MENDACITY DURING THE HOLLAND PERIOD OF LETTERS.
The Holland age of letters may be said to have extended over the eighth
decade of this century, and that it was an era of change and progress
can be readily seen by a glance at the periodical literature of the
seventies.
It is during this era, however, that we find indications of a
deplorable tendency on the part of the good doctor to pander to the
prejudices of the gas-fitter and the paper-hanger element, by the
publication of stories and articles which were either spurious as
literature or else absolutely mendacious as to the facts which they
recorded and the scenes which they described.
Of course I do not pretend that literary mendacity began under Dr.
Holland, for the _Ledger_ school was a highly imaginative one, at best;
but the vein of untruth which is found cropping out from time to time
during the eighth decade has proved infinitely more harmful to modern
literature than were the lurid and confessedly improbable tales of
bandits and haunted castles and splendid foreign noblemen which found
so many eager readers a score of years ago. The aristocratic circles
of English society which were enlivened by the nebulous presence of
Lady Chetwynde’s spectre were so far removed from those in which the
spellbound hay-maker, who read about them, had his being that it made
very little difference to him--or to literary art either--whether they
were truthfully portrayed or not; but the mendacious and meretricious
literature which we find in the Holland period is more pretentious in
its imitation of truth, and therefore all the more dangerous.
It was within a year after the first number of _Scribner’s_ had been
issued that Dr. Holland began the publication of a series of papers,
afterward printed in book form, which deserve special mention here
because they are so thoroughly characteristic of the period in which
they saw the light. They are known to the world as _Back-log Studies_,
and the average reader of ordinary intelligence will tell you that Mr.
Warner’s book is “delightful reading,” that he possesses a “dainty
style,” and that his studies of the open fireplace are “fresh,
original, and altogether charming.”
Now did you ever happen to read _The Reveries of a Bachelor_? If you
did you will admit that there was very little left in an open fire when
Ik Marvel got through with it; and if you have also read _Back-log
Studies_ in the conscientious, critical way in which all books should
be read, then you will agree with me in my opinion that Mr. Warner
found very little to say about it that had not already been much better
said by Marvel.
The book is neither fresh nor original nor charming, but it imitates
those qualities so artistically and successfully that it has won
for itself a unique place in the literature of a period in which
the _Ledger_ and the Holland schools of fiction may be said to have
struggled for the supremacy.
I do not call _Back-log Studies_ mendacious. They are merely imitative,
and deserve mention here only because they were put together with so
much cleverness that nearly the whole of the reading public has been
deluded into believing them wholly original and of a high order of
merit.
In a previous chapter I have cited certain glaring examples of
mendacity that occurred during the Holland period; but none of them
deserves to rank, in point of barefaced and unscrupulous perversion
of facts, with Abbott’s _Life of Napoleon Bonaparte_, published in
_Harper’s Magazine_ years before Dr. Holland became the leading figure
in American letters, which he was during the seventies. Nor should we
lose sight of the fact that the present literary age has given birth
to no end of stories and novels and descriptive articles which are
disgracefully mendacious in color, fact, and sentiment.
But if you, my dear reader, would like to see a descriptive article
which is absolutely matchless in point of mendacity and asinine
incompetency, turn to the June _Scribner’s_ of 1875--the very middle
of the Holland age--and read what a certain Mr. Rhodes has to say
about the Latin Quarter of Paris. I suppose the whole world does not
contain a corner that offers so much that is picturesque, fascinating,
interesting--in short, so well worth writing about--as the Quartier
Latin in the French capital.
At the time this article was printed there were dozens of clever young
men--Bohemians, poets, and humorists of the class that used to gather
in Pfaff’s of a Saturday night to make merry with the “tenner” received
the day before for a _Ledger_ poem entitled “Going Home to Mother” or
“Be Prepared; Bow to the Will Divine.” I doubt if we have to-day young
men better equipped for the task of describing the student life of
Paris than were those who dwelt in our own Bohemia in 1875. But the
conductors of _Scribner’s Monthly_ passed them by and intrusted the
work to this Albert Rhodes, concerning whom history is silent, but who
seems to have been more incompetent and more unworthy of his great
opportunity than any human being on the face of the earth.
What shall we say of a man who quotes one of the best things in the
_Scènes de la Vie de Bohême_ and then blandly remarks that he does not
see anything funny in it?
That is precisely what Mr. Rhodes does. He prints the program of the
soirée given by Rodolphe and Marcel, and then observes, with the
solemnity of a Central Park pelican: “There is nothing very humorous
in this, as will be observed, and yet it may be regarded as one of the
best specimens of Murger’s _genre_.”
Well, I can inform Mr. Rhodes, and also the simple-minded folk who
believed in him because he wrote for the magazines, that if that
chapter of the _Vie de Bohême_ is not funny, there is nothing funny in
the world. It begins with the “opening of the salons and entry and
promenade of the witty authors of the _Mountain in Labor_, a comedy
rejected by the Odéon Théâtre,” and closes with the significant warning
that “persons attempting to read or recite poetry will be cast into
outer darkness.”
The gifted Mr. Rhodes was probably in doubt as to the humor of this
passage because it is not prefixed with “Our friend K---- sends
the ‘Drawer’ the following good one,” and because its point is not
indicated by italics after the fashion of humor of the _Ayer’s Almanac_
school; but he can rest assured that that brief quotation from Murger
is the funniest thing in his essay, always excepting his own bovine
lack of perception. It is particularly funny to me because I have
sometimes witnessed the “entry and promenade” through the salons of
the witty authors of stories that have been accepted by magazines--a
spectacle calculated to produce prolonged and hilarious merriment--and
I have often wished that the recitation clause in the Bohemian’s
program could be enforced in every house in the town.
I have devoted a good deal of space to this long-forgotten article
because it is a fair sample of the sort of stuff that is offered
to us from time to time, prepared especially for us, like so much
baby’s food, by men and women who are carefully selected by the
magazine barons, and who generally rival Mr. Rhodes in point of simian
incompetence and utter lack of all appreciative or perceptive qualities.
But let us turn from the awful spectacle of Mr. Rhodes standing like
a lone penguin in the very midst of the Latin Quarter of Paris, and
wailing mournfully about the poor girl who “sometimes compels the young
man to marry her.” A far brighter picture is that presented by the
distinguished English gentleman who, having won the highest distinction
with his pencil, takes up his pen with the air of one who is enjoying
a holiday fairly earned by a lifetime of toil, and portrays the real
Quartier Latin of the Second Empire with a humor that makes us think
of Henri Murger, and with a delicacy of touch, a human sympathy, and
a tendency to turn aside and moralize that place him very near to
Thackeray.
If you wish to read a story which is at once human, truthful, and
interesting, read George Du Maurier’s “Trilby,” and note the skill with
which he has caught the very essence of the spirit of student life,
preserved it for a third of a century, and then given it to us in all
its freshness, and with the fire of an artistic youth blended with the
philosophy and worldly knowledge that belong only to later life.
To read “Trilby” is to open a box in which some rare perfume has been
kept for thirty odd years, and to drink in the fragrance that is as
pervading and strong and exquisite as ever.
And while we are enjoying this charming story, let us not forget to
give thanks to the Harpers for the courage which they have shown in
publishing it, for if there is anything calculated to injure them in
the eyes of the gas-fitters and paper-hangers it is a novel in which
the truth is told in the high-minded, cleanly, and straightforward
fashion in which Mr. Du Maurier tells it here. Fancy the feelings of
a Christian Endeavorer--the modern prototype of the Levite who passed
by on the other side--on finding in a publication of the sort which he
has always found as soothing to his prejudices and hypocrisy and pet
meannesses as the purring of a cat on a warm hearthstone--fancy the
feelings of such an one as he finds the mantle of charity thrown over
the sins and weaknesses of the erring, suffering, exquisitely human
Latin Quarter model.
One need not read more than a single instalment of “Trilby” to
realize that its author never learned the trade of letters in either
the _Ledger_ primary school or the Dr. Holland academy, for there is
scarcely a chapter that does not fairly teem with matter that has long
been forbidden in all well-regulated magazine offices, and I know that
a great many experienced manufacturers of and dealers in serial fiction
believe that it marks a new era in literature.
But to return to our sheep--and in the case of Mr. Rhodes the word
is an apt one--why was that article about the Latin Quarter of Paris
published?
Perhaps some of my readers think it was that the Scribner people did
not know any better, or because Mr. Rhodes belonged to that “ring of
favored contributors” of which one hears so much in certain artistic
circles. In reply, let me say that the “ring of favored contributors”
is a myth, or at least I have never been able to find reasonable proof
of its existence. Magazine editors buy exactly what they consider
suitable for their readers, and they buy from whoever offers what
they want. If they allowed themselves to be influenced by their small
personal likes and dislikes the whole literary system which they have
reared would go to pieces, and some dialect-writers that I wot of would
be “back on the old farm,” like the slick chaps in eight of the “Two
Brothers” poems.
As for the Scribner editors “not knowing any better,” let none be
deceived. They have always known a great deal more than their rejected
contributors gave them credit for, and there was a distinct and
vital reason for every important step that they took in building up
the magnificent property now known the world over as the _Century
Magazine_. Personally I have the highest confidence in the wisdom of
the magazine barons. If a barbed-wire fence is stretched across a
certain pasture it is with a purpose as definite and rational as that
which led Mr. Bonner to reject Jack Moran’s “Stepmother’s Prayer” and
pay $160 for the sixteen poems about the two brothers.
No; there was something in this article that made it valuable for
magazine purposes. It was well calculated to please those who revel in
that sniveling Anglo-Saxon hypocrisy and humbug about British virtue
and the wickedness of the French people. Mr. Rhodes was employed by
Dr. Holland because he was probably the only living creature who could
stand on the spot from which has come so much that has made the world
brighter and better and happier, and utter his silly platitudes about
“young men draining the cup of pleasure to the dregs.” I say that the
editor of _Scribner’s_ had just as good a reason for publishing the
Quartier Latin essay as Mr. Bonner had for being “down on stepmothers”
and refusing all poems that treated of them: _Dr. Holland was down on
grisettes_.