Long ago, Leigh Hunt wrote that the time would arrive when the question must be entertained whether a little more candor, or less, will be the better for the interests of the community; whether the system producing nine-tenths of the tragedies in books and real life will be the better for retaining within itself the same mixture of inclination for truth, and practice of duplicity, or for begging the whole world, with its sorrows, concealments, and contradictions, to speak aloud, and consider, not what it is best to pretend, but what to do.
This time has not arrived. We are so little superstitious now that halcyon days no longer have a place in our calendar, though the kingfisher still holds his own in natural history. I do not hope to forward the time, but at least I can utter my “piep” with mice and such “small deer” who are privileged to come in conclave before the kings of opinion, and give receipts for “soup on a sausage-peg.” I propose a paper on a subject which I have not only thought out, but have experienced out — viz.: In regard to a certain fashion among authors who — continually offering their intellectual wares to the public to gain its approbation and its money — fall into convulsions of anger and disgust if somebody betrays to the same public innocent items which pertain to them as human beings — husbands, fathers, and the inhabitants of houses where the universal drama goes on as it does with the commonplace and the brainless world.
I begin by saying that I believe this fashion to be more or less a sham, and a duster for the eyes of said public. Literary history proves this habit of concealment a humbug. The very authors who at present bar their doors and windows against the vulgar multitude, are, by the light of the midnight lamp, preparing memoirs for the sons and daughters of the fathers and mothers whose curiosity and interest must be baffled and denied. The books most popular among authors are literary memorials of their peers or ancestors. From many published papers this truth may be gathered. Hunt, for instance, dwells upon this. “Nay,” he says of great men, “we wish to learn even in what postures they delighted to sit, and whether they indulged in the same tricks and comforts we do!” And Crabb Robinson, early learning that he did not possess the creative power, wisely concluded to keep a diary which related to those with that power. What author is offended with Crabb Robinson?
Does any writer not consider Boswell’s book on Johnson an invaluable one? Macaulay says that the reputation of those writings which Johnson probably expected to be immortal is every day fading, while those peculiarities of manner, and that careless table-talk recorded by Boswell, are likely to be remembered as long as the English language is spoken. The interest of such books as “Horace Walpole’s Letters,” “Lady Wortley Montagu’s Letters,” “Pepys’s Diary,” still continues fresh; new editions are published from time to time, and will be. Neither will Goethe’s “Autobiography,” Bettini’s “Correspondence,” Schiller and Goethe’s “Correspondence,” Eckermann’s “Conversations,” cease to be circulated and translated, as well as that mine of French personal literature between Sully’s famous “Memoirs” and Las Casas’s “Napoleon at St. Helena.”
Of biography, Carlyle says: “It is the most universally pleasant, universally profitable, of all reading.” When a life like Savage Landor’s is published, or a book like Miss Mitford’s ‘Letters,’ what use is made of them by the reviewers! Whole columns of newspapers, and pages of magazines, contain their synopses and ample criticisms. At once these volumes become popular, unsatisfying as they may be. Mr. Foster’s work, from his fear and prudishness, lacks truth and reality; and the editor of Miss Mitford has omitted the part of Miss Mitford.
In justification of this scribble, perhaps I should at once have declared that I, too, am an Arcadian. That is, I am a member of the literary race. Literary human beings bear a strong resemblance to each other, for they are the strongest and the weakest of all discovered races. There are circumstances under which all humanity are astonishingly alike. For instance, at the moment of birth, through the period of love, in the hour of death. Some of us have an aversion for the harmless, necessary cat; some of us consider puss an agreeable appendage to the fireside; but we all hate the tiger, which is but a colossal cat. As Selden says, “One man wears his doublet slashed, another laced, another plain; but every man has his doublet!”
Being literary, I have written books; but, as they have not extended my reputation to an incalculable distance, my vanity is bounded. I cannot practise the various tricks of my trade. It would not comfort me to follow the wondrous examples given us by the press — that engine which ministers to diurnal egotism — which expresses itself in this wise: A mere handful of women (meaning about a hundred females who extensively advertised their plan of a club, by sending circulars to every person of note, and paragraphing their lunch, and their feminine lingo in every newspaper) have created an unprecedented interest from one end of the country to the other. (That is, from one reporting column of a daily to another.) This handful of women suddenly found themselves the object of wit and sneers on the part of men (i. e., reporters) and of eager hope and expectation on the part of women (immense fib!); but, though constantly under the fire of criticism, they live! They have demonstrated that men and women can dine together, and have revealed the possibilities of womanhood! The beauty and bareness of egotism could not be better expressed. Or, to take another form of intellectual vanity, that of writing letters to editors, begging them to disabuse the popular mind of errors, implicating the writers thereof. One supposes it is too late for the world to believe him to be a native of the Empire State, since the Iowa Tree-Toad asserts that he was born in Rhode Island. Another demands that the intelligent should not be so misled in regard to the author of that popular poem, “Beautiful Indian-Rubber,” as to believe that he has from boyhood spelled caoutchouc with a c instead of a k, as a correspondent affirms in the Prairie-Dog Sentinel.
If I cannot enjoy these little hoodwinking delusions, I may at least make the most of the tiny sprays and wavelets of reputation given me for twelve years of mental industry and servile behavior to editors and publishers. My footing may be somewhat like that of the “Learned Pig,” or the “Trained Dog,” still these animals are cynosures to somebody, and so am I. I am often aware of a judgment which decides me to be abnormal. The opposite sex compliment me in this fashion, and my own say —
“How does she do it?”
“She does not look as if she could write.”
“What a pity!”
“Where does she get the ideas she has put into ‘St. Jugglesville?’ Suppose it is real?”
And so on.
Shylock says the Jew laughs if he is tickled, and dies if he is poisoned. So do I when I am stared at and questioned by my sisters. Moreover, I have the testimony of curious and affecting letters from said sisters, who venture to ask questions which they have never asked anybody besides. I also receive advice and reproof from per¬sons who, as they term it, accidentally come across something I have written, and feel compelled to address me at once, and wind up with requesting the rest of my performances. Poor as this fame may be, it gratifies me. With “Oliver Twist” I could ask for “more” stirabout, provided nothing else will rain into my porridge-pot. Recognition is the thing; for praise I labor as well as money. The crumbs which fall from my pampered critic’s table I swallow thankfully, even though I gain but a dreadful indigestion thereby. It inflates my pride when I meet the distinguished of my class, and hear them say I am not unknown to them, even if I perceive they make no mention of a line of mine. It is not disagreeable to read lies about myself in the newspapers:
“We understand that Mrs. Whang is immured in her country-house, engaged in writing a poem in German hexameters.” Or “There is a rumor that the wife of the poet Bang Whang is about to publish an epic, the subject of which is ‘Mittens for Both Sexes.’”
And, in the offence the “old Adam” naturally feels at personalities not flatteringly applied, a streak of elation and defiance runs. My dress, my manners, my mental calibre, which society rudely jostles, must contain something noteworthy and influential.
With thorough sincerity do I return to all celebrities the faintest of my reflections which put me in the light of a genius. If I could be hail-fellow-well-met with the authors I admire, no pilgrimage to reach them would be too painful or self-denying. To meet them on show, or simply to bear frankincense, and hide my face in the ground while presenting it, would be small satisfaction. Still I would take great pains to look upon them silently and afar off. The obtuse and the ignorant even are impressed and moved by that which is established as original authority; how much more than those who have the innate artistic sympathy! The first time I saw Ristori, I felt a sudden chill; then painful tears clung to my eyelids; and then I fell into a melancholy sadness because I knew that I could never behold in her any thing except her artistic appearance. Genius “cometh from afar,” and its “trailing clouds of glory” are not for us to grasp while we are in the prison-house of the commonplace. One more excuse for this paper is, that for fifteen years I have lived among authors and artists. In short, fifteen years ago I joined my hapless fortune to that of a poet, one who lives, and moves, and has his being, through the multitudinous forms of literature. By our lives, I assume the right of speaking frankly; if too modest regarding my own merits, I certainly have the right to reveal those of my better half, and one of them is an aptitude for getting into difficulties with his literary brethren. He has not only made jokes against them at so many shillings per dozen, but he has compiled biographies and betrayed the subjects thereof. He has committed the grave error by exposing the fact that one author lived near Philadelphia, and that, as he was a small man, his wife smaller, his children petite, their housekeeping appeared like doll-housekeeping! “Honor among thieves” is a proverb which does not hold entirely with said better half. Considering the individuality of genius an interesting topic, and living among his books, breathing the atmosphere of their truth, is it any wonder that he should continue his reading in living books, and so make a conventional mistake? It may be hard to draw the proper lines. Perhaps an author can be called tall, but not short! At any rate, we — of our set — talk about all our celebrated contemporaries, and are eager to collect any details concerning them, or to see any relics.
Launt Thompson, the sculptor, has a plaster cast of an English poet’s hand, and a big, ugly hand it is. No doubt but that he permitted a cast of his “bunch of fives” to be taken. Why, then, should he make the outcry he has lately made about the invasion of his private life? Particularly in one case. Through some carelessness, the letter of an American traveller, which described his visit to said distinguished poet, crept into the newspapers, and to his ears; whereat he grew violent, and wrote letters about the person who had sought him in the guise of a gentleman. The items of the letter could only have an innocent effect upon the reader, for they were about trifling domestic matters. There has been uproar enough upon the kind of separation which the author insists shall be continued between what he gives to the world, and what the public chooses to discover. The structure of his brain, and its operations, are at the mercy of every penny-a-liner; but no luckless individual may reveal the fact that he has dyspepsia, or mention the weight of his children.
At the best, we only see men as trees walking, and we all play the Grand Lama to each other. The epitaph of all life is a lie, as society puts it, and that of genius is especially mendacious. Who, of all the great men buried in Westminster Abbey, is known to posterity? The grave hides him no more than his inner life was hid to his peers. What memoir, anecdote, letter, gossip, reveals more than some of a man’s many-sided existence? For my part, I believe I shall die an impenetrable secret, even if I should be subjected to the visits of newspaper reporters, desiring to describe my warts and my wens, and to take down my table and my literary talk.