It is the first step that costs, say the French, and Millard made those
false starts that are inevitable at the outset of every career. A
beginner has to trust somebody, and in looking around for a mentor he
fell into the hands of a fellow-boarder, one Sampson, who was a quiet
man with the air of one who knows it all and is rather sorry that he
does. Sampson fondly believed himself a man of the world, and he had the
pleasure of passing for one among those who knew nothing at all about
the world. He was a reflective man, who had given much thought to that
gravest problem of a young man's life--how to keep trousers from bagging
at the knees, the failure to solve which is one of the most pathetic
facts of human history. After he had made one or two mistakes in
following the dicta that Sampson uttered with all the diffidence of a
papal encyclical, Millard became aware that in social matters pretension
is often in inverse ratio to accomplishment. About the time that he gave
up Sampson he renounced the cheap tailor into whose hands he had
unwarily fallen, and consigned to oblivion a rather new thirty-dollar
dress-suit in favor of one that cost half a hundred dollars more. He had
by this time found out that the society which he had a chance to meet
moved only in a borderland, and, like the ambitious man he was, he began
already to lay his plans broad and deep, and to fit himself, by every
means within his reach, for success in the greater world beyond.
Having looked about the circle of his small acquaintance in vain for a
guide, he bethought him that there were probably books on etiquette. He
entered a bookstore one day with the intention of asking for some work
of the sort, but finding in the proprietor a well-known depositor of the
bank, Charley bought a novel instead. Behold already the instinct of a
man of the world, whose role it is to know without ever seeming to
learn!
When at length Millard had secured a book with the title, "Guide to Good
Manners as Recognized in the Very Best Society. By One of the Four
Hundred," he felt that he had got his feet on firm ground.
It chanced about this time that Sampson brought an old college chum of
his to eat a Sunday dinner at the boarding-house in Eighteenth street.
He introduced this friend to Millard with that impressiveness which
belonged to all that the melancholy Sampson did, as "Mr. Bradley, Mr.
Harrison Holmes Bradley, the author; you know his writings."
Millard was covered with concealed shame to think that he did not happen
to know the books of an author with a name so resonant, but he did not
confess his ignorance. This was his first acquaintance with a real
literary man--for the high-school teacher in Cappadocia who wrote
poetry for the country papers would hardly count. The aspiring Millard
thought himself in luck in thus early making the acquaintance of a man
of letters, for to the half-sophisticated an author seems a person who
reflects a mild and moonshiny luster on even a casual acquaintance. To
know Mr. Bradley might be a first step toward gaining access to the more
distinguished society of the metropolis.
Harrison Holmes Bradley proved to be on examination a New-Englander of
the gaunt variety, an acute man of thirty, who ate his roast turkey and
mashed potatoes with that avidity he was wont to manifest when running
down an elusive fact in an encyclopaedia. At the table Millard, for want
of other conversation, plucked up courage to ask him whether he was
connected with a newspaper.
"No; I am engaged in general literary work," said Bradley.
Neither Millard nor any one else at the table had the faintest notion of
the nature of "general literary work." It sounded large, and Bradley was
a clever talker on many themes fresh to Millard, and when he went away
the author exacted a promise from Charley to call on him soon in his
"den," and he gave him a visiting card which bore a street number in
Harlem.
Two weeks later Millard, who was quite unwilling to miss a chance of
making the acquaintance of a distinguished man through whom he might
make other eligible friends, called on Bradley. He found him at work in
his shirt-sleeves, in a hall bedroom of a boarding-house, smoking and
writing as he sat with a gas-stove for near neighbor on the left hand,
and a table, which was originally intended to serve as a wash-stand, on
the other side of him. The author welcomed his guest with unaffected
condescension and borrowed a chair from the next room for him to sit on.
Finding Millard curious about the ways of authors, he entertained his
guest with various anecdotes going to show how books are made and
tending to throw light on the relation of authors to publishers. Millard
noted what seemed to him a bias against publishers, of whom as a human
species Bradley evidently entertained no great opinion. Millard's love
for particulars was piqued by Bradley's statement at their first meeting
that he was engaged in general literary work. He contrived to bring the
author to talk of what he was doing and how it was done.
"You see," said Bradley, pleased to impart information on a theme in
which he was much interested himself, "a literary life isn't what people
generally take it to be. Most men in general literary work fail because
they can do only one thing or, at most, two. To make a living one must
be able to do everything."
"I suppose that is so," said Millard, still unable to form any notion of
what was implied in Bradley's everything. To him all literature was
divided into prose and poetry. General literature seemed to include both
of these and something more.
"Last week," Bradley continued, illustratively, "I finished an index,
wrote some verses for a pictorial advertisement of Appleblossom's Toilet
Soap, and ground out an encyclopaedia article on Christian Missions, and
a magazine paper on the history of the game of bumblepuppy. I am now
just beginning a novel of society life. Versatility is the very
foundation of success. If it hadn't been for my knack of doing all sorts
of things I never should have succeeded as I have."
Judging by Bradley's surroundings and his own account of the sordid
drudgery of a worker in general literature, his success did not seem to
Millard a very stunning one. But Bradley was evidently content with it,
and what more can one ask of fortune?
"There is another element that goes a long way toward success in
literature," proceeded the author, "and that is ability to work rapidly.
When Garfield was shot I was out of work and two weeks behind with my
board. I went straight to the Astor Library and worked till the library
closed, gathering material. When I went to bed that night, or rather the
next morning, I had a paper on 'Famous Assassinations of History' ready
for the best market. But what I hate the most about our business is the
having to write, now and then, a thunder and lightning story for the
weekly blood-curdlers. Now there is Milwain, the poet, a man of genius,
but by shop girls and boys reading the Saturday-night papers he is
adored as Guy St. Cyr, the author of a long list of ghastly horribles
thrown off to get money."
"This sort of work of all kinds is what you call general literary work?"
queried Millard.
"General literary work is the evening dress we put on it when it has to
pass muster before strangers," said Bradley, laughing.
What Millard noted with a sort of admiration was Bradley's perfect
complacency, his contentment in grinding Philistine grists, the zest
even that he evinced for literary pot-hunting, the continual
exhilaration that he got out of this hazardous gamble for a living, and
the rank frankness with which he made his own affairs tributary to the
interest of his conversation.
At length Bradley emptied his pipe and laid it across his manuscript, at
the same time rising nervously from his chair and sitting down on the
bed for a change.
"Millard," he said, with a Bohemian freedom of address, "you must know
more about society than I do. Give me advice on a point of etiquette."
Charley Millard was flattered as he never had been flattered before. He
had not hoped to be considered an oracle so soon.
"You see," Bradley went on, "the publisher of a new magazine called the
'United States Monthly' has asked me to dinner. It is away over in
Brooklyn, and, besides, the real reason I can't go is that I haven't got
a dress-coat. Now what is the thing to do about regrets, cards, and so
on?"
Fresh from reading his new "Guide to Good Manners," Millard felt
competent to decide any question of Bristol-board, however weighty or
complicated. He delivered his opinion with great assurance in the very
words of the book.
"I believe in my soul," said Bradley, laughing, "that you prigged that
from the 'Guide to Good Manners as Recognized in the Very Best
Society.'"
Millard looked foolish, but answered good-naturedly, "Well, what if I
did? Have you read the book?"
Bradley rocked his long slender body backward and forward as though
about to fall into a spasm with suppressed merriment.
"There is only one good thing I can say for that book," he said,
recovering himself.
"What's that?" asked Millard, a little vexed with the unaccountable
mirth of his host.
"Why, that I got two hundred dollars for writing it."
"You wrote it?" exclaimed Millard, not concealing his opinion that
Bradley was not a suitable person to give lessons in politeness.
"You see I was offered two hundred for a book on manners. I needed the
money most consumedly. There was Sampson, who knew, or thought he knew,
all about the ways of the world, though, between you and me, Sampson
always did do a large business on a plaguy small capital. So I put
Sampson to press and got out of him whatever I could, and then I
rehashed a good deal in a disguised way from the old 'Bazar Book of
Decorum' and the still older Count D'Orsay, and some others. You have to
know how to do such things if you're going to make a living as a
literary man. The title is a sixpenny publisher's lie. In the day of
judgment, authors, or at least those of us doing general literary work,
will get off easy on the ground that poor devils scratching for their
dinners can not afford to be too high-toned, but publishers won't have
that excuse."
Millard made his way home that night with some sense of disappointment.
Being a fine gentleman was not so easy as it had seemed. The heights
grew more and more frosty and inaccessible as he approached them. Yet he
had really made a great advance by his talk with Bradley. He had cleared
the ground of rubbish. And though during the next week he bought two or
three of the books of decorum then in vogue, he had learned to depend
mainly on his own observations and good sense. He had also acquired a
beginning of that large stock of personal information which made him in
after years so remarkable. Natural bent is shown in what a man
assimilates. Not an item of all the personal traits and anecdotes of
writers and publishers brought out in Bradley's unreserved talk had
escaped him, and years afterward he could use Bradley's funny stories to
give piquancy to conversation.
It was this memory of individual traits and his tactful use of it that
helped to launch him on the sea of social success. The gentleman who sat
next to him at dinner, the lady who chatted with him at a tea or a
reception, felt certain that a man who knew all about every person in
any way distinguished in society could not be quite without
conspicuousness of some sort himself. This belief served to open doors
to him. Moreover, his fund of personal gossip, judiciously and
good-naturedly used, made him a valuable element in a small company; the
interest never flagged when he talked. Then, too, Millard had a knack
of repeating in a way that seemed almost accidental, or at least purely
incidental, what this or that noted person had said to him. It was in
appearance only an embellishment of his talk, but it served to keep up a
belief in the breadth, and especially the height, of his acquaintance.
If he had only been presented to Mrs. Manorhouse, and she had repeated
her stock witticism in his presence, Millard knew how to quote it as a
remark of Mrs. Manorhouse, but the repose of his manner left the
impression that he set no particular store by the Manorhouses. He early
learned the inestimable value of a chastened impudence to a man with
social ambitions.
Some sacrifice of self-respect? Doubtless. But what getter-on in the
world is there that does not have to pay down a little self-respect now
and then? Your millionaire usually settles at a dear rate, and to be a
great statesman implies that one has paid a war tariff in this specie.
One of the talents that contributed to Millard's success was a knack of
taking accomplishments quickly. Whether it was fencing, or boxing, or
polo that was the temporary vogue; whether it was dancing, or speaking
society French, he held his own with the best. In riding he was easily
superior to the riding-school cavaliers, having the advantage of
familiarity with a horse's back from the time he had bestrode the
plow-horses on their way to water. Though he found time in his first
years in New York for only one little run in Europe, he always had the
air of a traveled man, so quickly did he absorb information, imitate
fashions, and get rid of provincial manners and prejudices. His friends
never knew where he learned anything. When a Frenchman of title was
basking in New York drawing-rooms it was found that Millard was equal to
a tete-a-tete with the monolingual foreigner, though his accent was
better than his vocabulary was copious. His various accomplishments of
course represented many hours of toil, but it was toil of which his
associates never heard. He treated himself as a work of art, of which
the beholder must judge only by the charming result, with no knowledge
of the foregoing effort, no thought of the periods of ugly
incompleteness that have been passed on the way to perfection.