On Christmas Eve, while the Perfect Reader sits in his armchair
immersed in a book--so absorbed that he has let the fire go out--I
propose to slip gently down the chimney and leave this tribute in
his stocking. It is not a personal tribute. I speak, on behalf of
the whole fraternity of writers, this word of gratitude--and envy.
No one who has ever done any writing, or has any ambition toward
doing so, can ever be a Perfect Reader. Such a one is not
disinterested. He reads, inevitably, in a professional spirit. He
does not surrender himself with complete willingness of enjoyment.
He reads "to see how the other fellow does it"; to note the turn of
a phrase, the cadence of a paragraph; carrying on a constant
subconscious comparison with his own work. He broods constantly as
to whether he himself, in some happy conjuncture of quick mind and
environing silence and the sudden perfect impulse, might have
written something like that. He is (poor devil) confessedly selfish.
On every page he is aware of his own mind running with him, tingling
him with needle-pricks of conscience for the golden chapters he has
never written. And so his reading is, in a way, the perfection of
exquisite misery--and his writing also. When he writes, he yearns to
be reading; when he reads, he yearns to be writing.
But the Perfect Reader, for whom all fine things are written, knows
no such delicate anguish. When he reads, it is without any _arrière
pensée_, any twingeing consciousness of self. I like to think of one
Perfect Reader of my acquaintance. He is a seafaring man, and this
very evening he is in his bunk, at sea, the day's tasks completed.
Over his head is a suitable electric lamp. In his mouth is a pipe
with that fine wine-dark mahogany sheen that resides upon excellent
briar of many years' service. He has had (though I speak only by
guess) a rummer of hot toddy to celebrate the greatest of all
Evenings. At his elbow is a porthole, brightly curtained with a
scrap of clean chintz, and he can hear the swash of the seas along
his ship's tall side. And now he is reading. I can see him reading.
I know just how his mind feels! Oh, the Perfect Reader! There is not
an allusion that he misses; in all those lovely printed words he
sees the subtle secrets that a lesser soul would miss. He (bless his
heart!) is not thinking how he himself would have written it; his
clear, keen, outreaching mind is intent only to be one in spirit
with the invisible and long-dead author. I tell you, if there is
anywhere a return of the vanished, it is then, at such moments, over
the tilted book held by the Perfect Reader.
And how quaint it is that he should diminish himself so modestly.
"Of course" (he says), "I'm only a Reader, and I don't know anything
about writing----" Why, you adorable creature, _You_ are our court
of final appeal, you are the one we come to, humbly, to know
whether, anywhere in our miserable efforts to set out our unruly
hearts in parallel lines, we have done an honest thing. What do we
care for what (most of) the critics say? They (we know only too
well) are not criticising _us_, but, unconsciously, themselves. They
skew their own dreams into their comment, and blame us for not
writing what they once wanted to. You we can trust, for you have
looked at life largely and without pettifogging qualms. The parallel
lines of our eager pages meet at Infinity--that is, in the infinite
understanding and judgment of the Perfect Reader.
The enjoyment of literature is a personal communion; it cannot be
outwardly instilled. The utmost the critic can do is read the
marriage service over the reader and the book. The union is
consummated, if at all, in secret. But now and then there comes up
the aisle a new Perfect Reader, and all the ghosts of literature
wait for him, starry-eyed, by the altar. And as long as there are
Perfect Readers, who read with passion, with glory, and then speed
to tell their friends, there will always be, ever and anon, a
Perfect Writer.
And so, dear Perfect Reader, a Merry Christmas to you and a New Year
of books worthy your devotion! When you revive from that book that
holds you in spell, and find this little note on the cold hearth, I
hope you may be pleased.
[Illustration]