“Well?”:--for these short phrases are often the most emphatic.
“Well,” said Dr. Caliban, “that man must not be allowed to go
under. He must be made, and we must make him.”
I said that such a man could not fail to pierce through and
conquer. He seemed the very salt and marrow of all that has made us
great.
Dr. Caliban laid his hand in a fatherly way upon my shoulder and
said:
“You are still young; you do not know how long fame may take to
find a man, if the way is not pointed out to her; and if she takes
too long, sometimes he dies of a broken heart.”
It was a noble thought in one who had known Fame almost from the
very day when, as a lad of 22 years old, he had stood up in the
chapel at Barking Level and answered the preacher with the words,
“Lord, here am I.”
Dr. Caliban continued in a few simple words to convince me that my
foolish pride alone stood between this young genius and the fame he
deserved. He pointed out what a weight would lie upon my mind were
that poet some day to become famous, and to be able to say when I
presented myself at his receptions:
“Get ye hence: I know ye not!”
He added the awful words that death might find us at any moment,
and that then we should have to answer, not for our reasons or
our motives, but for the things we have done, and for the things
we have left undone. He added that he would regard a visit to
this new writer as overtime work, and that he was ready to pay my
expenses, including cab fares to and from the station. He ended
with an appeal which would have convinced one less ready to yield:
a magnificent picture of the Empire and of the Voice for which it
had waited so long.
* * * * *
It seems unworthy, after the relation of this intimate domestic
scene, to add any words of exhortation to the reader and student.
I will not pretend that the interview is a form of true literature.
If I have been guilty of too great a confidence, my excess has
proceeded from an earnest desire to watch over others of my kind,
and to warn them lest by one chance refusal they should destroy the
opportunities of a lifetime.
To interview another, even a rival, is sometimes necessary at the
outset of a career. It is an experience that need not be repeated.
It is one that no earnest student of human nature will regret.
The powerful emotions aroused by the reminiscence of Dr. Caliban’s
eloquence, and of the meeting to which it led, must not be
desecrated by too lengthy an insistence upon the mere technique of
a subsidiary branch of modern letters. I will state very briefly my
conclusions as to what is indispensable in the regulation of this
kind of literature.
It is, in the first place, of some moment that the young
interviewer should take his hat and gloves with him in his left
hand into the room. If he carries an umbrella or cane, this
also should be carried in the same hand, leaving the right hand
completely free. Its readiness for every purpose is the mark of a
gentleman, and the maintenance of that rank is absolutely necessary
to the _sans gêne_ which should accompany a true interview.
In the second place, let him, the moment he appears, explain
briefly the object of his visit. Without any such introduction as
“The fact is ...” “It is very odd, but ...”, let him say plainly
and simply, like an Englishman, “I have been sent to interview you
on the part of such and such a paper.”
He will then be handed (in the majority of cases) a short
type-written statement, which he will take into his right hand,
pass into his left, in among the gloves, stick, hat, &c., and will
bow, not from the shoulders, nor from the hips, but subtly from the
central vertebrae.
In the third place he will go out of the room.
There are two exceptions to this general procedure. The first is
with men quite unknown; the second with men of high birth or great
wealth.
In the first case, the hat and gloves should be laid upon a table
and the stick leaning against it in such a way as not to fall down
awkwardly in the middle of a conversation. The student will then
begin to talk in a genial manner loudly, and will continue for
about half-an-hour; he will end by looking at his watch, and will
go away and write down what he feels inclined.
In the second case, he will do exactly the same, but with a
different result, for in the first case he will very probably
become the friend of the person interviewed, which would have
happened anyhow, and in the second case he will be forbidden the
house, a result equally inevitable.
I cannot conclude these remarks without exhorting the young
writer most earnestly, when he is entering upon the first of
these distressing experiences, to place a firm trust in Divine
Providence, and to remember that, come what may, he has done his
duty.
If he should have any further hesitation as to the general manner
in which an interview should be written, he has but to read what
follows. It constitutes the interview which I held with that young
genius whom Mr. Caliban persuaded me to visit, and of whose fame I
shall therefore always feel myself a part.