were 
suffering.  It  is  conceivable  that  he  could 
write  a  story  that  would  make  the  blood  boil 
with  indignation.  But  he  himself,  if  he  is  to 
remain  an  artist,  if  he  is  to  write  his  novel  suc- 
cessfully, will,  as  a  novelist,  care  very  little 
about  the  iniquitous  labour  system  of  the 
Welsh  coal-mines.  It  will  be  to  him  as  imper- 
sonal a  thing  as  the  key  is  to  the  composer  of  a 
sonata.  As  a  man  Hardy  may  or  may  not 
be  vitally  concerned  in  the  Welsh  coal-miner. 
That  is  quite  unessential.  But  as  a  novelist, 
as  an  artist,  his  sufferings  must  be  for  him  a 
matter  of  the  mildest  interest.  They  are 
important,  for  they  constitute  his  keynote. 
They  are  not  interesting  for  the  reason  that 
the  working  out  of  his  story,  its  people, 
episodes,  scenes  and  pictures,  is  for  the 
moment  the  most  interesting  thing  in  all 
the  world  to  him,  exclusive  of  everything 
else.  Do  you  think  that  Mrs.  Stowe  was 
more  interested  in  the  slave  question  than 
she  was  in  the  writing  of  "Uncle  Tom's 
Cabin "  ?  Her  book,  her  manuscript,  the 
page-to-page  progress  of  the  narrative,  were 
more  absorbing  to  her  than  all  the  Negroes 
that  were  ever  whipped  or  sold.  Had  it  not 


30       The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

been  so,  that  great  purpose-novel  never  would 
have  succeeded. 

Consider  the  reverse — "Fecondite*,"  for  in- 
stance. The  purpose  for  which  Zola  wrote  the 
book  ran  away  with  him.  He  really  did  care 
more  for  the  depopulation  of  France  than 
he  did  for  his  novel.  Result — sermons  on  the 
fruitfulness  of  women,  special  pleading,  a  far- 
rago of  dry,  dull  incidents,  overburdened  and 
collapsing  under  the  weight  of  a  theme  that 
should  have  intruded  only  indirectly. 

This  is  preeminently  a  selfish  view  of  the 
question,  but  it  is  assuredly  the  only  correct 
one.  It  must  be  remembered  that  the  artist 
has  a  double  personality,  himself  as  a  man, 
and  himself  as  an  artist.  But,  it  will  be  urged, 
how  account  for  the  artist's  sympathy  in  his 
fictitious  characters,  his  emotion,  the  actual 
tears  he  sheds  in  telling  of  their  griefs,  their 
deaths,  and  the  like  ? 

The  answer  is  obvious.  As  an  artist  his 
sensitiveness  is  quickened  because  they  are 
characters  in  his  novel.  It  does  not  at  all 
follow  that  the  same  artist  would  be  moved  to 
tears  over  the  report  of  parallel  catastrophes 
in  real  life.  As  an  artist,  there  is  every  reason 
to  suppose  he  would  welcome  the  news  with 
downright  pleasure.  It  would  be  for  him 
4 'good  material."  He  would  see  a  story  in  it, 


The  Novel  with  a  "Purpose''1  31 

a  good  scene,  a  great  character.  Thus  the 
artist.  What  he  would  do,  how  he  would 
feel  as  a  man  is  quite  a  different  matter. 

To  conclude,  let  us  consider  one  objection 
urged  against  the  novel  with  a  purpose  by  the 
plain  people  who  read.  For  certain  reasons, 
difficult  to  explain,  the  purpose  novel  always 
ends  unhappily.  It  is  usually  a  record  of 
suffering,  a  relation  of  tragedy.  And  the 
plain  people  say,  "Ah,  we  see  so  much  suffering 
in  the  world,  why  put  it  into  novels?  We 
do  not  want  it  in  novels." 

One  confesses  to  very  little  patience  with 
this  sort.  "We  see  so  much  suffering  in  the 
world  already!"  Do  they?  Is  this  really 
true?  The  people  who  buy  novels  are  the 
well-to-do  people.  They  belong  to  a  class 
whose  whole  scheme  of  life  is  concerned  solely 
with  an  aim  to  avoid  the  unpleasant.  Suffer- 
ing, the  great  catastrophes,  the  social  throes, 
that  annihilate  whole  communities,  or  that 
crush  even  isolated  individuals — all  these  are 
as  far  removed  from  them  as  earthquakes  and 
tidal-waves.  Or,  even  if  it  were  so,  suppose 
that  by  some  miracle  these  blind  eyes  were 
opened  and  the  sufferings  of  the  poor,  the 
tragedies  of  the  house  around  the  corner, 
really  were  laid  bare.  If  there  is  much  pain 
in  life,  all  the  more  reason  that  it  should  appear 


32       The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

in  a  class  of  literature  which,  in  its  highest  form, 
is  a  sincere  transcription  of  life. 

It  is  the  complaint  of  the  coward,  this  cry 
against  the  novel  with  a  purpose,  because  it 
brings  the  tragedies  and  griefs  of  others  to 
notice.  Take  this  element  from  fiction,  take 
from  it  the  power  and  opportunity  to  prove 
that  injustice,  crime  and  inequality  do  exist, 
and  what  is  left?  Just  the  amusing  novels, 
the  novels  that  entertain.  The  juggler  in 
spangles,  with  his  balancing-pole  and  gilt  ball, 
does  this.  You  may  consider  the  modern 
novel  from  this  point  of  view.  It  may  be  a 
flippant  paper-covered  thing  of  swords  and 
cloaks,  to  be  carried  on  a  railway  journey  and 
to  be  thrown  out  the  window  when  read, 
together  with  the  sucked  oranges  and  peanut 
shells.  Or  it  may  be  a  great  force,  that  works 
together  with  the  pulpit  and  the  universi- 
ties for  the  good  of  the  people,  fearlessly  prov- 
ing that  power  is  abused,  that  the  strong 
grind  the  faces  of  the  weak,  that  an  evil  tree 
is  still  growing  in  the  midst  of  the  garden,  that 
undoing  follows  hard  upon  unrighteousness, 
that  the  course  of  Empire  is  not  yet  finished, 
and  that  the  races  of  men  have  yet  to  work  out 
their  destiny  in  those  great  and  terrible  move- 
ments that  crush  and  grind  and  rend  asunder 
the  pillars  of  the  houses  of  the  nations. 


The  Novel  with  a  "Purpose"  33 

Fiction  may  keep  pace  with  the  Great 
March,  but  it  will  not  be  by  dint  of  amusing 
the  people.  The  muse  is  a  teacher,  not  a 
trickster.  Her  rightful  place  is  with  the 
leaders,  but  in  the  last  analysis  that  place  is 
to  be  attained  and  maintained  not  by  cap-and- 
bells,  but  because  of  a  serious  and  sincere 
interest,  such  as  inspires  the  great  teachers, 
the  great  divines,  the  great  philosophers,  a 
well-defined,  well-seen,  courageously  sought-for 
purpose. 


STORY-TELLERS    VS.    NOVELISTS 


STORY-TELLERS    VS.    NOVELISTS 

TT  is  a  thing  accepted  and  indisputable  that 
a  story-teller  is  a  novelist,  but  it  has 
often  occurred  to  one  that  the  reverse  is  not 
always  true  and  that  the  novelist  is  not  of 
necessity  a  story-teller.  The  distinction  is 
perhaps  a  delicate  one,  but  for  all  that  it  seems 
to  be  decisive,  and  it  is  quite  possible  that 
with  the  distinction  in  mind  a  different  judg- 
ment might  be  passed  upon  a  very  large  part 
of  present-day  fiction.  It  would  even  be 
entertaining  to  apply  the  classification  to  the 
products  of  the  standard  authors. 

The  story-telling  instinct  seems  to  be  a  gift, 
whereas — we  trend  to  the  heretical — the  art  of 
composing  novels — using  the  word  in  appo- 
sition to  stories,  long  or  short — may  be 
an  acquirement.  The  one  is  an  endowment, 
the  other  an  accomplishment.  Accordingly 
throughout  the  following  paragraphs  the  expres- 
sion, novelists  of  composition,  for  the  time 
being  will  be  used  technically,  and  will  be 
applied  to  those  fiction-writers  who  have  not 
the  story-telling  faculty. 

It  would  not  be  fair  to  attempt  a  proof  that 
37 


38       The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

the  one  is  better  or  worse  than  the  other. 
The  difference  is  surely  of  kind  and  not  of 
degree.  One  will  only  seek  to  establish  the 
fact  that  certain  eminent  and  brilliant  novel- 
writers  are  quite  bereft  of  a  sense  of  fiction, 
that  some  of  them  have  succeeded  in  spite  of 
this  deficiency,  and  that  other  novel-writers 
possessing  this  sense  of  fiction  have  succeeded 
because  of  it,  and  in  spite  of  many  drawbacks 
such  as  lack  of  training  and  of  education. 

It  is  a  proposition  which  one  believes  to  be 
capable  of  demonstration  that  every  child  con- 
tains in  himself  the  elements  of  every  known 
profession,  every  occupation,  every  art,  every 
industry.  In  the  five-year-old  you  may  see 
glimpses  of  the  soldier,  trader,  farmer,  painter, 
musician,  builder,  and  so  on  to  the  end  of 
the  roster.  Later,  circumstances  produce  the 
atrophy  of  all  of  these  instincts  but  one,  and 
from  that  one  specialized  comes  the  career. 
Thus  every  healthy-minded  child — no  matter 
if  he  develops  in  later  years  to  be  financier  or 
boot-maker — is  a  story-teller.  As  soon  as  he 
begins  to  talk  he  tells  stories.  Witness  the 
holocausts  and  carnage  of  the  leaden  platoons 
of  the  nursery  table,  the  cataclysms  of  the 
Grand  Trans-Continental  Playroom  and  Front- 
Hall  Railroad  system.  This,  though,  is  not 
real  story-telling.  The  toys  practically  tell 


Story-tellers  vs.  Novelists  39 

the  story  for  him  and  are  no  stimulant  to  the 
imagination.  However,  the  child  goes  beyond 
the  toys.  He  dramatizes  every  object  of 
his  surroundings.  The  books  of  the  library 
shelves  are  files  of  soldiers,  the  rugs  are  isles 
in  the  seaway  of  the  floor,  the  easy  chair  is  a 
comfortable  old  gentleman  holding  out  his 
arms,  the  sofa  a  private  brig  or  a  Baldwin 
locomotive,  and  the  child  creates  of  his  sur- 
roundings an  entire  and  complex  work  of 
fiction  of  which  he  is  at  one  and  the  same 
time  hero,  author  and  public. 

Within  the  heart  of  every  mature  human 
being,  not  a  writer  of  fiction,  there  is  the 
withered  remains  of  a  little  story-teller  who 
died  very  young.  And  the  love  of  good 
fiction  and  the  appreciation  of  a  fine  novel  in 
the  man  of  the  world  of  riper  years  is — I  like 
to  think — a  sort  of  memorial  tribute  which  he 
pays  to  his  little  dead  playmate  of  so  very  long 
ago,  who  died  very  quietly  with  his  little  broken 
tin  locomotive  in  his  hands  on  the  cruel  day 
when  he  woke  to  the  realization  that  it  had 
outlived  its  usefulness  and  its  charm. 

Even  in  the  heart  of  some  accepted  and 
successful  fiction-writer  you  shall  find  this 
little  dead  story-teller.  These  are  the  novelists 
of  composition,  whose  sense  of  fiction,  under 
stress  of  circumstances,  has  become  so  blunted 


40       The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

that  when  they  come  at  last  to  full  maturity 
and  to  the  power  of  using  the  faculty  they  can  no 
longer  command  it.  These  are  novelists  rather 
of  intellect  than  of  spontaneous  improvisation ; 
and  all  the  force  of  their  spendid  minds,  every 
faculty  other  than  the  lost  fiction-faculty, 
must  be  brought  into  play  to  compensate  for 
the  lack.  Some  more  than  compensate  for  it, 
so  prodigal  in  resource,  so  persistent  in  effort, 
so  powerful  in  energy  and  in  fertility  of  inven- 
tion, that — as  it  were  by  main  strength — they 
triumph  over  the  other  writer,  the  natural 
story-teller,  from  whose  pen  the  book  flows 
with  almost  no  effort  at  all. 

Of  this  sort — the  novelists  of  intellect,  in 
whom  the  born  story-teller  is  extinct,  the 
novelists  of  composition  in  a  word — the  great 
example,  it  would  seem,  is  George  Eliot.  It 
was  by  taking  thought  that  the  author  of 
"Romola"  added  to  her  stature.  The  result 
is  superb,  but  achieved  at  what  infinite  pains, 
with  what  colossal  labour — of  head  rather  than 
of  the  heart !  She  did  not  feel,  she  knew,  and 
to  attain  that  knowledge  what  effort  had  to 
be  expended  !  Even  all  her  art  cannot  exclude 
from  her  pages  evidences  of  the  labour,  of 
the  superhuman  toil.  And  it  was  labour 
and  toil  for  what?  To  get  back,  through 
years  of  sophistication,  of  solemn  education, 


Story-tellers  vs.  Novelists  41 

of  worldly  wisdom,  back  again  to  the  point 
of  view  of  the  little  lost  child  of  the  doll-house 
days. 

But  sometimes  the  little  story-teller  does 
not  die,  but  lives  on  and  grows  with  the  man, 
increasing  in  favour  with  God,  till  at  [last  he 
dominates  the  man  himself,  and  the  playroom 
of  the  old  days  simply  widens  its  walls  till  it 
includes  the  street  outside,  and  the  street 
beyond  and  other  streets,  the  whole  city,  the 
whole  world,  and  the  story-teller  discovers  a 
set  of  new  toys  to  play  with,  and  new  objects 
of  a  measureless  environment  to  dramatize 
about,  and  in  exactly,  exactly  the  same  spirit 
in  which  he  trundled  his  tin  train  through  the 
halls  and  shouted  boarding  orders  from  the 
sofa  he  moves  now  through  the  world's  play- 
room "making  up  stories";  only  now  his 
heroes  and  his  public  are  outside  himself  and 
he  alone  may  play  the  author. 

For  him  there  is  but  little  effort  required. 
He  has  a  sense  of  fiction.  Every  instant  of 
his  day  he  is  dramatizing.  The  cable-car  has 
for  him  a  distinct  personality.  Every  window 
in  the  residence  quarters  is  an  eye  to  the  soul 
of  the  house  behind.  The  very  lamp-post  on 
the  corner,  burning  on  through  the  night  and 
through  the  storm,  is  a  soldier,  dutiful,  vigilant 
in  stress.  A  ship  is  Adventure;  an  engine 


42        The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

a  living  brute ;  and  the  easy  chair  of  his  library 
is  still  the  same  comfortable  and  kindly  old 
gentleman  holding  out  his  arms. 

The  men  and  women  of  his  world  are  not 
apt  to  be— to  him — so  important  in  themselves 
as  in  relation  to  the  whirl  of  things  in  which 
he  chooses  to  involve  them.  They  cause 
events,  or  else  events  happen  to  them,  and  by 
an  unreasoned  instinct  the  story-teller  pre- 
serves the  consistencies  (just  as  the  child 
would  not  have  run  the  lines  of  the  hall  railway 
across  the  seaway  of  the  floor  between  the 
rugs).  Much  thought  is  not  necessary  to  him. 
Production  is  facile,  a  constant  pleasure.  The 
story  runs  from  his  pen  almost  of  itself;  it 
takes  this  shape  or  that,  he  knows  not  why; 
his  people  do  this  or  that  and  by  some  blessed 
system  of  guesswork  they  are  somehow  always 
plausible  and  true  to  life.  His  work  is  hap- 
hazard, yet  in  the  end  and  in  the  main  tremen- 
dously probable.  Devil-may-care,  slipshod, 
melodramatic,  but  invincibly  persuasive,  he 
uses  his  heart,  his  senses,  his  emotions,  every 
faculty  but  that  of  the  intellect.  He  does 
not  know;  he  feels. 

Dumas  was  this,  and  "The  Three  Musketeers/' 
different  from  "Romola"  in  kind  but  not  in 
degree,  is  just  as  superb  as  Eliot  at  her  best. 
Only  the  Frenchman  had  a  sense  of  fiction 


Story-tellers  vs.  Novelists  43 

which  the  Englishwoman  had  not.  Her  novels 
are  character  studies,  are  portraits,  are  por- 
trayals of  emotions  or  pictures  of  certain 
times  and  certain  events,  are  everything  you 
choose,  but  they  are  not  stories,  and  no  stretch 
of  the  imagination,  no  liberalness  of  criticism 
can  make  them  such.  She  succeeded  by  dint 
of  effort  where  the  Frenchman — merely  wrote. 

George  Eliot  compensated  for  the  defect  arti- 
ficially and  succeeded  eminently  and  conclu- 
sively, but  there  are  not  found  wanting  cases — 
in  modern  literature — where  "novelists  of  com- 
position" have  not  compensated  beyond  a  very 
justifiable  doubt,  and  where,  had  they  but  re- 
joiced in  a  very  small  modicum  of  this  dowry 
of  the  gods,  their  work  would  have  been — to 
one's  notion — infinitely  improved. 

As,  for  instance,  Tolstoi ;  incontestably  great 
though  he  be,  all  his  unquestioned  power  has 
never  yet  won  for  him  that  same  vivid  sense 
of  fiction  enjoyed  by  so  (comparatively)  unim- 
portant a  writer  as  the  author  of  "Sherlock 
Holmes."  And  of  the  two,  judged  strictly 
upon  their  merits  as  story-tellers,  one  claims 
for  Mr.  Doyle  the  securer  if  not  the  higher 
place,  despite  the  magnificent  genius  of  the 
novelist. 

In  the  austere  Russian — gloomy,  sad,  ac- 
quainted with  grief — the  child  died  irrevoca- 


44       The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

bly  long,  long  ago ;  and  no  power  however  vast, 
no  wisdom  however  profound,  no  effort  how- 
ever earnest,  can  turn  one  wheel  on  the  little 
locomotive  of  battered  tin  or  send  it  one  inch 
along  the  old  right-of-way  between  the  nursery 
and  the  front  room.  One  cannot  but  feel  that 
the  great  author  of  "Anna  Karenina"  realizes 
as  much  as  his  readers  the  limitations  that 
the  loss  of  this  untainted  childishness  imposes. 
The  power  was  all  his,  the  wonderful  intellectual 
grip,  but  not  the  fiction  spirit — the  child's 
knack  and  love  of  "making  up  stories."  Given 
that,  plus  the  force  already  his  own,  and  what 
a  book  would  have  been  there !  The  perfect 
novel !  No  doubt,  clearer  than  all  others,  the 
great  Russian  sees  the  partial  failure  of  his 
work,  and  no  doubt  keener  and  deeper  than  all 
others  sees  that,  unless  the  child-vision  and  the 
child-pleasure  be  present  to  guide  and  to  stimu- 
late, the  entrances  of  the  kingdom  must  stay 
forever  shut  to  those  who  would  enter,  storm 
they  the  gates  never  so  mightily  and  beat  they 
never  so  clamorously  at  the  doors. 

Whatever  the  end  of  fiction  may  be,  what- 
ever the  reward  and  recompense  bestowed, 
whatever  object  is  gained  by  good  work,  the 
end  will  not  be  gained,  nor  the  reward  won, 
nor  the  object  attained  by  force  alone — by 
strength  of  will  or  of  mind.  Without  the 


Story-tellers  vs.  Novelists  45 

auxiliary  of  the  little  playmate  of  the  old  days 
the  great  doors  that  stand  at  the  end  of  the 
road  will  stay  forever  shut.  Look  once,  how- 
ever, with  the  child's  eyes,  or  for  once  touch 
the  mighty  valves  with  the  child's  hand,  and 
Heaven  itself  lies  open  with  all  its  manifold 
wonders. 

So  that  in  the  end,  after  all  trial  has  been 
made  and  every  expedient  tested,  the  simplest 
way  is  the  best  and  the  humblest  means  the 
surest.  A  little  child  stands  in  the  midst  of 
the  wise  men  and  the  learned,  and  their  wis- 
dom and  their  learning  are  set  aside  and  they 
are  taught  that  unless  they  become  as  one  of 
these  they  shall  in  nowise  enter  into  the 
Kingdom  of  Heaven. 


THE  NEED  OF  A  LITERARY 
CONSCIENCE 


THE  NEED  OF  A  LITERARY  CONSCIENCE 

T)ILATE  saith  unto  them:  what  is  truth?" 
•*•  and  it  is  of  record  that  he  received  no 
answer — and  for  very  obvious  reasons.  For 
is  it  not  a  fact,  that  he  who  asks  that  question 
must  himself  find  the  answer,  and  that  not 
even  one  sent  from  Heaven  can  be  of  hope  or 
help  to  him  if  he  is  not  willing  to  go  down  into 
his  own  heart  and  into  his  own  life  to  find  it  ? 

To  sermonize,  to  elaborate  a  disquisition  on 
nice  distinctions  of  metaphysics  is  not  appro- 
priate here.  But  it  is — so  one  believes — 
appropriate  to  consider  a  certain  very  large 
class  of  present  day  novelists  of  the  United 
States  who  seldom  are  stirred  by  that  spirit 
of  inquiry  that  for  a  moment  disturbed  the 
Roman,  who  do  not  ask  what  is  truth,  who  do 
not  in  fact  care  to  be  truthful  at  all,  and  who 
— and  this  is  the  serious  side  of  the  business — 
are  bringing  the  name  of  American  literature 
perilously  near  to  disrepute. 

One  does  not  quarrel  for  one  instant  with 
the  fact  that  certain  books  of  the  writers  in 
question  have  attained  phenomenally  large 
circulations.  This  is  as  it  should  be.  There 

49 


50       The  Responsibilities  of  ike  Novelist 

are  very  many  people  in  the  United  States, 
and  compared  with  such  a  figure  as  seventy 
million,  a  mere  hundred  thousand  of  books 
sold  is  no  great  matter. 

But  here — so  it  seems — is  the  point.  He 
who  can  address  a  hundred  thousand  people 
is,  no  matter  what  his  message  may  be,  in  an 
important  position.  It  is  a  large  audience, 
one  hundred  thousand,  larger  than  any  roofed 
building  now  standing  could  contain.  Less 
than  one  one-hundredth  part  of  that  number 
nominated  Lincoln.  Less  than  half  of  it  won 
Waterloo. 

And  it  must  be  remembered  that  for  every 
one  person  who  buys  a  book  there  are  three 
who  will  read  it  and  half  a  dozen  who  will 
read  what  some  one  else  has  written  about  it,  so 
that  the  sphere  of  influence  widens  indefinitely, 
and  the  audience  that  the  writer  addresses 
approaches  the  half -million  mark. 

Well  and  good;  but  if  the  audience  is  so 
vast,  if  the  influence  is  so  far-reaching,  if  the 
example  set  is  so  contagious,  it  becomes  incum- 
bent to  ask,  it  becomes  imperative  to  demand 
that  the  half -million  shall  be  told  the  truth  and 
not  a  lie. 

And  this  thing  called  truth— "what  is  it?" 
says  Pilate,  and  the  average  man  conceives  at 
once  of  an  abstraction,  a  vague  idea,  a  term 


The  Need  of  a  Literary  Conscience       51 

borrowed  from  the  metaphysicians,  certainly 
nothing  that  has  to  do  with  practical,  tangible, 
concrete  work-a-day  life. 

Error  !  If  truth  is  not  an  actual  workaday 
thing,  as  concrete  as  the  lamp-post  on  the 
corner,  as  practical  as  a  cable-car,  as  real  and 
homely  and  workaday  and  commonplace  as  a 
bootjack,  then  indeed  are  we  of  all  men  most 
miserable  and  our  preaching  vain. 

And  truth  in  fiction  is  just  as  real  and  just 
as  important  as  truth  anywhere  else — as  in 
Wall  Street,  for  instance.  A  man  who  does  not 
tell  the  truth  there,  and  who  puts  the  untruth 
upon  paper  over  his  signature,  will  be  very 
promptly  jailed.  In  the  case  of  the  Wall 
Street  man  the  sum  of  money  in  question 
may  be  trivial — $100,  $50.  But  the  untruth- 
ful novelist  who  starts  in  motion  something 
like  half  a  million  dollars  invokes  not  fear  nor 
yet  reproach.  If  truth  in  the  matter  of  the 
producing  of  novels  is  not  an  elusive,  intangible 
abstraction,  what,  then,  is  it  ?  Let  us  get  at  the 
hard  nub  of  the  business,  something  we  can  hold 
in  the  hand.  It  is  the  thing  that  is  one's  own, 
the  discovery  of  a  subject  suitable  for  fictitious 
narration  that  has  never  yet  been  treated, 
and  the  conscientious  study  of  that  subject  and 
the  fair  presentation  of  results.  Not  a  difficult 
matter,  it  would  appear,  not  an  abstraction,  not 


52        The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

a  philosophical  kink.  Newspaper  reporters, 
who  are  not  metaphysicians,  unnamed,  unre- 
warded, despised,  even,  and  hooted  and 
hounded,  are  doing  this  every  day.  They  do 
it  on  a  meager  salary,  and  they  call  the  affair 
a  "scoop."  Is  the  standard  of  the  novelist — 
he  who  is  entrusted  with  the  good  name  of 
his  nation's  literature — lower  than  that  of  a 
reporter  ? 

"Ah,  but  it  is  so  hard  to  be  original,"  "ah, 
but  it  is  so  hard  to  discover  anything  new." 
Great  Heavens !  when  a  new  life  comes  into 
the  world  for  every  tick  of  the  watch  in  your 
pocket — a  new  life  with  all  its  complications, 
and  with  all  the  thousand  and  one  other  com- 
plications it  sets  in  motion ! 

Hard  to  be  original !  when  of  all  of  those 
billion  lives  your  own  is  as  distinct,  as  indi- 
vidual, as  "original,"  as  though  you  were  born 
out  of  season  in  the  Paleozoic  age  and  yours 
the  first  human  face  the  sun  ever  shone  upon. 

Go  out  into  the  street  and  stand  where  the 
ways  cross  and  hear  the  machinery  of  life 
work  clashing  in  its  grooves.  Can  the  utmost 
resort  of  your  ingenuity  evolve  a  better  story 
than  any  one  of  the  millions  that  jog  your 
elbow?  Shut  yourself  in  your  closet  and  turn 
your  eyes  inward  upon  yourself — deep  into 
yourself,  down,  down  into  the  heart  of  you; 


The  Need  of  a  Literary  Conscience       53 

and  the  tread  of  the  feet  upon  the  pavement 
is  the  systole  and  diastole  of  your  own  being — 
different  only  in  degree.  It  is  life ;  and  it  is 
that  which  you  must  have  to  make  your  book, 
your  novel — life,  not  other  people's  novels. 

Or  look  from  your  window.  A  whole  Lit- 
erature goes  marching  by,  clamouring  for  a 
leader  and  a  master  hand  to  guide  it.  You 
have  but  to  step  from  your  doorway.  And 
instead  of  this,  instead  of  entering  into  the 
leadership  that  is  yours  by  right  divine,  instead 
of  this,  you  must  toilfully,  painfully  endeavour 
to  crawl  into  the  armour  of  the  chief  of  some 
other  cause,  the  harness  of  the  leader  of  some 
other  progress. 

But  you  will  not  fit  into  that  panoply.  You 
may  never  brace  that  buckler  upon  your 
arm,  for  by  your  very  act  you  stand  revealed 
as  a  littler  man  than  he  who  should  be  chief — 
a  littler  man  and  a  weaker;  and  the  casque 
will  fall  so  far  over  your  face  that  it  will  only 
blind  you,  and  the  sword  will  trip  you,  and 
the  lance,  too  ponderous,  will  falter  in  your 
grip,  and  all  that  life  which  surges  and  thun- 
ders behind  you  will  in  time  know  you  to  be 
the  false  leader,  and  as  you  stumble  will  trample 
you  in  its  onrush,  and  leave  you  dead  and  for- 
gotten upon  the  road. 

And  just  as  a  misconception  of  the  truth 


54       The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

makes  of  this  the  simplest  and  homeliest  of 
things,  a  vagary,  an  abstraction  and  a  bugbear, 
so  it  is  possible  that  a  misconception  of  the 
Leader  creates  the  picture  of  a  great  and 
dreadful  figure  wrapped  in  majesty,  solemn 
and  profound.  So  that  perhaps  for  very  lack 
of  self-confidence,  for  very  diffidence,  one 
shrinks  from  lifting  the  sword  of  him  and 
from  enduing  one's  forehead  with  the  casque 
that  seems  so  ponderous. 

In  other  causes  no  doubt  the  leader  must 
be  chosen  from  the  wise  and  great.  In  science 
and  finance  one  looks  to  him  to  be  a  strong 
man,  a  swift  and  a  sure  man.  But  the  litera- 
ture that  to-day  shouts  all  in  vain  for  its  chief 
needs  no  such  a  one  as  this.  Here  the  battle  is 
not  to  the  strong  nor  yet  the  race  to  the  swift. 
Here  the  leader  is  no  vast,  stern  being,  profound, 
solemn,  knowing  all  things,  but,  on  the  contrary, 
is  as  humble  as  the  lowliest  that  follow  after 
him.  So  that  it  need  not  be  hard  to  step  into 
that  place  of  eminence.  Not  by  arrogance, 
nor  by  assumption,  nor  by  the  achievement  of 
the  world's  wisdom,  shall  you  be  made  worthy 
of  the  place  of  high  command.  But  it  will 
come  to  you,  if  it  comes  at  all,  because  you  shall 
have  kept  yourself  young  and  humble  and  pure 
in  heart,  and  so  unspoiled  and  unwearied  and 
un jaded  that  you  shall  find  a  joy  in  the  mere 


The  Need  of  a  Literary  Conscience       55 

rising  of  the  sun,  a  wholesome,  sane  delight 
in  the  sound  of  the  wind  at  night,  a  pleasure  in 
the  sight  of  the  hills  at  evening,  shall  see  God 
in  a  little  child  and  a  whole  religion  in  a  brood- 
ing bird. 


A  NEGLECTED  EPIC 


A  NEGLECTED  EPIC 

OUDDENLY  we  have  found  that  there  is 
*^  no  longer  any  Frontier.  The  westward- 
moving  course  of  empire  has  at  last  crossed 
the  Pacific  Ocean.  Civilization  has  circled  the 
globe  and  has  come  back  to  its  starting  point, 
the  vague  and  mysterious  East. 

The  thing  has  not  been  accomplished  peace- 
fully. From  the  very  first  it  has  been  an  affair 
of  wars — of  invasions.  Invasions  of  the  East 
by  the  West,  and  of  raids  North  and  South — 
raids  accomplished  by  flying  columns  that 
dashed  out  from  both  sides  of  the  main  army. 
Sometimes  even  the  invaders  have  fought 
among  themselves,  as  for  instance  the  Trojan 
War,  or  the  civil  wars  of  Italy,  England  and 
America;  sometimes  they  have  turned  back  on 
their  tracks  and,  upon  one  pretext  or  another, 
reconquered  the  races  behind  them,  as  for 
instance  Alexander's  wars  to  the  eastward,  the 
Crusades,  and  Napoleon's  Egyptian  campaigns. 

Retarded  by  all  these  obstacles,  the  march 
has  been  painfully  slow.  To  move  from 
Egypt  to  Greece  took  centuries  of  time.  More 

59 


60       The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

centuries  were  consumed  in  the  campaign 
that  brought  empire  from  Greece  to  Rome, 
and  still  more  centuries  passed  before  it  crossed 
the  Alps  and  invaded  northern  and  western 
Europe. 

But  observe.  Once  across  the  Mississippi, 
the  West — our  Far  West — was  conquered  in 
about  forty  years.  In  all  the  vast  campaign 
from  east  to  west  here  is  the  most  signal  vic- 
tory, the  swiftest,  the  completest,  the  most 
brilliant  achievement — the  wilderness  subdued 
at  a  single  stroke. 

Now  all  these  various  fightings  to  the 
westward,  these  mysterious  race-movements, 
migrations,  wars  and  wanderings  have  pro- 
duced their  literature,  distinctive,  peculiar, 
excellent.  And  this  literature  we  call  epic. 
The  Trojan  War  gave  us  the  " Iliad,"  the 
"Odyssey"  and  the  "./^neid";  the  campaign 
of  the  Greeks  in  Asia  Minor  produced  the 
"Anabasis";  a  whole  cycle  of  literature  grew 
from  the  conquest  of  Europe  after  the  fall  of 
Rome— "The  Song  of  Roland,"  "The  Nibel- 
ungenlied,"  "The  Romance  of  the  Rose," 
"  Beowulf, "  "  Magnusson, "  "  The  Scotch  Border 
Ballads,"  "The  Poem  of  the  Cid,"  "The 
Hemskringla, "  " Orlando  Furioso, "  "Jerusalem 
Delivered,"  and  the  like. 

On  this  side  of  the  Atlantic,  in  his  clumsy, 


A  Neglected  Epic  61 

artificial  way,  but  yet  recognized  as  a  producer 
of  literature,  Cooper  has  tried  to  chronicle  the 
conquest  of  the  eastern  part  of  our  country. 
Absurd  he  may  be  in  his  ideas  of  life  and 
character,  the  art  in  him  veneered  over  with 
charlatanism;  yet  the  man  was  solemn  enough 
and  took  his  work  seriously,  and  his  work  is 
literature. 

Also  a  cycle  of  romance  has  grown  up  around 
the  Civil  War.  The  theme  has  had  its  poets 
to  whom  the  public  have  been  glad  to  listen. 
The  subject  is  vast,  noble ;  is,  in  a  word,  epic, 
just  as  the  Trojan  War  and  the  Retreat  of  the 
Ten  Thousand  were  epic. 

But  when  at  last  one  comes  to  look  for  the 
literature  that  sprang  from  and  has  grown 
up  around  the  last  great  epic  event  in  the 
history  of  civilization,  the  event  which  in 
spite  of  stupendous  difficulties  was  consum- 
mated more  swiftly,  more  completely,  more 
satisfactorily  than  any  like  event  since  the 
westward  migration  began — I  mean  the  con- 
quering of  the  West,  the  subduing  of  the 
wilderness  beyond  the  Mississippi — What  has 
this  produced  in  the  way  of  literature?  The 
dime  novel !  The  dime  novel  and  nothing  else. 
The  dime  novel  and  nothing  better. 

The  Trojan  War  left  to  posterity  the  charac- 
ter of  Hector ;  the  wars  with  the  Saracens  gave 


62       The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

us  Roland;  the  folklore  of  Iceland  produced 
Grettir ;  the  Scotch  border  poetry  brought  forth 
the  Douglas;  the  Spanish  epic  the  Cid.  But 
the  American  epic,  just  as  heroic,  just  as  ele- 
mental, just  as  important  and  as  picturesque, 
will  fade  into  history  leaving  behind  no  finer 
type,  no  nobler  hero  than  Buffalo  Bill. 

The  young  Greeks  sat  on  marble  terraces 
overlooking  the  ^Egean  Sea  and  listened  to 
the  thunderous  roll  of  Homer's  hexameter. 
In  the  feudal  castles  the  minstrel  sang  to  the 
young  boys,  of  Roland.  The  farm  folk  of 
Iceland  to  this  very  day  treasure  up  and  read 
to  their  little  ones  hand-written  copies  of  the 
Gretla  Saga  chronicling  the  deeds  and  death  of 
Grettir  the  Strong.  But  the  youth  of  the 
United  States  learn  of  their  epic  by  paying  a 
dollar  to  see  the  "  Wild  West  Show. " 

The  plain  truth  of  the  matter  is  that  we 
have  neglected  our  epic — the  black  shame  of  it 
be  on  us — and  no  contemporaneous  poet  or 
chronicler  thought  it  worth  his  while  to  sing 
the  song  or  tell  the  tale  of  the  West  because 
literature  in  the  day  when  the  West  was  being 
won  was  a  cult  indulged  in  by  certain  well-bred 
gentlemen  in  New  England  who  looked  east- 
ward to  the  Old  World,  to  the  legends  of 
England  and  Norway  and  Germany  and  Italy 
for  their  inspiration,  and  left  the  great,  strong, 


A  Neglected  Epic  63 

honest,  fearless,  resolute  deeds  of  their  own 
countrymen  to  be  defamed  and  defaced  by 
the  nameless  hacks  of  the  "yellow  back" 
libraries. 

One  man — who  wrote  "How  Santa  Claus 
Came  to  Simpson's  Bar" — one  poet,  one 
chronicler  did,  in  fact,  arise  for  the  moment, 
who  understood  that  wild,  brave  life  and  who 
for  a  time  gave  promise  of  bearing  record  of 
things  seen. 

One  of  the  requirements  of  an  epic — a  true 
epic — is  that  its  action  must  devolve  upon  some 
great  national  event.  There  was  no  lack  of 
such  in  those  fierce  years  after  '49.  Just  that 
long  and  terrible  journey  from  the  Mississippi 
to  the  ocean  is  an  epic  in  itself.  Yet  no  serious 
attempt  has  ever  been  made  by  an  American 
author  to  render  into  prose  or  verse  this  event 
in  our  history  as  "national"  in  scope,  in  origin 
and  in  results  as  the  Revolution  itself.  The 
prairie  schooner  is  as  large  a  figure  in  the 
legends  as  the  black  ship  that  bore  Ulysses 
homeward  from  Troy.  The  sea  meant  as 
much  to  the  Argonauts  of  the  fifties  as  it  did  to 
the  ten  thousand. 

And  the  Alamo!  There  is  a  trumpet-call 
in  the  word;  and  only  the  look  of  it  on  the 
printed  page  is  a  flash  of  fire.  But  the  very 
histories  slight  the  deed,  and  to  many  an 


64       The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

American,  born  under  the  same  flag  that  the 
Mexican  rifles  shot  to  ribbons  on  that  splendid 
day,  the  word  is  meaningless.  Yet  Thermopylae 
was  less  glorious,  and  in  comparison  with  that 
siege  the  investment  of  Troy  was  mere  wanton 
riot.  At  the  very  least  the  Texans  in  that 
battered  adobe  church  fought  for  the  honour 
of  their  flag  and  the  greater  glory  of  their 
country,  not  for  loot  or  the  possession  of  the 
person  of  an  adultress.  Young  men  are  taught 
to  consider  the  "  Iliad, "  with  its  butcheries,  its 
glorification  of  inordinate  selfishness  and  vanity, 
as  a  classic.  Achilles,  murderer,  egoist,  ruffian 
and  liar,  is  a  hero.  But  the  name  of  Bowie, 
the  name  of  the  man  who  gave  his  life  to  his 
flag  at  the  Alamo,  is  perpetuated  only  in  the 
designation  of  a  knife.  Crockett  is  the  hero 
only  of  a  "  funny  story  "  about  a  sagacious  coon ; 
while  Travis,  the  boy  commander  who  did  what 
Gordon  with  an  empire  back  of  him  failed  to  do, 
is  quietly  and  definitely  ignored. 

Because  we  have  done  nothing  to  get  at  the 
truth  about  the  West ;  because  our  best  writers 
have  turned  to  the  old-country  folklore  and 
legends  for  their  inspiration;  because  ''melan- 
choly harlequins"  strut  in  fringed  leggings 
upon  the  street-corners,  one  hand  held  out  for 
pennies,  we  have  come  to  believe  that  our  West, 
our  epic,  was  an  affair  of  Indians,  road-agents 


A  Neglected  Epic  65 

and  desperadoes,  and  have  taken  no  account 
of  the  brave  men  who  stood  for  law  and  justice 
and  liberty,  and  for  those  great  ideas  died  by 
the  hundreds,  unknown  and  unsung — died  that 
the  West  might  be  subdued,  that  the  last  stage 
of  the  march  should  be  accomplished,  that  the 
Anglo-Saxon  should  fulfil  his  destiny  and 
complete  the  cycle  of  the  world. 

The  great  figure  of  our  neglected  epic,  the 
Hector  of  our  ignored  Iliad,  is  not,  as  the  dime 
novels  would  have  us  believe,  a  lawbreaker, 
but  a  lawmaker;  a  fighter,  it  is  true,  as  is 
always  the  case  with  epic  figures,  but  a  fighter 
for  peace,  a  calm,  grave,  strong  man  who 
hated  the  lawbreaker  as  the  hound  hates  the 
wolf. 

He  did  not  lounge  in  barrooms;  he  did  not 
cheat  at  cards;  he  did  not  drink  himself  to 
maudlin  fury;  he  did  not  " shoot  at  the  drop  of 
the  hat. "  But  he  loved  his  horse,  he  loved 
his  friend,  he  was  kind  to  little  children ;  he  was 
always  ready  to  side  with  the  weak  against  the 
strong,  with  the  poor  against  the  rich.  For 
hypocrisy  and  pretense,  for  shams  and  subter- 
fuges he  had  no  mercy,  no  tolerance.  He 
was  too  brave  to  lie  and  too  strong  to  steal. 
The  odds  in  that  lawless  day  were  ever  against 
him;  his  enemies  were  many  and  his  friends 
were  few;  but  his  face  was  always  set  bravely 


66       The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

against  evil,  and  fear  was  not  in  him  even  at 
the  end.  For  such  a  man  as  this  could  die  no 
quiet  death  in  a  land  where  law  went  no  further 
than  the  statute  books  and  lite  lay  in  the  crook 
of  my  neighbour's  forefinger. 

He  died  in  defense  of  an  ideal,  an  epic  hero, 
a  legendary  figure,  formidable,  sad.  He  died 
facing  down  injustice,  dishonesty  and  crime; 
died  "in  his  boots";  and  the  same  world  that 
has  glorified  Achilles  and  forgotten  Travis 
finds  none  too  poor  to  do  him  reverence.  No 
literature  has  sprung  up  around  him — this 
great  character  native  to  America.  He  is  of  all 
the  world-types  the  one  distinctive  to  us — 
peculiar,  particular  and  unique.  He  is  dead 
and  even  his  work  is  misinterpreted  and  mis- 
understood. His  very  memory  will  soon  be 
gone,  and  the  American  epic,  which,  on  the 
shelves  of  posterity,  should  have  stood  shoulder 
to  shoulder  with  the  "  Hemskringla "  and  the 
" Tales  of  the  Nibelungen"  and  the  "Song  of 
Roland, "  will  never  be  written. 


THE  FRONTIER   GONE  AT  LAST 


THE    FRONTIER    GONE    AT    LAST 

T  TNTIL  the  day  when  the  first  United  States 
^  marine  landed  in  China  we  had  always 
imagined  that  out  yonder  somewhere  in  the 
West  was  the  borderland  where  civilization 
disintegrated  and  merged  into  the  untamed. 
Our  skirmish-line  was  there,  our  posts  that 
scouted  and  scrimmaged  with  the  wilderness, 
a  thousand  miles  in  advance  of  the  steady 
march  of  civilization. 

And  the  Frontier  has  become  so  much  an 
integral  part  of  our  conception  of  things  that 
it  will  be  long  before  we  shall  all  understand 
that  it  is  gone.  We  liked  the  Frontier;  it  was 
romance,  the  place  of  the  poetry  of  the  Great 
March,  the  firing-line  where  there  was  action 
and  fighting,  and  where  men  held  each  other's 
lives  in  the  crook  of  the  forefinger.  Those 
who  had  gone  out  came  back  with  tremendous 
tales,  and  those  that  stayed  behind  made  up 
other  and  even  more  tremendous  tales. 

When  we — we  Anglo-Saxons — busked  our- 
selves for  the  first  stage  of  the  march,  we 
began  from  that  little  historic  reach  of  ground 

69 


70       The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

in  the  midst  of  the  Friesland  swamps,  and  we 
set  our  faces  Westward,  feeling  no  doubt  the 
push  of  the  Slav  behind  us.  Then  the  Frontier 
was  Britain  and  the  sober  peacefulness  of  land 
where  are  the  ordered,  cultivated  English  farm- 
yards of  to-day  was  the  Wild  West  of  the 
Frisians  of  that  century ;  and  for  the  little  chil- 
dren of  the  Frisian  peat  cottages  Hengist  was 
the  Apache  Kid  and  Horsa  Deadwood  Dick — 
freebooters,  law-defiers,  slayers-of-men,  epic 
heroes,  blood  brothers,  if  you  please,  of  Boone 
and  Bowie. 

Then  for  centuries  we  halted  and  the  van 
closed  up  with  the  firing-line,  and  we  filled  all 
England  and  all  Europe  with  our  clamour 
because  for  awhile  we  seemed  to  have  gone 
as  far  Westward  as  it  was  possible;  and  the 
checked  energy  of  the  race  reacted  upon  itself, 
rebounded  as  it  were,  and  back  we  went  to  the 
Eastward  again — crusading,  girding  at  the 
Mahommedan,  conquering  his  cities,  breaking 
into  his  fortresses  with  mangonel,  siege-engine 
and  catapult — just  as  the  boy  shut  indoors 
finds  his  scope  circumscribed  and  fills  the 
whole  place  with  the  racket  of  his  activity. 

But  always,  if  you  will  recall  it,  we  had  a 
curious  feeling  that  we  had  not  reached  the 
ultimate  West  even  yet,  and  there  was  still  a 
Frontier.  Always  that  strange  sixth  sense 


The  Frontier  Gone  at  Last  71 

turned  our  heads  toward  the  sunset;  and  all 
through  the  Middle  Ages  we  were  peeking  and 
prying  into  the  Western  horizon,  trying  to  reach 
it,  to  run  it  down,  and  the  queer  tales  about 
Vineland  and  that  storm-driven  Viking*  s  ship 
would  not  down. 

And  then  at  last  a  naked  savage  on  the 
shores  of  a  little  island  in  what  is  now  our 
West  Indies,  looking  Eastward  one  morning, 
saw  the  caravels,  and  on  that  day  the  Frontier 
was  rediscovered,  and  promptly  a  hundred 
thousand  of  the  more  hardy  rushed  to  the 
skirmish-line  and  went  at  the  wilderness  as 
only  the  Anglo-Saxon  can. 

And  then  the  skirmish-line  decided  that  it 
would  declare  itself  independent  of  the  main 
army  behind  and  form  an  advance  column  of 
its  own,  a  separate  army  corps ;  and  no  sooner 
was  this  done  than  again  the  scouts  went  for- 
ward, went  Westward,  pushing  the  Frontier 
ahead  of  them,  scrimmaging  with  the  wilder- 
ness, blazing  the  way.  At  last  they  forced 
the  Frontier  over  the  Sierra  Nevadas  down 
to  the  edge  of  the  Pacific.  And  here  it  would 
have  been  supposed  that  the  Great  March 
would  have  halted  again  as  it  did  before  the 
Atlantic,  that  here  at  last  the  Frontier  ended. 

But  on  the  first  of  May,  1898,  a  gun  was  fired 
in  the  Bay  of  Manila,  still  farther  Westward, 


72       The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

and  in  response  the  skirmish-line  crossed  the 
Pacific,  still  pushing  the  Frontier  before  it. 
Then  came  a  cry  for  help  from  Legation  Street 
in  Peking,  and  as  the  first  boat  bearing  its 
contingent  of  American  marines  took  ground 
on  the  Asian  shore,  the  Frontier — at  last  after 
so  many  centuries,  after  so  many  marches, 
after  so  much  fighting,  so  much  spilled  blood, 
so  much  spent  treasure,  dwindled  down  and 
vanished;  for  the  Anglo-Saxon  in  his  course  of 
empire  had  circled  the  globe  and  brought  the 
new  civilization  to  the  old  civilization,  and 
reached  the  starting  point  of  history,  the  place 
from  which  the  migrations  began.  So  soon  as 
the  marines  landed  there  was  no  longer  any 
West,  and  the  equation  of  the  horizon,  the 
problem  of  the  centuries  for  the  Anglo-Saxon 
was  solved. 

So,  lament  it  though  we  may,  the  Frontier 
is  gone,  an  idiosyncrasy  that  has  been  with  us 
for  thousands  of  years,  the  one  peculiar  pic- 
turesqueness  of  our  life  is  no  more.  We  may 
keep  alive  for  many  years  the  idea  of  a  Wild 
West,  but  the  hired  cowboys  and  paid  rough 
riders  of  Mr.  William  Cody  are  more  like 
"the  real  thing"  than  can  be  found  to-day  in 
Arizona,  New  Mexico  or  Idaho.  Only  the 
imitation  cowboys,  the  college-bred  fellows 
who  "go  out  on  a  ranch,"  carry  the  revolver 


The  Frontier  Gone  at  Last  73 

or  wear  the  concho.  The  Frontier  has  become 
conscious  of  itself,  acts  the  part  for  the  Eastern 
visitor;  and  this  self -consciousness  is  a  sign, 
surer  than  all  others,  of  the  decadence  of  a 
type,  the  passing  of  an  epoch.  The  Apache 
Kid  and  Deadwood  Dick  have  gone  to  join 
Hengist  and  Horsa  and  the  heroes  of  the 
Magnusson  Saga. 

But  observe.  What  happened  in  the  Middle 
Ages  when  for  awhile  we  could  find  no  Western 
Frontier?  The  race  impulse  was  irresistible. 
March  we  must,  conquer  we  must,  and  checked 
in  the  Westward  course  of  empire,  we  turned 
Eastward  and  expended  the  resistless  energy 
that  by  blood  was  ours  in  conquering  the  Old 
World  behind  us. 

To-day  we  are  the  same  race,  with  the  same 
impulse,  the  same  power  and,  because  there  is 
no  longer  a  Frontier  to  absorb  our  overplus  of 
energy,  because  there  is  no  longer  a  wilderness 
to  conquer  and  because  we  still  must  march, 
still  must  conquer,  we  remember  the  old  days 
when  our  ancestors  before  us  found  the  outlet 
for  their  activity  checked  and,  rebounding, 
turned  their  faces  Eastward,  and  went  down 
to  invade  the  Old  World.  So  we.  No  sooner 
have  we  found  that  our  path  to  the  Westward 
has  ended  than,  reacting  Eastward,  we  are  at 
the  Old  World  again,  marching  against  it, 


74       The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

invading  it,  devoting  our  overplus  of  energy 
to  its  subjugation. 

But  though  we  are  the  same  race,  with  the 
same  impulses,  the  same  blood-instincts  as  the 
old  Frisian  marsh  people,  we  are  now  come 
into  a  changed  time  and  the  great  word  of  our 
century  is  no  longer  War,  but  Trade. 

Or,  if  you  choose,  it  is  only  a  different  word 
for  the  same  race-characteristic.  The  desire 
for  conquest — say  what  you  will — was  as  big 
in  the  breast  of  the  most  fervid  of  the  Crusaders 
as  it  is  this  very  day  in  the  most  peacefully 
disposed  of  American  manufacturers.  Had 
the  Lion-Hearted  Richard  lived  to-day  he 
would  have  become  a  "  leading  representative 
of  the  Amalgamated  Steel  Companies,"  and 
doubt  not  for  one  moment  that  he  would  have 
underbid  his  Manchester  rivals  in  the  matter 
of  bridge-girders.  Had  Mr.  Andrew  Carnegie 
been  alive  at  the  time  of  the  preachings  of 
Peter  the  Hermit  he  would  have  raised  a  com- 
pany of  gens  d'armes  sooner  than  all  of  his 
brothers-in-arms,  would  have  equipped  his  men 
better  and  more  effectively,  would  have  been 
first  on  the  ground  before  Jerusalem,  would  have 
built  the  most  ingenious  siege-engine  and  have 
hurled  the  first  cask  of  Greek-fire  over  the  walls. 

Competition  and  conquest  are  words  easily 
interchangeable,  and  the  whole  spirit  of  our 


The  Frontier  Gone  at  Last  75 

present  commercial  crusade  to  the  Eastward 
betrays  itself  in  the  fact  that  we  cannot  speak 
of  it  but  in  terms  borrowed  from  the  glossary 
of  the  warrior.  It  is  a  commercial  "  invasion," 
a  trade  "war,"  a  "threatened  attack"  on  the 
part  of  America;  business  is  "captured," 
opportunities  are  "seized,"  certain  industries 
are  "killed,"  certain  former  monopolies  are 
"wrested  away."  Seven  hundred  years  ago  a 
certain  Count  Baldwin,  a  great  leader  in  the 
attack  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  Crusaders  upon  the 
Old  World,  built  himself  a  siege-engine  which 
would  help  him  enter  the  beleaguered  city  of 
Jerusalem.  Jerusalem  is  beleaguered  again 
to-day,  and  the  hosts  of  the  Anglo-Saxon 
commercial  crusaders  are  knocking  at  the 
gates.  And  now  a  company  named  for 
another  Baldwin — and,  for  all  we  know,  a 
descendant  of  the  Count — leaders  of  the 
invaders  of  the  Old  World,  advance  upon 
the  city,  and,  to  help  in  the  assault, 
build  an  engine — only  now  the  engine  is  no 
longer  called  a  mangonel,  but  a  locomotive. 

The  difference  is  hardly  of  kind  and  scarcely 
of  degree.  It  is  a  mere  matter  of  names,  and 
the  ghost  of  Saladin  watching  the  present 
engagement  might  easily  fancy  the  old  days 
back  again. 

So  perhaps  we  have  not  lost  the  Frontier, 


76       The  Responsibilities  of  ike  Novelist 

after  all.  A  new  phrase,  reversing  that  of 
Berkeley's,  is  appropriate  to  the  effect  that 
"Eastward  the  course  of  commerce  takes  its 
way,"  and  we  must  look  for  the  lost  battle- 
line  not  toward  the  sunset,  but  toward  the 
East.  And  so  rapid  has  been  the  retrograde 
movement  that  we  must  go  far  to  find  it,  that 
scattered  firing-line,  where  the  little  skirmishes 
are  heralding  the  approach  of  the  Great  March. 
We  must  already  go  farther  afield  than  England. 
The  main  body,  even  to  the  reserves,  are 
intrenched  there  long  since,  and  even  conti- 
nental Europe  is  to  the  rear  of  the  skirmishers. 

Along  about  Suez  we  begin  to  catch  up  with 
them  where  they  are  deepening  the  great  canal, 
and  we  can  assure  ourselves  that  we  are  fairly 
abreast  of  the  most  distant  line  of  scouts  only 
when  we  come  to  Khiva,  to  Samarcand,  to 
Bokhara  and  the  Trans-Baikal  country. 

Just  now  one  hears  much  of  the  "  American 
commercial  invasion  of  England."  But  adjust 
the  field-glasses  and  look  beyond  Britain  and 
seach  for  the  blaze  that  the  scouts  have  left 
on  the  telegraph  poles  and  mile-posts  of 
Hungary,  Turkey,  Turkey  in  Asia,  Persia, 
Baluchistan,  India  and  Siam.  You'll  find  the 
blaze  distinct  and  the  road,  though  rough  hewn, 
is  easy  to  follow.  Prophecy  and  presumption 
be  far  from  us,  but  it  would  be  against  all 


The  Frontier  Gone  at  Last  77 

precedent  that  the  Grand  March  should  rest 
forever  upon  its  arms  and  its  laurels  along  the 
Thames,  the  Mersey  and  the  Clyde,  while  its 
pioneers  and  frontiersmen  are  making  roads 
for  it  to  the  Eastward. 

Is  it  too  huge  a  conception,  too  inordinate 
an  idea  to  say  that  the  American  conquest  of 
England  is  but  an  incident  of  the  Greater 
Invasion,  an  affair  of  outposts  preparatory  to 
the  real  maneuver  that  shall  embrace  Europe, 
Asia,  the  whole  of  the  Old  World?  Why  not? 
And  the  blaze  is  ahead  of  us,  and  every  now 
and  then  from  far  off  there  in  the  countries 
that  are  under  the  rising  sun  we  catch  the  faint 
sounds  of  the  skirmishing  of  our  outposts.  One 
of  two  things  invariably  happens  under  such 
circumstances  as  these:  either  the  outposts  fall 
back  upon  the  main  body  or  the  main  body 
moves  up  to  the  support  of  its  outposts.  One 
does  not  think  that  the  outposts  will  fall  back. 

And  so  goes  the  great  movement,  Westward, 
then  Eastward,  forward  and  then  back.  The 
motion  of  the  natural  forces,  the  elemental 
energies,  somehow  appear  to  be  thus  alterna- 
tive— action  first,  then  reaction.  The  tides 
ebb  and  flow  again,  the  seasons  have  their 
slow  vibrations,  touching  extremes  at  periodic 
intervals.  Not  impossibly,  in  the  larger  view, 


78       The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

is  the  analogy  applicable  to  the  movements  of 
the  races.  First  Westward  with  the  great 
migrations,  now  Eastward  with  the  course 
of  commerce,  moving  in  a  colossal  arc  measured 
only  by  the  hemispheres,  as  though  upon  the 
equator  a  giant  dial  hand  oscillated,  in  gradual 
divisions  through  the  centuries,  now  marking 
off  the  Westward  progress,  now  traveling  pro- 
portionately to  the  reaction  toward  the  East. 

Races  must  follow  their  destiny  blindly, 
but  is  it  not  possible  that  we  can  find  in  this 
great  destiny  of  ours  something  a  little  better 
than  mere  battle  and  conquest,  something  a 
little  more  generous  than  mere  trading  and 
underbidding?  Inevitably  with  constant 
change  of  environment  comes  the  larger  view, 
the  more  tolerant  spirit,  and  every  race  move- 
ment, from  the  first  step  beyond  the  Friesland 
swamp  to  the  adjustment  of  the  first  American 
theodolite  on  the  Himalayan  watershed,  is  an 
unconscious  lesson  in  patriotism.  Just  now 
we  cannot  get  beyond  the  self -laudatory  mood, 
but  is  it  not  possible  to  hope  that,  as  the  prog- 
ress develops,  a  new  patriotism,  one  that  shall 
include  all  peoples,  may  prevail?  The  past 
would  indicate  that  this  is  a  goal  toward  which 
we  trend. 

In  the  end  let  us  take  the  larger  view,  ignor- 
ing the  Frieslanders,  the  Anglo-Saxons,  the 


The  Frontier  Gone  at  Last  79 

Americans.  Let  us  look  at  the  peoples  as 
people  and  observe  how  inevitably  as  they 
answer  the  great  Westward  impulse  the  true 
patriotism  develops.  If  we  can  see  that  it  is 
so  with  all  of  them  we  can  assume  that  it  must 
be  so  with  us,  and  may  know  that  mere  victory 
in  battle  as  we  march  Westward,  or  mere 
supremacy  in  trade  as  we  react  to  the  East, 
is  not  after  all  the  great  achievement  of  the 
races,  but  patriotism.  Not  our  present  selfish 
day  conception  of  the  word,  but  a  new  patriot- 
ism, whose  meaning  is  now  the  secret  of  the 
coming  centuries. 

Consider  then  the  beginnings  of  patriotism. 
At  the  very  first,  the  seed  of  the  future  nation 
was  the  regard  of  family;  the  ties  of  common 
birth  held  men  together,  and  the  first  feeling 
of  patriotism  was  the  love  of  family.  But  the 
family  grows,  develops  by  lateral  branches, 
expands  and  becomes  the  clan.  Patriotism  is 
the  devotion  to  the  clan,  and  the  clansmen 
will  fight  and  die  for  its  supremacy. 

Then  comes  the  time  when  the  clans,  tired 
of  the  roving  life  of  herders,  halt  a  moment 
and  settle  down  in  a  chosen  spot;  the  tent, 
becoming  permanent,  evolves  the  dwelling- 
house,  and  the  encampment  of  the  clan  becomes 
at  last  a  city.  Patriotism  now  is  civic  pride; 
the  clan  absorbed  into  a  multitude  of  clans  is 


8o       The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

forgotten ;  men  speak  of  themselves  as  Atheni- 
ans, not  as  Greeks,  as  Romans,  not  as  Italians. 
It  is  the  age  of  cities. 

The  city  extends  its  adjoining  grazing  fields; 
they  include  outlying  towns,  other  cities,  and 
finally  the  State  comes  into  being.  Patriotism 
no  longer  confines  itself  to  the  walls  of  the 
city,  but  is  enlarged  to  encompass  the  entire 
province.  Men  are  Hanoverians  or  Wurt em- 
burgers,  not  Germans;  Scots  or  Welsh,  not 
English;  are  even  Carolinians  or  Alabamans 
rather  than  Americans. 

But  the  States  are  federated,  pronounced 
boundaries  fade,  State  makes  common  cause 
with  State,  and  at  last  the  nation  is  born. 
Patriotism  at  once  is  a  national  affair,  a  far 
larger,  broader,  truer  sentiment  than  that  first 
huddling  about  the  hearthstone  of  the  family. 
The  word  "  brother"  may  be  applied  to  men 
unseen  and  unknown,  and  a  countryman  is 
one  of  many  millions. 

We  have  reached  this  stage  at  the  present, 
but  if  all  signs  are  true,  if  all  precedent  may 
be  followed,  if  all  augury  may  be  relied  on 
and  the  tree  grow  as  we  see  the  twig  is  bent, 
the  progress  will  not  stop  here. 

By  war  to  the  Westward  the  family  fought 
its  way  upward  to  the  dignity  of  the  nation ;  by 
reaction  Eastward  the  nation  may  in  patriotic 


The  Frontier  Gone  at  Last  81 

effect  merge  with  other  nations,  and  others 
and  still  others,  peacefully,  the  bitterness  of 
trade  competition  may  be  lost,  the  business 
of  the  nations  seen  as  a  friendly  quid  pro  quo, 
give  and  take  arrangement,  guided  by  a  gen- 
erous reciprocity.  Every  century  the  bound- 
aries are  widening,  patriotism  widens  with 
the  expansion,  and  our  countrymen  are  those  of 
different  race,  even  different  nations. 

Will  it  not  go  on,  this  epic  of  civilization, 
this  destiny  of  the  races,  until  at  last  and  at 
the  ultimate  end  of  all  we  who  now  arrogantly 
boast  ourselves  as  Americans,  supreme  in 
conquest,  whether  of  battle-ship  or  of  bridge- 
building,  may  realize  that  the  true  patriotism 
is  the  brotherhood  of  man  and  know  that  the 
whole  world  is  our  nation  and  simple  humanity 
our  countrymen? 


THE  GREAT  AMERICAN 
NOVELIST 


THE  GREAT  AMERICAN  NOVELIST 

all  the  overworked  phrases  of  over- 
worked book  reviewers,  the  phrase,  the 
"Great  American  Novelist,"  is  beyond  doubt 
worn  the  thinnest  from  much  handling — or 
mishandling.  Continually  the  little  literary 
middlemen  who  come  between  the  producers 
and  the  consumers  of  fiction  are  mouthing  the 
words  with  a  great  flourish  of  adjectives,  scare- 
heading  them  in  Sunday  supplements  or  pla- 
carding them  on  posters,  crying  out,  "Lo,  he 
is  here!"  or  "lo,  there!"  But  the  heathen 
rage  and  the  people  imagine  a  vain  thing. 
The  G.  A.  N.  is  either  as  extinct  as  the  Dodo 
or  as  far  in  the  future  as  the  practical  aeroplane. 
He  certainly  is  not  discoverable  at  the  present. 

The  moment  a  new  writer  of  fiction  begins  to 
make  himself  felt  he  is  gibbeted  upon  this 
elevation — upon  this  false,  insecure  elevation, 
for  the  underpinning  is  of  the  flimsiest,  and  at 
any  moment  is  liable  to  collapse  under  the 
victim's  feet  and  leave  him  hanging  in  midair 
by  head  and  hands,  a  fixture  and  a  mockery. 

And  who  is  to  settle  the  title  upon  the  aspi- 
rant in  the  last  issue  ?  Who  is  to  determine 
85 


86       The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

what  constitutes  the  G.  A.  N.  Your  candidate 
may  suit  you,  but  your  neighbour  may  have 
a  very  different  standard  to  which  he  must 
conform.  It  all  depends  upon  what  you  mean 
by  Great,  what  you  mean  by  American.  Shake- 
speare has  been  called  great,  and  so  has  Mr. 
\  Stephen  Phillips.  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes 
was  American,  and  so  is  Bret  Harte.  Who  is 
to  say? 

And  many  good  people  who  deplore  the 
decay  of  American  letters  are  accustomed  to 
refer  to  the  absence  of  a  G.  A.  N.  as  though 
there  were  a  Great  English  Novelist  or  a  Great 
French  Novelist.  But  do  these  two  people 
exist?  Ask  any  dozen  of  your  friends  to 
mention  the  Great  English  Novelist,  and  out  of 
the  dozen  you  will  get  at  least  a  half-dozen 
different  names.  It  will  be  Dickens  or  Scott  or 
Thackeray  or  Bronte  or  Eliot  or  Stevenson, 
and  the  same  with  the  Frenchman.  And  it 
seems  to  me  that  if  a  novelist  were  great 
enough  to  be  universally  acknowledged  to  be 
the  Great  one  of  his  country,  he  would  cease 
to  belong  to  any  particular  geographical  area 
and  would  become  a  heritage  of  the  whole 
world ;  as  for  instance  Tolstoi ;  when  one  thinks 
of  him  it  is — is  it  not  ? — as  a  novelist  first  and 
as  a  Russian  afterward. 

But  if  one  wishes  to  split  hairs,  one  might 


The  Great  American  Novelist  87 

admit  that  while  the  Great  American  Novelist 
is  yet  to  be  born,  the  possibility  of  A — note 
the  indefinite  article — A  Great  American  Novel 
is  not  too  remote  for  discussion.  But  such  a 
novel  will  be  sectional.  The  United  States  is 
a  Union,  but  not  a  unit,  and  the  life  in  one  part 
is  very,  very  different  from  the  life  in  another. 
It  is  as  yet  impossible  to  construct  a  novel 
which  will  represent  all  the  various  charac- 
teristics of  the  different  sections.  It  is  only 
possible  to  make  a  picture  of  a  single  locality. 
What  is  true  of  the  South  is  not  true  of  the 
North.  The  West  is  different,  and  the  Pacific 
Coast  is  a  community  by  itself. 

Many  of  our  very  best  writers  are  working 
on  this  theory.  Bret  Harte  made  a  study  of 
the  West  as  he  saw  it,  and  Mr.  Howells  has 
done  the  same  for  the  East.  Cable  has  worked 
the  field  of  the  Far  South,  and  Eggleston  has 
gone  deep  into  the  life  of  the  Middle  West. 

But  consider  a  suggestion.  It  is  an  argu- 
ment on  the  other  side,  and  to  be  fair  one  must 
present  it.  It  is  a  good  argument,  and  if  based 
on  fact  is  encouraging  in  the  hope  that  the 
Great  man  may  yet  appear.  It  has  been  said 
that  "what  is  true — vitally  and  inherently 
true — for  any  one  man  is  true  for  all  men." 
Accordingly,  then,  what  is  vitally  true  of  the 
Westerner  is  true  of  the  Bostonian — yes,  and 


88       The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

of  the  creole.  So  that  if  Mr.  Cable,  say,  should 
only  go  deep  enough  into  the  hearts  and  lives  of 
his  Creoles,  he  would  at  last  strike  the  universal 
substratum  and  find  the  elemental  thing  that 
is  common  to  the  Creole  and  to  the  Puritan 
alike — yes,  and  to  the  Cowboy  and  Hoosier 
and  Greaser  and  Buckeye  and  Jay  Hawker, 
and  that,  once  getting  hold  of  that,  he  could 
produce  the  Great  American  Novel  that  should 
be  a  picture  of  the  entire  nation. 

Now,  that  is  a  very  ingenious  argument  and 
sounds  very  plausible.  But  it  won't  do,  and 
for  this  reason:  If  an  American  novelist 
should  go  so  deep  into  the  lives  of  the  people 
of  any  9ne  community  that  he  would  find  the 
thing  that  is  common  to  another  class  of  people 
a  thousand  miles  away,  he  would  have  gone 
too  deep  to  be  exclusively  American.  He 
would  not  only  be  American,  but  English  as 
well.  He  would  have  sounded  the  world-note ; 
he  would  be  a  writer  not  national,  but  inter- 
national, and  his  countrymen  would  be  all 
humanity,  not  the  citizens  of  any  one  nation. 
He  himself  would  be  a  heritage  of  the  whole 
world,  a  second  Tolstoi,  which  brings  us  back 
to  the  very  place  from  which  we  started. 

And  the  conclusion  of  the  whole  matter? 
That  fiction  is  very  good  or  very  bad — there 
is  no  middle  ground;  that  writers  of  fiction  ir> 


The  Great  American  Novelist  89 

their  points  of  view  are  either  limited  to  a  cir- 
cumscribed area  or  see  humanity  as  a  tremen- 
dous conglomerate  whole;  that  it  must  be 
either  Mary  Wilkins  or  George  Eliot,  Edward 
Eggleston  or  William  Shakespeare;  that  the 
others  do  not  weigh  very  much  in  the  balance 
of  the  world's  judgment;  and  that  the  Great 
American  Novel  is  not  extinct  like  the  Dodo, 
but  mythical  like  the  Hippogriff ,  and  that  the 
thing  to  be  looked  for  is  not  the  Great  American 
Novelist,  but  the  Great  Novelist  who  shall  also 
be  an  American. 


NEW  YORK  AS  A  LITERARY 
CENTRE 


NEW  YORK  AS  A  LITERARY  CENTRE 

TT  has  been  given  to  the  present  writer 
•*•  to  know  a  great  many  of  what  one 
may  call  The  Unarrived  in  literary  work,  and 
of  course  to  be  one  himself  of  that  "innumer- 
able caravan,"  and  speaking  authoritatively 
and  of  certain  knowledge,  the  statement  may 
be  made,  that  of  all  the  ambitions  of  the  Great 
Unpublished,  the  one  that  is  strongest,  the 
most  abiding,  is  the  ambition  to  get  to  New 
York.  For  these,  New  York  is  the  "point  de 
depart,"  the  pedestal,  the  niche,  the  indispensa- 
ble vantage  ground;  as  one  of  the  unpub- 
lished used  to  put  it :  "  It  is  a  place  that  I  can 
stand  on  and  holler." 

This  man  lived  in  a  second-class  town  west 
of  the  Mississippi,  and  one  never  could  persuade 
him  that  he  might  holler  from  his  own,  his 
native  heath,  and  yet  be  heard.  He  said  it 
would  be  "the  voice  of  one  crying  in  the 
wilderness."  New  York  was  the  place  for 
him.  Once  land  him  in  New  York  and  all 
would  be  gas  and  gaiters. 

There  are  so  many  thousands  like  this  young 
man  of  mine  that  a  word  in  this  connection 

93 


94       The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

seems  appropriate;  and  the  object  of  this 
present  writing  is  to  protest  against  this  blind 
and  unreasoned  hegira,  and  to  urge  the  point 
that  tradition,  precedent  to  the  contrary  not- 
withstanding, New  York  is  not  a  literary 
centre. 

I  am  perfectly  well  aware  that  this  statement 
savours  of  hearsay,  but  at  the  same  time  I  think 
it  can  be  defended.  As  for  instance : 

Time  was  when  Boston  claimed  the  dis- 
tinction that  one  now  denies  to  New  York. 
But  one  asserts  that  Boston  made  her  claims 
good.  In  those  days  the  reactionary  movement 
of  populations  from  the  cities  toward  the  coun- 
try had  not  set  in.  A  constant  residence 
winter  and  summer  in  the  country  was  not 
dreamed  of  by  those  who  had  the  leisure  and 
the  money  to  afford  it.  As  much  as  possible 
the  New  England  writers  crowded  to  Boston, 
or  to  Cambridge,  which  is  practically  the  same 
thing,  and  took  root  in  the  place.  There  was 
their  local  habitation;  there  they  lived,  and 
thence  they  spread  their  influence.  Remember 
that  at  the  height  of  the  development  of  the 
New  England  school  there  were  practically  no 
other  writers  of  so  great  importance  the  length 
and  breadth  of  the  land.  This  huddling  about 
a  common  point  made  it  possible  to  visit  all 
the  homes  of  nearly  all  of  the  most  eminent 


New  York  as  a  Literary  Centre          95 

American  literati  in  a  single  day.  The  younger 
men,  the  aspirants,  the  Unpublished,  however, 
thrown  into  such  society,  could  not  fail  to  be 
tremendously  impressed,  and,  banded  together 
as  these  great  ones  were,  their  influence  counted 
enormously.  It  was  no  unusual  sight  to  see 
half  a  dozen  of  these  at  the  same  dinner  table. 
They  all  knew  each  other  intimately,  these 
Bostonians,  and  their  word  was  Lex,  and  the 
neophites  came  from  all  corners  of  the  compass 
to  hear  them  speak,  and  Boston  did  in  good 
earnest  become  the  Hub,  the  centre  of  Literary 
thought  and  work  in  the  United  States. 

But  no  such  conditions  obtain  in  New  York 
to-day.  During  the  last  ten  years  two  very 
important  things  have  happened  that  bear  upon 
this  question.  First  has  come  the  impulse 
toward  a  country  life — a  continued  winter  and 
summer  residence  in  the  country.  Authors 
more  than  any  other  class  of  workers  can  afford 
this  since  their  profession  can  be  carried  any- 
where. They  need  no  city  offices.  They 
are  not  forced  to  be  in  touch  with  the  actual 
business  life  of  Broadway.  Secondly,  since 
the  days  of  the  Bostonian  supremacy  a  tre- 
mendous wave  of  literary  production  has 
swept  over  the  United  States.  Now  England 
has  ceased  to  be  the  only  place  where  books  are 
written.  Poems  are  now  indited  in  Dakota, 


g6       The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

novels  composed  in  Wyoming,  essays  written 
in  Utah,  and  criticisms  flourish  in  Kansas.  A 
thousand  and  one  Little  Centres  have  sprung 
up.  Literary  groups  are  formed  everywhere, 
in  Buffalo,  in  San  Francisco,  in  Indianapolis 
and  Chicago. 

All  this  detracts  from  the  preponderance  of 
any  one  city,  such  as  New  York,  as  Literary 
dictator.  You  shall  find  but  a  very  small  and 
meager  minority  of  the  Greater  Men  of  Letters 
who  have  their  homes  in  Manhattan.  Most  of 
them  preferred  to  live  in  the  places  whereof 
they  treat  in  their  books,  in  New  Orleans, 
in  Indiana,  in  Kentucky,  or  Virginia,  or 
California,  or  Kansas,  or  Illinois.  If  they 
come  to  New  York  at  all  it  is  only  tem- 
porarily, to  place  their  newest  book  or  to 
arrange  with  publishers  for  future  work. 

The  result  of  this  is  as  is  claimed.  New 
York  is  not  a  literary  centre.  The  publishing 
houses  are  there,  the  magazines,  all  the  dis- 
tributing machinery,  but  not  the  writers.  They 
do  not  live  there.  They  do  not  care  to  come 
there.  They  regard  the  place  simply  as  a 
distributing  point  for  their  wares. 

Literary  centres  produce  literary  men.  Paris, 
London  and  Boston  all  have  their  long  lists  of 
native-born  writers — men  who  were  born  in 
these  cities  and  whose  work  was  identified 


New  York  as  a  Literary  Centre          97 

with  them.  But  New  York  can  claim  but 
ridiculously  few  of  the  men  of  larger  caliber 
as  her  own.  James  Whitcomb  Riley  is  from 
Indiana,  Joel  Chandler  Harris  is  a  Southerner. 
Howells  came  from  Boston,  Cable  from  New 
Orleans,  Hamlin  Garland  from  the  West.  Bret 
Harte  from  California,  Mark  Twain  from  the 
Middle  West,  Harold  Frederic  and  Henry 
James  found  England  more  congenial  than  the 
greatest  city  of  their  native  land.  Even  among 
the  younger  generation  there  are  but  few  who 
can  be  considered  as  New  Yorkers.  Although 
Richard  Harding  Davis  wrote  accurately  and 
delightfully  of  New  York  people,  he  was  not 
born  in  New  York,  did  not  receive  his  first 
impetus  from  New  York  influences,  and  does 
not  now  live  in  New  York.  Nor  is  his  best 
work  upon  themes  or  subjects  in  any  way 
related  to  New  York. 

In  view  of  all  these  facts  it  is  difficult  to  see 
what  the  Great  Unpublished  have  to  gain  by 
a  New  York  residence.  Indeed,  it  is  much 
easier  to  see  how  very  much  they  have  to  lose. 

The  writing  of  fiction  has  many  drawbacks, 
but  one  of  its  blessed  compensations  is  the  fact 
that  of  all  the  arts  it  is  the  most  independent. 
Independent  of  time,  of  manner  and  of  place. 
Wherever  there  is  a  table  and  quiet,  there  the 
novel  may  be  written.  "Ah,  but  the  publishing 


98       The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

houses  are  in  New  York."  What  has  that  to  do 
with  it?  Do  not  for  a  moment  suppose  that 
your  novel  will  be  considered  more  carefully 
because  you  submit  it  in  person.  It  is  not  as 
though  you  were  on  the  lookout  for  odd  jobs 
which,  because  of  a  personal  acquaintance  with 
editors  and  publishers,  might  be  put  in  your 
way.  The  article,  the  story,  the  essay,  poem 
or  novel  is  just  as  good,  just  as  available,  just  as 
salable  whether  it  comes  from  Washington 
Territory  or  Washington  Square. 

Not  only  this,  but  one  believes  that  actual 
residence  in  New  York  is  hostile  and  inimical 
to  good  work.  The  place,  admittedly,  teems 
with  literary  clubs,  circles,  associations,  organ- 
izations of  pseudo-literati,  who  foregather  at 
specified  times  to  ''read  papers"  and  "discuss 
questions."  It  is  almost  impossible  for  the 
young  writer  who  comes  for  a  first  time  to  the 
city  to  avoid  entangling  himself  with  them; 
and  of  the  influences  that  tend  to  stultify 
ambition,  warp  original  talent  and  definably 
and  irretrievably  stamp  out  the  last  spark  of 
productive  ability  one  knows  of  none  more 
effective  than  the  literary  clubs. 

You  will  never  find  the  best  men  at  these 
gatherings.  You  will  never  hear  the  best  work 
read  in  this  company,  you  will  never  evolve 
any  original,  personal,  definite  ideas  or  ideals 


New  York  as  a  Literary  Centre          99 

under  such  influence.  The  discussions  of  the 
literary  clubs  are  made  up  of  puerile  argu- 
ments that  have  done  duty  for  years  in  the 
college  text-books.  Their  work — the  papers 
quoted  and  stories  read  aloud — is  commonplace 
and  conventional  to  the  deadliest  degree,  while 
their  "originality" — the  ideas  that  they  claim 
are  their  very  own — is  nothing  but  a  distor- 
tion and  dislocation  of  preconceived  notions, 
mere  bizarre  effects  of  the  grotesque  and  the 
improbable.  "Ah,  but  the  spur  of  competi- 
tion." Competition  is  admirable  in  trade — 
it  is  even  desirable  in  certain  arts.  It  has  no 
place  in  a  literary  career.  It  is  not  as  though 
two  or  more  writers  were  working  on  the 
same  story,  each  striving  to  better  the  others. 
That  would,  indeed,  be  true  competition.  But 
in  New  York,  where  the  young  writer — any 
writer — may  see  a  dozen  instances  in  a  week  of 
what  he  knows  is  inferior  work  succeeding 
where  he  fails,  competition  is  robbed  of  all 
stimulating  effect  and,  if  one  is  not  very  careful, 
leaves  only  the  taste  of  ashes  in  the  mouth 
and  rancour  and  discontent  in  the  heart. 

With  other  men's  novels  the  novelist  has 
little  to  do.  What  this  writer  is  doing,  what 
that  one  is  saying,  what  books  this  publishing 
house  is  handling,  how  many  copies  so-and-so's 
book  is  selling — all  this  fuss  and  feathers 


ioo     The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

of  "New  York  as  a  literary  centre"  should  be 
for  him  so  many  distractions.  It  is  all  very- 
well  to  say  "let  us  keep  in  touch  with  the 
best  thought  in  our  line  of  work."  "Let  us  be 
in  the  movement."  The  best  thought  is  not 
in  New  York;  and  even  if  it  were,  the  best 
thought  of  other  men  is  not  so  good  for  you  as 
your  own  thought,  dug  out  of  your  own  vitals 
by  your  own  unaided  efforts,  be  it  never  so 
inadequate. 

You  do  not  have  to  go  to  New  York  for  that. 
Your  own  ideas,  your  own  work  will  flourish 
best  if  left  alone  untrammeled  and  uninfluenced. 
And  believe  this  to  be  true,  that  wherever 
there  is  a  table,  a  sheet  of  paper  and  a  pot  of 
ink,  there  is  a  Literary  Centre  if  you  will.  You 
will  find  none  better  the  world  over. 


THE  AMERICAN  PUBLIC  AND 
"POPULAR"   FICTION 


THE  AMERICAN   PUBLIC  AND  u  POPU- 
LAR" FICTION 

HE  American  people  judged  by  Old  World 
standards — even  sometimes  according 
to  native  American  standards — have  always 
been  considered  a  practical  people,  a  material 
people. 

We  have  been  told  and  have  also  told  our- 
selves that  we  are  hard-headed,  that  we  rejoiced 
in  facts  and  not  in  fancies,  and  as  an  effect  of 
this  characteristic  were  not  given  to  books. 
We  were  not  literary,  we  assumed,  were  not 
fond  of  reading.  We,  who  were  subjugating 
a  continent,  who  were  inventing  machinery 
and  building  railroads,  left  it  to  the  older  and 
more  leisurely  nations — to  France  and  to 
England  to  read  books. 

On  the  face  of  it  this  would  seem  a  safe 
assumption.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  American 
people  are  the  greatest  readers  in  the  world. 
That  is  to  say,  that,  count  for  count,  there 
are  more  books  read  in  the  United  States  in  one 
year  than  in  any  other  country  of  the  globe  in 
the  same  space  of  time. 

Nowhere  do  the  circulations  attain  such 
103 


104     The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

magnitude  as  they  do  with  us.  A  little  while 
ago — ten  years  ago — the  charge  that  we  did 
not  read  was  probably  true.  But  there  must 
exist  some  mysterious  fundamental  connection 
between  this  recent  sudden  expansion  of  things 
American — geographic,  commercial  and  other- 
wise— and  the  demand  for  books.  Imperialism, 
Trade  Expansion,  the  New  Prosperity  and  the 
Half  Million  Circulation  all  came  into  existence 
at  about  the  same  time. 

Merely  the  fact  of  great  prosperity  does  not 
account  for  the  wider  reading.  Prosperous 
periods,  good  prices,  easy  credit  and  a  mobile 
currency  have  occurred  often  before  without 
producing  the  demand  for  books.  Something 
more  than  prosperity  has  suddenly  swept  across 
the  continent  and  evaded  the  spirit  of  the 
times.  Something  very  like  an  awakening, 
something  very  like  a  renaissance  and  the 
70,000,000  have  all  at  once  awakened  to  the 
fact  that  there  are  books  to  be  read.  As 
with  all  things  sudden,  there  is  noticeable  with 
this  awakening  a  lack  of  discrimination,  the 
70,000,000  are  so  eager  for  books  that,  faute 
de  mieux,  anything  printed  will  pass  current  for 
literature.  It  is  a  great  animal,  this  American 
public,  and  having  starved  for  so  long,  it  is 
ready,  once  aroused,  to  devour  anything.  And 
the  great  presses  of  the  country  are  for  the  most 


The  American  Public  and  "Popular"  Fiction  105 

part  merely  sublimated  sausage  machines  that 
go  dashing  along  in  a  mess  of  paper  and  printer's 
ink  turning  out  the  meat  for  the  monster. 

There  are  not  found  wanting  many  who 
deplore  this  and  who  blackguard  the  great 
brute  for  his  appetite.  Softly,  softly.  If  the 
Megatherium  has  been  obliged  to  swallow 
wind  for  sustenance  for  several  hundred  years, 
it  would  be  unkind  to  abuse  him  because  he  eats 
the  first  lot  of  spoiled  hay  or  over-ripe  twigs 
that  is  thrust  under  the  snout  of  him.  Patience 
and  shuffle  the  cards.  Once  his  belly  filled,  and 
the  pachyderm  will  turn  to  the  new-mown 
grass  and  fruit  trees  in  preference  to  the  hay 
and  twigs. 

So  the  studios  and  the  Browning  classes  need 
not  altogether  revile  the  great  American  public. 
Better  bad  books  than  no  books ;  better  half  a 
loaf  of  hard  bread  than  no  frosted  wedding- 
cake.  The  American  people,  unlike  the  English, 
unlike  the  French  and  other  Europeans,  have 
not  been  educated  and  refined  and  endoctrinated 
for  2,000  years,  and  when  you  remember  what 
they  have  done  in  one  hundred  years,  tamed  an 
entire  continent,  liberated  a  race,  produced  a 
Lincoln,  invented  the  telegraph,  spanned  the 
plains — when  you  remember  all  this,  do  not 
spurn  the  70,000,000  because  they  do  not 
understand  Henry  James,  but  be  glad  that  they 


io6     The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

even  care  for  "The  Duchess"  and  "Ouida." 
The  wonder  of  it  is  not  that  they  do  not  read 
or  appreciate  the  best,  but  that  they  have  set 
apart  any  time  at  all  in  the  struggle  of  civiliz- 
ing the  wilderness  and  forging  steel  rivets  to 
so  much  as  pick  up  any  kind  or  description  of 
a  book. 

Consider  the  other  nations,  France  for 
instance — the  very  sanctum  of  Art,  the  home 
and  birthplace  of  literature.  Compare  the 
rural  districts  of  France  with  the  rural  dis- 
tricts of  the  United  States,  and  in  the  com- 
parison allow,  if  you  like,  for  all  the  centuries 
of  quiet  uninterrupted  growth,  the  wilderness 
tamed,  life  domesticated,  reduced  to  routine 
that  modern  France  enjoys.  Do  you  suppose  for 
one  moment  that  a  bourgeois  family  of — say — 
Tours  is  on  the  same  level  in  the  matter  of 
its  reading  as  the  household  of  a  contractor's 
family  in — for  example — Martinez,  California, 
or  Cheyenne,  Wyoming  ? 

I  tell  you  there  is  no  comparison  whatever. 
The  West  may  be  wild  even  yet,  may  be  what 
Boston  would  call  uncultured,  but  it  reads. 
There  are  people  in  Cheyenne  and  Martinez 
who  can  express  an  opinion — and  a  more 
intelligent  opinion,  mark  you — on  Maeterlinck 
and  Bourget,  better  than  the  same  class  of 
readers  in  Belgium  and  France.  And  quite 


The  American  Public  and  "Popular"  Fiction  107 

as  likely  as  not  the  same  class  of  people  in  the 
very  native  countries  of  the  two  writers  named 
have  never  so  much  as  heard  of  these  writers. 

This,  admittedly,  is  the  exception,  but  if  our 
exceptional  Martinez  and  Cheyenne  people  are 
so  far  advanced  in  literary  criticism,  we  may 
reasonably  expect  that  the  rank  and  file  below 
them  are  proportionately  well  on.  Maeterlinck 
and  Bourget  are  closed  books  to  those  rank- 
and-file  readers  yet.  But  again  I  say,  this  is  not 
the  point.  The  point  is,  that  they  are  readers 
at  all.  Let  them — in  the  name  of  future 
American  literature — read  their  Duchesses  and 
Ouidas  and  Edna  Lyalls  and  Albert  Rosses. 
What  are  their  prototypes  in  France,  Germany 
and  Russia  reading?  They  simply  are  not 
reading  at  all,  and  as  often  as  not  it  is  not 
because  of  the  lack  of  taste,  but  because  of 
the  lack  of  sheer  downright  ability,  because 
they  do  not  know  how  to  read. 

A  very  great  man  once  said  that  "  books 
never  have  done  harm,"  and  under  this  sign  let 
us  conquer.  There  is  hardly  a  better  to  be 
found.  Instead,  then,  of  deploring  the  vast 
circulation  of  mediocre  novels,  let  us  take 
the  larger  view  and  find  in  the  fact  not  a 
weakness,  but  a  veritable  strength.  The  more 
one  reads — it  is  a  curious  consolatory  fact — 
the  more  one  is  apt  to  discriminate.  The 


io8     The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

ten-year-old  who  reads  "Old  Sleuth"  to-day, 
in  a  little  while  will  find  Scott  more  to  his  liking. 
Just  now  the  70,000,000  is  ten  years  old.  But 
it  is  started  right.  Patience.  Books  have 
never  done  harm,  and  in  the  end  let  us  be 
certain  that  the  day  will  come  when  the  real 
masterpiece,  the  real  literature,  will  also  be 
selling  in  its  "five  hundredth  thousand." 


CHILD  STORIES  FOR  ADULTS 


CHILD  STORIES  FOR  ADULTS 

'TpHERE  was  a  time,  none  too  remote  at 
•*•  this  date  of  writing,  when  juvenile  and 
adult  fiction  were  two  separate  and  distinct 
classifications.  Boys  read  stories  for  boys 
and  girls  stories  for  girls,  and  the  adults  con- 
tented themselves  with  the  wise  lucubrations 
of  their  equals  in  years.  But  the  last  few 
years  have  changed  all  that — have  changed 
everything  in  American  literature,  in  fact. 

Some  far-distant  day,  when  the  critics  and 
litterateurs  of  the  twenty-second  and  twenty- 
third  centuries  shall  be  writing  of  our  day  and 
age,  they  will  find  a  name  for  the  sudden  and 
stupendous  demand  for  reading  matter  that 
has  penetrated  to  all  classes  and  corners  since 
1890.  A  great  deal  could  be  said  upon  this 
sudden  demand  in  itself,  and  I  think  it  can  be 
proved  to  be  the  first  effects  of  a  genuine  awak- 
ening— a  second  Renaissance.  But  the  sub- 
ject would  demand  an  article  by  itself,  and 
in  the  meanwhile  we  may  use  the  term  awaken- 
ing as  a  self-evident  fact  and  consider  not  so 
much  the  cause  as  the  effects. 

One  of  the  effects,  as  has  been  already  sug- 
iii 


ii2      The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

gested,  is  the  change  in  classifications.  Old 
forms  and  formulas  are,  or  are  being  rapidly 
broken  up,  and  one  school  and  style  merging 
into  others,  till  now  what  was  once  amusement 
for  the  children  has  become  entertaining  for  the 
elders.  And  vice  versa.  The  abruptness  of 
the  awakening  has  disjointed  and  inverted  all 
the  old  fabric.  "Robinson  Crusoe,"  written 
for  adults,  is  now  exclusively  a  "juvenile," 
while  "Treasure  Island,"  written  for  boys,  has 
been  snapped  up  by  the  parents. 

Simultaneously  with  this  topsy-turvy  busi- 
ness, and  I  am  sure  in  some  way  connected 
with  it,  comes  the  craze  for  stories  about  very 
young  children  for  adult  reading.  A  boy's 
story  must  now  be  all  about  the  doings  of  men, 
fighters  preferably,  man-slayers,  terrible  fellows 
full  of  blood  and  fury,  stamping  on  their 
quarter-decks  or  counting  doubloons  by  torch- 
light on  unnamed  beaches.  Meanwhile  the 
boy's  father  with  a  solemn  interest  is  following 
the  fortunes  of  some  terrible  infant  of  the 
kindergarten,  or  the  vagaries  of  a  ten-year-old 
of  a  country  town,  or  the  teacup  tragedy  of 
"The  Very  Little  Girl,"  or  "The  Indiscretion 
of  Pinky  Trevethan,"  or  "The  Chastening  of 
Skinny  McCleave,"  etc.,  etc. 

It  is  interesting  to  try  to  account  for  this. 
It  may  either  be  a  fad  or  a  phase.  It  is  almost 


Child  Stories  for  Adults  113 

too  soon  to  tell,  but  in  either  case  the  matter 
is  worth  considering. 

Roughly  speaking,  the  Child's  Stories  for 
Adults  fall  into  three  classes.  First  there  is 
'The  Strange  Child  Story."  This  is  a  very 
old  favourite,  and  was  pretty  well  installed 
long  before  the  more  recent  developments. 
In  "The  Strange  Child  Story"  the  bid  for  the 
reader's  pity  and  sympathy  fairly  clamoured 
from  between  the  lines.  Always  and  per- 
sistently The  Strange  Child  was  misunderstood. 
He  had  "indefinable  longings"  that  were 
ridiculed,  budding  talents  that  were  nipped, 
heartaches  —  terrible,  tear-compelling  heart- 
aches— that  were  ignored;  and  he  lived  in  an 
atmosphere  of  gloom,  hostility  and  loneliness 
that  would  have  maddened  an  eremite. 

But  as  his  kind  declined  in  popular  esti- 
mate the  country  boy,  the  ten-year-old — who 
always  went  in  swimmin'  and  lost  his  tow — 
appeared  in  the  magazines.  There  is  no 
sentiment  about  him.  Never  a  tear  need  be 
shed  over  the  vicarious  atonements  of  Pinky 
Trevethan  or  Skinny  McCleave. 

It  is  part  of  the  game  to  pretend  that  the 
Pinkys  and  Skinnys  and  Peelys  and  Mickeys 
are  different  individuals.  Error.  They  are 
merely  different  names  of  the  boy  that  peren- 
nially and  persistently  remains  the  same.  Do 


ii4     The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

you  know  who  he  is?  He  is  the  average 
American  business  man  before  he  grew  up. 
That  accounts  for  his  popularity.  The  average 
business  man  had  clean  forgotten  all  about 
those  early  phases  of  primitive  growth,  and  it 
amuses  him  immensely  to  find  out  that  the 
scribe  has  been  making  a  study  of  him  and 
bringing  to  light  the  forgotten  things  that  are 
so  tremendously  familiar  when  presented  to 
the  consideration.  It  is  not  fiction  nor  yet 
literature  in  the  straightest  sense  of  the  word, 
this  rehabilitation  of  Skinny  McCleave.  It  has 
a  value  vaguely  scientific,  the  same  value  that  a 
specimen,  a  fossil  insect,  has  when  brought  to 
the  attention  of  the  savant.  It  is  the  study  of 
an  extinct  species,  a  report  upon  the  American 
boy  of  thirty  years  ago. 

Then  lastly — the  latest  development — there 
is  the  cataclysm  of  the  kindergarten,  the 
checked  apron  drama,  the  pigtail  passion,  the 
epic  of  the  broken  slate-pencil.  This  needs 
a  delicacy  of  touch  that  only  a  woman  can 
supply,  and  as  a  matter  of  fact  it  is  for  the  most 
part  women  who  sign  the  stories.  The  interest 
in  these  is  not  so  personal  and  retrospective  as 
in  the  Skinny  McCleave  circle,  for  the  kinder- 
garten is  too  recent  to  be  part  of  the  childhood 
memories  of  the  present  generation  of  adult 
magazine  readers.  It  is  more  informative,  a 


Child  Stories  for  Adults  115 

presentation  of  conditions  hitherto  but  vaguely 
known,  and  at  the  same  time  it  is  an  attempt  to 
get  at  and  into  the  heart  and  head  of  a  little 
child. 

And  in  this  last  analysis  it  would  seem  as  if 
here  existed  the  barrier  insurmountable.  It 
is  much  to  be  doubted  if  ever  a  genius  will 
arise  so  thoughtful,  so  sensitive  that  he  will 
penetrate  into  more  than  the  merest  outside 
integument  of  a  child's  heart.  Certain  phases 
have  been  guessed  at  with  beautiful  intention, 
certain  rare  insights  have  been  attained 
with  exquisite  nicety,  but  somehow  even 
the  most  sympathetic  reader  must  feel 
that  the  insight  is  as  rare  as  the  interest  is 
misguided. 

Immanuel  Kant  conceived  of,  and,  in  the 
consummate  power  of  his  intellect,  executed 
the  "Critique  of  Pure  Reason ";  Darwin  had 
taken  the  adult  male  and  female  human  and 
tracked  down  their  every  emotion,  impulse, 
quality  and  sentiment.  The  intellectual  powers 
and  heart-beats  of  a  Napoleon  or  a  Shake- 
speare have  been  reduced  to  more  common- 
place corner  gossip,  but  after  thousands  of 
years  of  civilization,  with  the  subject  ever  be- 
fore us,  its  workings  as  near  to  us  as  air  itself, 
the  mind  of  a  little  child  is  as  much  a  closed 
book,  as  much  an  enigma,  as  much  a  blank 


n6      The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

space    upon    the    charts    of    our    intellectual 
progress  as  at  the  very  first. 

Volumes  have  been  written  about  the  child, 
and  stories  for  and  of  the  child,  and  very 
learned  men  have  lectured  and  other  very 
eminent  and  noble  men  have  taught,  and  it 
has  all  been  going  on  for  nineteen  hundred  and 
two  years.  And  yet,  notwithstanding  all  this, 
there  lurks  a  mystery  deep  down  within  the 
eye  of  the  five-year-old,  a  mystery  that  neither 
you  nor  I  may  know.  You  may  see  and 
understand  what  he  actually  does,  but  the 
thinking  part  of  him  is  a  second  hidden  nature 
that  belongs  to  him  and  to  other  children,  not 
to  adults,  not  even  to  his  mother.  Once  the 
older  person  invades  the  sphere  of  influence  of 
this  real  undernature  of  the  child  and  it  congeals 
at  once.  It  thaws  and  thrives  only  in  the 
company  of  other  children,  and  at  the  best  we 
older  ones  may  see  it  from  a  distance  and  from 
the  outside.  Between  us  and  them  it  would 
appear  that  a  great  gulf  is  bridged;  there 
is  no  knowing  the  child  as  he  really  is,  and  until 
the  real  child  can  be  known  the  stories  about 
him  and  the  fiction  and  literature  about  him 
can  at  best  be  only  a  substitute  for  the  real 
knowledge  that  probably  never  shall  be  ours. 


NEWSPAPER  CRITICISMS  AND 
AMERICAN  FICTION 


NEWSPAPER  CRITICISMS  AND  AMERICAN 
FICTION 

/TpHE  limitations  of  space  impose  a  re- 
-*•  stricted  title,  and  one  hastens  to 
qualify  the  substantive  " criticisms"  by  the 
adjective  ''average."  Even  "average"  is  not 
quite  specialized  enough;  "vast  majority"  is 
more  to  the  sense,  and  the  proposition  expanded 
to  its  fullest  thus  stands,  "How  is  the  vast 
majority  of  newspaper  criticisms  made,  and 
how  does  it  affect  American  Fiction?"  And 
it  may  not  be  inappropriate  at  the  outset  to 
observe  that  one  has  adventured  both  hazards 
— criticism  (of  the  "vast  majority"  kind)  and 
also  Fiction.  One  has  criticized  and  has  been 
criticized.  Possibly  then  it  may  be  permitted 
to  speak  a  little  authoritatively;  not  as  the 
Scribes.  Has  it  not  astonished  you  how  many 
of  those  things  called  by  the  new  author 
"favourable  reviews"  may  attach  themselves 
— barnacles  upon  a  lifeless  hulk — to  a  novel 
that  you  know,  that  you  know  every  one  must, 
must  know,  is  irretrievably  bad?  "On  the 
whole,  Mr. 's  story  is  a  capital  bit  of  vigor- 
ous writing  that  we  joyfully  recommend" — 
119 


i2o     The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

11 A  thrilling  story  palpitating  with  life,"  "One 
of  the  very  best  novels  that  has  appeared  in 
a  long  time,"  and  the  ever-new,  ever-dutiful, 
ever-ready  encomium,  "  Not  a  dull  page  in  the 
book"  (as  if  by  the  furthest  stretch  of  con- 
ceivable human  genius  a  book  could  be  written 
that  did  not  have  a  dull  page ;  as  if  dull  pages 
were  not  an  absolute  necessity).  All  these 
you  may  see  strung  after  the  announcement  of 
publication  of  the  novel.  No  matter,  I  repeat, 
how  outrageously  bad  the  novel  may  be.  Now 
there  is  an  explanation  of  this  matter,  and  it 
is  to  be  found  not  in  the  sincere  admiration 
of  little  reviewers  who  lack  the  ingenuity  to 
invent  new  phrases,  but  in  the  following  fact: 
it  is  easier  to  write  favourable  than  unfavour- 
able reviews.  It  must  be  borne  in  mind  that 
very  few  newspapers  (comparatively)  employ 
regularly  paid  book-reviewers  whose  business 
it  is  to  criticize  novels — and  nothing  else.  Most 
book-reviewing  is  done  as  an  odd  job  by  sub- 
editors, assistants  and  special  writers  in  the 
intervals  between  their  regular  work.  They 
come  to  the  task  with  a  brain  already  jaded, 
an  interest  so  low  as  to  be  almost  negligible, 
and  with — as  often  as  not — a  mind  besieged 
by  a  thousand  other  cares,  responsibilities 
and  projects. 

The    chief    has    said    something    like    this 


Newspaper  Criticisms  and  American  Fiction  121 

(placing  upon  the  scribe's  table  a  column  of 
novels  easily  four  feet  high,  sent  in  for  review) : 

"Say,  B ,  these  things  have  been  stacking 

up  like  the  devil  lately,  and  I  don't  want  'em 
kicking  'round  the  office  any  longer.  Get 
through  with  them  as  quick  as  you  can,  and 
remember  that  in  an  hour  there's  such  and 
such  to  be  done." 

I  tell  you  I  have  seen  it  happen  like  this  a 
hundred  times.  And  the  scribe  "must"  read 
and  "review"  between  twenty  and  thirty 
books  in  an  hour's  time.  One  way  of  doing  it 
is  to  search  in  the  pages  of  the  book  for  the 
"publisher's  notice,"  a  printed  slip  that  has  a 
favourable  review — that  is  what  it  amounts 
to — all  ready-made.  The  scribe  merely  turns 
this  in  with  a  word  altered  here  and  there. 
How  he  reviews  the  books  that  have  not  this 
publisher's  notice  Heaven  only  knows.  He 
is  not  to  blame,  as  they  must  be  done  in 
.an  hour.  Twenty  books  in  sixty  minutes — 
three  minutes  to  each  book.  Now,  it  is  impos- 
sible to  criticize  a  book  adversely  after  a 
minute  and  a  half  of  reading  (we  will  allow  a 
minute  and  a  half  for  writing  the  review).  In 
order  to  write  unfavourably  it  is  necessary  to 
know  what  one  is  writing  about.  But  it  is 
astonishing  how  much  commendatory  palaver 
already  exists  that  can  be  applied  to  any  kind 


122     The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

or  condition  of  novel.  Is  it  a  novel  of  adven- 
ture (the  reviewer  may  know  if  it  be  such  by 
the  ship  on  the  cover  design) — it  will  be  appro- 
priate to  use  these  terms:  " Vibrant  with 
energy,"  or  "Full  of  fine  fighting,"  or  "The 
reader  is  carried  with  breathless  interest  from 
page  to  page  of  this  exciting  romance."  Is  it 
a  novel  of  rural  life  ?  These  may  be  made  use 
of :  "  Replete  with  quaint  humour,"  "  A  faithful 
picture  of  an  interesting  phase  of  American 
life,"  etc.,  etc.  Is  it  a  story  of  the  West  (you 
can  guess  that  from  the  chapter  headings),  it 
will  be  proper  to  say,  "A  strong  and  vital  por- 
traying of  the  wild  life  of  the  trail  and  frontier." 

And  so  one  might  run  through  the  entire 
list.  The  books  must  be  reviewed,  the  easiest 
way  is  the  quickest,  and  the  quickest  way  is 
to  write  in  a  mild  and  meaningless  phraseology, 
innocuous,  "favourable."  In  this  fashion  is 
made  the  greater  mass  of  American  criticism. 
As  to  effects:  It  nas  of  course  no  effect  upon 
the  novel's  circulation.  Only  one  person  is  at 
all  apt  to  take  these  reviews,  this  hack-work, 
seriously. 

Only  one  person,  I  observed,  is  at  all  apt  to 
take  these  reviews  seriously.  This  way  lies  the 
harm.  The  new  writer,  the  young  fellow  with 
his  first  book,  who  may  not  know  the  ways  of 
reviewers.  The  author,  who  collects  these 


Newspaper  Criticisms  and  American  Fiction  123 

notices  and  pastes  them  in  a  scrap-book.  He 
is  perilously  prone  to  believe  what  the  hacks 
say,  to  believe  that  there  is  "no  dull  page  in 
the  story,"  that  his  novel  is  "  one  of  the  notable 
contributions  to  recent  fiction,"  and  cherishing 
this  belief  he  is  fated  to  a  wrench  and  a  heart- 
ache when,  six  months  after  publication  day, 
the  semi-annual  account  of  copies  sold  is 
rendered.  There  is  unfortunately  no  palaver 
in  the  writing  of  this — no  mild-mannered 
phraseology;  and  the  author  is  made  to  see 
suddenly  that  "this  exciting  romance"  which 
the  reviewers  have  said  the  readers  "would 
follow  with  a  breathless  interest  till  the  end 
is  reached  and  then  wish  for  more, "  has  circu- 
lated among — possibly — five  hundred  of  the 
breathless. 

Thus,  then,  the  vast  majority  of  criticisms. 
It  is  not  all,  however,  and  it  is  only  fair  to  say 
that  there  are  exceptions-^great  papers  which 
devote  whole  supplements  to  the  consideration 
of  literary  matters  and  whose  reviewers  are 
deliberate,  thoughtful  fellows,  who  do  not  read 
more  than  one  book  a  week,  who  sign  their  opin- 
ions and  who  have  themselves  a  name,  a  reputa- 
tion, to  make  or  keep  These  must  have  an 
effect.  But  even  the  most  conspicuous  among 
them  cannot  influence  very  widely.  They 
may  help,  so  one  believes,  a  good  book  which 


124     The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

is  already  becoming  popular.  No  one  of  them 
can  "make"  a  book  by  a  "favourable  review," 
as  they  could  a  little  while  ago  in  France.  No 
number  of  them  could  do  it,  here  in  America. 
There  are  too  many  other  reviewers.  No  one 
man,  nor  aggregation  of  men,  can  monopolize 
the  requisite  authority.  And  then  with  us  the 
spirit  of  independent  thinking  and  judgment 
is  no  doubt  too  prevalent. 


NOVELISTS  TO  ORDER-WHILE 
YOU   WAIT 


NOVELISTS   TO   ORDER—  WHILE  YOU 
WAIT 


at  all  absurd,  "Novelists  to  order— 
while  you  wait,"  provided  you  order 
the  right  sort,  and  are  willing  to  wait  long 
enough.  In  other  words,  it  is  quite  possible 
to  make  a  novelist,  and  a  good  one,  too, 
if  the  thing  is  undertaken  in  the  right  spirit, 
just  as  it  is  possible  to  make  a  painter,  or  an 
actor,  or  a  business  man. 

I  am  prepared  to  hear  the  old  objections 
raised  to  this:  "Ah,  it  must  be  born  in  you"; 
"no  amount  of  training  can  'make'  an  artist"  ; 
"poets  are  born  and  not  made,"  etc.,  etc. 
But  I  am  also  willing  to  contend  that  a  very 
large  percentage  of  this  talk  is  sheer  non- 
sense, and  that  what  the  world  calls  "genius" 
is,  as  often  as  not,  the  results  of  average 
ability  specialized  and  developed.  The  original 
"spark"  in  the  child-mind,  that  later  on 
"kindles  the  world  into  flame  with  its  light," 
I  do  believe  could  be  proved  to  be  the  same  for 
the  artist,  the  actor,  the  novelist,  the  inventor, 
even  the  financier  and  "magnate."  It  is  only 
made  to  burn  in  different  lamps.  Nor  does  any 
127 


128     The  Responsibilities  of  ike  Novelist 

one  believe  that  this  "  spark"  is  any  mysterious, 
supernatural  gift,  some  marvelous,  angelic 
"genius,"  God-given,  Heaven-given,  etc.,  etc., 
etc.,  but  just  plain,  forthright,  rectangular, 
everyday  common  sense,  nothing  more  extra- 
ordinary or  God-given  than  sanity.  If  it  were 
true  that  Genius  were  the  gift  of  the  gods,  it 
would  also  be  true  that  hard  work  in  cultivat- 
ing it  would  be  superfluous.  As  well  be  with- 
out genius  if  some  plodder,  some  dullard,  can 
by  such  work  equal  the  best  you  can  do — you 
with  your  God-given  faculties. 

Is  it  not  much  more  reasonable — more  noble, 
for  the  matter  of  that — to  admit  at  once  that  all 
faculties,  all  intellects  are  God-given,  the  only 
difference  being  that  some  are  specialized  to  one 
end,  some  to  another,  some  not  specialized  at 
all.  We  call  Rostand  and  Mr.  Carnegie  geniuses, 
but  most  of  us  would  be  unwilling  to  admit 
that  the  genius  of  the  American  financier 
differed  in  kind  from  the  genius  of  the  French 
dramatist.  However,  one  believes  that  this  is 
open  to  debate.  As  for  my  part,  I  suspect  that, 
given  a  difference  in  environment  and  training, 
Rostand  would  have  consolidated  the  American 
steel  companies  and  Carnegie  have  written 
"L'Aiglon."  But  one  dares  to  go  a  little 
further — a  great  deal  further — and  claims  that 
the  young  Carnegie  and  the  young  Rostand 


Novelists  to  Order — While  You  Wait    129 

were  no  more  than  intelligent,  matter-of-fact 
boys,  in  no  wise  different  from  the  common 
house  variety,  grammar  school  product.  They 
have  been  trained  differently,  that  is  all. 

Given  the  ordinarily  intelligent  ten-year-old, 
and,  all  things  being  equal,  you  can  make 
anything  you  like  out  of  him — a  minister  of 
the  gospel  or  a  green-goods  man,  an  electrical 
engineer  or  a  romantic  poet,  or — return  to  our 
muttons — a  novelist.  If  a  failure  is  the  result, 
blame  the  method  of  training,  not  the  quantity 
or  quality  of  the  ten-year-old's  intellect.  Don't 
say,  if  he  is  a  failure  as  a  fine  novelist,  that  he 
lacks  genius  for  writing,  and  would  have  been 
a  fine  business  man.  Make  no  mistake,  if  he 
did  not  have  enough  " genius"  for  novel-writing 
he  would  certainly  have  not  had  enough  for 
business. 

' 'Why,  then,"  you  will  ask,  "is  it  so  impos- 
sible for  some  men,  the  majority  of  them,  to 
write  fine  novels,  or  fine  poems,  or  paint  fine 
pictures?  Why  is  it  that  this  faculty  seems 
to  be  reserved  for  the  chosen  few,  the  more 
refined,  cultured,  etc.  ?  Why  is  it,  in  a  word, 
that,  for  every  artist  (using  the  word  to  in- 
clude writers,  painters,  actors,  etc.)  that  appears 
there  are  thousands  of  business  men,  com- 
mercial ' '  geniuses' '  ? 

The  reason  seems  to  lie  in  this:  and  it  is 


130     The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

again  a  question  of  training.  From  the  very 
first  the  average  intelligent  American  boy  is 
trained,  not  with  a  view  toward  an  artistic 
career,  but  with  a  view  to  entering  a  business 
life.  If  the  specialization  of  his  faculties  along 
artistic  lines  ever  occurs  at  all  it  begins  only 
when  the  boy  is  past  the  formative  period.  In 
other  words,  most  people  who  eventually 
become  artists  are  educated  for  the  first  eighteen 
or  twenty  years  of  their  life  along  entirely 
unartistic  lines.  Biographies  of  artists  are 
notoriously  full  of  just  such  instances.  The 
boy  who  is  to  become  a  business  man  finds,  the 
moment  he  goes  to  school,  a  whole  vast  machin- 
ery of  training  made  ready  for  his  use,  and  not 
only  is  it  a  matter  of  education  for  him,  but  the 
whole  scheme  of  modern  civilization  works  in 
his  behalf.  No  one  ever  heard  of  obstacles 
thrown  in  the  way  of  the  boy  who  announces 
for  himself  a  money-making  career;  while  for 
the  artist,  as  is  said,  education,  environment, 
the  trend  of  civilization  are  not  merely  indiffer- 
ent, but  openly  hostile  and  inimical.  One  hears 
only  of  those  men  who  surmount — and  at  what 
cost  to  their  artistic  powers — those  obstacles. 
How  many  thousands  are  there  who  succumb 
unrecorded ! 

So  that  it  has  not   often  been  tried — the 
experiment   of  making  a  novelist  while  you 


Novelists  to  Order — While  You  Wait    131 

wait — i.  e.y  taking  a  ten-year-old  of  average 
intelligence  and  training  him  to  be  a  novelist. 
Suppose  all  this  modern,  this  gigantic  perfected 
machinery — all  this  resistless  trend  of  a  com- 
mercial civilization  were  set  in  motion  in  favour 
of  the  little  aspirant  for  honours  in  artistic 
fields,  who  is  to  say  with  such  a  training  he 
would  not  in  the  end  be  a  successful  artist, 
painter,  poet,  musician  or  novelist.  Training, 
not  "genius,"  would  make  him. 

Then,  too,  another  point.  The  artistic  train- 
ing should  begin  much,  much  earlier  than  the 
commercial  training — instead  of,  as  at  present, 
so  much  later. 

Nowadays,  as  a  rule,  the  artist's  training 
begins,  as  was  said,  after  a  fourth  of  his  life, 
the  very  best,  the  most  important  has  been 
lived.  You  can  take  a  boy  of  eighteen  and 
make  a  business  man  of  him  in  ten  years.  But 
at  eighteen  the  faculties  that  make  a  good 
artist  are  very  apt  to  be  atrophied,  hardened, 
unworkable.  Even  the  ten-year-old  is  almost 
too  old  to  begin  on.  The  first  ten  years  of 
childhood  are  the  imaginative  years,  the  creative 
years,  the  observant  years,  the  years  of  a 
fresh  interest  in  life.  The  child  "imagines" 
terrors  or  delights,  ghosts  or  fairies,  creates  a 
world  out  of  his  toys,  and  observes  to  an  extent 
that  adults  have  no  idea  of.  ("Give  me,"  a 


132     The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

detective  once  told  me,  "a  child's  description 
of  a  man  that  is  wanted.  It  beats  an  adult's 
every  single  time . " )  And  imagination,  creation, 
observation  and  an  unblunted  interest  in  life  are 
exactly  the  faculties  most  needed  by  novelists. 

At  eighteen  there  comes  sophistication — or  a 
pretended  sophistication,  which  is  deadlier. 
Other  men's  books  take  the  place  of  imagination 
for  the  young  man;  creation  in  him  is  satisfied 
by  dramas,  horse-races  and  amusements.  The 
newspapers  are  his  observation,  and  oh,  how 
he  assumes  to  be  above  any  pleasure  in  simple, 
vigorous  life ! 

So  that  at  eighteen  it  is,  as  a  rule,  too  late 
to  make  a  fine  novelist  out  of  him.  He  may 
start  out  in  that  career,  but  he  will  not  go 
far — so  far  as  he  would  in  business.  But  if  he 
was  taken  in  hand  as  soon  as  he  could  write  in 
words  of  three  syllables,  and  instead  of  being 
crammed  with  commercial  arithmetic  (How 
many  marbles  did  A  have?  If  a  man  buys  a 
piece  of  goods  at  I2j4  cents  and  sells  it  for 
15  cents,  etc.,  etc.) — 

If  he  had  been  taken  in  hand  when  his 
imagination  was  alive,  his  creative  power 
vigorous,  his  observation  lynxlike,  and  his 
interest  keen,  and  trained  with  a  view  toward 
the  production  of  original  fiction,  who  is  to  say 
how  far  he  would  have  gone? 


Novelists  to  Order — While  You  Wait    133 

One  does  not  claim  that  the  artist  is  above 
the  business  man.  Far  from  it.  Only,  when 
you  have  choked  the  powers  of  imagination 
and  observation,  and  killed  off  the  creative 
ability,  and  deadened  the  interest  in  life,  don't 
call  it  lack  of  genius. 

Nor  when  some  man  of  a  different  race  than 
ours,  living  in  a  more  congenial  civilization, 
whose  training  from  his  youth  up  has  been 
adapted  to  a  future  artistic  profession,  succeeds 
in  painting  the  great  picture,  composing  the 
great  prelude,  writing  the  great  novel,  don't 
say  he  was  born  a  "genius,"  but  rather  admit 
that  he  was  made  "to  order"  by  a  system  whose 
promoters  knew  how  to  wait. 


THE   "NATURE"  REVIVAL  IN 
LITERATURE 


THE  « NATURE »  REVIVAL  IN  LITER- 
ATURE 


r 


T  has  been  a  decade  of  fads,  and  "the 
people  have  imagined  a  vain  thing," 
as  they  have  done  from  the  time  of  Solomon 
and  as  no  doubt  they  will  till  the  day  of  the 
New  Jerusalem .  And  in  no  other  line  of  activity 
has  the  instability  and  changeableness  of  the 
taste  of  the  public  been  so  marked  as  in  that 
of  literature.  Such  an  overturning  of  old  gods 
and  such  a  setting  up  of  new  ones,  such  an 
image-breaking,  shrine-smashing,  relic-ripping 
carnival  I  doubt  has  ever  been  witnessed  in  all 
the  history  of  writing.  It  has  been  a  sort  of 
literary  Declaration  of  Independence.  For 
half  a  century  certain  great  names,  from 
Irving  down  to  Holmes,  were  veritable  Abra- 
cadabras— impeccable,  sanctified.  Then  all  at 
once  the  fin  de  siecle  irreverence  seemed  to 
invade  all  sorts  and  conditions  simultaneously, 
and  the  somber,  sober  idols  were  shouldered 
off  into  the  dark  niches,  and  not  a  man  of  us 
that  did  not  trundle  forth  his  own  little  tin- 
god-on-wheels,  kowtowing  and  making  obei- 

137 


138     The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

sance,  and  going  before  with  cymbals  and  a 
great  noise,  proclaiming  a  New  Great  One; 
now  it  was  the  great  Colonial  Image,  now  the 
Great  Romantic  Image,  now  the  Great  Minor- 
German  Kingdom  Image. 

There  are  a  great  many  very  eminent  and 
very  wise  critics  who  frown  upon  and  deplore 
the  reaction.  But  it  is  a  question  if,  after  all, 
the  movement  will  not  prove — ultimately — 
beneficial.  Convention,  blind  adherence  to 
established  forms,  inertia,  is  the  dry  rot  of  a 
national  literature.  Better  the  American  public 
should  read  bad  books  than  no  books,  and 
that  same  public  is  reading  now  as  never 
before.  It  is  a  veritable  upheaval,  a  breaking- 
up  of  all  the  old  grounds.  Better  this  than 
supineness ;  better  this  than  immobility.  Once 
the  ground  turned  over  a  bit,  harrowed  and 
loosened,  and  the  place  is  made  ready  for  the 
good  seed. 

Some  of  this,  one  chooses  to  believe,  has 
already  been  implanted.  In  all  the  parade  of 
the  new  little  tin-gods  some  may  be  discovered 
that  are  not  tin,  but  sterling.  Of  all  the  fads, 
the  most  legitimate,  the  most  abiding,  the 
most  inherent — so  it  would  appear — is  the 
"  Nature"  revival.  Indeed,  it  is  not  fair 
to  call  it  a  fad  at  all.  For  it  is  a  return 
to  the  primitive,  sane  life  of  the  country, 


The  "Nature"  Revival  in  Literature     139 

and  the  natural  thing  by  its  very  character 
cannot  be  artificial,  cannot  be  a  "fad."  The 
writers  who  have  followed  where  Mr.  Thompson 
Seton  blazed  the  way  are  so  numerous  and  so 
well  known  that  it  is  almost  superfluous  in  this 
place  to  catalogue  or  criticize  them.  But  it  is 
significant  of  the  strength  of  this  movement 
that  such  an  outdoor  book  as  "  Bob,  Son  of 
Battle,"  was  unsuccessful  in  England,  and  only 
attained  its  merited  popularity  when  published 
here  in  America.  We  claimed  the  "good  gray 
dog"  as  our  own  from  the  very  first,  recognizing 
that  the  dog  has  no  nationality,  being  indeed  a 
citizen  of  the  whole  world.  The  flowers  in 
"  Elizabeth's  German  Garden" — also  world  citi- 
zens— we  promptly  transplanted  to  our  own 
soil.  Mr.  Mowbray,  with  his  mingling  of  fact 
and  fiction,  made  his  country  home  for  the 
benefit — I  have  no  doubt — of  hundreds  who 
have  actually  worked  out  the  idea  suggested 
in  his  pages.  The  butterfly  books,  the  garden 
books,  the  flower  books,  expensive  as  they  are, 
have  been  in  as  much  demand  as  some  very 
popular  novels.  Mr.  Dugmore  astonished  and 
delighted  a  surprisingly  large  public  with  his 
marvelous  life-photographs  of  birds,  while 
even  President  Roosevelt  himself  deemed 
Mr.  Wallihan's  "Photographs  of  Big  Game" 
of  so  much  importance  and  value  that 


140     The  Responsibilities  of  ike  Novelist 

he  wrote  the  introductory  notice  to  that  ex- 
cellent volume. 

It  is  hardly  possible  to  pick  up  a  magazine 
now  that  does  not  contain  the  story  of  some 
animal  hero.  Time  was  when  we  relegated 
this  sort  to  the  juvenile  periodicals.  But  now 
we  cannot  get  too  much  of  it.  Wolves,  rabbits, 
hounds,  foxes,  the  birds,  even  the  reptilia,  all 
are  dramatized,  all  figure  in  their  little  roles. 
Tobo  and  the  Sand-hill  Stag  parade  upon  the 
same  pages  as  Mr.  Christie's  debutantes  and 
Mr.  Smedley's  business  men,  and,  if  you  please, 
have  their  love  affairs  and  business  in  precisely 
the  same  spirit.  All  this  cannot  but  be  signifi- 
cant, and,  let  us  be  assured,  significant  of  good. 
The  New  England  school  for  too  long  domi- 
nated the  entire  range  of  American  fiction — 
limiting  it,  specializing  it,  polishing,  refining 
and  embellishing  it,  narrowing  it  down  to  a 
veritable  cult,  a  thing  to  be  safeguarded  by 
the  elect,  the  few,  the  aristocracy.  It  is  small 
wonder  that  the  reaction  came  when  and  as 
it  did ;  small  wonder  that  the  wearied  public, 
roused  at  length,  smashed  its  idols  with 
such  vehemence ;  small  wonder  that,  declaring 
its  independence  and  finding  itself  suddenly 
untrammeled  and  unguided,  it  flew  off 
"mobishly"  toward  false  gods,  good  only 
because  they  were  new. 


The  "Nature"  Revival  in  Literature     141 

All  this  is  small  wonder.  The  great  wonder 
is  this  return  to  nature,  this  unerring  groping 
backward  toward  the  fundamentals,  in  order 
to  take  a  renewed  grip  upon  life.  If  you  care 
to  see  a  proof  of  how  vital  it  is,  how  valuable, 
look  into  some  of  the  magazines  of  the  seventies 
and  eighties.  It  is  astonishing  to  consider 
that  we  ever  found  an  interest  in  them.  The 
effect  is  like  entering  a  darkened  room.  And 
not  only  the  magazines,  but  the  entire  literature 
of  the  years  before  the  nineties  is  shadowed  and 
oppressed  with  the  bugbear  of  "literature." 
Outdoor  life  was  a  thing  apart  from  our  read- 
ing. Even  the  tales  and  serials  whose  mise 
en  scene  was  in  the  country  had  no  breath  of 
the  country  in  them.  The  "  literature  "  in  them 
suffocated  the  life,  and  the  humans  with  their 
everlasting  consciences,  their  heated  and  arti- 
ficial activities,  filled  all  the  horizon,  admitting 
the  larks  and  the  robins  only  as  accessories ;  con- 
sidering the  foxes,  the  deer  and  the  rabbits  only 
as  creatures  to  be  killed,  to  be  pursued,  to  be 
exterminated.  But  Mr.  Seton  and  his  school, 
and  the  Mowbrays,  and  the  Ollivants,  the 
Dugmores  and  the  Wallihans  opened  a  door, 
opened  a  window,  and  mere  literature  has  had 
to  give  place  to  life.  The  sun  has  come  in  and 
the  great  winds,  and  the  smell  of  the  baking 
alkali  on  the  Arizona  deserts  and  the  reek  of  the 


142      The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

tar-weed  on  the  Colorado  slopes;  and  nature 
has  ceased  to  exist  as  a  classification  of  science, 
has  ceased  to  be  w*s-understood  as  an  aggregate 
of  botany,  zoology,  geology  and  the  like,  and 
has  become  a  thing  intimate  and  familiar  and 
rejuvenating. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  the  estate  of  Ameri- 
can letters  is  experiencing  a  renaissance.  For- 
mality, the  old  idols,  the  demi-gorgons 
and  autocrats  no  longer  hold  an  absolute 
authority.  A  multitude  of  false  gods  are 
clamouring  for  recognition,  shouldering 
one  another  about  to  make  room  for  their 
altars,  soliciting  incense  as  if  it  were 
patronage.  No  doubt  these  "draw  many  after 
them,"  but  the  "nature  revival"  has  brought 
the  galvanizing,  vital  element  into  this  tumult 
of  little  inkling  sham  divinities  and  has  shown 
that  life  is  better  than  "literature,"  even  if  the 
"literature"  be  of  human  beings  and  the  life 
be  that  of  a  faithful  dog. 

Vitality  is  the  thing,  after  all.  Dress  the 
human  puppet  never  so  gaily,  bedeck  it  never 
so  brilliantly,  pipe  before  it  never  so  cunningly, 
and,  fashioned  in  the  image  of  God  though  it 
be,  just  so  long  as  it  is  a  puppet  and  not  a 
person,  just  so  long  the  great  heart  of  the 
people  will  turn  from  it,  in  weariness  and 
disgust,  to  find  its  interest  in  the  fidelity  of 


The  "Nature'1  Revival  in  Literature    143 

the  sheep-dog  of  the  North  o'  England,  the 
intelligence  of  a  prairie  wolf  of  Colorado,  or 
the  death-fight  of  a  bull  moose  in  the  tim- 
berlands  of  Ontario. 


THE  MECHANICS  OF  FICTION 


THE    MECHANICS    OF    FICTION 

'ITT'E  approach  a  delicate  subject.  And 
if  the  manner  of  approach  is  too 
serious  it  will  be  very  like  the  forty  thousand 
men  of  the  King  of  France  who  marched  terribly 
and  with  banners  to  the  top  of  the  hill  with  the 
meager  achievement  of  simply  getting  there. 
Of  all  the  arts,  as  one  has  previously  observed, 
that  of  novel-writing  is  the  least  mechanical. 
Perhaps,  after  all,  rightly  so;  still  it  is  hard 
to  escape  some  formality,  some  forms.  There 
must  always  be  chapter  divisions,  also  a  begin- 
ning and  an  end,  which  implies  a  middle,  con- 
tinuity, which  implies  movement,  which  in  turn 
implies  a  greater  speed  or  less,  an  accelerated, 
retarded  or  broken  action;  and  before  the 
scoffer  is  well  aware  he  is  admitting  a  multitude 
of  set  forms.  No  one  who  sets  a  thing  in 
motion  but  keeps  an  eye  and  a  hand  upon  its 
speed.  No  one  who  constructs  but  keeps 
watch  upon  the  building,  strengthening  here, 
lightening  there,  here  at  the  foundations 
cautious  and  conservative,  there  at  the  cornice 
fantastic  and  daring.  In  all  human  occupa- 
tions, trades,  arts  or  business,  science,  morals 
147 


148     The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

or  religion,  there  exists,  way  at  the  bottom, 
a  homogeneity  and  a  certain  family  likeness, 
so  that,  quite  possibly  after  all,  the  discussion 
of  the  importance  of  the  mechanics  of  fiction 
may  be  something  more  than  mere  speculative 
sophistry. 

A  novel  addresses  itself  primarily  to  a  reader, 
and  it  has  been  so  indisputably  established 
that  the  reader's  time  and  effort  of  attention 
must  be  economized  that  the  fact  need  not  be 
mentioned  in  this  place — it  would  not  econo- 
mize the  reader's  time  nor  effort  of  attention. 

Remains  then  the  means  to  be  considered, 
or  in  other  words,  How  best  to  tell  your  story. 

It  depends  naturally  upon  the  nature  of  the 
story.  The  formula  which  would  apply  to  one 
would  not  be  appropriate  for  another.  That 
is  very  true,  but  at  the  same  time  it  is  hard  to 
get  away  from  that  thing  in  any  novel  which, 
let  us  call,  the  pivotal  event.  All  good  novels 
have  one.  It  is  the  peg  upon  which  the  fabric 
of  the  thing  hangs,  the  nucleus  around  which 
the  shifting  drifts  and  currents  must — suddenly 
— coagulate,  the  sudden  releasing  of  the 
brake  to  permit  for  one  instant  the  entire 
machinery  to  labour,  full  steam,  ahead.  Up 
to  that  point  the  action  must  lead;  from  it,  it 
must  decline. 

But — and  here  one  holds  at  least  one  mechan- 


The  Mechanics  of  Fiction  149 

ical  problem — the  approach,  the  leading  up  to 
this  pivotal  event  must  be  infinitely  slower 
than  the  decline.  For  the  reader's  interest 
in  the  story  centres  around  it,  and  once  it  is 
disposed  of  attention  is  apt  to  dwindle  very 
rapidly — and  thus  back  we  go  again  to  the 
economy  proposition. 

It  is  the  slow  approach,  however,  that  tells. 
The  unskilled,  impatient  of  the  tedium  of 
meticulous  elaboration,  will  rush  at  it  in  a 
furious  gallop  of  short  chapters  and  hurried 
episodes,  so  that  he  may  come  the  sooner  to 
the  purple  prose  declamation  and  drama  that 
he  is  sure  he  can  handle  with  such  tremendous 
effect. 

Not  so  the  masters.  Watch  them  during 
the  first  third — say — of  their  novels.  Nothing 
happens — or  at  least  so  you  fancy.  People 
come  and  go,  plans  are  described,  localities, 
neighbourhoods;  an  incident  crops  up  just  for 
a  second  for  which  you  can  see  no  reason,  a  note 
sounds  that  is  puzzlingly  inappropriate.  The 
novel  continues.  There  seems  to  be  no  prog- 
ress; again  that  perplexing  note,  but  a  little 
less  perplexing.  By  now  we  are  well  into  the 
story.  There  are  no  more  new  people,  but  the 
old  ones  come  back  again  and  again,  and  yet 
again;  you  remember  them  now  after  they 
are  off  the  stage;  you  are  more  intimate  with 


150     The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

the  two  main  characters.  Then  comes  a  series 
of  pretty  incidents  in  which  these  two  are 
prominent.  The  action  still  lags,  but  little  by 
little  you  are  getting  more  and  more  acquainted 
with  these  principal  actors.  Then  perhaps 
comes  the  first  acceleration  of  movement.  The 
approach  begins — ever  so  little — to  rise,  and 
that  same  note  which  seemed  at  first  so  out  of 
tune  sounds  again  and  this  time  drops  into  place 
in  the  progression,  beautifully  harmonious, 
correlating  the  whole  gamut.  By  now  all  the 
people  are  "on";  by  now  all  the  groundwork 
is  prepared.  You  know  the  localities  so  well 
that  you  could  find  your  way  about  among 
them  in  the  dark;  hero  and  heroine  are  inti- 
mate acquaintances. 

Now  the  action  begins  to  increase  in  speed. 
The  complication  suddenly  tightens;  all  along 
the  line  there  runs  a  sudden  alert.  An  episode 
far  back  there  in  the  first  chapter,  an  episode 
with  its  appropriate  group  of  characters,  is 
brought  forward  and,  coming  suddenly  to  the 
front,  collides  with  the  main  line  of  development 
and  sends  it  off  upon  an  entirely  unlooked- 
for  tangent.  Another  episode  of  the  second 
chapter — let  us  suppose — all  at  once  makes 
common  cause  with  a  more  recent  incident,  and 
the  two  produce  a  wholly  unlooked-for  counter- 
influence  which  swerves  the  main  theme  in 


The  Mechanics  of  Fiction  151 

still  another  direction,  and  all  this  time  the 
action  is  speeding  faster  and  faster,  the  compli- 
cation tightening  and  straining  to  the  breaking 
point,  and  then  at  last  a  '  'motif"  that  has  been 
in  preparation  ever  since  the  first  paragraph 
of  the  first  chapter  of  the  novel  suddenly  comes 
to  a  head,  and  in  a  twinkling  the  complication 
is  solved  with  all  the  violence  of  an  explosion, 
and  the  catastrophe,  the  climax,  the  pivotal 
event  fairly  leaps  from  the  pages  with  a  rush 
of  action  that  leaves  you  stunned,  breathless 
and  overwhelmed  with  the  sheer  power  of  its 
presentation.  And  there  is  a  master-work  of 
fiction. 

Reading,  as  the  uninitiated  do,  without  an 
eye  to  the  mechanics,  without  a  consciousness 
of  the  wires  and  wheels  and  cogs  and  springs 
of  the  affair,  it  seems  inexplicable  that  these 
great  scenes  of  fiction — short  as  they  are — 
some  of  them  less  than  a  thousand  words  in 
length — should  produce  so  tremendous  an 
effect  by  such  few  words,  such  simple  language ; 
and  that  sorely  overtaxed  word,  "genius,"  is 
made  to  do  duty  as  the  explanation.  But  the 
genius  is  rare  that  in  one  thousand  simple  words, 
taken  by  themselves,  could  achieve  the  effect— 
for  instance — of  the  fight  aboard  The  Flying 
Scud  in  Stevenson's  ' 'Wrecker."  Taken  by 
itself,  the  scene  is  hardly  important  except 


152     The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

from  the  point  of  view  of  style  and  felicity  of 
expression.  It  is  the  context  of  the  story 
that  makes  it  so  tremendous,  and  because 
Osborne  and  Stevenson  prepared  for  that 
very  scene  from  the  novel's  initial  chapter. 

And  it  seems  as  if  there  in  a  phrase  one  could 
resume  the  whole  system  of  fiction-mechanics — 
preparations  of  effect. 

The  unskilled  will  invariably  attempt  to 
atone  for  lack  of  such  painstaking  preparation 
for  their  "  Grande  Scenes"  by  hysteria,  and  by 
exclamation  in  presenting  the  catastrophe. 
They  declaim,  they  shout,  stamp,  shake  then- 
fists  and  flood  the  page  with  sonorous  adjectives, 
call  upon  heaven  and  upon  God.  They  sum- 
mon to  their  aid  every  broken-down  device  to 
rouse  the  flaccid  interest  of  the  reader,  and  con- 
clusively, irretrievably  and  ignominiously  fail. 
It  is  too  late  for  heroic  effort  then,  and  the 
reader,  uninterested  in  the  character,  unfamiliar 
with  the  locale,  unattracted  by  any  charm  of 
"atmosphere,"  lays  down  the  book  unper- 
turbed and  forgets  it  before  dinner. 

Where  is  the  fault?  Is  it  not  in  defective 
machinery?  The  analogies  are  multitudinous. 
The  liner  with  hastily  constructed  boilers  will 
flounder  when  she  comes  to  essay  the  storm; 
and  no  stoking  however  vigorous,  no  oiling 
however  eager,  if  delayed  till  then,  will  avail 


The  Mechanics  of  Fiction  153 

to  aid  her  to  ride  through  successfully.  It  is 
not  the  time  to  strengthen  a  wall  when  the 
hurricane  threatens;  prop  and  stay  will  not 
brace  it  then.  Then  the  thing  that  tells  is 
the  plodding,  slow,  patient,  brick-by-brick 
work,  that  only  half  shows  down  there  at  the 
foot  half -hidden  in  the  grass,  obscure,  unnoted. 
No  genius  is  necessary  for  this  sort  of  work, 
only  great  patience  and  a  willingness  to  plod, 
for  the  time  being. 

No  one  is  expected  to  strike  off  the  whole 
novel  in  one  continued  fine  frenzy  of  inspiration. 
As  well  expect  the  stone-mason  to  plant  his 
wall  in  a  single  day.  Nor  is  it  possible  to  lay 
down  any  rule  of  thumb,  any  hard-and-fast 
schedule  in  the  matter  of  novel  writing.  But 
no  work  is  so  ephemeral,  so  delicate,  so — in  a 
word — artistic  that  it  cannot  be  improved  by 
systematizing. 

There  is  at  least  one  indisputably  good 
manner  in  which  the  unskilled  may  order  his 
work — besides  the  one  of  preparation  already 
mentioned.  He  may  consider  each  chapter 
as  a  unit,  distinct,  separate,  having  a  definite 
beginning,  rise,  height  and  end,  the  action 
continuous,  containing  no  break  in  time,  the 
locality  unchanged  throughout — no  shifting 
of  the  scene  to  another  environment.  Each 
chapter  thus  treated  is  a  little  work  in  itself, 


154     The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

and  the  great  story  of  the  whole  novel  is  told 
thus  as  it  were  in  a  series  of  pictures,  the  author 
supplying  information  as  to  what  has  inter- 
vened between  the  end  of  one  chapter  and  the 
beginning  of  the  next  by  suggestion  or  by 
actual  resume.  As  often  as  not  the  reader 
himself  can  fill  up  the  gap  by  the  context. 

This  may  be  over-artificial,  and  it  is  con- 
ceivable that  there  are  times  when  it  is  neces- 
sary to  throw  artificiality  to  the  winds.  But 
it  is  the  method  that  many  of  the  greatest 
fiction  writers  have  employed,  and  even  a 
defective  system  is — at  any  rate,  in  fiction — 
better  than  none. 


FICTION  WRITING  AS  A 
BUSINESS 


FICTION    WRITING    AS    A    BUSINESS 

E  exaggerated  and  exalted  ideas  of  the 
•*•  unenlightened  upon  this  subject  are,  I 
have  found,  beyond  all  reason  and  beyond  all 
belief.  The  superstition  that  with  the 
publication  of  the  first  book  comes  fame  and 
affluence  is  as  firmly  rooted  as  that  other 
delusion  which  asks  us  to  suppose  that  "a 
picture  in  the  Paris  Salon"  is  the1  certificate  of 
success,  ultimate,  final,  definite. 

One  knows,  of  course,  that  very  naturally 
the  "Eben  Holden"  and  "  David  Harum"  and 
" Richard  Carvel"  fellows  make  fortunes,  and 
that  these  are  out  of  the  discussion;  but  also 
one  chooses  to  assume  that  the  average,  honest, 
middle-class  author  supports  himself  and  even 
a  family  by  the  sale  of  his  novels — lives  on  his 
royalties. 

Royalties  !  Why  in  the  name  of  heaven  were 
they  called  that,  those  microscopic  sums  that 
too,  too  often  are  less  royal  than  beggarly? 
It  has  a  fine  sound — royalty.  It  fills  the 
mouth.  It  can  be  said  with  an  air — royalty. 
But  there  are  plenty  of  these  same  royalties 
that  will  not  pay  the  typewriter's  bill. 


158     The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

Take  an  average  case.  No,  that  will  not 
do,  either,  for  the  average  published  novel — I 
say  it  with  my  right  hand  raised — is,  irretriev- 
ably, hopelessly  and  conclusively,  a  financial 
failure. 

Take,  then,  an  unusually  lucky  instance, 
literally  a  novel  whose  success  is  extraordinary, 
a  novel  which  has  sold  2,500  copies.  I  repeat 
that  this  is  an  extraordinary  success.  Not  one 
book  out  of  fifteen  will  do  as  well.  But  let  us 
consider  it.  The  author  has  worked  upon  it 
for — at  the  very  least — three  months.  It  is 
published.  Twenty-five  hundred  copies  are 
sold.  Then  the  sale  stops.  And  by  the  word 
stop  one  means  cessation  in  the  completest 
sense  of  the  word.  There  are  people — I  know 
plenty  of  them — who  suppose  that  when  a  book 
is  spoken  of  as  having  stopped  selling,  a  gener- 
ality is  intended,  that  merely  a  falling  off  of  the 
initial  demand  has  occurred.  Error.  When 
a  book — a  novel — stops  selling,  it  stops  with 
the  definiteness  of  an  engine  when  the  fire  goes 
out.  It  stops  with  a  suddenness  that  is  appall- 
ing, and  thereafter  not  a  copy,  not  one  single, 
solitary  copy  is  sold.  And  do  not  for  an  instant 
suppose  that  ever  after  the  interest  may  be 
revived.  A  dead  book  can  no  more  be  resusci- 
tated than  a  dead  dog. 

But  to  go  back.     The  2,500  have  been  sold. 


Fiction  Writing  as  a  Business         159 

The  extraordinary,  the  marvelous  has  been 
achieved.  What  does  the  author  get  out  of 
it  ?  A  royalty  of  ten  per  cent.  Two  hundred 
and  fifty  dollars  for  three  months'  hard  work. 
Roughly,  less  than  $20  a  week,  a  little  more  than 
$2.50  a  day.  An  expert  carpenter  will  easily 
make  twice  that,  and  the  carpenter  has  infi- 
nitely the  best  of  it  in  that  he  can  keep  the 
work  up  year  in  and  year  out,  where  the 
novelist  must  wait  for  a  new  idea,  and  the 
novel  writer  must  then  jockey  and  maneuver 
for  publication.  Two  novels  a  year  is  about 
as  much  as  the  writer  can  turn  out  and  yet 
keep  a  marketable  standard.  Even  admitting 
that  both  the  novels  sell  2,500  copies,  there  is 
only  $500  of  profit.  In  the  same  time  the 
carpenter  has  made  his  $1,800,  nearly  four 
times  as  much.  One  may  well  ask  the 
question:  Is  fiction  writing  a  money-making 
profession  ? 

The  astonishing  thing  about  the  affair  is 
that  a  novel  may  make  a  veritable  stir,  almost 
a  sensation,  and  yet  fail  to  sell  very  largely. 

There  is  so-and-so's  book.  Everywhere  you 
go  you  hear  about  it.  Your  friends  have  read 
it.  It  is  in  demand  at  the  libraries.  You  don't 
pick  up  a  paper  that  does  not  contain  a  review 
of  the  story  in  question.  It  is  in  the  "Book 
of  the  Month"  column.  It  is  even,  even — the 


160     The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

pinnacle  of  achievement — in  that  shining  roster, 
the  list  of  best  sellers  of  the  week. 

Why,  of  course  the  author  is  growing  rich! 
Ah,  at  last  he  has  arrived !  No  doubt  he  will 
build  a  country  house  out  of  his  royalties. 
Lucky  fellow ;  one  envies  him. 

Catch  him  unawares  and  what  is  he  doing? 
As  like  as  not  writing  unsigned  book  reviews 
at  five  dollars  a  week  in  order  to  pay  his 
board  bill — and  glad  of  the  chance. 

It  seems  incredible.  But  one  must  remem- 
ber this :  That  for  every  one  person  who  buys 
a  book,  there  will  be  six  who  will  talk  about  it. 
And  the  half -thousand  odd  reviewers  who  are 
writing  of  the  book  do  not  buy  it,  but  receive 
"editorial"  copies  from  the  publishers,  upon 
which  no  royalty  is  paid. 

I  know  it  for  an  undisputed  fact  that  a  certain 
novel  which  has  ever  been  called  the  best 
American  novel  of  the  nineteenth  century,  and 
which  upon  publication  was  talked  about, 
written  about  and  even  preached  about,  from 
the  Atlantic  to  the  Pacific,  took  ten  years  in 
which  to  attain  the  sale  of  10,000  copies.  Even 
so  famous,  so  brilliant  an  author  as  Harold 
Frederic  did  not  at  first  sell  conspicuously. 
"That  Lawton  Girl,"  "The  Copperhead," 
"Seth's  Brother's  Wife,"  masterpieces  though 
they  are,  never  made  money  for  the  writer. 


Fiction  Writing  as  a  Business         161 

Each  sold  about  2,000  copies.  Not  until 
"Theron  Ware"  was  published  did  Mr. 
Frederic  reap  his  reward. 

Even  so  great  a  name  as  that  of  George 
Meredith  is  not  a  *  'sesame,"  and  only  within 
the  last  few  years  has  the  author  of  "Evan 
Harrington"  made  more  than  five  or  six 
hundred  dollars  out  of  any  one  of  his  world- 
famous  books. 

But  of  course  there  is  another  side.  For 
one  thing,  the  author  is  put  to  no  expense  in 
the  composing  of  his  novel.  (It  is  not  always 
necessary  to  typewrite  the  manuscript.)  The 
carpenter  must  invest  much  money  in  tools; 
must  have  a  shop.  Shop  rent  and  tools  repaired 
or  replaced  cut  into  his  $1,800  of  profit.  Or 
take  it  in  the  fine  arts.  The  painter  must  have 
a  studio,  canvases,  models,  brushes,  a  whole 
equipment ;  the  architect  must  have  his  draught- 
ing room,  the  musician  his  instrument.  But 
so  far  as  initial  expense  is  concerned,  a  half- 
dollar  will  buy  every  conceivable  necessary 
tool  the  novelist  may  demand.  He  needs  no 
office,  shop  or  studio ;  models  are  not  required. 
The  libraries  of  the  city  offer  him  a  quiet 
working  place  if  the  home  is  out  of  the 
question.  Nor,  as  one  has  so  often  urged,  is 
any  expensive  training  necessary  before  his 
money-earning  capacity  is  attained.  The  archi- 


1 62     The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

tect  must  buy  instruction  for  many  years. 
The  painter  must  study  in  expensive  studios, 
the  musician  must  learn  in  costly  conservatories, 
the  singer  must  be  taught  by  high-priced 
maestros.  Furthermore,  it  is  often  necessary 
for  the  aspirant  to  travel  great  distances  to 
reach  the  cities  where  his  education  is  to  be 
furthered;  almost  invariably  a  trip  to  and  a 
residence  in  Europe  is  indispensable.  It  is  a 
great  undertaking  and  an  expensive  one  to 
prepare  for  the  professions  named,  and  it  takes 
years  of  time — years  during  which  the  aspirant 
is  absolutely  non-productive. 

But  the  would-be  novel  writer  may  deter- 
mine between  breakfast  and  dinner  to  essay 
the  plunge,  buy  (for  a  few  cents)  ink  and 
paper  between  dinner  and  supper,  and  have 
the  novel  under  way  before  bedtime. 

How  much  of  an  outlay  of  money  does  his 
first  marketable  novel  represent?  Practically 
nothing.  On  the  other  hand,  let  us  ask  the 
same  question  of,  say,  the  painter.  How 
much  money  has  he  had  to  spend  before  he  was 
able  to  paint  his  first  marketable  picture  ?  To 
reach  a  total  sum  he  must  foot  up  the  expenses 
of  at  least  five  years  of  instruction  and  study, 
the  cost  of  living  during  that  time,  the  cost  of 
materials,  perhaps  even  the  price  of  a  trip  to 
Paris.  Easily  the  sum  may  reach  $5,000. 


Fiction  Writing  as  a  Business         163 

Fifty  cents'  worth,  of  ink  and  paper  do  not 
loom  large  beside  this  figure. 

Then  there  are  other  ways  in  which  the  fiction 
writer  may  earn  money — by  fiction.  The 
novelist  may  look  down  upon  the  mere  writer 
of  short  stories,  or  may  even  look  down  upon 
himself  in  the  same  capacity,  but  as  a  rule  the 
writer  of  short  stories  is  the  man  who  has  the 
money.  It  is  much  easier  to  sell  the  average 
short  story  than  the  average  novel.  Infinitely 
easier.  And  the  short  story  of  the  usual  length 
will  fetch  $100.  One  thousand  people — think 
of  it — one  thousand  people  must  buy  copies  of 
your  novel  before  it  will  earn  so  much  for  you. 
It  takes  three  months  to  complete  the  novel — 
the  novel  that  earns  the  $250.  But  with 
ingenuity,  the  writer  should  be  able  to  turn 
out  six  short  stories  in  the  same  time,  and 
if  he  has  luck  in  placing  them  there  is  $600 
earned — more  than  twice  the  sum  made  by 
the  novel.  So  that  the  novelist  may  eke  out 
the  alarming  brevity  of  his  semiannual  state- 
ments by  writing  and  selling  " short  stuff." 

Then — so  far  as  the  novel  is  concerned — 
there  is  one  compensation,  one  source  of  revenue 
which  the  writer  enjoys  and  which  is,  as  a  rule, 
closed  to  all  others.  Once  the  carpenter  sells 
his  piece  of  work  it  is  sold  for  good  and  all. 
The  painter  has  but  one  chance  to  make  money 


164     The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

from  the  sale  of  his  picture.  The  architect 
receives  payment  for  his  design  and  there  is  the 
end.  But  the  novelist — and  one  speaks  now  of 
the  American — may  sell  the  same  work  over 
many  times.  Of  course,  if  the  novel  is  a  fail- 
ure it  is  a  failure,  and  no  more  is  said.  But 
suppose  it  is  a  salable,  readable,  brisk  bit  of 
narrative,  with  a  swift  action  and  rapid  move- 
ment. Properly  managed,  this,  under  favour- 
able conditions,  might  be  its  life  history: 
First  it  is  serialized  either  in  the  Sunday  press 
or,  less  probably,  in  a  weekly  or  monthly. 
Then  it  is  made  up  into  book  form  and  sent  over 
the  course  a  second  time.  The  original  pub- 
lisher sells  sheets  to  a  Toronto  or  Montreal 
house  and  a  Canadian  edition  reaps  a  like 
harvest.  It  is  not  at  all  unlikely  that  a  special 
cheap  cloth  edition  may  be  bought  and  launched 
by  some  large  retailer  either  of  New  York  or 
Chicago.  Then  comes  the  paper  edition — with 
small  royalties,  it  is  true,  but  based  upon  an 
enormous  number  of  copies,  for  the  usual  paper 
edition  is  an  affair  of  tens  of  thousands.  Next 
the  novel  crosses  the  Atlantic  and  a  small  sale 
in  England  helps  to  swell  the  net  returns,  which 
again  are  added  to — possibly — by  the  "  colonial 
edition"  which  the  English  firm  issues.  Last 
of  all  comes  the  Tauchnitz  edition,  and  with 
this  (bar  the  improbable  issuing  of  later  special 


Fiction  Writing  as  a  Business         16$ 

editions)  the  exploitation  ceases.  Eight  separate 
times  the  same  commodity  has  been  sold,  no 
one  of  the  sales  militating  against  the  success  of 
the  other  seven,  the  author  getting  his  fair  slice 
every  time.  Can  any  other  trade,  profession 
or  art  (excepting  only  the  dramatist,  which  is, 
after  all,  a  sister  art)  show  the  like?  Even 
(speaking  of  the  dramatist)  there  may  be  a 
ninth  reincarnation  of  the  same  story  and  the 
creatures  of  the  writer's  pages  stalk  forth  upon 
the  boards  in  cloak  and  buskin. 

And  there  are  the  indirect  ways  in  which  he 
may  earn  money.  Some  of  his  ilk  there  are 
who  lecture.  Nor  are  there  found  wanting 
those  who  read  from  their  own  works.  Some 
write  editorials  or  special  articles  in  the  maga- 
zines and  newspapers  with  literary  depart- 
ments. But  few  of  them  have  "princely" 
incomes. 


THE  "VOLUNTEER  MANU- 
SCRIPT" 


THE     "VOLUNTEER    MANUSCRIPT" 

AT  a  conservative  estimate  there  are 
*  *•  70,000,000  people  in  the  United  States. 
At  a  liberal  estimate  100,000  of  these  have  lost 
the  use  of  both  arms;  remain  then  69,900,000 
who  write  novels.  Indeed,  many  are  called, 
but  few — oh,  what  a  scanty,  skimped  handful 
that  few  represent — are  chosen. 

The  work  of  choosing  these  few,  or  rather 
of  rejecting  these  many,  devolves  upon  the 
manuscript  readers  for  the  baker's  dozen  of 
important  New  York  publishing  houses,  and  a 
strange  work  it  is,  and  strange  are  the  contri- 
butions that  pass  under  their  inspection. 

As  one  not  unfamiliar  with  the  work  of 
" reading,"  the  present  writer  may  offer  a  little 
seasonable  advice. 

i.  First  have  your  manuscript  typewritten. 
The  number  of  manuscripts  is  too  great  and 
the  time  too  short  to  expect  the  reader  to 
decipher  script;  and,  besides,  ideas  presented 
or  scenes  described  in  type  are  infinitely  more 
persuasive,  more  plausible  than  those  set  down 
in  script.  A  good  story  typewritten  will  appear 
169 


170     The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

to   better   advantage;   a   poor   one    similarly 
treated  seems  less  poverty  stricken. 

2.  Do  not,  by  any  manner  of  means,  announce 
in  a  prefatory  note  that  you  "lay  no  claim  to 
literary  excellence,"  with  the  intention  thereby 
of   ingratiating   yourself   with   regard   to   the 
"reader,"  winning  him  over  by  a  parade  of 
modesty.     Invariably  the  statement  is  prejudi- 
cial, producing  an  effect  exactly  contrary  to 
the  one  desired.     It  will  make  the  mildest  of 
"readers"  angry.     If  you  have  no  claims  upon 
literary  excellence,  why  in  Heaven's  name  are 
you  bothering  him  to  read  your  work? 

3.  Enclose    a    forwarding  address    in    case 
of  rejection.     This,    seemingly,    is  superfluous 
advice.     But  it  is  astonishing  how  many  manu- 
scripts come  in  innocent  even  of  the  author's 
name,  with  never  a  scrap  nor  clue  as  to  their 
proper  destination. 

4.  Don't  ask  for  criticism.     The  reader  is 
not  a  critic.     He  passes  only  upon  the  avail- 
ability of  the  manuscript  for  the  uses  of  the 
publisher  who  employs  him.     And  a  manu- 
script of  paramount  literary  quality  may  be 
rejected  for  any  number  of  reasons,  none  of 
which  have  anything  to  do  with  its  literary 
worth — or  accepted  for  causes  equally  outside 
the  domain  of   letters.     Criticism  is  one  thing, 
professional  "reading"  quite  another. 


The  "Volunteer  Manuscript"          171 

5.  Don't  bother  about  "enclosing  stamps  for 
return."     The  manuscript  will  go  back  to  you 
by  c.  o.  d.  express. 

6.  Don't   submit   a   part   of   a   manuscript. 
It  is  hard  enough  sometimes  to  judge  the  story 
as  a  whole,  and  no  matter  how  discouraging 
the  initial  chapter  may  be  the  publisher  will 
always  ask  to  see  the  remaining  portions  before 
deciding. 

7.  Don't  write  to  the  publisher  beforehand 
asking  him  if  he  will  consider  your  manuscript. 
If  it  is  a  novel  he  will  invariably  express  his 
willingness  to   consider  it.     How  can  he  tell 
whether  he  wants  it  or  not  until  he,  through 
his  "reader,"  has  seen  it? 

8.  Don't    expect   to   get   an   answer   much 
before  a  month.     Especially  if  your  story  has 
merit,  it  must  pass  through  many  hands  and 
be  considered  by  many  persons  before  judg- 
ment is  rendered.     The  better  it  is  the  longer 
you  will  wait  before  getting  a  report. 

9.  Don't,   in  Heaven's  name,   enclose  com- 
mendatory   letters    written    by    your    friends, 
favourable  reviews  by  your  pastor  or  by  the 
president  of  the  local  college.     The  story  will 
speak  for  itself  more  distinctly  than  any  of 
your  acquaintances. 

10.  Don't  say  you  will  revise  or  shorten  to 
suit  the  tastes  or  judgment  of  the  publisher. 


172     The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

At  best  that's  a  servile  humility  that  in  itself 
is  a  confession  of  weakness  and  that  will  make 
you  no  friends  at  court. 

11.  Don't  forward  a  letter  of  introduction, 
no  matter  from  how  near  a  friend  of  the  pub- 
lisher.    The  publisher  will  only  turn  the  MS. 
over  to  his  "  readers,"  and  with  them  the  letter 
from  a  stranger  carries  no  weight. 

12.  Don't  write  a  Colonial  novel. 

13.  Don't  write  a  Down  East  novel. 

14.  Don't  write  a  "  Prisoner  of  Zenda"  novel. 

15.  Don't  write  a  novel. 

1 6.  Try  to  keep  your  friends  from  writing 
novels. 

And  of  all  the  rules,  one  is  almost  tempted 
to  declare  that  the  last  two  are  the  most 
important.  For  to  any  one  genuinely  inter- 
ested in  finding  "good  stuff"  in  the  ruck 
and  run  of  volunteer  manuscripts,  nothing  is 
more  discouraging,  nothing  more  apparently 
hopeless  of  ultimate  success  than  the  consistent 
and  uniform  trashiness  of  the  day's  batch  of 
submitted  embryonic  novels.  Infinitely  better 
for  their  author  had  they  never  been  written; 
infinitely  better  for  him  had  he  employed  his 
labour — at  the  very  least  it  is  labour  of  three 
months — upon  the  trade  or  profession  to  which 
he  was  bred.  It  is  very  hard  work  to  write  a 
good  novel,  but  it  is  much  harder  to  write  a 


The  "Volunteer  Manuscript"          173 

bad  one.  Its  very  infelicity  is  a  snare  to  the 
pen,  its  very  clumsiness  a  constant  demand 
for  laborious  boosting  and  propping. 

And  consider  another  and  further  word  of 
advice — number  17,  if  you  please.  Don't  go 
away  with  that  popular  idea  that  your  manu- 
script will  be  considered,  or  if  really  and  unde- 
niably good  will  be  heedlessly  rejected.  Bad 
manuscripts  are  not  read  from  cover  to  cover. 
The  reader  has  not  the  right  to  waste  his 
employer's  time  in  such  unremunerative  dili- 
gence. Often  a  page  or  two  will  betray  the 
hopelessness  of  the  subsequent  chapters,  and  no 
one  will  demand  of  the  "reader"  a  perusal  of  a 
work  that  he  knows  will  be  declined  in  the  end. 

Nor  was  there  ever  a  sincere  and  earnest 
effort  that  went  unappreciated  in  a  publisher's 
place  of  business.  I  have  seen  an  entire  office 
turned  upside  down  by  a  "  reader"  who  believed 
he  had  discovered  among  the  batch  of  volumin- 
ous MS.  something  "really  good,  you  know," 
and  who  almost  forced  a  reading  of  the  offering 
in  question  upon  every  member  of  the  firm 
from  the  senior  partner  down  to  the  assistant 
salesman. 

As  a  rule,  all  manuscripts  follow  the  same 
routine.  From  the  clerk  who  receives  them 
at  the  hands  of  the  expressman  they  go  to  the 
recorder,  who  notes  the  title,  address  and  date 


174     The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

of  arrival,  and  also,  after  turning  them  over 
to  the  junior  reader,  the  fact  of  the  transfer. 
The  junior  reader's  report  upon  the  manu- 
script is  turned  in  to  one  of  the  members  of 
the  firm,  whose  decision  is  final.  The  manu- 
script itself  goes  up  to  the  senior  reader, 
who  also  reports  upon  it  to  the  firm  member. 
If  both  reports  are  unfavourable,  this  latter 
directs  the  manuscript  to  be  returned  with  or 
without  a  personal  letter,  as  he  deems  proper. 
If  both  the  readers'  reports  are  favourable,  or 
even  if  one  is  sufficiently  laudatory,  he  calls 
for  the  manuscript  and  reads  it  himself.  If  he 
disagrees  with  the  readers'  reports,  the  manu- 
script is  declined.  If  not,  he  passes  the  manu- 
script on  to  one  of  the  partners  of  the  house, 
who  also  reads  it.  The  two  "  talk  it  over,"  and 
out  of  the  conference  comes  the  ultimate 
decision  in  the  matter. 

Sometimes  the  circulation  manager  and  head 
salesman  are  consulted  to  decide  whether  or 
not — putting  all  questions  of  the  book's  literary 
merits  aside — the  "thing  will  sell."  And 
doubt  not  for  a  moment  that  their  counsel 
carries  weight. 

Another  feature  of  the  business  which  it  is 
very  well  to  remember  is  that  all  publishers 
cannot  be  held  responsible  for  the  loss  of  or 
damage  to  unsolicited  manuscripts.  If  you 


The  "Volunteer  Manuscript11          175 

submit  the  MS.  of  a  novel  you  do  it  at  your  own 
risk,  and  the  carelessness  of  an  office-boy  may 
lose  for  you  the  work  of  many  months — years, 
even ;  work  that  you  could  never  do  over  again. 
You  could  demand  legally  no  reparation.  The 
publishers  are  not  responsible.  Only  in  a  case 
where  a  letter  signed  by  one  of  the  ''heads" 
has  been  sent  to  the  author  requesting  that  the 
manuscript  be  forwarded  does  the  situation 
become  complicated.  But  in  the  case  of  an 
unknown  writer  the  monetary  value  of  his  work 
in  a  court  of  law  would  be  extremely  difficult 
to  place,  and  even  if  an  award  of  damages  could 
be  extorted  it  would  hardly  more  than  pay  the 
typewriter's  bill. 

But  the  loss  of  manuscript  may  be  of  serious 
import  to  the  publisher  for  all  that.  That 
reputation  for  negligence  in  the  matter  of 
handling  unsolicited  matter  fastens  upon  a 
firm  with  amazing  rapidity.  Bothersome  as 
the  number  of  volunteer  manuscripts  are,  they 
do — to  a  certain  extent — gauge  the  importance 
of  a  given  concern.  And  as  they  arrive  in 
constantly  increasing  quantities,  the  house 
may  know  that  it  is  growing  in  favour  and  in 
reputation :  and  so  a  marked  falling  off  reverses 
the  situation.  Writers  will  be  naturally  averse 
to  submitting  manuscripts  to  offices  which  are 
known  to  be  careless.  And  I  know  of  at  least 


176     The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

one  instance  where  the  loss  of  a  couple  of  manu- 
scripts within  a  month  produced  a  marked 
effect  upon  the  influx  of  the  volunteers.  Some- 
how the  news  of  the  loss  always  gets  out,  and 
spreads  by  some  mysterious  means  till  it  is 
heard  of  from  strangely  remote  quarters.  The 
author  will,  of  course,  tell  his  friends  of  the 
calamity,  and  will  make  more  ado  over  the 
matter  than  if  his  story  was  accepted.  Of 
course,  this  particular  story  is  the  one  great 
masterpiece  of  his  career;  the  crass  stupidity 
of  the  proud  and  haughty  publisher  has  ruined 
his  chance  of  success,  and  the  warning:  "  Don't 
send  your  stuff  to  that  firm.  It  will  be  lost !" 
is  passed  on  all  along  the  line.  So  that  repeated 
instances  of  the  negligence  may  in  the  end 
embarrass  the  publisher,  and  the  real  master- 
piece, the  first  novel  of  a  New  Man,  goes  to  a 
rival. 

I  have  in  mind  one  case  where  a  manuscript 
was  lost  under  peculiarly  distressing  circum- 
stances. The  reader,  who  had  his  office  in 
the  editorial  rooms  of  a  certain  important  house 
of  New  York,  was  on  a  certain  day  called  to 
the  reception  room  to  interview  one  of  the  host 
of  writers  who  came  daily  to  submit  their 
offerings  in  person. 

In  this  case  the  reader  confronted  a  little 
gentleman  in  the  transition  period  of  genteel 


The  "Volunteer  Manuscript"          177 

decay.  He  was  a  Frenchman.  His  mustache, 
tight,  trim  and  waxed,  was  white.  The  frock 
coat  was  buttoned  only  at  the  waist;  a  silk 
handkerchief  puffed  from  the  pocket,  and  a 
dried  carnation,  lamentably  faded,  that  had 
done  duty  for  many  days,  enlivened  with  a 
feeble  effort  the  worn  silk  lapel. 

But  the  innate  French  effervescence,  debo- 
nair, insouciant,  was  not  gone  yet.  The 
little  gentleman  presented  a  card.  Of  course 
the  name  boasted  that  humblest  of  titles — 
baron.  The  Baron,  it  appeared,  propitiated 
destiny  by  ''Instruction  in  French,  German 
and  Italian,"  but  now  instruction  was  no 
longer  propitious.  With  a  deprecating  giggle 
this  was  explained;  the  Baron  did  not 
wish  to  make  the  "reader"  feel  bad — to 
embarrass  him. 

"I  will  probably  starve  very  soon,"  he 
observed,  still  with  the  modifying  little  giggle, 
and,  of  course,  the  inevitable  shrug,  "unless — 
my  faith — something  turns  up." 

It  was  to  be  turned  up,  evidently,  by  means  of 
an  attenuated  manuscript  which  he  presented. 
He  had  written — during  the  intervals  of 
instruction — a  series  of  articles  on  the  charac- 
ter of  Americans  as  seen  by  a  Frenchman,  and 
these  had  been  published  by  a  newspaper  of 
the  town  in  which  he  instructed — an  absolutely 


178     The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

obscure  town,  lost  and  forgotten,  away  up 
among  the  New  Hampshire  hills. 

The  articles,  he  insinuated,  might  be  made 
into  a  book — a  book  that  might  be  interesting 
to  the  great  American  public.  And,  with  a 
naivete  that  was  absolutely  staggering,  he 
assumed  without  question  that  the  firm  would 
publish  his  book — that  it  was  really  an  impor- 
tant contribution  to  American  literature. 

He  would  admit  that  he  had  not  been  paid 
very  liberally  by  the  country  paper  for  the 
articles  as  they  appeared.  He  was  not  Emile 
Zola.  If  he  was  he  might  have  sold  his  articles 
at  fifteen  or  twenty  dollars  each. 

He  said  just  that.  Think  of  it!  The  poor 
little  Instructor-Baron  Zola !  Fifteen  dollars ! 
Well! 

He  left  the  articles — neatly  cut  out  and 
pasted  in  a  copy-book — with  the  "reader,"  and 
gave  as  his  address  a  dreadfully  obscure  hotel. 

The  "reader"  could  not  make  up  his  mouth  to 
tell  him,  even  before  looking  over  the  first  para- 
graph of  the  first  article,  that  as  a  book  the 
commercial  value  of  the  offering  was  absolutely, 
irrevocably  and  hopelessly  nil,  and  so  the  little 
manuscript  went  into  the  mill — and  in  two  days 
was  lost. 

I  suppose  that  never  in  the  history  of  that 
particular  firm  was  the  search  for  a  missing 


The  "Volunteer  Manuscript"  179 

manuscript  prosecuted  with  half  the  energy 
or  ardour  that  ensued  upon  the  discovery  of 
this  particular  loss.  From  the  desk-files  of 
the  senior  partner  to  the  shipping-slips  of  the 
packer's  assistant  the  hunt  proceeded — and  all 
in  vain. 

Meanwhile  the  day  approached  on  which  the 
Baron  was  to  come  for  his  answer  and  at  last  it 
arrived,  and  promptly  at  the  appointed  hour 
the  poor  little  card  with  the  hyphenated  titled 
name  written  carefully  and  with  beautiful 
flourishes  in  diluted  ink  was  handed  in. 

Do  you  know  what  the  publisher  did?  He 
wrote  the  absurd,  pompous  name  across  the 
order  line  of  a  check  and  signed  his  own  name 
underneath,  and  the  check  was  for  an  amount 
that  would  make  even  unpropitious  Destiny 
take  off  his  hat  and  bow  politely. 

And  I  tell  you  that  my  little  Instructor- 
Baron,  with  eminent  good-humour,  but  with  the 
grand  manner,  a  Marechal  du  royaume,  waved 
it  aside.  Turenne  could  have  been  no  more 
magnificent.  (They  do  order  these  matters 
better  in  France.)  His  whole  concern — 
hunger-pinched  as  he  may  easily  have  been 
at  the  very  moment — his  whole  concern  was 
to  put  the  embarrassed  publisher  at  his  ease, 
to  make  this  difficulty  less  difficult. 

He  assured  him  that  his  articles  were  written 


180     The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

comme-ci,  comme-ca,  for  his  own  amusement, 
that  he  could  not  think  of  accepting,  etc. 

And  I  like  to  remember  that  this  whole 
affair,  just  as  if  it  had  been  prepared  in 
advance  for  a  popular  magazine  whose  editor 
insisted  upon  "happy  endings,"  did  end 
well,  and  the  publisher,  who  at  the  moment 
was  involved  in  the  intricacies  of  a  vast  corre- 
spondence with  a  Parisian  publishing  house, 
found  a  small  position  as  translator  in  one  of 
his  sub-departments  for  the  little  Instructor- 
Baron  who  had  the  great  good  fortune  to 
suffer  the  loss  of  a  manuscript — in  the  right 
place. 

And  now  the  card — engraved,  if  you  please — 
bears  proudly  the  Baron's  name,  supported 
by  the  inscription,  "Official  Translator  and 
Director  of  Foreign  Correspondence  to  the 
of &  Co.,  Publishers.  " 


RETAIL  BOOKSELLER:  LITERARY 
DICTATOR 


RETAIL  BOOKSELLER:  LITERARY 
DICTATOR 

all  the  various  and  different  kinds 
and  characters  of  people  who  are  con- 
cerned in  the  writing  and  making  of  a  novel, 
including  the  author,  the  publisher,  the  critic, 
the  salesman,  the  advertisement  writer, 
the  drummer — of  all  this  "  array  of  talent," 
as  the  bill-boards  put  it,  which  one  has  the  most 
influence  in  the  success  of  the  book?  Who, 
of  all  these,  can,  if  he  chooses,  help  or  hurt  the 
sales  the  most? — assuming  for  the  moment 
that  sales  are  the  index  of  success,  the  kind  of 
success  that  at  the  instant  we  are  interested  in. 
Each  one  of  these  people  has  his  followers 
and  champions.  There  are  not  found  wanting 
those  who  say  the  publisher  is  the  all-in-all. 
And  again  it  is  said  that  a  critic  of  authority 
can  make  a  book  by  a  good  review  or  ruin  it 
by  an  unfavourable  one.  The  salesman,  others 
will  tell  you — he  who  is  closest  allied  to  the 
money  transaction — can  exert  the  all-powerful 
influence.  Or  again,  surely  in  this  day  of 
exploitation  and  publicity  the  man  who  con- 
cocts great  "ads"  is  the  important  one. 


184     The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

The  author  is  next  included.  He  can  do  no 
more  than  write  the  book,  and  as  good  books 
have  failed  and  bad  ones  have  succeeded — 
always  considering  failure  and  success  in  their 
most  sordid  meanings — the  mere  writing  need 
not  figure.  But  the  fact  remains  that  there 
are  cases  where  publishers  have  exerted  every 
device  to  start  a  book  and  still  have  known  it 
to  remain  upon  their  hands;  that  critics  have 
raved  to  heaven  or  damned  to  hell,  and  the 
novel  has  fallen  or  flown  in  spite  and  not 
because  of  them;  that  salesmen  have  cajoled 
and  schemed,  and  yet  have  returned  with 
unfilled  orders,  and  that  advertisements  that 
have  clamoured  so  loudly  that  even  they  who 
ran  must  have  read,  and  yet  the  novel  in 
question  remained  inert,  immovable,  a  failure, 
a  "plug." 

All  these,  then,  have  been  tried  and  at  times 
have  been  found  wanting.  There  yet  remains 
one  exponent  of  the  business  of  distributing 
fiction  who  has  not  been  considered.  He,  one 
claims,  can  do  more  than  any  or  all  of  the  gen- 
tlemen just  mentioned  to  launch  or  strand  a 
novel. 

Now  let  it  be  understood  that  by  no  possible 
manner  of  means  does  one  consider  him  infalli- 
ble. Again  and  again  have  his  best  efforts 
come  to  nothing.  This,  however,  is  what  is 


Retail  Bookseller:  Literary  Dictator     185 

claimed:  he  has  more  influence  on  success  or 
failure  than  any  of  the  others.  And  who  is  he  ? 
The  retailer.  One  can  almost  affirm  that 
he  is  a  determining  factor  in  American  fiction ; 
that,  in  a  limited  sense,  with  him,  his  is  the 
future.  Author,  critic,  analyst  and  essayist 
may  hug  to  themselves  a  delusive  phantom  of 
hope  that  they  are  the  moulders  of  public 
opinion,  they  and  they  alone.  That  may  be, 
sometimes.  But  consider  the  toiling  and  spin- 
ning retailer.  What  does  the  failure  or  success 
of  the  novel  mean  to  the  critic  ?  Nothing  more 
than  a  minute  and  indefinite  increase  or  decrease 
of  prestige.  The  publisher  who  has  many 
books  upon  his  list  may  recoup  himself  on  one 
failure  by  a  compensating  success.  The  sales- 
man's pay  goes  on  just  the  same  whether  his 
order  slips  are  full  or  blank;  likewise  the 
stipend  of  the  writer  of  "ads."  The  author 
has  no  more  to  lose — materially — than  the  price 
of  ink  and  paper.  But  to  the  retail  bookseller 
a  success  means  money  made ;  failure,  money 
lost.  If  he  can  dispose  of  an  order  of  fifty 
books  he  is  ahead  by  calculable,  definite,  con- 
crete profits.  If  he  cannot  dispose  of  the  fifty 
his  loss  is  equally  calculable,  equally  definite, 
equally  concrete.  Naturally,  being  a  business 
man,  he  is  a  cautious  man.  He  will  not  order 
a  book  which  he  deems  unsalable,  but  he  will 


1 86     The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

lay  in  a  stock  of  one  that  promises  returns. 
Through  him  the  book  is  distributed  to  the 
public.  If  he  has  a  book  in  stock,  the  public 
gets  it.  If  he  does  not  have  it,  the  public  goes 
without.  The  verdict  of  the  public  is  the  essen- 
tial to  popularity  or  unpopularity,  and  the 
public  can  only  pass  verdict  upon  what  it  has 
read.  The  connection  seems  clear  and  the 
proposition  proved  that  the  retail  bookseller 
is  an  almost  paramount  influence  in  American 
literature. 

It  is  interesting  to  see  what  follows  from  this 
and  to  note  how  the  retailer  in  the  end  can 
effectually  throttle  the  sham  novelist  who  has 
fooled  the  public  once.  Were  it  not  for  the 
retailer,  the  sham  novelist  would  get  an 
indefinite  number  of  chances  for  his  life ;  but  so 
long  as  the  small  book-dealer  lives  and  acts, 
just  so  long  will  bad  work — and  one  means  by 
this  wholly  bad,  admittedly  bad,  hopelessly 
bad  work — fail  to  trick  the  reading  public  twice. 
Observe  now  the  working  of  it.  Let  us  take  a 
typical  case.  A  story  by  an  unknown  writer 
is  published.  By  strenuous  exploitation  the 
publishers  start  a  vogue.  The  book  begins 
to  sell.  The  retailer,  observing  the  campaign 
of  publicity  managed  by  the  publishers,  stocks 
up  with  the  volume ;  surely  when  the  publishers 
are  backing  the  thing  so  strong  it  will  be  a  safe 


Retail  Bookseller:  Literary  Dictator     187 

venture;  surely  the  demand  will  be  great.  It 
does  prove  a  safe  venture ;  the  demand  is  great ; 
the  retailer  disposes  of  fifty,  then  of  a  second 
order  of  one  hundred,  then  of  two  hundred, 
then  of  five  hundred.  The  book  is  now  in  the 
hands  of  the  public.  It  is  read  and  found 
sadly,  sadly  wanting.  It  is  not  a  good  story; 
it  is  trivial;  it  is  insincere.  Far  and  wide  the 
story  is  condemned. 

Meanwhile  the  unknown  writer,  now  become 
famous,  is  writing  a  second  novel.  It  is  finished, 
issued,  and  the  salesman  who  travels  for  the 
publishers  begins  to  place  his  orders.  The 
retailer,  remembering  the  success  of  this  author's 
past  venture,  readily  places  a  large  order.  Two 
hundred  is  not,  in  his  opinion,  an  overstock.  So 
it  goes  all  over  the  country.  Returns  are  made 
to  the  author,  and  he  sees  that  some  fifty 
thousand  have  been  sold.  Encouraging,  is  it 
not?  Yes,  fifty  thousand  have  been  sold — 
by  the  publisher  to  the  retailer;  but  here  is  the 
point — not  by  the  retailer  to  the  public.  Of 
the  two  hundred  our  dealer  took  from  the 
publisher's  traveling  salesman,  one  hundred 
and  ninety  yet  remain  upon  his  counters.  The 
public,  fooled  once,  on  the  first  over-praised, 
over-exploited  book,  refuse  to  be  taken  in  a 
second  time.  Who  is  the  loser  now  ?  Not  the 
author,  who  draws  royalties  on  copies  sold  to 


1 88     The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

the  tradesman — the  retailer ;  not  the  publisher, 
who  makes  his  profit  out  of  the  same  trans- 
action; but  the  retailer,  who  is  loaded  down 
with  an  unsalable  article. 

Meanwhile  our  author  writes  his  third  novel. 
So  far  as  he  can  see,  his  second  book  is  as  great 
a  popular  success  as  his  first.  His  semiannual 
statements  are  there  to  show  it — there  it  is  in 
black  and  white;  figures  can't  lie.  The  third 
novel  is  finished  and  launched.  At  the  end  of 
the  first  six  months  after  publication  day  the 
author  gets  his  publisher's  statement  of  sales. 
Instead  of  the  expected  10,000  copies  sold, 
behold  the  figure  is  a  bare  1,500.  At  the  end  of 
the  second  six  months  the  statement  shows 
about  250.  The  book  has  failed.  Why?  Be- 
cause the  retailer  refuses  to  order  it.  He  has 
said  to  the  soliciting  salesman,  "Why  should  I, 
in  Heaven's  name,  take  a  third  book  by  this 
man  when  I  have  yet  one  hundred  and  ninety 
copies  of  his  second  novel  yet  to  sell?" 

It  is  hard  for  the  salesman  to  controvert 
that  argument.  He  may  argue  that  the  third 
book  is  a  masterpiece,  and — mark  this — it  may 
in  fact  be  a  veritable,  actual  masterpiece,  a 
wonderful  contribution  to  the  world's  litera- 
ture; it  is  all  of  no  effect.  There  stands  the 
block  of  unsold  books,  190  strong,  and  all  the 
eloquence  in  the  world  will  not  argue  them 


Retail  Bookseller:  Literary  Dictator     189 

off  the  counter.  After  this  our  author's  pub- 
lisher will  have  none  of  his  books.  Even  if  he 
writes  a  fourth  and  submits  it,  the  publisher 
incontinently  declines  it.  This  author  is  no 
longer  a  " business  proposition." 

There  cannot  but  be  an  element  of  satisfac- 
tion in  all  this,  and  a  source  of  comfort  to  those 
who  take  the  welfare  of  their  country's  litera- 
ture seriously  to  heart.  The  sham  novelist 
who  is  in  literature  (what  shall  we  say)  "for  his 
own  pocket  every  time"  sooner  or  later  meets 
the  wave  of  reaction  that  he  cannot  stem  nor 
turn  and  under  which  he  and  his  sham  are  con- 
clusively, definitely  and  irrevocably  buried. 
Observe  how  it  works  out  all  down  the  line. 
He  fools  himself  all  of  the  time,  he  fools  the 
publisher  three  times,  he  fools  the  retail  dealer 
twice,  and  he  fools  the  Great  American  Public 
just  exactly  once. 


AN   AMERICAN    SCHOOL  OF 
FICTION? 


AN  AMERICAN  SCHOOL  OF  FICTION? 

TT  seems  to  me  that  it  is  a  proposition 
not  difficult  of  demonstration  that  the 
United  States  of  America  has  never  been  able 
to  boast  of  a  school  of  fiction  distinctively  its 
own.  And  this  is  all  the  more  singular  when 
one  considers  that  in  all  other  activities 
Americans  are  peculiarly  independent  in 
thought  and  in  deed,  and  have  acquired 
abroad  a  reputation — even  a  notoriety — for 
being  original. 

In  the  mechanical  arts,  in  the  industries,  in 
politics,  in  business  methods,  in  diplomacy,  in 
ship-building,  in  war,  even  in  dentistry,  if  you 
please — even  in  the  matter  of  riding  race-horses 
— Americans  have  evolved  their  own  methods, 
quite  different  from  European  methods. 

Hardy  and  adventurous  enough  upon  all  other 
lines,  disdainful  of  conventions,  contemptuous 
of  ancient  custom,  we  yet  lag  behind  in  the 
arts — slow  to  venture  from  the  path  blazed 
long  ago  by  Old  World  masters. 

It  is  preeminently  so  in  the  fine  arts.  No 
sooner  does  an  American  resolve  upon  a  career 
of  painting,  sculpture  or  architecture  than 
193 


194     The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

straight  he  departs  for  Paris,  the  Beaux  Arts 
and  the  Julien  atelier;  and,  his  education 
finished,  returns  to  propagate  French  ideas; 
French  methods;  and  our  best  paintings  to- 
day are  more  French  than  American ;  French 
in  conception,  in  composition,  in  technique 
and  treatment. 

I  suppose  that  the  nearest  we  ever  came  to 
an  organized  school  of  native-born  Americans, 
writing  about  American  things  from  an  Ameri- 
can point  of  view,  was  in  the  days  of  Lowell, 
Longfellow,  Holmes,  Whittier  and  the  rest  of 
that  illustrious  company.  But  observe :  How 
is  this  group  spoken  of  and  known  to  literature  ? 
Not  as  the  American  school,  but  as  the  New 
England  school.  Even  the  appellation  "  New" 
England  as  differentiated  from  ''old"  England 
is  significant.  And  New  England  is  not 
America. 

Hawthorne,  it  will  be  urged,  is  a  great  name 
among  American  writers  of  fiction.  Not  pecu- 
liarly American,  however.  Not  so  distinctively 
and  unequivocally  as  to  lay  claim  to  a  vigorous 
original  Americanism.  "The  Scarlet  Letter" 
is  not  an  American  story,  but  rather  a  story  of 
an  English  colony  on  North  American  soil. 
"The  Marble  Faun "  is  frankly  and  unreservedly 
foreign.  Even  the  other  novels  were  pictures 


An  American  School  of  Fiction?      195 

of  a  very  limited  and  circumscribed  life — the 
life  of  New  England  again. 

Cooper,  you  will  say,  was  certainly  American 
in  attitude  and  choice  of  subject ;  none  more  so. 
None  less,  none  less  American.  As  a  novelist 
he  is  saturated  with  the  romance  of  the  con- 
temporary English  story-tellers.  It  is  true 
that  his  background  is  American.  But  his 
heroes  and  heroines  talk  like  the  characters  out 
of  Bulwer  in  their  most  vehement  moods,  while 
his  Indians  stalk  through  all  the  melodramatic 
tableaux  of  Byron,  and  declaim  in  the  periods 
of  the  border  noblemen  in  the  pages  of  Walter 
Scott. 

Poe  we  may  leave  out  of  classification;  he 
shone  in  every  branch  of  literature  but  that  of 
novel-writing.  Bret  Harte  was  a  writer  of 
short  stories  and — oh,  the  pity  of  it,  the  folly 
of  it ! — abandoned  the  field  with  hardly  more 
than  a  mere  surface-scratching. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  had  Mr.  Henry 
James  remained  in  America  he  would  have  been 
our  very  best  writer.  If  he  has  been  able  to 
seize  the  character  and  characteristics  so  forci- 
bly of  a  people  like  the  English,  foreign  to 
him,  different,  unfamiliar,  what  might  he  not 
have  done  in  the  very  midst  of  his  own  country- 
men, into  whose  company  he  was  born,  reared 
and  educated.  All  the  finish  of  style,  the 


196     The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

marvelous  felicity  of  expression  would  still  have 
been  his  and  at  the  same  time,  by  the  very 
nature  of  the  life  he  lived  and  wrote  about, 
the  concrete,  the  vigorous,  the  simple  direct 
action  would  have  become  a  part  of  his  work, 
instead  of  the  present  ultimate  vagueness  and 
indecision  that  so  mars  and  retards  it. 

Of  all  the  larger  names  remain  only  those 
of  Mr.  Howells  and  Mr.  Clemens.  But  as  the 
novelists,  as  such,  are  under  consideration, 
even  Mark  Twain  may  be  left  out  of  the  dis- 
cussion. American  to  the  core,  posterity  will 
yet  know  him  not  as  a  novel-writer,  but  as  a 
humourist.  Mr.  Howells  alone  is  left,  then, 
after  the  elimination  is  complete.  Of  all  pro- 
ducers of  American  fiction  he  has  had  the  broad- 
est vision,  at  once  a  New  Englander  and  a  New 
Yorker,  an  Easterner  and — in  the  Eastern  sense 
— a  Westerner.  But  one  swallow  does  not  make 
a  summer,  nor  does  one  writer  constitute  a 
"school."  Mr.  Howells  has  had  no  successors. 
Instead,  just  as  we  had  with  "Lapham" 
and  "The  Modern  Instance"  laid  the  founda- 
tion of  fine,  hardy  literature,  that  promised  to 
be  our  very,  very  own,  we  commence  to  build 
upon  it  a  whole  confused  congeries  of  borrowed, 
faked,  pilfered  romanticisms,  building  a  crum- 
bling gothic  into  a  masonry  of  honest  brown- 
stone,  or  foisting  colonial  porticos  upon  facades 


An  American  School  of  Fiction?      197 

of  Montpelier  granite,  and  I  cannot  allow  this 
occasion  to  pass  without  protest  against  what 
I  am  sure  every  serious-minded  reader  must 
consider  a  lamentable  discrowning. 

Of  the  latter-day  fiction  writers  Miss  Wilkins 
had  more  than  all  others  convinced  her  public 
of  her  sincerity.  Her  field  was  her  own;  the 
place  was  ceded  to  her.  No  other  novelist 
could  invade  her  domain  and  escape  the  censure 
that  attaches  to  imitation.  Her  public  was 
loyal  to  her  because  it  believed  in  her,  and  it 
was  a  foregone  conclusion  that  she  would  be 
loyal  to  it. 

More  than  this:  A  writer  who  occupies  so 
eminent  a  place  as  Miss  Wilkins,  who  has 
become  so  important,  who  has  exerted  and 
still  can  exert  so  strong  an  influence,  cannot 
escape  the  responsibilities  of  her  position. 
She  cannot  belong  wholly  to  herself,  cannot  be 
wholly  independent.  She  owes  a  duty  to  the 
literature  of  her  native  country. 

Yet  in  spite  of  all  this,  and  in  spite  of  the  fact 
that  those  who  believe  in  the  future  of  our 
nation's  letters  look  to  such  established  repu- 
tations as  hers  to  keep  the  faith,  to  protest, 
though  it  is  only  by  their  attitude,  silently  and 
with  dignity,  against  corruptions,  degradations ; 
in  spite  of  all  this,  and  in  the  heyday  of  her 
power,  Miss  Wilkins  chooses  to  succumb  to 


198     The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

the  momentary,  transitory  set  of  the  tide,  and 
forsaking  her  own  particular  work,  puts  forth, 
one  of  a  hundred  others,  a  "colonial  romance." 
It  is  a  discrowning.  It  can  be  considered  as 
no  less.  A  deliberate  capitulation  to  the 
clamour  of  the  multitude.  Possibly  the  novel- 
ist was  sincere,  but  it  is  perilously  improbable 
that  she  would  have  written  her  "Colonial 
Romance"  had  not  "colonial  romances"  been 
the  fashion.  On  the  face  of  it  Miss  Wilkins 
has  laid  herself  open  to  a  suspicion  of  dis- 
ingenuousness  that  every  honest  critic  can 
only  deplore.  Even  with  all  the  sincerity  in 
the  world  she  had  not  the  right  to  imperil  the 
faith  of  her  public,  to  undermine  its  confidence 
in  her.  She  was  one  of  the  leaders.  It  is  as 
if  a  captain,  during  action,  had  deserted  to 
the  enemy. 

It  could  not  have  been  even  for  the  baser 
consideration  of  money.  With  her  success 
assured  in  advance  Miss  Wilkins  can  be 
above  such  influences.  Nor  of  fame.  Surely 
no  great  distinction  centres  upon  writers  of 
"colonial  romances"  of  late.  Only  the  author 
herself  may  know  her  motives,  but  we  who 
looked  to  her  to  keep  the  standard  firm — and 
high — have  now  to  regret  the  misfortune  of  a 
leader  lost,  a  cause  weakened 

However,  it  is  a  question  after  all  if  a  "school," 


An  American  School  of  Fiction?        199 

understood  in  the  European  sense  of  the  word, 
is  possible  for  America  just  yet.  France  has 
had  its  schools  of  naturalism  and  romance, 
Russia  its  schools  of  realism,  England  its  schools 
of  psychologists.  But  France,  Russia  and 
England  now,  after  so  many  centuries  of 
growth,  may  be  considered  as  units.  Certain 
tendencies  influence  each  one  over  its  whole 
geographical  extent  at  the  same  time.  Its 
peoples  have  been  welded  together  to  a  certain 
homogeneousness.  It  is  under  such  conditions 
that  "schools"  of  fiction,  of  philosophy,  of 
science  and  the  like  arise. 

But  the  United  States  are  not  yet,  in  the 
European  sense,  united.  We  have  existed  as 
a  nation  hardly  more  than  a  generation  and 
during  that  time  our  peoples  have  increased 
largely  by  emigration.  From  all  over  the 
globe  different  races  have  been  pouring  in  upon 
us.  The  North  has  been  settled  under  one 
system,  the  South  under  another,  the  Middle 
West  under  another,  the  East  under  another. 
South  Central  and  Far  West  under  still  others. 
There  is  no  homogeneousness  among  us  as  yet. 
The  Westerner  thinks  along  different  lines  from 
the  Easterner  and  arrives  at  different  con- 
clusions. What  is  true  of  California  is  false  of 
New  York.  Mr.  Cable's  picture  of  life  is  a  far 
different  thing  than  that  of  Mr.  Howells. 


200     The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

The  " school"  implies  a  rallying  of  many 
elements  under  one  standard.  But  no  such 
thing  is  possible  to-day  for  American  writers. 
Mr.  Hamlin  Garland  could  not  merge  his  per- 
sonality nor  pool  his  ideals  with  Edith  Wharton. 
Their  conceptions  of  art  are  as  different  as  the 
conditions  of  life  they  study  in  their  books. 

The  school  of  fiction  American  in  thought, 
in  purpose  and  in  treatment  will  come  in  time, 
inevitably.  Meanwhile  the  best  we  can  expect 
of  the  leaders  is  to  remain  steadfast,  to  keep 
unequivocably  to  the  metes  and  bounds  of  the 
vineyards  of  their  labours;  no  trespassing,  no 
borrowing,  no  niching  of  the  grapes  of  another 
man's  vines.  The  cultivation  of  one's  own 
vine  is  quite  sufficient  for  all  energy.  We  want 
these  vines  to  grow — in  time — to  take  root  deep 
in  American  soil  so  that  by  and  by  the  fruit 
shall  be  all  of  our  own  growing. 

We  do  not  want — distinctly  and  vehemently 
we  do  not  want-the  vine-grower  to  leave  his  own 
grapes  to  rot  while  he  flies  off  to  the  gathering 
of — what?  The  sodden  lees  of  an  ancient 
crushing. 


NOVELISTS  OF  THE  FUTURE 


NOVELISTS   OF  THE  FUTURE 

TT  seems  to  me  that  a  great  deal  could  be 
-^  said  on  this  subject — a  great  deal  that 
has  not  been  said  before.  There  are  so  many 
novelists  these  latter  days.  So  many  whose 
works  show  that  they  have  had  no  training, 
and  it  does  seem  that  so  long  as  the  fiction 
writers  of  the  United  States  go  fumbling  and 
stumbling  along  in  this  undisciplined  fashion, 
governed  by  no  rule,  observing  no  formula, 
setting  for  themselves  no  equation  to  solve, 
that  just  so  long  shall  we  be  far  from  the  desir- 
able thing — an  American  school  of  fiction. 
Just  now  (let  us  say  that  it  is  a  pity)  we  have 
no  school  at  all.  We  acknowledge  no  master, 
and  we  are  playing  at  truant,  incorrigible, 
unmanageable,  sailing  paper  boats  in  the  creek 
behind  the  schoolhouse,  or  fishing  with  bent 
pins  in  the  pools  and  shallows  of  popular  favour. 
That  some  catch  goldfish  there  is  no  great 
matter,  and  is  no  excuse  for  the  truancy.  We 
are  not  there  for  the  goldfish,  if  you  please,  but 
to  remain  in  the  school  at  work  till  we  have 
been  summoned  to  stand  up  in  our  places  and 
tell  the  master  what  we  have  learned. 
203 


204     The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

There's  where  we  should  be,  and  if  we  do  not 
observe  the  rules  and  conform  to  some  degree 
of  order,  we  should  be  rapped  on  the  knuckles 
or  soundly  clumped  on  the  head,  and  by  vigor- 
ous discipline  taught  to  know  that  formulas 
(a — b;  a-|-b)  are  important  things  for  us  to 
observe,  and  that  each  and  all  of  us  should 
address  ourselves  with  all  diligence  to  finding 
the  value  of  x  in  our  problems. 

It  is  the  class  in  the  Production  of  Original 
Fiction  which  of  all  the  school  contains  the 
most  truants.  Indeed,  its  members  believe 
that  schooling  for  them  is  unnecessary.  Not 
so  with  the  other  classes.  Not  one  single  mem- 
ber of  any  single  one  of  them  who  does  not 
believe  that  he  must  study  first  if  he  would  pro- 
duce afterward.  Observe,  there  on  the  lower 
benches,  the  assiduous  little  would-be  car- 
penters and  stone-masons ;  how  carefully  they 
con  their  tables  of  measurement,  their  squares 
and  compasses.  "Ah,  the  toilers,"  you  say, 
"the  grubby  manual  fellows — of  course  they 
must  learn  their  trade  !" 

Very  well,  then.  Consider — higher  up  the 
class,  on  the  very  front  row  of  benches — the 
Fine  Arts  row,  the  little  painters  and  architects 
and  musicians  and  actors  of  the  future.  See 
how  painfully  they  study,  and  study  and  study. 
The  little  stone-mason  will  graduate  in  a  few 


Novelists  of  the  Future  205 

months;  but  for  these  others  of  the  Fine  Arts 
classes  there  is  no  such  thing  as  graduation. 
For  them  there  shall  never  be  a  diploma,  signed 
and  sealed,  giving  them  the  right  to  call 
themselves  perfected  at  their  work.  All  their 
lives  they  shall  be  students.  In  the  vacations 
— maybe — they  write,  or  build,  or  sing,  or  act, 
but  soon  again  they  are  back  to  the  benches, 
studying,  studying  always;  working  as  never 
carpenter  or  stone-mason  worked.  Now  and 
then  they  get  a  little  medal,  a  bit  of  gold  and 
enamel,  a  bow  of  ribbon,  that  is  all ;  the  stone- 
mason would  disdain  it,  would  seek  it  for  the 
value  of  the  metal  in  it.  The  Fine  Arts  people 
treasure  it  as  the  veteran  treasures  his  cross. 

And  these  little  medals  you — the  truants,  the 
bad  boys  of  the  paper  boats  and  the  goldfish — 
you  want  them,  too;  you  claim  them  and 
clamour  for  them.  You  who  declare  that  no 
study  is  necessary  for  you;  you  who  are  not 
content  with  your  catch  of  goldfish,  you  must 
have  the  bits  of  ribbon  and  enamel,  too.  Have 
you  deserved  them?  Have  you  worked  for 
them  ?  Have  you  found  the  value  of  x  in  your 
equation?  Have  you  solved  the  parenthesis 
of  your  problem?  Have  you  even  done  the 
problem  at  all?  Have  you  even  glanced  or 
guessed  at  the  equation?  The  shame  of  it  be 
upon  you !  Come  in  from  the  goldfish  and  go 


206      The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

to  work,  or  stay  altogether  at  the  fishing  and 
admit  that  you  are  not  deserving  of  the  medal 
which  the  master  gives  as  a  reward  of  merit. 

"  But  there  are  no  books  that  we  can  study/' 
you  contest.  "  The  architect  and  the  musician, 
the  painter  and  the  actor — all  of  these  have 
books  ready  to  hand;  they  can  learn  from 
codified,  systematized  knowledge.  For  the 
novelist,  where  is  there  of  cut-and-dried  science 
that  he  can  learn  that  will  help  him?'1 

And  that  is  a  good  contention.  No,  there 
are  no  such  books.  Of  all  the  arts,  the  art  of 
fiction  has  no  handbook.  By  no  man's  teach- 
ing can  we  learn  the^knack  of  putting  a  novel 
together  in  the  best  way.  No  one  has  ever 
risen  to  say,  "Here  is  how  the  plan  should  be; 
thus  and  so  should  run  the  outline." 

We  admit  the  fact,  but  neither  does  that 
excuse  the  goldfishing  and  the  paper-boat  busi- 
ness. Some  day  the  handbook  may  be  com- 
piled— it  is  quite  possible — but  meanwhile,  and 
faute  de  mieux,  there  is  that  which  you  may 
study  better  than  all  handbooks. 

Observe,  now.  Observe,  for  instance,  the 
little  painter  scholars.  On  the  fly-leaves  of 
their  schoolbooks  they  are  making  pictures — 
of  what?  Remember  it,  remember  it  and 
remember  it — of  the  people  around  them.  So 
is  the  actor,  so  the  musician — all  of  the  occu- 


Novelists  of  the  Future  207 

pants  of  the  Fine  Arts  bench.  They  are  study- 
ing one  another  quite  as  much  as  their  boots 
— even  more,  and  they  will  tell  you  that  it  is 
the  most  important  course  in  the  curriculum. 

You — the  truant  little  would-be  novelist — 
you  can  do  this,  quite  as  easily  as  they,  and  for 
you  it  is  all  the  more  important,  for  you  must 
make  up  for  the  intimate  knowledge  of  your 
fellows  what  you  are  forced  to  lack  in  the  igno- 
rance of  forms.  But  you  cannot  get  this 
knowledge  out  there  behind  the  schoolhouse — 
hooking  goldfish.  Come  in  at  the  tap  of  the 
bell  and,  though  you  have  no  books,  make 
pictures  on  your  slate,  pictures  of  the  Fine 
Arts  bench  struggling  all  their  lives  for  the 
foolish  little  medals,  pictures  of  the  grubby 
little  boys  in  the  stone-mason's  corner,  jeering 
the  art  classes  for  their  empty  toiling.  The 
more  you  make  these  pictures,  the  better  you 
shall  do  them.  That  is  the  kind  of  studying 
you  can  do,  and  from  the  study  of  your  fellows 
you  shall  learn  more  than  from  the  study  of  all 
the  text-books  that  ever  will  be  written. 

But  to  do  this  you  must  learn  to  sit  very 
quiet,  and  be  very  watchful,  and  so  train  your 
eyes  and  ears  that  every  sound  and  every 
sight  shall  be  significant  to  you  and  shall 
supply  all  the  deficiency  made  by  the  absence 
of  text-books. 


2o8     The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

This,  then,  to  drop  a  very  protracted  alle- 
gory, seems  to  be  the  proper  training  of  the 
novelist:  The  achieving  less  of  an  aggressive 
faculty  of  research  than  of  an  attitude  of  mind 
— a  receptivity,  an  acute  sensitiveness.  And 
this  can  be  acquired. 

But  it  cannot  be  acquired  by  shutting  one- 
self in  one's  closet,  by  a  withdrawal  from  the 
world,  and  that,  so  it  would  appear,  is  just  the 
mistake  so  many  would-be  fiction  writers  allow 
themselves.  They  would  make  the  art  of  the 
novelist  an  aristocracy,  a  thing  exclusive,  to 
be  guarded  from  contact  with  the  vulgar, 
humdrum,  bread-and-butter  business  of  life, 
to  be  kept  unspotted  from  the  world,  consider- 
ing it  the  result  of  inspirations,  of  exaltations, 
of  subtleties  and — above  all  things — of  refine- 
ment, a  sort  of  velvet  jacket  affair,  a  studio 
hocus-pocus,  a  thing  loved  of  women  and  of 
esthetes. 

What  a  folly !  Of  all  the  arts  it  is  the  most 
virile;  of  all  the  arts  it  will  not,  will  not,  will 
not  flourish  indoors.  Dependent  solely  upon 
fidelity  to  life  for  existence,  it  must  be  practised 
in  the  very  heart's  heart  of  life,  on  the  street 
corner,  in  the  market-place,  not  in  the  studios. 
God  enlighten  us  !  It  is  not  an  affair  of  women 
and  esthetes,  and  the  muse  of  American  fiction 
is  no  chaste,  delicate,  superfine  mademoi- 


Novelists  of  the  Future  209 

selle  of  delicate  poses  and  "elegant"  attitudin- 
izings,  but  a  robust,  red-armed  bonne  femme, 
who  rough-shoulders  her  way  among  men  and 
among  affairs,  who  finds  a  healthy  pleasure  in 
the  jostlings  of  the  mob  and  a  hearty  delight 
in  the  honest,  rough-and-tumble,  Anglo-Saxon 
give-and-take  knockabout  that  for  us  means 
life.  Choose  her,  instead  of  the  sallow,  pale- 
faced  statue-creature,  with  the  foolish  tablets 
and  foolish,  upturned  eyes,  and  she  will  lead 
you  as  brave  a  march  as  ever  drum  tapped  to. 
Stay  at  her  elbow  and  obey  her  as  she  tells  you 
to  open  your  eyes  and  ears  and  heart,  and  as  you 
go  she  will  show  things  wonderful  beyond 
wonder  in  this  great,  new,  blessed  country  of 
ours,  will  show  you  a  life  untouched,  untried, 
full  of  new  blood  and  promise  and  vigour. 

She  is  a  Child  of  the  People,  this  muse  of  our 
fiction  of  the  future,  and  the  wind  of  a  new 
country,  a  new  heaven  and  a  new  earth  is  in 
her  face  and  has  blown  her  hair  from  out  the 
fillets  that  the  Old  World  muse  has  bound  across 
her  brow,  so  that  it  is  all  in  disarray.  The  tan 
of  the  sun  is  on  her  cheeks,  and  the  dust  of  the 
highway  is  thick  upon  her  buskin,  and  the 
elbowing  of  many  men  has  torn  the  robe  of  her, 
and  her  hands  are  hard  with  the  grip  of  many 
things.  She  is  hail-fellow-well-met  with  every 
one  she  meets,  unashamed  to  know  the  clown 


2io     The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

and  unashamed  to  face  the  king,  a  hardy, 
vigorous  girl,  with  an  arm  as  strong  as  a  man's 
and  a  heart  as  sensitive  as  a  child's. 

Believe  me,  she  will  lead  you  far  from  the 
studios  and  the  esthetes,  the  velvet  jackets 
and  the  uncut  hair,  far  from  the  sexless  crea- 
tures who  cultivate  their  little  art  of  writing 
as  the  fancier  cultivates  his  orchid.  Tramping 
along,  then,  with  a  stride  that  will  tax  your  best 
paces,  she  will  lead  you — if  you  are  humble 
with  her  and  honest  with  her — straight  into 
a  World  of  Working  Men,  crude  of  speech,  swift 
of  action,  strong  of  passion,  straight  to  the  heart 
of  a  new  life,  on  the  borders  of  a  new  time,  and 
there  and  there  only  will  you  learn  to  know 
the  stuff  of  which  must  come  the  American 
fiction  of  the  future. 


A  PLEA  FOR  ROMANTIC  FICTION 


A  PLEA  FOR  ROMANTIC   FICTION 

T  ET  us  at  the  start  make  a  distinction. 
Observe  that  one  speaks  of  romanti- 
cism and  not  sentimentalism.  One  claims  that 
the  latter  is  as  distinct  from  the  former  as  is 
that  other  form  of  art  which  is  called  Realism. 
Romance  has  been  often  put  upon  and  over- 
.  burdened  by  being  forced  to  bear  the  onus  of 
abuse  that  by  right  should  fall  to  sentiment; 
but  the  two  should  be  kept  very  distinct,  for 
a  very  high  and  illustrious  place  will  be  claimed 
for  romance,  while  sentiment  will  be  handed 
down  the  scullery  stairs. 

Many  people  to-day  are  composing  mere 
sentimentalism,  and  calling  it  and  causing  it  to 
be  called  romance;  so  with  those  who  are  too 
busy  to  think  much  upon  these  subjects,  but 
who  none  the  less  love  honest  literature, 
Romance,  too,  has  fallen  into  disrepute. 
Consider  now  the  cut-and-thrust  stories. 
They  are  all  labeled  Romances,  and  it  is 
very  easy  to  get  the  impression  that  Romance 
must  be  an  affair  of  cloaks  and  daggers, 
or  moonlight  and  golden  hair.  But  this  is 
not  so  at  all.  The  true  Romance  is  a 

213 


214     The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

more  serious  business  than  this.  It  is  not 
merely  a  conjurer's  trick-box,  full  of  flimsy 
quackeries,  tinsel  and  claptraps,  meant 
only  to  amuse,  and  relying  upon  deception  to 
do  even  that.  Is  it  not  something  better  than 
this?  Can  we  not  see  in  it  an  instrument, 
keen,  finely  tempered,  flawless — an  instrument 
with  which  we  may  go  straight  through  the 
clothes  and  tissues  and  wrappings  of  flesh  down 
deep  into  the  red,  living  heart  of  things  ? 

Is  all  this  too  subtle,  too  merely  speculative 
and  intrinsic,  too  precieuse  and  nice  and 
"  literary  "  ?  Devoutly  one  hopes  the  contrary. 
So  much  is  made  of  so-called  Romanticism  in 
present-day  fiction  that  the  subject  seems 
worthy  of  discussion,  and  a  protest  against  the 
misuse  of  a  really  noble  and  honest  formula 
of  literature  appeals  to  be  timely — misuse,  that 
is,  in  the  sense  of  limited  use.  Let  us  suppose 
for  the  moment  that  a  romance  can  be  made 
out  of  a  cut-and-thrust  business.  Good 
Heavens,  are  there  no  other  things  that  are 
romantic,  even  in  this — falsely,  falsely  called 
— humdrum  world  of  to-day?  Why  should  it 
be  that  so  soon  as  the  novelist  addresses  himself 
— seriously — to  the  consideration  of  contem- 
porary life  he  must  abandon  Romance  and  take 
up  that  harsh,  loveless,  colourless,  blunt  tool 
called  Realism? 


A  Plea  for  Romantic  Fiction          215 

Now,  let  us  understand  at  once  what  is 
meant  by  Romance  and  what  by  Realism. 
Romance,  I  take  it,  is  the  kind  of  fiction  that 
takes  cognizance  of  variations  from  the  type  of 
normal  life.  Realism  is  the  kind  of  fiction 
that  confines  itself  to  the  type  of  normal  life. 
According  to  this  definition,  then,  Romance 
may  even  treat  of  the  sordid,  the  un- 
lovely— as  for  instance,  the  novels  of  M.  Zola. 
(Zola  has  been  dubbed  a  Realist,  but  he  is,  on  the 
contrary,  the  very  head  of  the  Romanticists.) 
Also,  Realism,  used  as  it  sometimes  is  as  a  term 
of  reproach,  need  not  be  in  the  remotest  sense 
or  degree  offensive,  but  on  the  other  hand 
respectable  as  a  church  and  proper  as  a  deacon 
— as,  for  instance,  the  novels  of  Mr.  Howells. 

The  reason  why  one  claims  so  much  for 
Romance,  and  quarrels  so  pointedly  with 
Realism,  is  that  Realism  stultifies  itself.  It 
notes  only  the  surface  of  things.  For  it,  Beauty 
is  not  even  skin  deep,  but  only  a  geometrical 
plane,  without  dimensions  and  depth,  a  mere 
outside.  Realism  is  very  excellent  so  far  as  it 
goes,  but  it  goes  no  further  than  the  Realist 
himself  can  actually  see,  or  actually  hear. 
Realism  is  minute ;  it  is  the  drama  of  a  broken 
teacup,  the  tragedy  of  a  walk  down  the  block, 
the  excitement  of  an  afternoon  call,  the  adven- 
ture of  an  invitation  to  dinner.  It  is  the  visit 


2i6     The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

to  my  neighbour's  house,  a  formal  visit,  from 
which  I  may  draw  no  conclusions.  I  see  my 
neighbour  and  his  friends — very,  oh,  such  very  ! 
probable  people — and  that  is  all.  Realism 
bows  upon  the  doormat  and  goes  away  and 
says  to  me,  as  we  link  arms  on  the  sidewalk: 
"That  is  life."  And  I  say  it  is  not.  It  is  not, 
as  you  would  very  well  see  if  you  took  Romance 
with  you  to  call  upon  your  neighbour. 

Lately  you  have  been  taking  Romance  a 
weary  journey  across  the  water — ages  and 
the  flood  of  years — and  haling  her  into  the 
fusby,  musty,  worm-eaten,  moth-riddled,  rust- 
corroded  "Grandes  Salles"  of  the  Middle  Ages 
and  the  Renaissance,  and  she  has  found  the 
drama  of  a  bygone  age  for  you  there.  But 
would  you  take  her  across  the  street  to  your 
neighbour's  front  parlour  (with  the  bisque 
fisher-boy  on  the  mantel  and  the  photograph 
of  Niagara  Falls  on  glass  hanging  in  the  front 
window) ;  would  you  introduce  her  there  ?  Not 
you.  Would  you  take  a  walk  with  her  on  Fifth 
Avenue,  or  Beacon  Street,  or  Michigan  Avenue  ? 
No,  indeed.  Would  you  choose  her  for  a  com- 
panion of  a  morning  spent  in  Wall  Street,  or  an 
afternoon  in  the  Waldorf-Astoria?  You  just 
guess  you  would  not. 

She  would  be  out  of  place,  you  say — inap- 
propriate. She  might  be  awkward  in  my 


A  Plea  for  Romantic  Fiction          217 

neighbour's  front  parlour,  and  knock  over  the 
little  bisque  fisher-boy.  Well,  she  might.  If 
she  did,  you  might  find  underneath  the  base  of 
the  statuette,  hidden  away,  tucked  away — 
what  ?  God  knows.  But  something  that  would 
be  a  complete  revelation  of  my  neighbour's 
secretest  life. 

So  you  think  Romance  would  stop  in  the 
front  parlour  and  discuss  medicated  flannels 
and  mineral  waters  with  the  ladies?  Not  for 
more  than  five  minutes.  She  would  be  off  up- 
stairs with  you,  prying,  peeping,  peering  into 
the  closets  of  the  bedroom,  into  the  nursery, 
into  the  sitting-room;  yes,  and  into  that  little 
iron  box  screwed  to  the  lower  shelf  of  the  closet 
in  the  library;  and  into  those  compartments 
and  pigeon-holes  of  the  secretaire  in  the 
study.  She  would  find  a  heartache  (maybe) 
between  the  pillows  of  the  mistress's  bed,  and 
a  memory  carefully  secreted  in  the  master's 
deed-box.  She  would  come  upon  a  great  hope 
amid  the  books  and  papers  of  the  study-table 
of  the  young  man's  room,  and — perhaps — 
who  knows — an  affair,  or,  great  Heavens,  an 
intrigue,  in  the  scented  ribbons  and  gloves  and 
hairpins  of  the  young  lady's  bureau.  And  she 
would  pick  here  a  little  and  there  a  little, 
making  up  a  bag  of  hopes  and  fears  and  a  pack- 
age of  joys  and  sorrows — great  ones,  mind  you 


218      The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

— and  then  come  down  to  the  front  door,  and, 
stepping  out  into  the  street,  hand  you  the  bags 
and  package  and  say  to  you — "That  is  Life  !" 

Romance  does  very  well  in  the  castles  of  the 
Middle  Ages  and  the  Renaissance  chateaux, 
and  she  has  the  entree  there  and  is  very  well 
received.  That  is  all  well  and  good.  But  let 
us  protest  against  limiting  her  to  such  places 
and  such  times.  You  will  find  her,  I  grant  you, 
in  the  chatelaine's  chamber  and  the  dungeon 
of  the  man-at-arms;  but,  if  you  choose  to  look 
for  her,  you  will  find  her  equally  at  home  in  the 
brownstone  house  on  the  corner  and  in  the 
office-building  downtown.  And  this  very  day, 
in  this  very  hour,  she  is  sitting  among  the  rags 
and  wretchedness,  the  dirt  and  despair  of  the 
tenements  of  the  East  Side  of  New  York. 

"  What  ? "  I  hear  you  say,  "  look  for  Romance 
• — the  lady  of  the  silken  robes  and  golden  crown, 
our  beautiful,  chaste  maiden  of  soft  voice  and 
gentle  eyes — look  for  her  among  the  vicious 
ruffians,  male  and  female,  of  Allen  Street  and 
Mulberry  Bend?"  I  tell  you  she  is  there,  and 
to  your  shame  be  it  said  you  will  not  know 
her  in  those  surroundings.  You,  the  aristo- 
crats, who  demand  the  fine  linen  and  the  purple 
in  your  fiction ;  you,  the  sensitive,  the  delicate, 
who  will  associate  with  your  Romance  only  so 
long  as  she  wears  a  silken  gown.  You  will  not 


A  Plea  for  Romantic  Fiction          219 

follow  her  to  the  slums,  for  you  believe  that 
Romance  should  only  amuse  and  entertain  you, 
singing  you  sweet  songs  and  touching  the  harp 
of  silver  strings  with  rosy-tipped  fingers.  If 
haply  she  should  call  to  you  from  the  squalour 
of  a  dive,  or  the  awful  degradation  of  a  dis- 
orderly house,  crying:  "Look!  listen!  This, 
too,  is  life.  These,  too,  are  my  children  !  Look 
at  them,  know  them  and,  knowing,  help!" 
Should  she  call  thus  you  would  stop  your  ears ; 
you  would  avert  your  eyes  and  you  would 
answer,  "Come  from  there,  Romance.  Your 
place  is  not  there !"  And  you  would  make  of 
her  a  harlequin,  a  tumbler,  a  sword-dancer, 
when,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  she  should  be  by 
right  divine  a  teacher  sent  from  God. 

She  will  not  often  wear  the  robe  of  silk,  the 
gold  crown,  the  jeweled  shoon;  will  not  always 
sweep  the  silver  harp.  An  iron  note  is  hers 
if  so  she  choose,  and  coarse  garments,  and 
stained  hands;  and,  meeting  her  thus,  it  is  for 
you  to  know  her  as  she  passes — know  her  for 
the  same  young  queen  of  the  blue  mantle 
and  lilies.  She  can  teach  you  if  you  will  be 
humble  to  learn — teach  you  by  showing. 
God  help  you  if  at  last  you  take  from  Romance 
her  mission  of  teaching;  if  you  do  not  believe 
that  she  has  a  purpose — a  nobler  purpose  and  a 
mightier  than  mere  amusement,  mere  enter- 


22O     The  Responsibilities  of  ike  Novelist 

tainment.  Let  Realism  do  the  entertaining 
with  its  meticulous  presentation  of  teacups, 
rag  carpets,  wall-paper  and  haircloth  sofas, 
stopping  with  these,  going  no  deeper  than  it 
sees,  choosing  the  ordinary,  the  untroubled, 
the  commonplace. 

But  to  Romance  belongs  the  wide  world  for 
range,  and  the  unplumbed  depths  of  the  human 
heart,  and  the  mystery  of  sex,  and  the  problems 
of  life,  and  the  black,  unsearched  penetralia 
of  the  soul  of  man.  You,  the  indolent,  must 
not  always  be  amused.  What  matter  the 
silken  clothes,  what  matter  the  prince's  houses  ? 
Romance,  too,  is  a  teacher,  and  if — throwing 
aside  the  purple — she  wears  the  camel' s-hair 
and  feeds  upon  the  locusts,  it  is  to  cry  aloud 
unto  the  people,  "Prepare  ye  the  way  of  the 
Lord;  make  straight  his  path." 


A  PROBLEM  IN  FICTION 


A   PROBLEM  IN  FICTION 

OO  many  people — writers  more  especially 
-  — claim  stridently  and  with  a  deal  of 
gesturing  that  because  a  thing  has  happened 
it  is  therefore  true.  They  have  written  a 
story,  let  us  say,  and  they  bring  it  to  you  to 
criticize.  You  lay  your  finger  upon  a  certain 
passage  and  say  "Not  true  to  life."  The 
author  turns  on  you  and  then  annihilates  you 
— in  his  own  mind — with  the  words,  "But  it 
actually  happened."  Of  course,  then,  it  must 
be  true.  On  the  contrary,  it  is  accurate  only. 
For  the  assumption  is,  that  truth  is  a  higher 
power  of  accuracy — that  the  true  thing  includes 
the  accurate;  and  assuming  this,  the  authors 
of  novels — that  are  not  successful — suppose 
that  if  they  are  accurate,  if  they  tell  the  thing 
just  as  they  saw  it,  that  they  are  truthful.  It 
is  not  difficult  to  show  that  a  man  may  be 
as  accurate  as  the  spectroscope  and  yet  lie  like 
a  Chinese  diplomat.  As  for  instance:  Let  us 
suppose  you  have  never  seen  a  sheep,  never 
heard  of  sheep,  don't  know  sheep  from  shav- 
ings. It  devolves  upon  me  to  enlighten  your 
223 


224     The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

ignorance.  I  go  out  into  the  field  and  select 
from  the  flock  a  black  sheep,  bring  it  before 
you,  and,  with  the  animal  there  under  our 
eyes,  describe  it  in  detail,  faithfully,  omitting 
nothing,  falsifying  nothing,  exaggerating  noth- 
ing. I  am  painfully  accurate.  But  you  go 
away  with  the  untrue  conviction  that  all  sheep 
are  black !  I  have  been  accurate,  but  I  have 
not  been  true. 

So  it  is  with  very,  very  many  novels,  written 
with  all  earnestness  and  seriousness.  Every 
incident  has  happened  in  real  life,  and  because 
it  is  picturesque,  because  it  is  romantic,  because, 
in  a  word,  it  is  like  some  other  novel,  it  is  seized 
upon  at  once,  and  serves  as  the  nucleus  of  a  tale. 
Then,  because  this  tale  fails  of  success,  because 
it  fails  to  impress,  the  author  blames  the  public, 
not  himself.  He  thinks  he  has  gone  to  life  for 
his  material,  and  so  must  be  original,  new  and 
true.  It  is  not  so.  Life  itself  is  not  always 
true ;  strange  as  it  may  seem,  you  may  be  able 
to  say  that  life  is  not  always  true  to  life — from 
the  point  of  view  of  the  artist.  It  happened 
once  that  it  was  my  unfortunate  duty  to  tell 
a  certain  man  of  the  violent  death  of  his  only 
brother,  whom  he  had  left  well  and  happy  but 
an  hour  before.  This  is  how  he  took  it:  He 
threw  up  both  hands  and  staggered  back,  pre- 
cisely as  they  do  in  melodrama,  exclaiming  all 


A  Problem  in  Fiction  225 

in  a  breath:  "Oh,  my  God!  This  is  terrible! 
What  will  mother  say?"  You  may  say  what 
you  please,  this  man  was  not  true  to  life. 
From  the  point  of  view  of  the  teller  of  tales 
he  was  theatrical,  false,  untrue,  and  though  the 
incident  was  an  actual  fact  and  though  the 
emotion  was  real,  it  had  no  value  as  "  material," 
and  no  fiction  writer  in  his  senses  would  have 
thought  of  using  it  in  his  story. 

Naturally  enough  it  will  be  asked  what,  then, 
is  the  standard.  How  shall  the  writer  guide 
himself  in  the  treatment  of  a  pivotal,  critical 
scene,  or  how  shall  the  reader  judge  whether 
or  not  he  is  true.  Perhaps,  after  all,  the  word 
"seem,"  and  not  the  word  "true,"  is  the  most 
important.  Of  course  no  good  novelist,  no 
good  artist,  can  represent  life  as  it  actually  is. 
Nobody  can,  for  nobody  knows.  Who  is  to  say 
what  life  actually  is  ?  It  seems  easy — easy  for 
us  who  have  it  and  live  in  it  and  see  it  and  hear 
it  and  feel  it  every  millionth  part  of  every 
second  of  the  time.  I  say  that  life  is  actually 
this  or  that,  and  you  say  it  is  something  else, 
and  number  three  says  "  Lo  !  here,"  and  number 
four  says  "Lo!  there."  Not  even  science  is 
going  to  help  you;  no  two  photographs,  even, 
will  convey  just  the  same  impression  of  the 
same  actuality;  and  here  we  are  dealing  not 
with  science,  but  with  art,  that  instantly 


226     The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

involves  the  personality  of  the  artist  and  all 
that  that  means.  Even  the  same  artist  will 
not  see  the  same  thing  twice  exactly  alike. 
His  personality  is  one  thing  to-day  and  another 
thing  to-morrow — is  one  thing  before  dinner 
and  another  thing  after  it.  How,  then,  to 
determine  what  life  actually  is  ? 

The  point  is  just  this.  In  the  fine  arts  we 
do  not  care  one  little  bit  about  what  life  actually 
is,  but  what  it  looks  like  to  an  interesting, 
impressionable  man,  and  if  he  tells  his  story 
or  paints  his  picture  so  that  the  majority  of 
intelligent  people  will  say,  "Yes,  that  must 
have  been  just  about  what  would  have  hap- 
pened under  those  circumstances,"  he  is  true. 
His  accuracy  cuts  no  figure  at  all.  He  need 
not  be  accurate  if  he  does  not  choose  to  be. 
If  he  sees  fit  to  be  inaccurate  in  order  to  make 
his  point — so  only  his  point  be  the  conveying 
of  a  truthful  impression — that  is  his  affair.  We 
have  nothing  to  do  with  that.  Consider  the 
study  of  a  French  cuirassier  by  Detaille ;  where 
the  sunlight  strikes  the  brown  coat  of  the  horse, 
you  will  see,  if  you  look  close,  a  mere  smear  of 
blue — light  blue.  This  is  inaccurate.  The 
horse  is  not  blue,  nor  has  he  any  blue  spots. 
Stand  at  the  proper  distance  and  the  blue  smear 
resolves  itself  into  the  glossy  reflection  of  the 
sun,  and  the  effect  is  true. 


A  Problem  in  Fiction  227 

And  in  fiction:  Take  the  fine  scene  in 
"Ivanhoe,"  where  Rebecca,  looking  from  the 
window,  describes  the  assault  upon  the  outer 
walls  of  the  castle  to  the  wounded  knight  lying 
on  the  floor  in  the  room  behind  her.  If  you 
stop  and  think,  you  will  see  that  Rebecca 
never  could  have  found  such  elaborate  language 
under  the  stress  of  so  great  excitement — -those 
cleverly  managed  little  climaxes  in  each  phrase, 
building  up  to  the  great  climax  of  the  para- 
graph, all  the  play  of  rhetoric,  all  the  nice  chain 
and  adjustment  of  adjectives;  she  could  not 
possibly  have  done  it.  Neither  you  nor  I,  nor 
any  of  us,  with  all  the  thought  and  time  and 
labour  at  our  command,  could  have  ever  written 
the  passage.  But  is  it  not  admirably  true — 
true  as  the  truth  itself  ?  It  is  not  accurate :  it 
is  grossly,  ludicrously  inaccurate;  but  the  fire 
and  leap  and  vigour  of  it;  there  is  where  the 
truth  is.  Scott  wanted  you  to  get  an  impres- 
sion of  that  assault  on  the  barbican,  and  you 
do  get  it.  You  can  hear  those  axes  on  the  outer 
gate  as  plainly  as  Rebecca  could;  you  can  see 
the  ladders  go  up,  can  hear  them  splinter,  can 
see  and  feel  and  know  all  the  rush  and  trample 
and  smashing  of  that  fine  fight,  with  the  Fetter- 
lock Knight  always  to  the  fore,  as  no  merely 
accurate  description — accurate  to  five  points 
of  decimals — could  ever  present  it. 


228     The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

So  that  one  must  remember  the  distinction, 
and  claim  no  more  for  accuracy  than  it  deserves 
— and  that's  but  little.  Anybody  can  be 
accurate — the  man  with  the  foot-rule  is  that. 
Accuracy  is  the  attainment  of  small  minds, 
the  achievement  of  the  commonplace,  a  mere 
machine-made  thing  that  comes  with  nig- 
gardly research  and  ciphering  and  mensuration 
and  the  multiplication  table,  good  in  its  place, 
so  only  the  place  is  very  small.  In  fiction  it 
can  under  certain  circumstances  be  dispensed 
with  altogether.  It  is  not  a  thing  to  be  striven 
for.  To  be  true  is  the  all-important  business, 
and,  once  attaining  that,  "all  other  things  shall 
be  added  unto  you."  Paint  the  horse  pea- 
green  if  it  suits  your  purpose ;  fill  the  mouth  of 
Rebecca  with  gasconades  and  rhodomontades 
interminable:  these  things  do  not  matter.  It 
is  truth  that  matters,  and  the  point  is  whether 
the  daubs  of  pea-green  will  look  like  horseflesh 
and  the  mouth-filling  words  create  the  impres- 
sion of  actual  battle. 


WHY  WOMEN  SHOULD  WRITE 
THE  BEST  NOVELS 


WHY   WOMEN  SHOULD  WRITE   THE 
BEST   NOVELS 

TT  is  rather  curious  upon  reflection  and  upon 
A  looking  over  the  rank  and  file  of  achieve- 
ment during  the  period  of  recorded  history, 
to  observe  that  of  all  the  occupations  at  first 
exclusively  followed  by  men,  that  of  writing 
has  been — in  all  civilizations  and  among  all 
people — one  of  the  very  first  to  be  successfully 
— mark  the  qualification  of  the  adverb — to  be 
successfully  invaded  by  women.  We  hear  of 
women  who  write  poetry  long  before  we  hear 
of  women  who  paint  pictures  or  perform  upon 
musical  instruments  or  achieve  distinction 
upon  the  stage. 

It  would  seem  as  if,  of  all  the  arts,  that  of 
writing  is  the  one  to  which  women  turn  the 
quickest.  Great  success  in  the  sciences  or  in 
mercantile  pursuits  is,  of  course,  out  of  the 
question,  so  that — as  at  the  first — it  may  be 
said,  speaking  largely,  that  of  all  the  masculine 
occupations,  that  of  writing  is  the  first  to  be 
adopted  by  women. 

If  it  is  the  first  it  must  be  because  it  is  the 
easiest.  Now  to  go  very  far  back  to  the 
231 


232     The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

earliest  beginnings,  all  occupations,  whether 
artistic  or  otherwise,  were  the  prerogative  of 
the  male;  considering  this  fact,  I  say,  does  it 
not  follow,  or  would  not  the  inference  be  strong, 
that — given  an  equal  start — women  would 
write  more  readily  than  men,  would  do  so 
because  they  could  do  so;  that  writing  is 
a  feminine — not  accomplishment  merely — but 
gift. 

So  that  the  whole  matter  leads  up  to  the  point 
one  wishes  to  make,  namely,  that  here,  in  our 
present  day  and  time,  it  should  be  easier  for 
women  to  write  well  than  for  men.  And 
as  writing  to-day  means  the  writing  of  fiction, 
we  arrive,  somewhat  deviously  and  perhaps — 
after  jumping  many  gaps  and  weak  spots  en 
route — a  little  lamely,  at  the  very  last  result  of 
all,  which  is  this:  Women  should  be  able  to 
write  better  novels  than  men. 

But  under  modern  conditions  there  are 
many  more  reasons  for  this  success  of  women 
in  fiction  than  merely  a  natural  inherent  gift 
of  expression. 

One  great  reason  is  leisure.  The  average 
man,  who  must  work  for  a  living,  has  no  time 
to  write  novels,  much  less  to  get  into  that 
frame  of  mind,  or  to  assume  that  mental 
attitude  by  means  of  which  he  is  able  to  see 
possibilities  for  fictitious  narrative  in  the 


Why  Women  Should  Write  the  Best  Novels  233 

life  around  him.  But,  as  yet,  few  women 
(compared  with  the  armies  of  male  workers) 
have  to  work  for  a  living,  and  it  is  an  unusual 
state  of  affairs  in  which  the  average  woman  of 
moderate  circumstances  could  not,  if  she  would, 
take  from  three  to  four  hours  a  day  from  her 
household  duties  to  devote  to  any  occupation 
she  deemed  desirable. 

Another  reason  is  found,  one  believes,  in 
the  nature  of  women's  education.  From  almost 
the  very  first  the  young  man  studies  with  an 
eye  to  business  or  to  a  profession.  In  many 
State  colleges  nowadays  all  literary  courses, 
except  the  most  elementary — which,  indeed, 
have  no  place  in  collegiate  curriculums — are 
optional.  But  what  girls'  seminary  does  not 
prescribe  the  study  of  literature  through  all 
its  three  or  four  years,  making  of  this  study  a 
matter  of  all  importance  ?  And  while  the  courses 
of  literature  do  not,  by  any  manner  of  means, 
make  a  novelist,  they  familiarize  the  student 
with  style  and  the  means  by  which  words  are 
put  together.  The  more  one  reads  the  easier 
one  writes. 

Then,  too  (though  this  reason  lies  not  so 
much  in  modern  conditions  as  in  basic  princi- 
ples), there  is  the  matter  of  temperament. 
The  average  man  is  a  rectangular,  square-cut, 
matter-of-fact,  sober-minded  animal  who  does 


234     The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

not  receive  impressions  easily,  who  is  not 
troubled  with  emotions  and  has  no  over- 
mastering desire  to  communicate  his  sensations 
to  anybody.  But  the  average  woman  is  just 
the  reverse  of  all  these.  She  is  impressionable, 
emotional  and  communicative.  And  impres- 
sionableness,  emotionality  and  communicative- 
ness are  three  very  important  qualities  of  mind 
that  make  for  novel  writing. 

The  modern  woman,  then,  in  a  greater 
degree  than  her  contemporaneous  male,  has 
the  leisure  for  novel  writing,  has  the  education 
and  has  the  temperament.  She  should  be 
able  to  write  better  novels,  and  as  a  matter 
of  fact  she  does  not.  It  is,  of  course,  a  con- 
ceded fact  that  there  have  been  more  great  men 
novelists  than  women  novelists,  and  that  to-day 
the  producers  of  the  best  fiction  are  men  and 
not  women.  There  are  probably  more  women 
trying  to  write  novels  than  there  are  men,  but 
for  all  this  it  must  be  admitted  that  the  ranks 
of  the  "arrived"  are  recruited  from  the  razor 
contingent. 

Why,  then,  with  such  a  long  start  and  with 
so  many  advantages  of  temperament,  opportu- 
nity and  training  should  it  be  that  women  do  not 
write  better  novels  than  men  ? 

One  believes  that  the  answer  is  found  in 
the  fact  that  life  is  more  important  than  liter- 


Why  Women  Should  Write  the  Best  Novels  235 

ature,  and  in  the  wise,  wise,  old,  old  adage  that 
experience  is  the  best  teacher.  Of  all  the 
difficult  things  that  enter  into  the  learning  of  a 
most  difficult  profession,  the  most  difficult  of  all 
for  the  intended  novelist  to  acquire  is  the 
fact  that  life  is  better  than  literature.  The 
amateur  will  say  this  with  conviction,  will 
preach  it  in  public  and  practise  the  exact 
reverse  in  private.  But  it  still  remains  true 
that  all  the  temperament,  all  the  sensitiveness 
to  impressions,  all  the  education  in  the  world 
will  not  help  one  little,  little  bit  in  the  writing 
of  the  novel  if  life  itself,  the  crude,  the  raw,  the 
vulgar,  if  you  will,  is  not  studied.  An  hour's 
experience  is  worth  ten  years  of  study — of 
reading  other  people's  books.  But  this  fact 
is  ignored,  and  the  future  writer  of  what  it  is 
hoped  will  be  the  great  novel  of  his  day  and  age 
studies  the  thoughts  and  products  of  some 
other  writer,  of  some  other  great  novel,  of  some 
other  day  and  age,  in  the  hope  that  thereby 
much  may  be  learned.  And  much  will  be  learned 
— very  much,  indeed — of  the  methods  of  con- 
struction ;  and  if  the  tyro  only  has  wits  enough 
to  study  the  great  man's  formula,  well  and  good. 
But  the  fascination  of  a  great  story-writer — 
especially  upon  the  young,  untried  little  story- 
writer — is  strong,  and  before  the  latter  is  well 
aware  he  is  taking  from  the  big  man  that  which 


236     The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

he  has  no  right  to  take.  He  is  taking  his  code 
of  ethics,  his  view  of  life,  his  personality,  even 
to  the  very  incidents  and  episodes  of  his  story. 
He  is  studying  literature  and  not  life. 

If  he  had  gone  direct  to  life  itself,  all  would 
have  been  different.  He  would  have  developed 
in  his  own  code,  his  own  personality,  and  he 
would  have  found  incidents  and  episodes  that 
were  new — yes,  and  strikingly  forceful,  better 
than  any  he  could  have  imagined  or  stolen, 
and  which  were  all  his  own.  In  the  end,  if  the 
gods  gave  him  long  life  and  a  faculty  of  appli- 
cation, he  would  have  evolved  into  something 
of  a  writer  of  fiction. 

All  this  digression  is  to  try  to  state  the 
importance  of  actual  life  and  actual  experience, 
and  it  bears  upon  the  subject  in  hand  in  this, 
that  women  who  have  all  the  other  qualifica- 
tions of  good  novelists  are,  because  of  nature 
and  character  that  invariably  goes  with  these 
qualifications,  shut  away  from  the  study  of, 
and  the  association  with,  the  most  important 
thing  of  all  for  them — real  life.  Even  making 
allowances  for  the  emancipation  of  the  New 
Woman,  the  majority  of  women  still  lead,  in 
comparison  with  men,  secluded  lives.  The 
woman  who  is  impressionable  is  by  reason 
of  this  very  thing  sensitive  (indeed,  sensi- 
tiveness and  impressionableness  mean  almost 


Why  Women  Should  Write  the  Best  Novels  237 

the  same  thing),  and  it  is  inconceivably  hard  for 
the  sensitive  woman  to  force  herself  into  the 
midst  of  that  great,  grim  complication  of  men's 
doings  that  we  call  life.  And  even  admitting 
that  she  finds  in  herself  the  courage  to  do 
this,  she  lacks  the  knowledge  to  use  knowl- 
edge thus  gained.  The  faculty  of  selection 
comes  even  to  men  only  after  many  years  of 
experience. 

So  much  for  causes  exterior  to  herself,  and  it 
is  well  to  admit  at  once  that  the  exterior  causes 
are  by  far  the  most  potent  and  the  most  impor- 
tant ;  but  there  are  perhaps  causes  to  be  found 
in  the  make-up  of  the  woman  herself  which 
keep  her  from  success  in  fiction.  Is  it  not  a  fact 
that  protracted  labour  of  the  mind  tells  upon 
a  woman  quicker  than  upon  a  man.  Be  it 
understood  that  no  disparagement,  no  invidious 
comparison  is  intended.  Indeed,  it  is  quite 
possible  that  her  speedier  mental  fatigue  is  due 
to  the  fact  that  the  woman  possesses  the  more 
highly  specialized  organ. 

A  man  may  grind  on  steadily  for  an  almost 
indefinite  period,  when  a  woman  at  the  same 
task  would  begin,  after  a  certain  point,  to  "feel 
her  nerves,"  to  chafe,  to  fret,  to  try  to  do  too 
much,  to  polish  too  highly,  to  develop  more 
perfectly.  Then  come  fatigue,  harassing 
doubts,  more  nerves,  a  touch  of  hysteria  occa- 


238     The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

sionally,  exhaustion,  and  in  the  end  complete 
discouragement  and  a  final  abandonment  of 
the  enterprise:  and  who  shall  say  how  many 
good,  even  great,  novels  have  remained  half 
written,  to  be  burned  in  the  end,  because  their 
women  authors  mistook  lack  of  physical 
strength  for  lack  of  genuine  ability  ? 


SIMPLICITY  IN  ART 


SIMPLICITY  IN  ART 

upon  a  time  I  had  occasion  to  buy 
so  uninteresting  a  thing  as  a  silver 
soup-ladle.  The  salesman  at  the  silversmith's 
was  obliging  and  for  my  inspection  brought 
forth  quite  an  array  of  ladles.  But  my  purse 
was  flaccid,  anemic,  and  I  must  pick  and 
choose  with  all  the  discrimination  in  the  world. 
I  wanted  to  make  a  brave  showing  with  my 
gift — to  get  a  great  deal  for  my  money.  I 
went  through  a  world  of  soup-ladles — ladles 
with  gilded  bowls,  with  embossed  handles,  with 
chased  arabesques,  but  there  were  none  to  my 
taste.  "Or  perhaps,"  says  the  salesman, 
"you  would  care  to  look  at  something  like 
this, ' '  and  he  brought  out  a  ladle  that  was  as 
plain  and  as  unadorned  as  the  unclouded  sky — 
and  about  as  beautiful.  Of  all  the  others  this 
was  the  most  to  my  liking.  But  the  price  !  ah, 
that  anemic  purse ;  and  I  must  put  it  from  me  ! 
It  was  nearly  double  the  cost  of  any  of  the  rest. 
And  when  I  asked  why,  the  salesman  said : 

"You  see,  in  this  highly  ornamental  ware 
the  flaws  of  the  material  don't  show,  and  you 
241 


242     The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

can  cover  up  a  blow-hole  or  the  like  by  wreaths 
and  beading.  But  this  plain  ware  has  got  to 
be  the  very  best.  Every  defect  is  apparent. " 
And  there,  if  you  please,  is  a  conclusive  com- 
ment upon  the  whole  business — a  final  basis  of 
comparison  of  all  things,  whether  commercial 
or  artistic;  the  bare  dignity  of  the  unadorned 
that  may  stand  before  the  world  all  unashamed, 
panoplied  rather  than  clothed  in  the  conscious- 
ness of  perfection.  We  of  this  latter  day,  we 
painters  and  poets  and  writers — artists — must 
labour  with  all  the  wits  of  us,  all  the  strength 
of  us,  and  with  all  that  we  have  of  ingenuity 
and  perseverance  to  attain  simplicity.  But 
it  has  not  always  been  so.  At  the  very  earliest, 
men — forgotten,  ordinary  men — were  born  with 
an  easy,  unblurred  vision  that  to-day  we  would 
hail  as  marvelous  genius.  Suppose,  for  instance, 
the  New  Testament  was  all  unwritten  and  one 
of  us  were  called  upon  to  tell  the  world  that 
Christ  was  born,  to  tell  of  how  we  had  seen 
Him,  that  this  was  the  Messiah.  How  the 
adjectives  would  marshal  upon  the  page,  how 
the  exclamatory  phrases  would  cry  out,  how 
we  would  elaborate  and  elaborate,  and  how 
our  rhetoric  would  flare  and  blazen  till — so  we 
should  imagine — the  ear  would  ring  and  the 
very  eye  would  be  dazzled;  and  even  then  we 
would  believe  that  our  words  were  all  so  few 


Simplicity  in  Art  243 

and  feeble.  It  is  beyond  words,  we  should 
vociferate.  So  it  would  be.  That  is  very 
true — words  of  ours.  Can  you  not  see  how  we 
should  dramatize  it?  We  would  make  a  point 
of  the  transcendent  stillness  of  the  hour,  of  the 
deep  blue  of  the  Judean  midnight,  of  the  lip- 
lapping  of  Galilee,  the  murmur  of  Jordan,  the 
peacefulness  of  sleeping  Jerusalem.  Then  the 
stars,  the  descent  of  the  angel,  the  shepherds — 
all  the  accessories.  And  our  narrative  would 
be  as  commensurate  with  the  subject  as  the 
flippant  smartness  of  a  "bright"  reporter  in 
the  Sistine  chapel.  We  would  be  striving  to 
cover  up  our  innate  incompetence,  our  impo- 
tence to  do  justice  to  the  mighty  theme  by 
elaborateness  of  design  and  arabesque  intricacy 
of  rhetoric. 

But  on  the  other  hand — listen: 

"The  days  were  accomplished  that  she 
should  be  delivered,  and  she  brought  forth 
her  first  born  son  and  wrapped  him  in  swaddling 
clothes  and  laid  him  in  a  manger,  because  there 
was  no  room  for  them  in  the  inn. " 

Simplicity  could  go  no  further.  Absolutely 
not  one  word  unessential,  not  a  single  adjective 
that  is  not  merely  descriptive.  The  whole 
matter  stated  with  the  terseness  of  a  military 
report,  and  yet — there  is  the  epic,  the  world 
epic,  beautiful,  majestic,  incomparably  digni- 


244     The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

fied,  and  no  ready  writer,  no  Milton  nor  Shak- 
spere,  with  all  the  wealth  of  their  vocabularies, 
with  all  the  resources  of  their  genius,  with  all 
their  power  of  simile  or  metaphor,  their  pomp 
of  eloquence  or  their  royal  pageantry  of  hexa- 
meters, could  produce  the  effect  contained  in 
these  two  simple  declarative  sentences. 

The  mistake  that  we  little  people  are  so 
prone  to  make  is  this:  that  the  more  intense 
the  emotional  quality  of  the  scene  described, 
the  more  "vivid,"  the  more  exalted,  the  more 
richly  coloured  we  suppose  should  be  the 
language. 

When  the  crisis  of  the  tale  is  reached  there 
is  where  we  like  the  author  to  spread  himself, 
to  show  the  effectiveness  of  his  treatment. 
But  if  we  would  only  pause  to  take  a  moment's 
thought  we  must  surely  see  that  the  simplest, 
even  the  barest  statement  of  fact  is  only  not 
all-sufficient  but  all-appropriate. 

Elaborate  phrase,  rhetoric,  the  intimacy 
of  metaphor  and  allegory  and  simile  is  for- 
givable for  the  unimportant  episodes  where 
the  interest  of  the  narrative  is  languid;  where 
we  are  willing  to  watch  the  author's  ingenuity 
in  the  matter  of  scrolls  and  fretwork  and 
mosaics-rococo  work.  But  when  the  catas- 
trophe comes,  when  the  narrative  swings  clear 
upon  its  pivot  and  we  are  lifted  with  it  from 


Simplicity  in  Art  245 

out  the  world  of  our  surroundings,  we  want 
to  forget  the  author.  We  want  no  adjectives 
to  blur  our  substantives.  The  substantives 
may  now  speak  for  themselves.  We  want  no 
metaphor,  no  simile  to  make  clear  the  matter. 
If  at  this  moment  of  drama  and  intensity  the 
matter  is  not  of  itself  preeminently  clear  no 
verbiage,  however  ingenious,  will  clarify  it. 
Heighten  the  effect.  Does  exclamation  and 
heroics  on  the  part  of  the  bystanders  ever  make 
the  curbstone  drama  more  poignant?  Who 
would  care  to  see  Niagara  through  coloured 
fire  and  calcium  lights. 

The  simple  treatment,  whether  of  a  piece 
of  silversmith  work  or  of  a  momentous  religious 
epic,  is  always  the  most  difficult  of  all.  It 
demands  more  of  the  artist.  The  unskilful 
story-teller  as  often  as  not  tells  the  story  to 
himself  as  well  as  to  his  hearers  as  he  goes  along. 
Not  sure  of  exactly  how  he  is  to  reach  the  end, 
not  sure  even  of  the  end  itself,  he  must  feel  his 
way  from  incident  to  incident,  from  page  to 
page,  fumbling,  using  many  words,  repeating 
himself.  To  hide  the  confusion  there  is  one 
resource — elaboration,  exaggerated  outline, 
violent  colour,  till  at  last  the  unstable  outline 
disappears  under  the  accumulation,  and  the 
reader  is  to  be  so  dazzled  with  the  wit  of  the 
dialogue,  the  smartness  of  the  repartee,  the 


246     The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

felicity  of  the  diction,  that  he  will  not  see  the 
gaps  and  lapses  in  the  structure  itself — just 
as  the  "nobby"  drummer  wears  a  wide  and 
showy  scarf  to  conceal  a  soiled  shirt-bosom. 

But  in  the  master-works  of  narrative  there 
is  none  of  this  shamming,  no  shoddyism,  no 
humbug.  There  is  little  more  than  bare  out- 
line, but  in  the  care  with  which  it  is  drawn, 
how  much  thought,  what  infinite  pains  go  to 
the  making  of  each  stroke,  so  that  when  it  is 
made  it  falls  just  at  the  right  place  and  exactly 
in  its  right  sequence.  This  attained,  what  need 
is  there  for  more?  Comment  is  superfluous. 
If  the  author  make  the  scene  appear  terrible 
to  the  reader  he  need  not  say  in  himself  or  in 
the  mouth  of  some  protagonist,  "  It  is  terrible  !" 
If  the  picture  is  pathetic  so  that  he  who  reads 
must  weep,  how  superfluous,  how  intrusive 
should  the  author  exclaim,  "It  was  pitiful  to 
the  point  of  tears. "  If  beautiful,  we  do  not 
want  him  to  tell  us  so.  We  want  him  to  make 
it  beautiful  and  our  own  appreciation  will 
supply  the  adjectives. 

Beauty,  the  ultimate  philosophical  beauty, 
is  not  a  thing  of  elaboration,  but  on  the  con- 
trary of  an  almost  barren  nudity:  a  jewel  may 
be  an  exquisite  gem,  a  woman  may  have  a 
beautiful  arm,  but  the  bracelet  does  not  make 
the  arm  more  beautiful,  nor  the  arm  the  brace- 


Simplicity  in  Art  247 

let.  One  must  admire  them  separately,  and 
the  moment  that  the  jewel  ceases  to  have  a 
value  or  a  reason  upon  the  arm  it  is  better  in 
the  case,  where  it  may  enjoy  an  undivided 
attention. 

But  after  so  many  hundreds  of  years  of  art 
and  artists,  of  civilization  and  progress,  we  have 
got  so  far  away  from  the  sane  old  homely 
uncomplex  way  of  looking  out  at  the  world 
that  the  simple  things  no  longer  charm,  and 
the  simple  declarative  sentence,  straightforward, 
plain,  seems  flat  to  our  intellectual  palate — flat 
and  tasteless  and  crude. 

What  we  would  now  call  simple  our  forbears 
would  look  upon  as  a  farrago  of  gimcrackery, 
and  all  our  art — the  art  of  the  better-minded 
of  us — is  only  a  striving  to  get  back  to  the 
unblurred,  direct  simplicity  of  those  writers 
who  could  see  that  the  Wonderful,  the  Coun- 
selor, the  mighty  God,  the  Prince  of  Peace, 
could  be  laid  in  a  manger  and  yet  be  the 
Saviour  of  the  world. 

It  is  this  same  spirit,  this  disdaining  of  sim- 
plicity that  has  so  warped  and  inflated  The 
First  Story,  making  of  it  a  pomp,  an  affair  of 
gold-embroidered  vestments  and  costly  choirs, 
of  marbles,  of  jeweled  windows  and  of  incense, 
unable  to  find  the  thrill  as  formerly  in  the  plain 
and  humble  stable,  and  the  brown-haired, 


248     The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

grave-eyed  peasant  girl,  with  her  little  baby; 
unable  to  see  the  beauty  in  the  crumbling  mud 
walls,  the  low-ceiled  interior,  where  the  only 
incense  was  the  sweet  smell  of  the  cow's  breath, 
the  only  vestments  the  swaddling  clothes, 
rough,  coarse-fibered,  from  the  hand-looms  of 
Nazareth,  the  only  pomp  the  scanty  gifts  of 
three  old  men,  and  the  only  chanting  the 
crooning  of  a  young  mother  holding  her  first- 
born  babe  upon  her  breast. 


SALT  AND  SINCERITY 


SALT  AND  SINCERITY 

I 

TF  the  signs  of  the  times  may  be  read 
aright,  and  the  future  forecasted,  the 
volume  of  short  stories  is  in  a  fair  way  of 
becoming  a  "rare  book."  Fewer  and  fewer 
of  this  kind  of  literature  are  published  every 
year,  and  only  within  the  last  week  one  of  the 
foremost  of  the  New  York  publishers  has  said 
that,  so  far  as  the  material  success  was  con- 
cerned, he  would  prefer  to  undertake  a  book 
of  poems  rather  than  a  book  of  stories.  Also 
he  explains  why.  And  this  is  the  interesting 
thing.  One  has  always  been  puzzled  to  account 
for  this  lapse  from  a  former  popularity  of  a 
style  of  fiction  certainly  legitimate  and  incon- 
testably  entertaining.  The  publisher  in  ques- 
tion cites  the  cheap  magazines — the  monthlies 
and  weeklies — as  the  inimical  factors.  The 
people  go  to  them  for  their  short  stories,  not 
to  the  cloth-bound  volumes  for  sale  at  a  dollar 
or  a  dollar  and  a  half.  Why  not,  if  the  cheap 
magazines  give  "just  as  good"?  Often,  too, 
they  give  the  very  same  stories  which,  later, 
are  republished  in  book  form.  As  the  case 
251 


252      The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

stands  now,  any  fairly  diligent  reader  of  two 
or  three  of  the  more  important  monthlies  and 
weeklies  may  anticipate  the  contents  of  the 
entire  volume,  and  very  naturally  he  cannot 
be  expected  to  pay  a  dollar  for  something  he 
already  has. 

Or  even  suppose — as  is  now  generally 
demanded  by  the  publisher — the  author  adds 
to  the  forthcoming  collection  certain  hitherto 
unpublished  stories.  Even  this  does  not  tempt 
the  buyer.  Turning  over  the  leaves  at  the 
bookseller's,  he  sees  two,  three,  five,  half  a 
dozen  familiar  titles.  "Come,"  says  he,  "I 
have  read  three-fourths  of  this  book  already. 
I  have  no  use  for  it. " 

It  is  quite  possible  that  this  state  of  affairs 
will  produce  important  results.  It  is  yet, 
perhaps,  too  soon  to  say,  but  it  is  not  outside 
the  range  of  the  probable  that,  in  America 
at  least,  it  will,  in  time  to  come,  engender  a 
decay  in  the  quality  of  the  short  story.  It 
may  be  urged  that  the  high  prices  paid  by 
periodicals  to  the  important  short-story  writers 
— the  best  men — will  still  act  as  a  stimulus  to 
production.  But  this  does  not  follow  by  any 
means.  Authors  are  queer  cattle.  They  do 
not  always  work  for  money,  but  sometimes  for 
a  permanent  place  in  the  eyes  of  the  world. 
Books  give  them  this — not  fugitive  short 


Salt  and  Sincerity  253 

stories,  published  here  and  there,  and  at 
irregular  intervals.  Reputations  that  have 
been  made  by  short  stories  published  in  periodi- 
cals may  be  counted  upon  the  ringers  of  one 
hand.  The  "life  of  a  novel" — to  use  a  trade 
term — is  to  a  certain  extent  indeterminable. 
The  life  of  a  short  story,  be  it  never  so  excellent, 
is  prolonged  only  till  the  next  issue  of  the 
periodical  in  which  it  has  appeared.  If  the 
periodical  is  a  weekly  it  will  last  a  week,  if  a 
monthly  a  month — and  not  a  day  more.  If 
very  good,  it  will  create  a  demand  for  another 
short  story  by  the  same  author,  but  that  one 
particular  contribution,  the  original  one,  is 
irretrievably  and  hopelessly  dead. 

If  the  author  is  in  literature  "for  his  own 
pocket  every  time, "  he  is  generally  willing  to 
accept  the  place  of  a  short-story  writer.  If 
he  is  one  of  the  "best  men,"  working  for  a 
"permanent  place,"  he  will  turn  his  attention 
and  time,  his  best  efforts,  to  the  writing  of 
novels,  reverting  to  the  short  story  only  when 
necessary  for  the  sake  of  boiling  the  Pot  and 
chasing  the  Wolf.  He  will  abandon  the  field 
to  the  inferior  men,  or  enter  it  only  to  dispose 
of  "copy"  which  does  not  represent  him  at  his 
best.  And,  as  a  result,  the  quality  of  the  short 
story  will  decline  more  and  more. 

So,  "taking  one  consideration  with  another, " 


254     The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

it  may  be  appropriate  to  inquire  if  it  is  not 
possible  that  the  American  short  story  is  liable 
to  decline  in  quality  and  standard  of  excellence. 

And  now  comes  again  this  question  addressed 
to  certain  authors,  "  Which  book  do  you  con- 
sider your  best?"  and  a  very  industrious  and 
painstaking  person  is  giving  the  answer  to  the 
world. 

To  what  end  it  is  difficult  to  see.  Who  cares 
which  of  the  "Waverleys"  Sir  Walter  thought 
his  best?  or  which  of  the  Rougon-Maquart 
M.  Zola  favours  the  most?  The  author's 
point  of  view  is  very  different  from  yours — 
the  reader's.  Which  one  do  you  think  the 
best?  That's  the  point.  Do  you  not  see  that 
in  the  author's  opinion  the  novel  he  is  working 
on  at  the  moment,  or  which  is  in  press  and 
about  to  appear — in  fine,  the  last  one  written — 
is  for  a  very  long  time  the  best  he  has  done? 
He  would  be  a  very  poor  kind  of  novelist  if  he 
did  not  think  that. 

And  even  in  retrospect  his  opinion  as  to 
"his  best  book"  is  not  necessarily  final.  For 
he  will  see  good  points  in  "unsuccessful" 
novels  that  the  public  and  critics  have  never 
and  will  never  discover;  and  also  defects  in 
what  the  world  considers  his  masterpiece  that 
for  him  spoil  the  entire  story.  His  best  novel 
is,  as  was  said,  the  last  he  has  written,  or — and 


Salt  and  Sincerity  255 

this  more  especially — the  one  he  is  going  to 
write.  For  to  a  certain  extent  this  is  true  of 
every  author,  whether  fiction  writer  or  not. 
Though  he  very  often  does  better  than  he  thinks 
he  can,  he  never  does  so  well  as  he  knows  he  might. 

His  best  book  is  the  one  that  he  never  quite 
succeeds  in  getting  hold  of  firmly  enough  to 
commit  to  paper.  It  is  always  just  beyond 
him.  Next  year  he  is  going  to  think  it  out, 
or  the  next  after  that,  and  instead  heTcompro- 
mises  on  something  else,  and  his  chef  d'ceuvre 
is  always  a  little  ahead  of  him.  If  this,  too, 
were  not  so,  he  would  be  a  poor  kind  of  writer. 
So  that  it  seems  to  me  the  most  truthful  answer 
to  the  question,  "What  is  your  best  book?' 
would  be,  "The  one  I  shall  never  write. " 

Another  ideal  that  such  of  the  "people  who 
imagine  a  vain  thing"  have  long  been  pursuing 
is  an  English  Academy  of  letters,  and  now 
that  "the  British  Academy  for  the  promotion 
of  Historical,  Philosophical  and  Philological 
studies"  has  been  proposed,  the  old  discussion 
is  revived,  and  especially  in  England  there  is 
talk  of  a  British  Academy,  something  on  the 
same  lines  as  the  Academie  Frangaise,  which 
shall  tend  to  promote  and  reward  particularly 
the  production  of  good  fiction.  In  a  word, 
it  would  be  a  distinction  reserved  only  for  the 
worthy,  a  charmed  circle  that  would  open  only 


256     The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

to  the  elite  upon  the  vote  of  those  already 
admitted.  The  proposition  strikes  one  as  pre- 
eminently ridiculous.  Literature  is  of  all  arts 
the  most  democratic;  it  is  of,  by  and  for  the 
people  in  a  fuller  measure  than  even  govern- 
ment itself.  And  one  makes  the  assertion 
without  forgetting  that  fine  mouth-filling 
phrase,  the  "aristocracy  of  letters."  The 
survival  of  the  fittest  is  as  good  in  the  evolution 
of  our  literature  as  of  our  bodies,  and  the  best 
"academy"  for  the  writers  of  the  United 
States  is,  after  all,  and  in  the  last  analysis,  to 
be  found  in  the  judgment  of  the  people,  exer- 
cised throughout  the  lapse  of  a  considerable 
time.  For,  give  the  people  time  enough,  and 
they  will  always  decide  justly. 

It  was  in  connection  with  this  talk  about  an 
"Academy"  that  Mr.  Hall  Caine  has  made  the 
remark  that  "no  academic  study  of  a  thing 
so  variable,  emotional  and  independent  as  the 
imaginative  writer's  art  could  be  anything  but 
mischievous."  One  is  inclined  to  take  excep- 
tion to  the  statement.  Why  should  the  aca- 
demic study  of  the  principles  of  writing  fiction 
be  mischievous?  Is  it  not  possible  to  codify 
in  some  way  the  art  of  construction  of  novels 
so  that  they  may  be  studied  to  advantage? 
This  has,  of  course,  never  been  done.  But  one 
believes  that,  if  managed  carefully  and  with  a 


Salt  and  Sincerity  257 

proper  disregard  of  "set  forms"  and  hampering 
conventions,  it  would  be  possible  to  start  and 
maintain  a  school  of  fiction-writing  in  the 
most  liberal  sense  of  the  word  "  school. "  Why 
should  it  be  any  more  absurd  than  the  painting 
schools  and  music  schools  ?  Is  the  art  of  music, 
say,  any  less  variable,  less  emotional,  less 
independent,  less  imaginative  than  the  fiction- 
writer's.  Heretical  as  the  assertion  may  ap- 
pear, one  is  thoroughly  convinced  that  the  art 
of  novel  writing  (up  to  a  certain  point,  bien 
entendu)  can  be  acquired  by  instruction  just  as 
readily  and  with  results  just  as  satisfactory 
and  practical  as  the  arts  of  painting,  sculpture, 
music,  and  the  like.  The  art  of  fiction  is,  in 
general,  based  upon  four  qualities  of  mind: 
observation,  imagination,  invention  and  sym- 
pathy. Certainly  the  first  two  are  "  acquired 
characters. "  Kindergarten  children  the  world 
over  are  acquiring  them  every  day.  Invention 
is  immensely  stimulated  by  observation  and 
imagination,  while  sympathy  is  so  universally 
a  fundamental  quality  with  all  sorts  and  condi- 
tions of  men  and  women — especially  the  latter 
— that  it  needs  but  little  cultivation.  Why, 
then,  would  it  be  impossible  for  a  few  of  our 
older,  more  seriously  minded  novelists  to 
launch  a  School  of  Instruction  in  the  Art 
of  Composition — just  as  Eougereau,  Lefevre, 


258     The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

Boulanger  and  Tony  Robert  Fleury  founded 
Julien's  in  Paris  ? 

At  present  the  stimulus  to,  and  even  the 
manner  of,  production  of  very  much  of  Ameri- 
can fiction  is  in  the  hands  of  the  publishers. 
No  one  not  intimately  associated  with  any  one 
of  the  larger,  more  important  "houses'*  can 
have  any  idea  of  the  influence  of  the  publisher 
upon  latter-day  fiction.  More  novels  are  writ- 
ten— practically — to  order  than  the  public  has 
any  notion  of.  The  publisher  again  and  again 
picks  out  the  man  (one  speaks,  of  course,  of 
the  younger  generation),  suggests  the  theme, 
and  exercises,  in  a  sense,  all  the  functions  of 
instructor  during  the  period  of  composition. 
In  the  matter  of  this  "picking  out  of  the  man" 
it  is  rather  curious  to  note  a  very  radical  change 
that  has  come  about  in  the  last  five  years. 
Time  was  when  the  publisher  waited  for  the 
unknown  writer  to  come  to  him  with  his  manu- 
script. But  of  late  the  Unknown  has  so  fre- 
quently developed,  under  exploitation  and  by 
direct  solicitation  of  the  publisher,  into  a 
"money-making  proposition"  of  such  formid- 
able proportions  that  there  is  hardly  a  publish- 
ing house  that  does  not  now  hunt  him  out  with 
all  the  resources  at  its  command.  Certain 
fields  are  worked  with  the  thoroughness, 
almost,  of  a  political  canvass,  and  if  a  given 


Salt  and  Sincerity  259 

State — as,  for  instance,  Indiana — has  suddenly 
evolved  into  a  region  of  great  literary  activity, 
it  is  open  to  suspicion  that  it  is  not  because 
there  is  any  inherent  literary  quality  in  the 
people  of  the  place  greater  than  in  other  States, 
but  that  certain  firms  of  publishers  are  "work- 
ing the  ground." 

It  might  not  have  been  altogether  out  of 
place  if  upon  the  Victor  Hugo  monument 
which  has  just  been  unveiled  in  Paris  there  had 
been  inscribed  this,  one  of  the  most  important 
of  the  great  Frenchman's  maxims : 

"Les  livres  n'ont  jamais  faites  du  mal"; 

and  I  think  that  in  the  last  analysis,  this  is  the 
most  fitting  answer  to  Mr.  Carnegie,  who,  in 
his  address  before  the  Author's  Club,  put  him- 
self on  record  as  willing  to  exclude  from  the 
libraries  he  is  founding  all  books  not  three  years 
old.  No  doubt  bad  books  have  a  bad  influence, 
but  bad  books  are  certainly  better  than  no 
books  at  all.  For  one  must  remember  that  the 
worst  books  are  not  printed — the  really  tawdry, 
really  pernicious,  really  evil  books.  These  are 
throttled  in  manuscript  by  the  publishers,  who 
must  be  in  a  sense  public  censors.  No  book, 
be  assured,  goes  to  press  but  that  there  is — 
oh,  hidden  away  like  a  grain  of  mustard — 
some  bit,  some  modicum,  some  tiny  kernel  of 


260     The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

good  in  it.  Perhaps  it  is  not  that  seed  of  good- 
ness that  the  cultured,  the  fastidious  care  much 
about.  Perhaps  the  discriminating  would  call 
it  a  platitude.  But  one  is  willing  to  believe 
that  somewhere,  somehow,  this  atom  of  real 
worth  makes  itself  felt — and  that's  a  beginning. 
It  will  create  after  awhile  a  taste  for  reading. 
And  a  taste  for  reading  is  a  more  important 
factor  in  a  nation's  literary  life  than  the  birth 
of  a  second  Shakespeare. 

It  is  the  people,  after  all,  who  "make  a  litera- 
ture. "  If  they  read,  the  few,  the  "  illuminati, " 
will  write.  But  first  must  come  the  demand — 
come  from  the  people,  the  Plain  People,  the 
condemned  bourgeoisie.  The  select  circles  of 
the  elite,  the  "studio"  hangers-on,  the  refined, 
will  never,  never,  clamour  they  never  so  loudly, 
toil  they  never  so  painfully,  produce  the  Great 
Writer.  The  demand  which  he  is  to  supply 
comes  from  the  Plain  People — from  the  masses, 
and  not  from  the  classes.  There  is  more  signifi- 
cance as  to  the  ultimate  excellence  of  American 
letters  in  the  sight  of  the  messenger  boy 
devouring  his  "Old  Sleuths"  and  "Deadwood 
Dicks"  and  "  Boy  Detectives, "  with  an  earnest, 
serious  absorption,  than  in  the  spectacle  of  a 
"reading  circle"  of  dilletanti  coquetting  with 
Verlaine  and  pretending  that  they  understand. 

By  the  same  token,  then,  is  it  not  better  to 


Salt  and  Sincerity  261 

welcome  and  rejoice  over  this  recent  "literary- 
deluge"  than  to  decry  it?  One  is  not  sure 
it  is  not  a  matter  for  self-gratulation — not  a 
thing  to  deplore  and  vilify.  The  "people"  are 
reading,  that  is  the  point ;  it  is  not  the  point  that 
immature,  untrained  writers  are  flooding  the 
counters  with  their  productions.  The  more 
the  Plain  People  read  the  more  they  will  dis- 
criminate. It  is  inevitable,  and  by  and  by 
they  will  demand  "something  better."  It  is 
impossible  to  read  a  book  without  formulating 
an  opinion  upon  it.  Even  the  messenger  boy 
can  tell  you  that,  in  his  judgment,  No.  3,666, 
"The  James  Boys  Brought  to  Bay,"  is  more — 
or  less,  as  the  case  may  be — exciting  than  No. 
3,667,  "  The  Last  of  the  Fly-by-nights. "  Well, 
that  is  something.  Is  it  not  better  than  that 
the  same  boy  should  be  shooting  craps  around 
the  corner?  Take  his  dime  novel  from  him, 
put  him  in  the  "No  Book"  condition — and 
believe  me,  he  will  revert  to  the  craps.  And 
so  it  is  higher  up  the  scale.  In  the  name  of 
American  literature,  let  the  Plain  People  read, 
anything — anything,  whether  it  is  three  days 
or  three  years  old.  Mr.  Carnegie  will  not 
educate  the  public  taste  by  shutting  his  libraries 
upon  recent  fiction.  The  public  taste  will 
educate  itself  by  much  reading,  not  by  restricted 
reading.  "Books  have  never  done  harm," 


262     The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

Victor  Hugo  said  it,  and  a  bad  book — that  is 
to  say,  a  poor,  cheap,  ill- written,  " trashy" 
book — is  not  after  all  so  harmful  as  "no 
book"  at  all. 

Later  on,  when  the  people  have  learned  dis- 
crimination by  much  reading,  it  will  not  be 
necessary  to  bar  fiction  not  three  years  old 
from  the  libraries,  for  by  then  the  people  will 
demand  the  " something  better,"  and  the 
writers  will  have  to  supply  it — or  disappear, 
giving  place  to  those  who  can,  and  then  the 
literary  standards  will  be  raised. 


II 


IN  a  recent  number  of  his  periodical,  the 
editor  of  Harper's  Weekly  prints  a  letter 
received  from  a  gentleman  who  deplores  the 
fact  that  the  participants  in  the  Harvard- 
Yale  track  teams  are  given  a  great  place  in 
the  daily  newspapers  while — by  implication — 
his  son,  an  arduous  student  and  winner  of  a 
"Townsend  prize,"  is  completely  and  definitely 
ignored.  "I  could  not  but  think  of  my  son/' 
writes  the  gentleman,  "a  Yale  Senior  who,  as 
one  of  the  results  of  nine  years'  devotion  to 
study,  won  a  Townsend  prize."  One  will  ask 
the  reader  to  consider  this  last  statement.  The 
publicity  of  the  college  athletes  is  not  the  point 
here.  The  point  is  "nine  years'  devotion  to 
study"  and — "a  Townsend  prize."  Nine  years 
— think  of  it — the  best,  the  most  important 
of  a  boy's  life  given  to  devoted  study  ! — not  of 
Men,  not  of  Life,  not  of  Realities,  but  of  the 
books  of  Other  People,  mere  fatuous,  unrea- 
soned, pig-headed  absorption  of  ideas  at  second- 
hand. And  the  result?  Not  a  well-ordered 
mind,  not  a  well-regulated  reasoning  machine, 
263 


264     The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

not  a  power  of  appreciation,  not  an  ability  to 
create.  None  of  these,  but — Great  Heavens  ! — 
a  Townsend  Prize,  a  rectangular  piece  of  the  skin 
of  a  goat,  dried  and  cured  and  marked  with 
certain  signs  and  symbols  by  means  of  a  black 
pigment ;  this  and  a  disk  of  the  same  metal  the 
Uganda  warrior  hangs  in  his  ears.  A  Townsend 
Prize.  And  for  this  a  young  American  living 
in  the  twentieth  century,  sane,  intelligent, 
healthful,  has  pored  over  Other  People's  books, 
has  absorbed  Other  People's  notions,  has 
wearied  his  brain,  has  weakened  his  body,  has 
shut  himself  from  the  wide  world,  has  denied 
himself,  has  restrained  himself,  has  stultified 
emotion,  has  in  a  word  buried  his  talent  in  the 
earth  wrapped  carefully  in  a  napkin.  "And," 
comments  the  editor,  "the  boy  who  won  the 
Townsend  prize  for  scholarship,  if  he  keeps  on, 
will  some  day  be  honoured  by  his  fellowmen, 
when  the  athletic  prize-winner,  if  he  does 
nothing  else,  will  be  a  director  of  a  gymnasium. 
The  serious  worker  comes  out  ahead  every  time." 
But  winning  Townsend  prizes  by  nine  years 
of  study  is,  we  submit,  not  serious  work, 
but  serious  misuse  of  most  valuable  time  and 
energy.  Scholarship?  Will  we  never  learn 
that  times  change  and  that  sauce  for  the 
Renaissance  goose  is  not  sauce  for  the  New 
Century  gander  ?  It  is  a  fine  thing,  this  scholar- 


Salt  and  Sincerity  265 

ship,  no  doubt;  but  if  a  man  be  content  with 
merely  this  his  scholarship  is  of  as  much  use  and 
benefit  to  his  contemporaries  as  his  deftness  in 
manicuring  his  ringer  nails.  The  United  States 
in  this  year  of  grace  of  nineteen  hundred  and 
two  does  not  want  and  does  not  need  Scholars, 
but  Men — Men  made  in  the  mould  of  the 
Leonard  Woods  and  the  Theodore  Roosevelts, 
Men  such  as  Colonel  Waring,  Men  such  as 
Booker  Washington.  The  most  brilliant  schol- 
arship attainable  by  human  effort  is  not, 
to-day,  worth  nine  years  of  any  young  man's 
life.  I  think  it  is  Nathaniel  Hawthorne  who 
tells  the  story  of  a  "scholar"  who  one  day, 
when  a  young  man,  found  the  tooth  of  a  mam- 
moth. He  was  a  student  of  fossil  remains, 
and  in  his  enthusiasm  set  out  to  complete  the 
skeleton.  His  mind  filled  with  this  one  idea, 
to  the  exclusion  of  all  else,  he  traveled  up  and 
down  the  world,  year  after  year,  picking  up 
here  a  vertebra,  here  a  femur,  here  a  rib,  here 
a  clavicle.  Years  passed ;  he  came  to  be  an  old 
man;  at  last  he  faced  death.  He  had  suc- 
ceeded. The  monstrous  framework  was  com- 
plete. But  he  looked  back  upon  the  sixty  years 
of  his  toil  and  saw  that  it  was  a  vanity.  He 
had  to  show  for  his  life-work — the  skeleton  of 
a  mammoth.  And,  believe  this  implicitly :  if — 
as  the  editor  and  commentator  remarks — if 


266     The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

the  Townsend  prize-winner  keeps  on,  this  will 
be  the  result,  a  huge  thing  no  doubt,  a  thing 
that  looms  big  in  the  eye  and  in  the  imagina- 
tion, but  an  empty  thing,  lifeless,  bloodless, 
dead;  yes  and  more  than  dead — extinct;  a 
mere  accumulation  of  dry  bones,  propped  up 
lest  it  fall  to  the  ground,  a  thing  for  the  wind 
to  blow  through  and  the  vulgar  to  gape  at. 

But  in  connection  with  this  subject  one  may 
cite  so  high  an  authority  as  Doctor  Patton  of 
Princeton,  who  has  recently  said  that  nowa- 
days men  do  not  go  to  colleges  to  become 
scholars,  and  that  it  was  time  and  money 
wasted  to  try  to  make  them  such.  This  is  a 
good  saying  and  should  be  taken  to  heart 
by  every  college  faculty  between  the  oceans. 
Sooner  or  later  there  is  bound  to  come  a  funda- 
mental change  in  the  mode  of  instruction  now 
in  favour  in  most  American  colleges.  The 
times  demand  it;  the  character  of  the  student 
body,  the  character  of  the  undergraduate,  is 
changing.  One  chooses  to  believe  that  the 
college  of  the  end  of  the  present  century  will  be 
an  institution  where  only  specialized  work  will 
be  indulged  in.  There  will  be  courses  in  engi- 
neering, in  electricity,  in  agriculture,  in  law, 
in  chemistry,  in  biology,  in  mining,  etc.,  and 
the  so-called  general  "literary"  or  "classical" 
courses  will  be  relegated  to  the  limbo  of  Things 


Salt  and  Sincerity  267 

No  Longer  Useful.  Any  instructor  in  collegiate 
work  will  tell  you  to-day  that  the  men  in  the 
special  courses  are  almost  invariably  the  hard- 
est, steadiest,  most  serious  workers.  The  man 
who  studies  law  at  college  finishes  his  work  a 
lawyer,  he  who  studies  engineering  ends  an 
engineer,  the  student  of  biology  graduates 
a  biologist,  the  student  of  chemistry,  a  chemist. 
But  the  student  in  the  "literary"  course  does 
not — no,  not  once  in  a  thousand  instances — 
graduate  a  literary  man.  He  spends  the  four 
years  of  his  life  over  a  little  Greek,  a  little 
Latin,  a  little  mathematics,  a  little  literature, 
a  little  history,  a  little  "theme"  writing,  and 
comes  out — just  what  it  would  be  difficult  to 
say.  But  he  has  in  most  cases  acquired  a  very- 
pronounced  distaste  for  the  authors  whose 
work  he  has  studied  in  class  and  lecture-room. 
Great  names  such  as  those  of  Carlyle,  Macaulay 
and  De  Quincey  are  associated  in  his  mind 
only  with  tedium.  He  never  will  go  back  to 
these  books,  never  read  with  enjoyment  what 
once  was  "work."  Even  his  conscientious- 
ness— supposing  him  to  be  animated  with  such 
a  motive — will  trap  him  and  trick  him.  I  do 
not  think  that  I  shall  ever  forget  the  spectacle 
and  impression  of  a  student  in  my  own  Alma 
Mater — a  little  lass  of  seventeen  (the  college 
was  co-educational),  with  her  hair  still  down 


268     The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

her  back  and  her  shoes  yet  innocent  of  heels, 
rising  in  her  place  in  the  classroom  to  read 
before  a  half-hundred  of  raw  boys  and  unde- 
veloped girls — not  three  months  out  of  the 
high  school — a  solemn  and  quite  unintelligible 
"theme"  on  "The  Insincerity  of  Thomas 
Babington  Macaulay." 

Just  at  the  time  of  the  present  writing  a 
controversy  has  been  started  in  London  literary 
circles  as  to  the  legitimacy  of  a  reviewer  pub- 
lishing the  whole  or  parts  of  the  same  unsigned 
article  in  two  or  more  periodicals.  Mr.  Arthur 
Symons  is  the  reviewer  under  fire,  and  his  article 
a  critique  of  the  dramas  of  Mr.  Stephen  Phillips. 
It  was  Mr.  Phillips,  so  we  are  told,  who  first 
started  the  protest,  and  he  has  found  followers 
and  champions.  And  on  first  consideration 
there  does  seem  to  be  ground  for  complaint 
here.  It  has  been  assumed  that  the  first 
publisher  of  the  article  has  a  right  to  expect 
that  for  the  money  he  pays  to  the  writer  this 
latter  shall  give  to  him  all  he  has  to  say  upon 
the  subject.  If  he  has  very  much  to  say — 
enough  for  another  article — is  it  not  the  duty 
of  the  scribe  to  condense  and  compact  so  that 
the  matter  may  be  represented  as  a  unit  and 
not  as  a  fragment?  Moreover,  does  it  seem 
fair  to  Mr.  Phillips  that  three  reviews — as  was 
the  case — all  unfavourable,  should  appear  in  as 


Salt  and  Sincerity  269 

many  publications,  thus  giving  to  the  public 
the  impression  that  a  group  of  critics,  instead 
of  merely  one,  was  hostile  to  his  work  ?  Lastly, 
it  has  been  urged  that  it  is  not  honest  to  sell  a 
thing  twice — that  if  a  horse  has  been  sold  by 
A  to  B,  A  cannot  sell  it  again  to  C. 

But  none  of  the  objections  seems  valid.  If 
the  space  allotted  to  the  article  in  the  paper 
is  not  sufficient,  that  is  the  fault  of  the  editor, 
not  the  writer.  The  editor  pays  only  for  what 
he  prints:  the  surplusage  is  still  the  author's 
property  and  can  be  by  him  disposed  of  as 
such.  As  tor  the  public  considering  the  single — 
unfavourable — review  as  the  opinions  of  three 
men,  and  as  such  unfair  to  Mr.  Phillips,  this 
as  well  is  inadequate  and  incompetent.  Another 
critic,  reviewing  Mr.  Phillips  favourably,  is  just 
as  much  at  liberty  to  split  up  his  work  as  the 
adverse  reviewer.  Last  of  all,  it  is  under 
certain  circumstances  perfectly  honest  to  sell 
the  same  thing  twice.  Articles,  stories,  poems 
and  the  like  are  continually  syndicated  in 
hundreds  of  newspapers  simultaneously,  and 
in  this  sense  are  sold  over  and  over  again. 
The  analogy  between  the  sale  of  a  horse  and 
the  sale  of  a  bit  of  literature  is  quite  misleading. 
For  the  matter  of  that,  the  writer  does  not  sell 
the  actual  concrete  manuscript  of  his  work, 
but  merely  the  right  to  print  it,  and  unless  the 


270     The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

word  "  exclusively"  is  understood  in  the  agree- 
ment he  is  in  no  wise  bound.  The  writer  is 
not  selling  his  copy  as  the  owner  sells  his  horse. 
The  analogy  would  be  true  if  A  sold  to  B  the 
use  of  the  horse.  When  B  had  got  the  "use" 
out  of  the  animal  no  one  will  deny  the  right  of 
A  to  sell  the  same  "use"  to  C,  D,  E,  and  so  on 
through  the  whole  alphabet.  The  reviewer  of 
books  has  a  hard  enough  time  of  it  as  it  is.  It 
is  only  fair  to  give  him  the  same  freedom  as  a 
livery  stable  keeper. 

It  has  often  occurred  to  me  as  a  thing  of 
some  importance  and  certain  significance  that 
all  great  travelers  are  great  writers.  And  the 
fact  is  so  well  established,  the  effect  flows  so 
n variably  from  the  cause,  that  there  would 
seem  to  be  here  a  matter  for  reflection.  One 
affirms  and  will  maintain  that  the  one  is  the 
direct  result  of  the  other,  that  the  faculty  of 
adequate  expression,  of  vivid  presentation,  of 
forceful  and  harmonious  grouping  of  words,  is 
engendered  and  stimulated  and  perfected  by 
wide  journeying. 

This  is  not  at  all  an  orthodox  view,  not  at 
all  the  theory  cherished  by  our  forbears.  The 
writer,  according  to  unvarying  belief,  is  the  man 
of  the  closet,  the  bookish  man,  a  student,  a 
sedentary,  a  consumer  of  kerosene,  a  reader 
rather  than  a  rover.  And  the  idea  is  plausible. 


Salt  and  Sincerity  271 

The  nomad,  he  without  local  habitation,  has 
no  leisure,  no  opportunity,  nor  even  actual 
concrete  place  to  write.  Would  it  not  seem 
that  literature  is  the  quiet  art,  demanding  an 
unperturbed  mind,  an  unexcited,  calm,  repose- 
ful temperament?  This  is  a  very  defensible 
position,  but  it  is  based  upon  a  foundation  of 
sand.  It  assumes  that  the  brain  of  the  writer 
is  a  jar  full  of  a  precious  fluid — a  bottle  full  of 
wine  to  be  poured  out  with  care  and  with  a 
hand  so  quiet,  so  restful  and  unshaken  that  not 
a  drop  be  spilled.  Very  well.  But  when  the 
jar,  when  the  bottle  is  emptied — then  what? 
Believe  me,  the  gods  give  but  one  vintage  to 
one  man.  There  will  be  no  refilling  of  the  ves- 
sel ;  and  even  the  lees  are  very  flat,  be  the  wine 
ever  so  good.  The  better  the  grape,  the  bitterer 
the  dregs;  and  the  outpouring  of  the  "best  that 
is  in  you"  in  the  end  will  be  soured  by  that 
brackish,  fade  sediment  that  follows  upon 
lavish  expenditure,  so  that  the  man  ends 
ignobly  and  because  of  exhaustion  and  deple- 
tion, with  all  the  product  of  his  early  and  mature 
richness  making  more  prominent  and  pitiful 
the  final  poverty  and  tenuity  of  his  outgiving — 
ends  the  butt  of  critics,  the  compassion  of  the 
incompetent,  a  shard  kicked  of  every  scullion. 
And  in  all  the  world  there  is  nothing  more 
lamentable  than  this — the  end  of  a  man  once 


272      The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

strong  who  has  used  himself  up  but  who  decants 
lees  and  not  wine.  Even  when  the  lees  are 
spent  he  absorbs  them  once  more  and  once 
more  gives  them  forth,  each  time  a  little  staler, 
a  little  thinner,  a  little  feebler,  realizing  his 
exhaustion,  yet — urged  by  some  whip  of  for- 
tune— forced  to  continue  the  miserable  per- 
formance till  the  golden  bowl  be  broken  and 
the  pitcher  shattered  at  the  fountain. 

But  suppose  the  productive  power  of  the 
writer  be  considered  not  as  a  golden  bowl  to 
be  emptied  and  in  the  end  broken,  but  as  a 
silver  cord  of  finest  temper  that  only  needs  to  be 
kept  in  tune.  True,  the  cord  may  be  stretched 
to  the  breaking-point.  But  its  end  comes  at 
the  very  height  and  in  the  very  consummate 
fulness  of  its  capacity,  and  oh,  the  grand  world- 
girdling  Note  that  it  sends  forth  in  the  breaking  ! 
— the  very  soul  of  it  at  mightiest  tension,  the 
very  spirit  of  it  at  fiercest  strain.  What  matter 
the  loosening  or  the  snapping  when  so  noble 
an  Amen  as  that  vibrates  through  the  nations 
to  sound  at  once  the  Height  and  the  End  of 
an  entire  Life — a  whole  existence  concentrated 
into  a  single  cry  ! 

Or  it  may  become  out  of  tune.  But  this  is 
no  great  matter,  because  so  easily  remedied. 
The  golden  bowl  once  emptied  there  will  be 
no  refilling,  but  by  some  blessed  provision  of 


Salt  and  Sincerity  273 

heaven  nothing  is  easier  than  to  attune  the 
cords  of  being  which  are  also  the  cords — the 
silver  singing  cords — of  expression. 

But — and  here  we  come  around  once  more 
to  the  point  de  depart — the  silver  cords  once 
gone  discordant,  once  jaded  and  slack,  will 
not,  cannot  be  brought  again  to  harmony  in  the 
closet,  in  the  study,  in  the  seclusion  of  the  cabi- 
net. Tinker  them  never  so  cunningly,  never  so 
delicately,  they  will  not  ring  true  for  you. 
Thought  will  avail  nothing,  nor  even  rest, 
nor  even  relaxation.  Of  oneself,  one  cannot 
cause  the  Master-note  to  which  they  will 
respond  to  vibrate.  The  cords  have  been 
played  on  too  much.  For  all  your  pottering 
they  will  yet  remain  a  little  loose,  and  so  long 
as  they  are  loose  the  deftest  fingering,  the  most 
skilful  touch,  will  produce  only  false  music. 

And  the  deadly  peril  is  that  the  cords  of 
Life  and  the  cords  of  expression  lie  so  close 
together,  are  so  intricately  mingled,  that  the 
man  cannot  always  tell  that  the  cords  of  expres- 
sion are  singing  out  of  tune.  Life  and  expres- 
sion are  two  parts  of  the  same  instrument.  If 
the  whole  life  be  out  of  tune,  how  can  the  man 
distinguish  the  false  music  from  the  true? 
There  is  a  danger  here,  but  it  is  not  great. 
Sooner  or  later  the  conviction  comes  that  the 
productive  power  is  menaced.  A  little  frank- 


274     The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

ness  with  oneself,  a  little  uncompromising 
testing  of  the  strings,  and  the  dissonance 
begins  to  impress  itself. 

And — as  was  said — the  remedy  is  not  to  be 
found  by  the  taking  of  thought,  but  by  an 
heroic,  drastic  thrusting  out  from  the  grooves 
and  cogs  of  the  life  of  other  men — of  the  life 
of  the  city  and  the  comfortable  stay-at-home, 
hour-to-hour  humdrum,  and  a  determined 
journeying  out  into  the  great  wide  world  itself. 

The  further  a-field  the  better.  The  Master- 
note  will  not  be  heard  within  "commuting 
distance  of  the  city. "  The  whir  of  civilization 
smothers  it.  The  click  of  the  telegraph,  the 
hiss  of  steam  and  the  clatter  of  the  printing- 
press  drown  it  out.  It  is  not  always  and  of 
necessity  a  loud  note.  Though  Nansen  heard 
ft  in  the  thunder  of  the  pack-ice  of  the  Farthest 
North,  it  came  to  the  ear  of  Stevenson  in  the 
lap  of  lazy  wavelets  in  the  hushed  noonday 
of  a  South  Sea  strand. 

Travel  is  the  only  way.  Travel  in  any 
direction,  by  any  means,  so  only  it  be  far — 
very,  very  far — is  the  great  attuner  of  the  list- 
less cords  of  the  writer's  instrument.  For 
again  and  again  and  again  his  power  is  not  a 
bowl  to  be  emptied,  but  an  instrument  to  be 
played  on.  To  be  of  use  it  must  be  sensitive 
and  responsive  and  true.  And  to  be  kept  sensi- 


Salt  and  Sincerity  275 

tive  and  responsive  and  true  it  must  go  once 
in  so  often  to  the  great  Tuner — to  Nature. 

We  speak  of  the  Mountains,  the  Rivers, 
Deserts  and  Oceans  as  though  we  knew  them. 
We  know  the  Adirondacks  from  a  fortnight  in  a 
"summer  camp";  the  Rivers  and  the  Deserts 
in  kinetoscopic  glimpses  from  the  Pullman's 
windows ;  the  Ocean — God  forgive  us  ! — from 
the  beach  of  a  "resort"  or  the  deck  of  an 
Atlantic  "greyhound."  And  I  think  the  gods 
of  the  Mountains,  Rivers,  Deserts  and  Oceans 
must  laugh  in  vast  contempt  of  our  credulity 
to  suppose  that  we  have  found  their  secrets  or 
heard  their  music  in  this  timid,  furtive  peeping 
and  pilfering.  For  such  little  minds  as  these 
the  gods  have  inexhaustible  stores  of  tinkling 
cymbals  and  sounding  brasses — Brummagem 
ware  that  they  sell  us  for  the  price  of  "commu- 
tation tickets"  and  mileage-books. 

The  real  knowledge,  the  real  experience  that 
tautens  and  trims  the  fibers  of  being,  that  tunes 
the  cords,  is  a  very  different  matter.  The  trail 
and  the  tall  ship  lead  to  those  places  where  the 
Master-note  sounds,  lead  to  those  untracked, 
uncharted  corners  of  the  earth,  and  dull  indeed 
must  be  the  tympanum  that  once  within  ear- 
shot cannot  hear  its  majestic  diapason.  It 
sounds  in  the  canyons  of  the  higher  mountains, 
in  the  plunge  of  streams  and  swirling  of  rivers 


276     The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

yet  without  names — in  the  wildernesses,  the 
plains,  the  wide-rimmed  deserts.  It  sings  a 
sonorous  rhapsody  in  the  rigging  of  the  clipper 
ship  driven  by  the  trade  winds,  in  the  ratlines 
and  halyards  of  South  Sea  schooners,  and 
drums  ''reveille"  on  the  tense,  hard  sails  of  the 
fishing-boats  off  the  "  Banks. "  You  can  hear 
it  in  the  cry  of  the  lynx,  the  chant  of  the  wild 
goose,  the  call  of  the  moose,  and  in  the  "break" 
of  the  salmon  in  the  deeper  pools  below  the 
cataract.  It  is  in  the  roar  of  the  landslide  and 
in  the  drone  of  the  cicada;  in  the  war-whoop 
of  the  savage  and  in  the  stridulating  of  crickets ; 
in  the  thunder  of  the  tempest  and  in  the  faintest 
breath  of  laziest  zephyrs. 

And  the  silver  cord  of  our  creative  faculty — 
the  thing  nearest  to  perfection  in  all  the  make- 
up of  our  imperfect  human  nature — responds 
to  this  Master-note  with  the  quickness  and 
sensitiveness  of  music-mathematics;  responds 
to  it,  attunes  itself  to  it,  vibrates  with  its 
vibration,  thrills  with  its  quivering,  beats  with 
its  rhythm,  and  tautens  itself  and  freshens  itself 
and  lives  again  with  its  great  pure,  elemental 
life,  and  the  man  comes  back  once  more  to  the 
world  of  men  with  a  true-beating  heart,  and  a 
true-hearing  ear,  so  that  he  understands  once 
more,  so  that  his  living,  sensitive,  delicately 
humming  instrument  trembles  responsive  to 


Salt  and  Sincerity  277 

the  emotions  and  impulses  and  loves  and  joys 
and  sorrows  and  fears  of  his  fellows,  and  the 
Man  writes  true  and  clear,  and  his  message  rings 
with  harmony  and  with  melody,  with  power 
and  with  passion  of  the  prophets  interpreting 
God's  handwriting  to  the  world  of  men. 


Ill 


THERE  can  be  no  question  nor  reasonable 
doubt  that  the  "  language,  institutions 
and  religion"  of  fiction  writers  are  at 
present  undergoing  the  most  radical  revolution 
in  the  history  of  literature.  And  I  mean  by 
that  that  the  men  themselves  are  changing — • 
their  characters,  their  attitudes  toward  life; 
even  the  mode  and  manner  of  their  own  life. 
Those  who  are  not  thus  changing  are  decaying. 
And  those  others,  the  Great  Unarrived  who 
do  not  recognize  the  Change,  who  do  not 
acknowledge  the  Revolution,  will  never  succeed, 
but  will  perish  untimely  almost  before  they 
can  be  said  to  have  been  born  at  all. 

Time  was  when  the  author  was  an  aristocrat, 
living  in  seclusion,  unspotted  from  the  world. 
But  the  Revolution  of  which  there  is  question 
here  has  meted  out  to  him  the  fate  that  Revolu- 
tions usually  prepared  for  Aristocrats,  and  his 
successor  is,  must  be,  must  be — if  he  is  to  voice 
the  spirit  of  the  times  aright,  if  he  is  to  interpret 
his  fellows  justly — the  Man  of  the  People,  the 
Good  Citizen. 

How  the  novelists  of  the  preceding  genera- 
279 


280      The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

tion  played  the  Great  Game  is  no  matter  for  dis- 
cussion here.  Times  were  different  then.  One 
shut  oneself  in  the  study;  one  wore  a  velvet 
coat;  one  read  a  great  deal  and  quoted  Latin; 
one  knew  the  classics ;  one  kept  apart  from  the 
vulgar  profane  and  never,  never,  never  read 
the  newspapers.  But  for  the  novelist  of  the 
next  fifty  years  of  this  twentieth  century  these 
methods,  these  habits,  this  conception  of  litera- 
ture as  a  cult,  as  a  refinement  to  be  kept  invio- 
late from  the  shoulderings  and  elbowings  of 
the  Common  People  is  a  clog,  is  a  stumbling- 
block,  is  a  pitfall,  a  bog,  mire,  trap — anything 
you  like  that  is  false,  misleading  and  pernicious. 
I  have  no  patience  with  a  theory  of  literature 
— and  oh,  how  often  one  hears  it  preached ! — 
that  claims  the  Great  Man  belongs  only  to  the 
cultured  few.  "You  must  write,"  so  these 
theorists  explain,  "for  that  small  number  of 
fine  minds  who  because  of  education,  because 
of  delicate,  fastidious  taste  are  competent  to 
judge. ' '  I  tell  you  this  is  wrong.  It  is  precisely 
the  same  purblind  prejudice  that  condemned 
the  introduction  of  the  printing-press  because 
it  would  cheapen  and  vulgarize  the  literature 
of  the  day.  A  literature  that  cannot  be  vul- 
garized is  no  literature  at  all  and  will  perish 
just  as  surely  as  rivers  run  to  the  sea.  The 
things  that  last  are  the  understandable  things 


Salt  and  Sincerity  281 

— understandable  to  the  common  minds,  the 
Plain  People,  understandable,  one  is  almost 
tempted  to  say,  to  the  very  children. 

It  is  so  in  every  branch  of  art:  in  music, 
painting,  sculpture,  architecture.  The  great 
monuments  of  these  activities,  the  things  that 
we  retain  longest  and  cherish  with  the  most 
care  are  plain  almost  to  bareness.  The  most 
rudimentary  mind  can  understand  them.  All 
the  learning,  all  the  culture,  all  the  refinement 
in  the  world  will  not  give  you  a  greater  thrill 
on  reading  your  "  Iliad"  than  the  boy  of  fifteen 
enjoys.  Is  the  "Marseillaise"  a  thing  of 
subtlety  or  refinement?  Are  the  Pyramids 
complex  ?  Are  Angelo's  Sibyls  involved  ?  But 
the  " Iliad,"  the  "Marseillaise,"  the  Pyramids, 
the  Sibyls  will  endure  and  endure  and  endure 
while  men  have  eyes  to  see,  ears  to  hear  and 
hearts  to  be  moved.  These  great  things,  these 
monuments  were  not  written  nor  composed, 
nor  builded,  nor  painted  for  the  select,  for  the 
cultured.  When  Homer  wrote  there  were  no 
reading  circles.  Rouget  de  Lisle  gave  no 
"recitals."  One  does  not  have  to  "read  up" 
to  understand  the  message  of  Cheops,  nor  take 
a  course  of  art  lectures  to  feel  the  mystery  of 
the  Delphic  Sibyl. 

And  so  to  come  back  to  the  starting  place, 
the  Revolution  in  the  character  of  the  writer  of 


282      The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

fiction.  If  the  modern  novelist  does  not  under- 
stand the  Plain  People,  if  he  does  not  address 
himself  directly  to  them  intelligibly  and  simply, 
he  will  fail.  But  he  will  never  understand 
them  by  shutting  himself  away  from  them. 
He  must  be — and  here  one  comes  to  the  con- 
clusion of  the  whole  matter — a  Man  of  the 
World.  None  more  so.  Books  have  no  place 
in  his  equipment,  have  no  right  to  be  there; 
will  only  cumber  and  confuse  him.  His  prede- 
cessor never  read  the  newspapers,  but  for  him 
the  newspaper  is  more  valuable  than  all  the 
tomes  of  Ruskin,  all  the  volumes  of  Carlyle. 
And  more  valuable  than  all  are  the  actual,  vital 
Affairs  of  Men.  The  function  of  the  novelist  of 
this  present  day  is  to  comment  upon  life  as  he 
sees  it.  He  cannot  get  away  from  this ;  this  is 
his  excuse  for  existence,  the  only  claim  he  has 
upon  attention.  How  necessary  then  for  him — 
of  all  men — to  be  in  the  midst  of  life  !  He  can- 
not plunge  too  deeply  into  it.  Politics  will 
help  him,  and  Religious  Controversies,  Explora- 
tions, Science,  the  newest  .theory  of  Socialism, 
the  latest  development  of  Biology.  He  should 
find  an  interest  in  Continental  diplomacy  and 
should  have  opinions  on  the  chances  of  a 
Russo-Japanese  war  over  the  Corean  question. 
He  should  be  able  to  tell  why  it  is  of  such 
unusual  importance  for  Queen  Wilhelmina  of 


Salt  and  Sincerity  283 

Holland  to  give  birth  to  an  heir,  and  should 
know  who  ought  to  be  nominated  for  Governor 
of  his  native  State  at  the  next  convention. 

No  piece  of  information — mere  downright 
acquisition  of  fact — need  be  considered  worth- 
less. Nothing  is  too  trivial  to  be  neglected. 
I  know  a  novelist  of  international  reputation 
who  told  me  that  the  following  little  bits  of 
knowledge  (collected  heaven  knows  where  and 
stored  up  for  years  in  some  pigeon-hole  of  his 
memory)  had  been  of  use  to  him  in  the  com- 
position of  a  novel  he  is  now  at  work  upon: 
That  great  cities  ten4  to  grow  to  the  westward ; 
that  race-horses  are  shod  with  a  long  and 
narrow  shoe;  and  that  the  usual  price  charged 
by  an  electrician  for  winding  an  armature  is 
four  dollars.  And  he  seemed  prouder  of  the 
fact  that  he  had  these  tiny  odds  and  ends  at  his 
command,  when  needed,  than  he  was  of  the 
honorary  degree  just  conferred  upon  him  by 
Harvard  University. 

I  suppose  this  is  an  exaggerated  case,  and  it 
is  not  to  be  denied  that  it  is  better  to  have  a 
Harvard  degree  than  to  know  the  shape  of  a 
race-horse's  shoe,  but  it  surely  goes  to  prove 
the  point  that,  as  far  as  actual  material  worth 
and  use  were  concerned,  the  fugitive  foolish 
memory-notes  were  of  more  present  help  than 
the  university  degree,  and  that  so  far  as  infor- 


284     The  Responsibilities  of  ike  Novelist 

mation  is  concerned  the  novelist  cannot  know 
too  much. 

In  a  recent  number  of  The  Bookman  there 
appears  an  able  article  under  the  title  "Attack- 
ing the  Newspapers."  The  title  is  a  trifle 
misleading,  since  the  author's  point  and  text 
are  a  defense  of  modern  journalism,  or  rather 
let  us  say  an  apology.  The  apology  is  very 
well  done.  The  manner  of  presentation  is 
ingenious,  the  style  amusing,  but  none  the  less 
one  cannot  let  the  article  pass  without  protest 
or,  at  the  least,  comment. 

The  original  function  of  a  newspaper  was, 
and  still  should  be,  to  tell  the  news — and, 
if  you  please,  nothing  more  than  that.  The 
"policy"  of  the  paper  was  (before  the  days 
of  the  yellow  press)  advocated  and  exploited 
in  the  editorial  columns. 

The  whole  difficulty  lies  in  the  fact  that 
nowadays  the  average  newspaper  is  violently 
partizan  and  deliberately  alters  news  to  suit  its 
partizanship.  "Not  a  very  criminal  proced- 
ure," I  hear  it  said;  "for  by  reading  the 
opposition  papers  the  public  gets  the  other 
side. "  But  one  submits  that  such  a  course  is 
criminal,  and  that  it  can  be  proved  to  be  such. 
How  many  people  do  you  suppose  read  the 
"opposition"  papers?  The  American  news- 
paper readers  have  not  time  to  read  "both 


Salt  and  Sincerity  285 

sides"   unless  presented  to  them  in  one  and 
the  same  paper. 

Observe  now  how  this  partizanship  works 
injustice  and  ruin.  Let  us  suppose  a  given 
newspaper  is  hostile  to  the  Governor  of  the 
State.  Now  every  man — even  a  journalist — 
has  a  right  to  his  opinions  and  his  hostilities, 
and  important  men  in  public  life  must  expect 
to  be  abused.  There  are  for  them  compensa- 
tions; their  position  is  too  high,  too  secure  to 
be  shaken  by  the  vituperation  of  malevolent 
journals.  But  these  journals  have  one  favour- 
ite form  of  attacking  important  public  men 
which,  though  it  does  not  always  harm  the 
personage  assaulted,  may  easily  ruin  the  sub- 
ordinates with  which  he  surrounds  himself. 
This  is  the  habit  of  discrediting  the  statesman 
by  defaming  his  appointees.  The  Governor, 
we  will  say,  has  appointed  John  Smith  to  be 
the  head  of  a  certain  institution  of  the  State. 
But  the  Governor  has  incurred  the  enmity  of 
the  Daily  Clarion — the  leading  newspaper. 
Promptly  the  Clarion  seizes  upon  Smith.  His 
career  as  head  of  the  institution  has  been  a 
record  of  misrule  (so  the  Clarion  reads),  has 
been  characterized  by  extravagance,  incom- 
petency,  mismanagement,  and  even  misappro- 
priation of  the  State's  money.  And  here  begins 
the  cruel  injustice  of  the  business.  The  editor 


286     The  Responsibilities  of  the   Novelist 

of  that  paper  will  set  no  bounds  upon  the 
lengths  to  which  he  will  urge  his  reporters  in 
their  vilification  of  Smith.  The  editor  knows 
he  is  a  liar,  the  reporters  know  they  are  liars, 
but  the  public,  ninety-nine  times  out  of  a 
hundred,  ignoring  motives,  unable  to  see  that 
the  real  object  of  attack  is  the  Governor, 
unable  to  understand  the  brute  callousness  and 
wretched  hypocrisy  of  the  whole  proceeding, 
believes  the  calumny,  believes  that  Smith  is  an 
incompetent,  a  spendthrift,  even  a  thief. 
And  even  the  better  class  of  readers,  even  the 
more  intelligent  who  make  allowances  for  the 
paper's  political  prejudices,  will  listen  to  the 
abuse  and  believe  that  there  "must  be  some 
fire  where  there  is  so  much  smoke."  Do  you 
suppose  for  one  moment  that  Smith  will  ever 
get  a  hearing  in  that  paper?  Do  you  suppose 
its  reporters  will  ever  credit  him  with  a  single 
honest  achievement,  a  single  sincere  effort? 
If  you  do,  you  do  not  understand  modern 
journalism. 

Ah,  but  the  opposition  papers !  They  will 
defend  Smith.  They  will  champion  him  as 
vehemently  as  the  Clarion  attacks.  That  is 
all  very  well,  but  suppose  there  are  no  opposition 
papers.  Politics  are  very  complicated.  The 
press  of  a  given  community  is  not  always 
equally  divided  between  the  Republican  and 


Salt  and  Sincerity  287 

Democratic  parties.  Time  and  time  again  it 
happens  that  all  the  leading  newspapers  of  a 
city,  a  county,  or  even  a  State,  Democratic, 
Republican,  Independent,  etc.,  are  banded  to- 
gether to  oppose  some  one  Large  Man. 

Where  then  will  Smith  get  his  hearing? 
He  cannot  fight  all  the  newspapers  at  once. 
He  is  not  strong  enough  to  retaliate  even 
upon  the  meanest.  The  papers  are  afraid 
of  nothing  he  can  do.  They  hold  absolute 
power  over  his  good  name  and  reputation. 
And  for  the  sake  of  feeding  fat  the  grudge 
they  bear  the  Great  One  they  butcher  the 
subordinate  without  ruth  and  without  re- 
proach. Believe  me,  it  has  been  shown 
repeatedly  that,  placed  in  such  a  position, 
the  modern  newspaper  will  check  at  no  lie 
however  monstrous,  at  no  calumny  however 
vile.  If  Smith  holds  a  position  of  trust  he 
will  be  trumpeted  from  end  to  end  of  the 
community  as  a  defaulter,  gambling  away 
the  public  moneys  entrusted  to  his  care.  He 
will  be  pictured  as  a  race-track  follower,  a 
supporter  of  fast  women,  a  thief,  a  blackguard, 
and  a  reprobate.  If  he  holds  an  administra- 
tive office,  it  will  be  shown  how  he  has  given 
and  taken  bribes;  how  he  has  neglected  his 
duties  and  ignored  his  responsibilities  till  his 
office  has  engendered  calamity,  ruin,  and  even 


288     The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

actual  physical  suffering.  If  his  work  is  in  the 
nature  of  supervision  over  one  of  those  State 
institutions  where  the  helpless  are  cared  for — • 
the  infirm,  the  imbecile,  the  aged,  or  sick,  or 
poor — his  cruelty  to  his  wards  will  be  the  theme, 
and  he  will  be  written  of  and  pictured  as  whip- 
ping or  torturing  old  men  and  little  children, 
imprisoning,  tormenting,  making  a  hell  of  what 
was  meant  to  be  a  help. 

And  the  man  once  blackened  after  this 
fashion  will  never  again  rehabilitate  himself 
in  the  eyes  of  the  public.  The  people  who  read 
newspapers  always  believe  the  worst,  and  when 
an  entire  press,  or  even  the  major  part  of  it, 
unite  to  defame  a  man  there  is  no  help  or 
redress  possible.  He  is  ruined,  ruined  profes- 
sionally and  financially,  ruined  in  character, 
in  pocket,  and  in  the  hopes  of  ever  getting 
back  the  good  name  that  once  was  his. 

And  all  this  is  done  merely  as  a  political  move, 
merely  to  discredit  the  Big  Man  who  put  Smith 
in  his  place,  merely  to  hurt  his  chances  of 
renomination,  merely  to  cut  down  the  number 
of  his  votes.  It  is  butchery;  there  is  no  other 
word  than  this  with  which  to  characterize  the 
procedure,  butchery  as  cruel,  as  wanton  and 
as  outrageous  as  ever  bloodied  the  sands  of  the 
Colosseum.  It  is  even  worse  than  this,  for  the 
victim  has  no  chance  for  his  life.  His  hands 


Salt  and  Sincerity  289 

are  tied  before  the  beasts  are  loosed.  He  is 
trussed  and  downed  before  the  cages  are  opened, 
and  the  benches  thunder  for  his  life,  not  as 
for  a  victim  to  be  immolated,  but  as  a  criminal 
to  be  punished.  He  is  getting  only  his  deserts, 
his  very  memory  is  an  execration,  and  his 
name  whenever  mentioned  is  a  by-word  and 
a  hissing. 

And  this  in  face  of  the  fact  that  the  man 
may  be  as  innocent  of  the  charges  urged  as  if 
he  had  never  been  born. 

Yet  Doctor  Colby  in  The  Bookman  article 
writes:  "If  we  must  attack  the  newspapers 
let  it  be  as  critics,  not  as  crusaders,  for  the 
people  who  write  for  them  are  under  no 
stricter  obligations  than  ourselves. ' '  What !  the 
reporter  or  the  editor  who  by  some  fillip  of 
fortune  is  in  a  position  to  make  public  opinion 
in  the  minds  of  a  million  people  under  no  more 
obligations  than  you  and  I !  If  every  obliga- 
tion bore  down  with  an  all  but  intolerable 
weight  it  is  in  just  his  case.  His  responsibility 
is  greater  than  that  of  the  Pulpit,  greater  than 
that  of  the  Physician,  greater  than  that  of  the 
Educator.  If  you  would  see  the  use  to  which 
it  is  put,  you  have  only  to  try  to  get  at  the  real 
truth  in  the  case  of  the  next  public  character 
assailed  and  vilified  in  the  public  prints. 

Doctor  Colby  is  wrong.     It  is  a  crusade  and 


290     The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

not  a  criticism  that  will  put  down  the  modern 
yellow  newspaper  from  the  bad  eminence  to 
which  the  minds  of  the  hysterical,  of  the  violent, 
of  the  ignorant,  brutal  and  unscrupulous  have 
exalted  it. 


IV 


THERE  is  a  certain  journal  of  the  Middle 
West  of  the  United  States  which  has 
proclaimed,  with  a  great  flourish  of  trumpets, 
that  Mme.  Humbert  of  Paris  would  have  made 
a  great  "fictionist"  if  she  had  not  elected  to 
become  a  great  swindler.  This  is  that  Mme. 
Humbert  who  cheated  a  number  of  bankers, 
capitalists  and  judges  out  of  a  great  deal  of 
money  with  a  story  of  $20,000,000  in  a  safe 
which  for  certain  reasons  she  could  not  open. 
Very  naturally,  when  her  hand  was  forced  the 
safe  was  empty.  And  this  person,  the  Middle 
West  paper  claims,  is  a  great  novelist  manquee, 
"a  female  Dumas  or  Hugo."  The  contention 
would  not  be  worthy  of  notice  were  it  not  for 
the  fact  that  it  is  an  opinion  similar  to  that 
held  by  a  great  number  of  people  intelligent 
enough  to  know  better.  In  a  word,  it  is  the 
contention  that  the  personal  morality  of  the 
artist  (including  "fictionists")  has  nothing 
to  do  with  his  work,  and  that  a  great  rascal 
may  be  a  good  painter,  good  musician,  good 
novelist.  With  painters,  musicians  and  the 
291 


292     The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

like  this  may  or  may  not  be  true.  With  the 
novelist  one  contends,  believes  and  avers  that 
it  is  absolutely  and  unequivocally  false,  and  that 
the  mind  capable  of  theft,  of  immorality,  of 
cruelty,  of  foulness,  or  falseness  of  any  kind  is 
incapable,  under  any  circumstances,  or  by  any 
degree  of  stimulation,  of  producing  one  single 
important,  artistic  or  useful  piece  of  fiction. 
The  better  the  personal  morality  of  the  writer, 
the  better  his  writings.  Tolstoi,  for  instance: 
it  is  wholly  and  solely  due  to  the  man's  vast 
goodness  and  philanthropy  that  his  novels 
carry  weight.  The  attitude  of  the  novelist 
toward  his  fellow-men  and  women  is  the  great 
thing,  not  his  inventiveness,  his  ingenuity, 
his  deftness,  or  glibness,  or  verbal  dexterity. 
And  the  mind  wholly  mean,  who  would  rob  a 
friend  of  $40,000  (after  the  manner  of  the 
Humbert  person),  or  could  even  wilfully  and 
deliberately  mar  the  pleasure  of  a  little  child, 
could  never  assume  toward  the  world  at  large 
that  attitude  of  sympathy  and  generosity  and 
toleration  that  is  the  first  requisite  of  the 
really  great  novelist.  Always  you  will  find 
this  thing  true:  that  the  best,  the  greatest 
writers  of  fiction  are  those  best  loved  of  troops 
of  friends;  and  for  the  reason  that,  like  the 
Arab  philosopher  of  the  poem,  they,  first  of  all, 
have  "loved  their  fellow-men."  It  is  this  that 


Salt  and  Sincerity  293 

has  made  their  novels  great.  Consider  Steven- 
son, or  our  own  "Dean,"  or  Hugo,  or  Scott, 
men  of  the  simplest  lives,  uncompromising  in 
rectitude,  scrupulously,  punctiliously,  Quixoti- 
cally honest ;  their  morality — surely  in  the  cases 
of  Stevenson  and  Hugo — setting  a  new  standard 
of  religion,  at  the  least  a  new  code  of  ethics. 
And  thus  it  goes  right  down  the  line,  from  the 
greater  lights  to  the  lesser  and  to  the  least.  It 
is  only  the  small  men,  the  "minor"  people 
among  the  writers  of  books  who  indulge  in 
eccentricities  that  are  only  immortalities  under 
a  different  skin;  who  do  not  pay  their  debts; 
who  borrow  without  idea  of  returning;  who 
live  loose,  "  irregular,"  wretched,  vicious  lives, 
and  call  it  "  Bohemianism,"  and  who  believe 
that  "good  work"  can  issue  from  the  turmoil, 
that  the  honeycomb  will  be  found  in  the 
carcass,  and  the  sweet  come  forth  from  the 
putrid.  So  that  in  the  end  one  may  choose  to 
disagree  with  the  Middle  West  editor  and  to 
affirm  that  it  is  not  the  ingenious  criminal  who 
is  the  novelist  manque,  but  the  philanthropist, 
the  great  educator,  the  great  pulpit  orator,  the 
great  statesman.  It  is  from  such  stuff  that  the 
important  novels  are  made,  not  from  the 
deranged  lumber  and  disordered  claptrap  of  the 
brain  of  a  defective. 

In  the  course  of  a  speech  made  at  a  recent 


294     The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

dinner  given  in  London,  Sir  Donald  Mackenzie 
Wallace  has  deplored  the  fact  that  our  present 
generation  of  English  writers  has  produced  no 
worthy  successors  to  the  great  men  of  the  mid- 
Victorian  period — that  there  are  no  names  to 
place  beside  Scott,  Dickens,  Thackeray,  Brown- 
ing, or  Keats.  But  he  also  brought  forward 
extenuating  circumstances,  chief  among  which 
was  the  fact  that  the  novelists  of  to-day  were 
working  overtime  to  supply  the  demands  of  an 
ever-increasing  public,  and  that,  by  implication, 
their  work  was  therefore  deteriorating.  One 
does  not  believe  that  this  is  so.  Rapid  work 
may  cause  the  deterioration  of  a  commercial 
article,  but  it  by  no  means  follows  that  the 
authors  who  are  called  upon  to  produce  a  very 
large  number  of  books  are  forced  into  the  com- 
position of  unworthy  literature.  The  writer's 
brain  does  not  hold  the  material  for  his  books. 
It  is  not  like  a  storehouse,  from  which  things 
may  be  taken  till  nothing  remains.  The 
writer's  material  is  life  itself,  inexhaustible 
and  renewed  from  day  to  day,  and  his  brain 
is  only  the  instrument  that  adapts  life  to  fiction. 
True,  this  instrument  itself  may  wear  out  after 
awhile,  but  it  usually  lasts  as  long  as  the  man 
himself,  and  is  good  for  more  work  than  the 
unthinking  would  believe  possible.  As  a  matter 
of  fact,  the  best  novelists  have,  as  a  rule,  been 


Salt  and  Sincerity  295 

the  most  prolific,  have  been  those  who  had  to 
write  rapidly  and  much  to  satisfy,  if  not  the 
demands  of  the  public,  then  at  least  other 
more  personal  demands,  none  the  less  insistent. 
Scott  and  Dickens  were  unusually  prolific,  yet 
the  rapidity  with  which  they  accomplished 
their  work  did  not  hurt  the  quality  of  the  work 
itself.  Balzac  and  Dumas  produced  whole 
libraries  of  books  and  yet  kept  their  standards 
high.  As  one  has  urged  before,  it  is  the  demand 
of  the  People  that  produces  the  great  writer, 
not  reduces  the  quality  and  fineness  of  his  work. 
If  he  has  the  "divine  spark,"  the  breath  of  the 
millions  will  fan  rather  than  extinguish  it. 

One  does  not  choose  to  believe  that  the  art  of 
fiction  nor  the  standards  of  excellence  have 
deteriorated  since  the  day  of  Scott,  Dickens 
and  Thackeray.  True,  we  have  no  men  to 
equal  them  as  yet,  but  they  are  surely  coming. 
Time  was,  at  the  end  of  the  seventeenth 
century,  when  the  dearth  of  good  fiction  was 
even  more  marked  than  "at  present.  But 
one  must  bear  in  mind  that  progress  is  never 
along  a  direct  line,  but  by  action  and  reaction. 
A  period  will  supervene  when  a  group  of 
geniuses  arise,  and  during  the  course  of  their 
activities  the  average  of  excellence  is  high, 
great  books  are  produced,  and  a  whole  New 
Literature  is  launched.  Their  influence  is 


296     The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

profound ;  the  first  subschool  of  imitators  follow 
good  enough  men  but  second-rate.  These  in 
turn  are  followed  by  the  third-raters,  and  these 
by  the  fourth-raters,  and  no  one  is  found  bold 
enough  to  strike  out  for  himself  until  the  bot- 
tom is  reached.  Then  comes  the  reaction,  and 
once  more  the  group  of  giants  towers  up  from 
out  the  mass.  We  are  probably  living  through 
the  era  of  the  fourth-raters  just  now,  and  one 
believes  that  we  are  rather  near  to  the  end  even 
of  that.  The  imitators  of  the  romantic  school 
have  imitated  to  ten  places  decimals  and  have 
diluted  and  rediluted  till  they  can  hardly  go 
further  without  producing  something  actually 
and  really  new.  At  any  rate,  the  time  is  most 
propitious  for  a  Man  of  Iron  who  can  be  bent 
to  no  former  shape  nor  diluted  to  no  old-time 
essence.  Then  will  come  the  day  of  the  New 
Literature,  and  the  wind  of  Life  itself  will  blow 
through  the  dry  bones  and  fustian  and  saw- 
dust of  the  Imitation,  and  the  People  will  all  at 
once  realize  how  very  far  afield  the  fourth- 
raters  have  drawn  them  and  how  very  differ- 
ent a  good  novel  is  from  a  bad  one. 

For  say  what  you  will,  the  People,  the  Plain 
People  who  Read,  do  appreciate  good  literature 
in  the  end.  One  must  keep  one's  faith  in  the 
People — the  Plain  People,  the  Burgesses,  the 
Grocers — else  of  all  men  the  artists  are  most 


Salt  and  Sincerity  297 

miserable  and  their  teachings  vain.  Let  us 
admit  and  concede  that  this  belief  is  ever  so 
sorely  tried  at  times.  Many  thousands  of 
years  ago  the  wisest  man  of  his  age  declared 
that  "the  People  imagine  a  vain  thing. "  Con- 
tinually they  are  running  away  after  strange 
gods;  continually  they  are  admiring  the  fake 
and  neglecting  actual  worth.  But  in  the  end, 
and  at  last,  they  will  listen  to  the  true  note  and 
discriminate  between  it  and  the  false.  In  the 
last  analysis  the  People  are  always  right.  Some- 
how, and  after  all  is  said  and  done,  they  will 
prefer  Walter  Scott  to  G.  P.  R.  James,  Shak- 
spere  to  Marlowe,  Flaubert  to  Goncourt. 
Sometimes  the  preference  is  long  in  forming, 
and  during  this  formative  period  they  have 
many  reversions,  and  go  galloping,  in  herds  of 
one  hundred  or  one  hundred  and  fifty  thousand 
(swelling  the  circulations),  after  false  gods. 
But  note  this  fact:  that  the  fustian  and  the 
tinsel  and  the  sawdust  are  discovered  very 
soon,  and,  once  the  discovery  made,  the 
sham  idol  can  claim  no  single  devotee. 

In  other  words,  it  is  a  comfort  to  those  who 
take  the  literature  of  the  Americans — or  even 
of  the  Anglo-Saxons — seriously  to  remember, 
in  the  long  run  and  the  larger  view,  that  a  circu- 
lation of  two  hundred,  three  hundred  or  four 
hundred  thousand — judging  even  by  this  base- 


298     The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

scale  of  "copies  sold" — is  not  so  huge  after  all. 
Consider.  A  "popular"  novel  is  launched 
and  sells  its  half-million.  Within  a  certain 
very  limited  period  of  time,  at  most  five  years, 
this  sale  stops  definitely  and  conclusively. 
The  People  have  found  out  that  it  is  not  such  a 
work  of  genius  after  all,  and  will  have  no  more 
of  it.  But  how  about  the  circulation  of  the 
works  of  the  real  Masters,  Scott  and  Dickens, 
say — to  be  more  concrete,  let  us  speak  of 
"Ivanhoe"  and  "David  Copperfield "— have 
not  each  of  these  "  sold  "  more  than  two  hundred 
thousand  since  publication?  Is  not  two  hun- 
dred million  nearer  the  mark?  And  they  are 
still  selling.  New  editions  are  published  every 
year.  Does  not  this  prove  that  the  People 
are  discriminating;  that  they  are — after  all — 
preferring  the  best  literature  to  the  mediocre; 
that  they  are  not  such  a  mindless  herd  after  all ; 
that  in  the  end,  in  fine,  they  are  always  right  ? 
It  will  not  do  to  decry  the  American  public; 
to  say  that  it  has  no  taste,  no  judgment ;  that 
it  "likes  to  be  fooled."  It  may  be  led  away 
for  a  time  by  clamorous  advertising  and  the 
"barking"  of  fakirs.  But  there  comes  a  day 
when  it  will  no  longer  be  fooled.  A  million 
dollars'  worth  of  advertising  would  not  today 
sell  a  hundred  thousand  copies  of  "Trilby." 
But  "Ivanhoe"  and  "Copperfield,"  without 


Salt  and  Sincerity  299 

advertising,  without  reclames  for  exploitation, 
are  as  marketable  this  very  day  as  a  sack  of 
flour  or  a  bag  of  wheat. 

Mr.  Metcalfe,  in  a  recent  issue  of  Life,  has 
been  lamenting  the  lack  of  good  plays  on  the 
American  stage  during  the  past  season,  and 
surely  no  one  can  aver  that  the  distinguished 
critic  is  not  right.  One  cannot  forbear  a  wince 
or  two  at  the  thought  of  what  future  art  histori- 
ans will  say  in  their  accounts  of  the  American 
drama  at  the  beginning  of  the  twentieth  century. 
Frankly  and  unreservedly  the  native  American 
drama  is  jusl:  about  as  bad  as  it  can  be,  and 
every  intelligent-minded  person  is  quite  willing 
to  say  so.  The  causes  are  not  difficult  to  trace. 
Two  come  to  the  mind  at  once,  which  in  them- 
selves alone  would  account  for  the  degeneracy 
— i.  e.,  the  rage  for  Vaudeville  and  the  exploita- 
tion of  the  Star.  The  first  has  developed  in 
the  last  ten  years,  an  importation  from  English 
music  halls.  Considered  at  first  as  a  fad  by 
the  better  class  of  theatre-goers,  a  thing  to  be 
countenanced  with  amused  toleration  like 
performing  bears  and  the  animal  circus,  it  has 
been  at  length  boosted  and  foisted  upon  the 
public  attention  till,  like  a  veritable  cancer,  it 
has  eaten  almost  into  the  very  vitals  of  the 
Legitimate  Comedy  (using  the  word  in  its  tech- 
nical sense).  Continually  nowadays  one  may 


300      The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

see  a  "specialty" — generally  in  the  form  of  a 
dance — lugged  in  between  the  scenes  of  a 
perfectly  sober,  perfectly  sane  Comedy  of 
Manners.  The  moment  any  one  subordinate 
feature  of  a  dramatic  action  is  developed  at  the 
expense  of  vraisemblance  and  the  Probabilities, 
and  for  the  sake  of  amusing  the  galleries,  there  is 
the  first  bacillus  of  decay.  Vaudeville  is  all 
very  well  by  itself,  and  one  will  even  go  so  far 
as  to  admit  that  it  has  its  place  as  much  as 
an  Ibsen  problem-play.  But  it  should  keep  to 
that  place.  It  is  ludicrously  out  of  place  in  a 
comedy — quite  as  much  so  as  the  "  Bible 
Incident"  in  Ebsmith  would  be  in  a  Hoyt  farce. 
But  because  the  "specialty,"  because  Vaude- 
ville, will  "go"  with  the  "gallery"  at  any  time 
and  at  any  place,  the  manager  and — the  pity 
of  it !— the  author,  too,  will  introduce  it  when- 
ever the  remotest  possibility  occurs,  and  by 
just  so  much  the  tone  of  the  whole  drama  is 
lowered.  It  has  got  to  such  a  pass  by  now, 
however,  that  one  ought  to  be  thankful  if  this 
same  "  tone  "  is  not  keyed  down  to  the  specialty. 
But  the  exploiting  of  the  Star,  it  would  seem, 
is,  of  all  others,  the  great  cause  of  the  mediocrity 
of  present-day  dramatic  literature.  One  has 
but  to  glance  at  the  theatre  programmes  and 
bills  to  see  how  matters  stand.  The  name  of  the 
leading  lady  or  leading  man  is  "scare-headed" 


Salt  and  Sincerity 


so  that  the  swiftest  runner  cannot  fail  to  see. 
Even  the  manager  proclaims  his  patronymic 
in  enormous  "caps."  But  the  author! — as 
often  as  not  his  name  is  not  discoverable  at  all. 
The  play  is  nothing — thus  it  would  seem  the 
managers  would  have  us  believe — it  is  the 
actress,  her  speeches,  her  scenes,  her  gowns, 
her  personality,  that  are  the  all-important 
essentials.  It  is  notorious  how  plays  are  cut, 
and  readjusted,  and  dislocated  to  suit  the  Star. 
Never  mind  whether  or  not  the  scene  is  artistic, 
is  vivid,  is  dramatic.  Does  the  Star  get  the 
best  of  it?  If  not,  write  it  over.  The  Star 
must  have  all  the  good  lines.  If  they  cannot 
be  built  into  the  Star's  part,  cut  'em  out. 
The  Probabilities,  the  construction,  artistic 
effect,  climax,  even  good,  common,  forthright, 
horse  sense,  rot  'em  !  who  cares  for  'em  ?  Give 
the  Star  the  lime-light — that's  the  point. 

If  the  audience  is  willing  to  pay  its  money  to 
see  Miss  Marlowe,  Miss  Mannering  or  Mrs. 
Carter  put  through  her  paces,  that's  another 
thing;  but  let  us  not  expect  that  good  dramas 
will  issue  forth  from  this  state  of  affairs. 

Where  are  the  Books  for  Girls?  Adults' 
books  there  are  and  books  for  boys  by 
the  carload,  but  where  is  the  book  for  the 
young  girls?  Something  has  already  been 
said  about  literature  for  the  amiable  young 


302      The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

woman,  but  this,  now,  is  a  very  different 
person.  One  means  the  girl  of  fourteen  to 
eighteen.  The  boy  passing  through  this  most 
trying  formative  period  finds  his  literature 
ready  to  hand.  Boys'  books,  tales  of  hunting, 
adventure  and  sport  abound.  They  are  good 
books,  too,  sane,  "healthy,"  full  of  fine  spirit 
and  life.  But  the  girl,  where  does  she  read? 
Surely  the  years  between  fourteen  and  eighteen 
are  even  more  trying  to  a  young  girl  than  to  a 
boy.  She  is  not  an  active  animal.  When  the 
boy  is  out-of-doors,  pitching  curves  or  "  running 
the  ends, "  the  girl  (even  yet  in  the  day  and  age 
of  "athletics  for  women")  is  in  the  house,  and, 
as  like  as  not,  reading.  And  reading  what,  if 
you  please?  The  feeblest,  thinnest,  most 
colourless  lucubrations  that  it  is  given  to  the 
mind  of  misguided  man  to  conceive  or  to  per- 
petuate. It  must  be  this  or  else  the  literature 
of  the  adult;  and  surely  the  novels  written  for 
mature  minds,  for  men  and  women  who  have 
some  knowledge  of  the  world  and  powers  of 
discrimination,  are  not  good  reading,  in  any 
sense  of  the  word,  for  a  sixteen-year-old  girl  in 
the  formative  period  of  her  life. 

Besides  Alcott,  no  one  has  ever  written 
intelligently  for  girls.  Surely  there  is  a  field 
here.  Surely  a  Public,  untried  and  unex- 
plored, is  wailing  for  its  author;  nor  is  it  a 


Salt  and  Sincerity  303 

public    wanting    in    enthusiasm,    loyalty    or 
intelligence. 

But  for  all  this  great  parade  and  prating  of 
emancipated  women  it  nevertheless  remains 
a  fact  that  the  great  majority  of  twentieth- 
century  opinion  is  virtually  Oriental  in  its 
conception  of  the  young  girl.  The  world  to-day 
is  a  world  for  boys,  men  and  women.  Of  all 
humans,  the  young  girl,  the  sixteen-year-old,  is 
the  least  important — or,  at  least,  is  so  deemed. 
Wanted :  a  Champion.  Wanted :  the  Discoverer 
and  Poet  of  the  Very  Young  Girl.  Unimportant 
she  may  now  appear  to  you,  who  may  yet  call 
her  by  her  first  name  without  fear  and  without 
reproach.  But  remember  this,  you  who  believe 
only  in  a  world  of  men  and  boys  and  women; 
the  Very  Young  Girl  of  to-day  is  the  woman  of 
to-morrow,  the  wife  of  the  day  after,  and  the 
mother  of  next  week.  She  only  needs  to  put 
up  her  hair  and  let  down  her  frocks  to  become 
a  very  important  person  indeed.  Meanwhile, 
she  has  no  literature;  meanwhile,  faute  de 
mieux,  she  is  trying  to  read  Ouida  and  many 
other  books  intended  for  maturer  minds;  or, 
worse  than  all,  she  is  enfeebling  her  mind  by 
the  very  thin  gruel  purveyed  by  the  mild- 
mannered  gentlemen  and  ladies  who  write  for 
the  Sunday-school  libraries.  Here  is  a  bad 
business ;  here  is  a  field  that  needs  cultivation. 


304     The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

All  very  well  to  tend  and  train  the  saplings, 
the  oaks  and  the  vines.  The  flowers — they 
have  not  bloomed  vet — are  to  be  thought 
about,  too. 

All  the  more  so  that  the  young  girl  takes  a 
book  to  heart  infinitely  more  than  a  boy.  The 
boy — his  story  once  read — votes  it  "bully," 
takes  down  his  cap,  and  there's  an  end.  But 
the  average  Very  Young  Girl  does  not  read  her 
story:  she  lives  it,  lingers  over  it,  weeps  over 
it,  lies  awake  nights  over  it.  So  long  as  she 
lives  she  will  never  quite  forget  the  books  she 
read  when  she  was  sixteen.  It  is  not  too  much 
to  say  that  the  " favourite"  books  of  a  girl  at 
this  age  become  a  part  of  her  life.  They  influ- 
ence her  character  more  than  any  of  us,  I 
imagine,  would  suspect  or  admit.  All  the 
more  reason,  then,  that  there  should  not  only 
be  good  books  for  girls,  but  plenty  of  good 
books. 

THE   END. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY,  ESSAYS,   ARTI- 
CLES, LETTERS 

"Ancient  Armour"  (first  published  article),  San  Fran- 
cisco Chronicle,  March  31,  1889. 

Series  of  letters  from  South  Africa  concerning  Uitlander 
Insurrection,  published  in  the  San  Francisco  Chronicle: 
"A  Californian  in  City  of  Cape  Town,"  January  19,  1896; 
"  In  the  Compound  of  a  Diamond  Mine,"  February  2,  1896 ; 
"  From  Cape  Town  to  Kimberley  Mine,"  January 
"In  the  Veldt  of  the  Transvaal,"  February  9,  1896;  "A 
Zulu  War  Dance,"  March  15,  1896. 

"Types  of  Western  Men,"  published  in  San  Francisco 
Wave,  May  2,  1896. 

"Western    City    Types,"    published   in    San    Francisco 
Wave,  May  9,  1896. 

"The  Bivalve  at  Home,"  published  in  San  Francisco 
Wave,  July  16,  1896. 

"Italy    in    California,"    published    in    San    Francisco 
Wave,  October  24,  1896. 

"A  Question  of  Ideals,"   published  in  San  Francisco 
Wave,  December  26,  1897. 

"  New  Year's  at  San  Quentin,"  published  in  San  Fran- 
cisco Wave,  January  9,  1897. 

"Hunting  Human  Game,"  published  in  San  Francisco 
Wave,  January  23,  1897. 

"Passing  of  Little  Pete,"  published  in  San  Francisco 
Wave,  January  30,  1897. 

"A    California    Artist,"    published    in    San    Francisco 
Wave,  February  6,  1897. 

"A  Lag's  Release,"  published  in  San  Francisco  Wave, 
March  12,  1897. 

305 


306     The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

"Among  the  Cliff- Dwellers,"  published  in  San  Fran- 
cisco Wave,  May  15,  1897. 

"The  Sailing  of  the  '  Excelsior,' "  published  in  San 
Francisco  Wave,  July  31,  1897. 

"The  Tale  and  the  Truth,"  published  in  San  Francisco 
Wave,  September  25,  1897. 

"Art  Education  in  San  Francisco,"  published  in  San 
Francisco  Wave,  September  25,  1897. 

"The  End  of  the  Act,"  published  in  San  Francisco 
Wave,  November  27,  1897. 

"Comida,"  published  in  Atlantic  Monthly,  March,  1899. 

"With  Lawton  to  Caney,"  published  in  Century 
Magazine,  June,  1899. 

"Student  Life  in  Paris,"  published  in  Collier's  Weekly, 
May  12,  1900. 

Series  of  New  York  letters  to  Chicago  American,  com- 
mencing May,  1901 — September,  1901. 

Series  of  Articles  to  Boston  Transcript,  commencing 
November  15 — February  5  (weekly  articles). 

"The  Unknown  Author  and  the  Publisher,"  published 
in  World's  Work,  April,  1901. 

"True  Reward  of  the  Novelist,"  published  in  World's 
Work,  September,  1901. 

"Mr.  Kipling's  'Kim,'"  published  in  World's  Work, 
September,  1901. 

"Story-Teller  vs.  Novelist,"  published  in  World's  Work, 
March,  1902. 

"The  Frontier  Gone  at  Last,"  published  in  World's 
Work,  February,  1902. 

"The  Need  of  a  Literary  Conscience,"  published  in 
World's  Work,  May,  1902. 

"The  Novel  with  a  Purpose,"  published  in  World's 
Work,  May,  1902. 

Series  of  articles  to  The  Critic,  entitled  "Salt  and 
Sincerity,"  published  monthly  from  May  to  October,  1902. 

"Life  in  the  Mining  Region,"  published  in  Everybody's 
Magazine,  September,  1902. 

"In  Defense  of  Doctor  W.  Lawlor,"  published  in  San 
Francisco  Argonaut,  August  n,  1902. 


Bibliography  307 

"The  Responsibilities  of  a  Novelist,"  published  in 
The  Critic,  December,  1902. 

"The  Neglected  Epic,"  published  in  World's  Work, 
December,  1902. 

The  "Great  American  Novelist,"  syndicated,  January 
19,  1903. 

"The  American  Public  and  Popular  Fiction,"  syndi- 
cated, February  2,  1903. 

"Child  Stories  for  Adults,"  syndicated,  February  9, 
1903. 

"The  Nature  Revival  in  Literature,"  syndicated, 
February  16,  1903. 

"Novelists  to  Order — While  You  Wait,"  syndicated, 
February  23,  1903. 

"Newspaper  Criticism  and  American  Fiction,"  syndi- 
cated, March  9,  1903. 

"Richard  Harding  Davis,"  syndicated,  January  26, 
1903. 

"Chances  of  Unknown  Writers,"  syndicated,  March  2, 
1903. 

SHORT  STORIES 

"Babazzouin,"  published  in  San  Francisco  Argonaut, 
May,  1891. 

"Son  of  a  Sheik,"  published  in  San  Francisco  Argonaut, 
June,  1891.  .  f 

"Le  Gongleur  de  Taillebois,"  published  in  San  Fran- 
cisco Wave,  December  25,  1891. 

"Arachne,"  published  in  San  Francisco  Wave,  1892. 

"Lauth,"  published  in  Overland  Monthly,  March,  1893. 

"Travis  Hallets,  Half-Back,"  published  in  Overland 
Monthly,  January,  1894. 

"Outward  and  Visible  Signs  Series"  of  short  stories, 
published  in  the  Overland  Monthly,  commencing  February, 
1894— titles  as  follows:  "Thoroughbred,"  February,  1894; 
"She  and  the  Other  Fellow,"  March,  1894;  "The  Most 
Noble  Conquest  of  Man,"  May,  1894;  "Outside  the 
Zewana,"  July,  1894;  "After  Strange  Gods,  "October,  1894. 


308     The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

"The  Caged  Lion,"  published  in  San  Francisco  Argo- 
naut, August,  1894. 

"A  Defense  of  the  Flag,"  published  in  San  Francisco 
Argonaut,  October,  1895. 

"A  Salvation  Boom  in  Matabeleland,"  published  in 
San  Francisco  Wave,  April  25,  1896. 

"The  Heroism  of  Jonesie,"  published  in  San  Francisco 
Wave,  May  16,  1896. 

Series  of  Sketches  entitled  ' '  Man  Proposes,"  published  in 
San  Francisco  Wave,  May  23,  1896;  May  30,  1896;  June  13, 
1896;  June  27,  1896;  July  4,  1896. 

"In  the  Heat  of  Battle,"  published  in  San  Francisco 
Wave,  December  19,  1896. 

"His  Sister,"  published  in  San  Francisco  Wave,  Decem- 
ber 28,  1896. 

"The  Puppets  and  the  Puppy,"  San  Francisco  Wave, 
May  22,  1897. 

"Beer  and  Skittles,"  published  in  San  Francisco  Wave, 
May  29,  1897. 

"Through  a  Glass  Darkly,"  published  in  San  Francisco 
Wave,  June  12,  1897. 

"Little  Dramas  of  the  Curbstone,"  published  in  San 
Francisco  Wave,  June  26,  1897. 

"The  Strangest  Thing,"  published  in  San  Francisco 
Wave,  July  3,  1897. 

"This  Animal  of  a  Buldy  Jones,"  published  in  San 
Francisco  Wave,  July  17,  1897. 

"Boom,"  published  in  San  Francisco  Wave,  August  7, 
1897. 

"  Reversion  to  Type,"  published  in  San  Francisco  Wave, 
August  14,  1897. 

"House  with  the  Blinds,"  published  in  San  Francisco 
Wave,  August  21,  1897. 

"The  Third  Circle,"  published  in  San  Francisco  Wave, 
August  28,  1897. 

"The  End  of  the  Beginning,"  published  in  San  Fran- 
cisco Wave,  September  4,  1897. 

"A  Case  for  Lombroso,"  published  in  San  Francisco 
Wave,  September  n,  1897. 


Bibliography  309 

"His  Single  Blessedness,"  published  in  San  Francisco 
Wave,  September  18,  1897. 

"Execution  without  Judgment,"  published  in  San 
Francisco  Wave,  October  2,  1897. 

"Miracle  Joyeux,"  published  in  San  Francisco  Wave, 
October  9,  1897. 

"Judy's  Service  of  Gold  Plate,"  published  in  San 
Francisco  Wave,  October  16,  1897. 

"The  Associated  Un- Charities,"  published  in  San 
Francisco  Wave,  October  30,  1897. 

"Fantasie  Printaniere,"  published  in  San  Francisco 
Wave,  November  6,  1897. 

"His  Dead  Mother's  Portrait,"  published  in  San 
Francisco  Wave,  November  13,  1897. 

"Shorty  Stack,  Pugilist,"  published  in  San  Francisco 
Wave,  November  20,  1897. 

"Isabella  Regina,"  published  in  San  Francisco  Wave, 
November  27,  1897. 

"Perverted  Tales"  (Parodies  on  several  well-known 
authors),  published  in  San  Francisco  Wave,  December 
25,  1897:  "The  Rickshaw  that  Happened,"  by  R — d 
K— g;  "The Green  Stone  of  Unrest,"  by  S— n  Cr— e;  "Van 
Bubble's  Story,"  by  R — d  H — g  D — s;  "Ambrosia  Beer," 
by  A — e  B — e;  "I  Call  on  Lady  Dotty,"  by  A — y  H — e; 
"The  Hero  of  Tomato  Can,"  by  B — t  H — e. 

"The  Drowned  Who  Do  Not  Die,"  published  in  San 
Francisco  Wave,  September  24,  1898. 

"  Miracle  Joyeux,"  republished  McClure's  Magazine, 
December,  1898. 

"This  Animal  of  a  Buldy  Jones,"  republished  in 
McClure's  Magazine,  March,  1899. 

"The  Riding  of  Felipe,"  published  in  Everybody's 
Magazine,  March,  1901. 

"  Buldy  Jones,  Chef  du  Claque,"  published  in  Everybody's 
Magazine,  May,  1901. 

"Kirkland  at  Quarter,"  published  in  Saturday  Evening 
Post,  December  12,  1901. 

"A  Memorandum  of  Sudden  Death,"  published  in 
Collier's  Weekly,  January,  1902. 


310     The  Responsibilities  of  the  Novelist 

"A  Bargain  with  Peg-leg,"  published  in  Collier's 
Weekly,  March  i,  1902. 

"  Grettir  at  Drangey,"  published  in  Everybody's  Magazine 
March,  1902. 

"A  Statue  in  an  Old  Garden,"  published  by  Ladies' 
Home  Journal  about  April,  1902. 

"Dying  Fires,"  published  in  Smart  Set  about  April, 
1902. 

"The  Passing  of  Cock-Eye  Blacklock,"  published  in 
Century  Magazine,  July,  1902. 

"The  Guest  of  Honour,"  published  in  the  Pilgrim 
Magazine,  July  and  August,  1902. 

"  A  Deal  in  Wheat,"  published  in  Everybody's  Magazine, 
August,  1902. 

"Two  Hearts  That  Beat  as  One,"  published  in  Brander 
Magazine  (unable  to  ascertain  date). 

"The  Dual  Personality  of  Slick  Dick  Nickerson,"  pub- 
lished in  Collier's  Weekly,  November,  1902. 

"The  Ship  That  Saw  a  Ghost,"  published  in  Overland 
Monthly,  December,  1902. 

"The  Wife  of  Chino,"  published  in  Century  Magazine, 
January,  1903. 

"The  Ghost  in  the  Cross-Trees,"  published  in  New  York 
Herald,  March,  1903. 

POEMS  PUBLISHED 

"Poitier,"  medieval  ballad,  published  in  Berklyian 
Magazine,  1891. 

"  Brunhilda,"  poem,  illustrated  by  author,  published 
in  California  Illustrated  Magazine  (discontinued),  1891. 

"  Crepusculum,"  sonnet,  published  by  Overland  Monthly, 
April,  1892. 

BOOKS  PUBLISHED 

"Yvernelle,"  long  poem,  published  by  Lippincott  & 
Company,  1892. 

"  Moran  of  the  Lady  Letty,"  serialized  in  San  Francisco 


Bibliography  311 

Wave  about  January,  1898.  Published  by  Doubleday  & 
McClure,  September,  1898. 

"McTeague,"  published  by  Doubleday  &  McClure, 
February,  1899. 

"Blix,"  serialized  in  The  Puritan  about  April,  1899. 
Published  by  Doubleday  &  McClure,  September,  1899. 

"A  Man's  Woman,"  serialized  in  New  York  Evening 
Sun  about  July — October,  1899;  in  San  Francisco 
Chronicle,  July  23,  1899 — October  8,  1899.  Published  by 
Doubleday  &  McClure,  February,  1900. 

"Octopus,"  published  by  Doubleday,  Page  &  Company, 
April,  1901. 

"The  Pit,"  serialized  in  Saturday  Evening  Post,  Septem- 
ber 27, 1902 — January  31,  1903.  Published  by  Doubleday. 
Page  &  Company,  January,  1903. 


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