with for bad economy; as if such writing were a form of self-indulgence
wasting the substance of future volumes. It seems that I am not
sufficiently literary. Indeed, a man who never wrote a line for print
till he was thirty-six cannot bring himself to look upon his existence
and his experience, upon the sum of his thoughts, sensations, and
emotions, upon his memories and his regrets, and the whole possession of
his past, as only so much material for his hands. Once before, some
three years ago, when I published "The Mirror of the Sea," a volume of
impressions and memories, the same remarks were made to me. Practical
remarks. But, truth to say, I have never understood the kind of thrift
they recommend. I wanted to pay my tribute to the sea, its ships and its
men, to whom I remain indebted for so much which has gone to make me
what I am. That seemed to me the only shape in which I could offer it to
their shades. There could not be a question in my mind of anything else.
It is quite possible that I am a bad economist; but it is certain that I
am incorrigible.
Having matured in the surroundings and under the special conditions of
sea life, I have a special piety toward that form of my past; for its
impressions were vivid, its appeal direct, its demands such as could be
responded to with the natural elation of youth and strength equal to the
call. There was nothing in them to perplex a young conscience. Having
broken away from my origins under a storm of blame from every quarter
which had the merest shadow of right to voice an opinion, removed by
great distances from such natural affections as were still left to me,
and even estranged, in a measure, from them by the totally
unintelligible character of the life which had seduced me so
mysteriously from my allegiance, I may safely say that through the blind
force of circumstances the sea was to be all my world and the merchant
service my only home for a long succession of years. No wonder, then,
that in my two exclusively sea books--"The Nigger of the Narcissus," and
"The Mirror of the Sea" (and in the few short sea stories like "Youth"
and "Typhoon")--I have tried with an almost filial regard to render the
vibration of life in the great world of waters, in the hearts of the
simple men who have for ages traversed its solitudes, and also that
something sentient which seems to dwell in ships--the creatures of their
hands and the objects of their care.
One's literary life must turn frequently for sustenance to memories and
seek discourse with the shades, unless one has made up one's mind to
write only in order to reprove mankind for what it is, or praise it for
what it is not, or--generally--to teach it how to behave. Being neither
quarrelsome, nor a flatterer, nor a sage, I have done none of these
things, and I am prepared to put up serenely with the insignificance
which attaches to persons who are not meddlesome in some way or other.
But resignation is not indifference. I would not like to be left
standing as a mere spectator on the bank of the great stream carrying
onward so many lives. I would fain claim for myself the faculty of so
much insight as can be expressed in a voice of sympathy and compassion.
It seems to me that in one, at least, authoritative quarter of criticism
I am suspected of a certain unemotional, grim acceptance of facts--of
what the French would call _sécheresse du cœur_. Fifteen years of
unbroken silence before praise or blame testify sufficiently to my
respect for criticism, that fine flower of personal expression in the
garden of letters. But this is more of a personal matter, reaching the
man behind the work, and therefore it may be alluded to in a volume
which is a personal note in the margin of the public page. Not that I
feel hurt in the least. The charge--if it amounted to a charge at
all--was made in the most considerate terms; in a tone of regret.
My answer is that if it be true that every novel contains an element of
autobiography--and this can hardly be denied, since the creator can
only express himself in his creation--then there are some of us to whom
an open display of sentiment is repugnant. I would not unduly praise the
virtue of restraint. It is often merely temperamental. But it is not
always a sign of coldness. It may be pride. There can be nothing more
humiliating than to see the shaft of one's emotion miss the mark of
either laughter or tears. Nothing more humiliating! And this for the
reason that should the mark be missed, should the open display of
emotion fail to move, then it must perish unavoidably in disgust or
contempt. No artist can be reproached for shrinking from a risk which
only fools run to meet and only genius dare confront with impunity. In a
task which mainly consists in laying one's soul more or less bare to the
world, a regard for decency, even at the cost of success, is but the
regard for one's own dignity which is inseparably united with the
dignity of one's work.
And then--it is very difficult to be wholly joyous or wholly sad on this
earth. The comic, when it is human, soon takes upon itself a face of
pain; and some of our griefs (some only, not all, for it is the capacity
for suffering which makes man august in the eyes of men) have their
source in weaknesses which must be recognized with smiling compassion as
the common inheritance of us all. Joy and sorrow in this world pass
into each other, mingling their forms and their murmurs in the twilight
of life as mysterious as an overshadowed ocean, while the dazzling
brightness of supreme hopes lies far off, fascinating and still, on the
distant edge of the horizon.
Yes! I, too, would like to hold the magic wand giving that command over
laughter and tears which is declared to be the highest achievement of
imaginative literature. Only, to be a great magician one must surrender
oneself to occult and irresponsible powers, either outside or within
one's breast. We have all heard of simple men selling their souls for
love or power to some grotesque devil. The most ordinary intelligence
can perceive without much reflection that anything of the sort is bound
to be a fool's bargain. I don't lay claim to particular wisdom because
of my dislike and distrust of such transactions. It may be my sea
training acting upon a natural disposition to keep good hold on the one
thing really mine, but the fact is that I have a positive horror of
losing even for one moving moment that full possession of myself which
is the first condition of good service. And I have earned my notion of
good service from my earlier into my later existence. I, who have never
sought in the written word anything else but a form of the Beautiful--I
have carried over that article of creed from the decks of ships to the
more circumscribed space of my desk, and by that act, I suppose, I have
become permanently imperfect in the eyes of the ineffable company of
pure esthetes.
As in political so in literary action a man wins friends for himself
mostly by the passion of his prejudices and by the consistent narrowness
of his outlook. But I have never been able to love what was not lovable
or hate what was not hateful out of deference for some general
principle. Whether there be any courage in making this admission I know
not. After the middle turn of life's way we consider dangers and joys
with a tranquil mind. So I proceed in peace to declare that I have
always suspected in the effort to bring into play the extremities of
emotions the debasing touch of insincerity. In order to move others
deeply we must deliberately allow ourselves to be carried away beyond
the bounds of our normal sensibility--innocently enough, perhaps, and of
necessity, like an actor who raises his voice on the stage above the
pitch of natural conversation--but still we have to do that. And surely
this is no great sin. But the danger lies in the writer becoming the
victim of his own exaggeration, losing the exact notion of sincerity,
and in the end coming to despise truth itself as something too cold, too
blunt for his purpose--as, in fact, not good enough for his insistent
emotion. From laughter and tears the descent is easy to snivelling and
giggles.
These may seem selfish considerations; but you can't, in sound morals,
condemn a man for taking care of his own integrity. It is his clear
duty. And least of all can you condemn an artist pursuing, however
humbly and imperfectly, a creative aim. In that interior world where his
thought and his emotions go seeking for the experience of imagined
adventures, there are no policemen, no law, no pressure of circumstance
or dread of opinion to keep him within bounds. Who then is going to say
Nay to his temptations if not his conscience?
And besides--this, remember, is the place and the moment of perfectly
open talk--I think that all ambitions are lawful except those which
climb upward on the miseries or credulities of mankind. All intellectual
and artistic ambitions are permissible, up to and even beyond the limit
of prudent sanity. They can hurt no one. If they are mad, then so much
the worse for the artist. Indeed, as virtue is said to be, such
ambitions are their own reward. Is it such a very mad presumption to
believe in the sovereign power of one's art, to try for other means, for
other ways of affirming this belief in the deeper appeal of one's work?
To try to go deeper is not to be insensible. A historian of hearts is
not a historian of emotions, yet he penetrates further, restrained as he
may be, since his aim is to reach the wry fount of laughter and tears.
The sight of human affairs deserves admiration and pity. They are worthy
of respect, too. And he is not insensible who pays them the
undemonstrative tribute of a sigh which is not a sob, and of a smile
which is not a grin. Resignation, not mystic, not detached, but
resignation open-eyed, conscious, and informed by love, is the only one
of our feelings for which it is impossible to become a sham.
Not that I think resignation the last word of wisdom. I am too much the
creature of my time for that. But I think that the proper wisdom is to
will what the gods will without, perhaps, being certain what their will
is--or even if they have a will of their own. And in this matter of life
and art it is not the Why that matters so much to our happiness as the
How. As the Frenchman said, "_Il y a toujours la manière_." Very true.
Yes. There is the manner. The manner in laughter, in tears, in irony, in
indignations and enthusiasms, in judgments--and even in love. The manner
in which, as in the features and character of a human face, the inner
truth is foreshadowed for those who know how to look at their kind.
Those who read me know my conviction that the world, the temporal
world, rests on a few very simple ideas; so simple that they must be as
old as the hills. It rests notably, among others, on the idea of
Fidelity. At a time when nothing which is not revolutionary in some way
or other can expect to attract much attention I have not been
revolutionary in my writings. The revolutionary spirit is mighty
convenient in this, that it frees one from all scruples as regards
ideas. Its hard, absolute optimism is repulsive to my mind by the menace
of fanaticism and intolerance it contains. No doubt one should smile at
these things; but, imperfect Esthete, I am no better Philosopher. All
claim to special righteousness awakens in me that scorn and anger from
which a philosophical mind should be free.
ON DRAWING
_By_ A. P. HERBERT
A. P. Herbert is one of the most brilliant of the younger English
writers, and has done remarkable work in fields apparently
incompatible: light verse, humorous drolleries, and a beautifully
written tragic novel, _The Secret Battle_. This last was
unquestionably one of the most powerful books born of the War, but
its sale was tragically small. _The House by the River_, a later
book, was also an amazingly competent and original tale, apparently
cast along the lines of the conventional "mystery story," but
really a study of selfishness and cowardice done with startling
irony and intensity.
Mr. Herbert went to Winchester School and New College, Oxford,
where he took his degree in 1914. He saw military service at the
Dardanelles and in France, and is now on the staff of _Punch_.
There is no young writer in England from whom one may more
confidently expect a continuance of fine work. This airy and
delicious little absurdity is a perfect example of what a genuine
humorist can do.
If there is still any one in doubt as to the value of the
oldfashioned classical training in forming a lusty prose style, let
him examine Mr. Herbert's _The Secret Battle_. This book often
sounds oddly like a translation from vigorous Greek--e.g.,
Herodotus. It is lucid, compact, logical, rich in telling epithet,
informal and swift. If these are not the cardinal prose virtues,
what are?
It is commonly said that everybody can sing in the bathroom; and this is
true. Singing is very easy. Drawing, though, is much more difficult. I
have devoted a good deal of time to Drawing, one way and another; I have
to attend a great many committees and public meetings, and at such
functions I find that Drawing is almost the only Art one can
satisfactorily pursue during the speeches. One really cannot sing
during the speeches; so as a rule I draw. I do not say that I am an
expert yet, but after a few more meetings I calculate that I shall know
Drawing as well as it can be known.
The first thing, of course, is to get on to a really good committee; and
by a good committee I mean a committee that provides decent materials.
An ordinary departmental committee is no use: generally they only give
you a couple of pages of lined foolscap and no white blotting-paper, and
very often the pencils are quite soft. White blotting-paper is
essential. I know of no material the spoiling of which gives so much
artistic pleasure--except perhaps snow. Indeed, if I was asked to choose
between making pencil-marks on a sheet of white blotting-paper and
making foot-marks on a sheet of white snow I should be in a thingummy.
Much the best committees from the point of view of material are
committees about business which meet at business premises--shipping
offices, for choice. One of the Pacific Lines has the best white
blotting-paper I know; and the pencils there are a dream. I am sure the
directors of that firm are Drawers; for they always give you two
pencils, one hard for doing noses, and one soft for doing hair.
When you have selected your committee and the speeches are well away,
the Drawing begins. Much the best thing to draw is a man. Not the
chairman, or Lord Pommery Quint, or any member of the committee, but
just A Man. Many novices make the mistake of selecting a subject for
their Art before they begin; usually they select the chairman. And when
they find it is more like Mr. Gladstone they are discouraged. If they
had waited a little it could have been Mr. Gladstone officially.
As a rule I begin with the forehead and work down to the chin (Fig. 1).
[Illustration: FIG. 1]
When I have done the outline I put in the eye. This is one of the most
difficult parts of Drawing; one is never quite sure where the eye goes.
If, however, it is not a good eye, a useful tip is to give the man
spectacles; this generally makes him a clergyman, but it helps the eye
(Fig. 2).
[Illustration: FIG. 2]
Now you have to outline the rest of the head, and this is rather a
gamble. Personally, I go in for _strong heads_ (Fig. 3).
[Illustration: FIG. 3]
I am afraid it is not a strong neck; I expect he is an author, and is
not well fed. But that is the worst of strong heads; they make it so
difficult to join up the chin and the back of the neck.
The next thing to do is to put in the ear; and once you have done this
the rest is easy. Ears are much more difficult than eyes (Fig. 4).
[Illustration: FIG. 4]
I hope that is right. It seems to me to be a little too far to the
southward. But it is done now. And once you have put in the ear you
can't go back; not unless you are on a _very_ good committee which
provides india-rubber as well as pencils.
Now I do the hair. Hair may either be very fuzzy or black, or lightish
and thin. It depends chiefly on what sort of pencils are provided. For
myself I prefer black hair, because then the parting shows up better
(Fig. 5).
[Illustration: FIG. 5]
Until one draws hair one never realizes what large heads people have.
Doing the hair takes the whole of a speech, usually, even one of the
chairman's speeches.
This is not one of my best men; I am sure the ear is in the wrong place.
And I am inclined to think he ought to have spectacles. Only then he
would be a clergyman, and I have decided that he is Mr. Philip Gibbs at
the age of twenty. So he must carry on with his eye as it is.
I find that all my best men face to the west; it is a curious thing.
Sometimes I draw two men facing each other, but the one facing east is
always a dud.
There, you see (Fig. 6)? The one on the right is a Bolshevik; he has a
low forehead and beetling brows--a most unpleasant man. Yet he has a
powerful face. The one on the left was meant to be another Bolshevik,
arguing with him. But he has turned out to be a lady, so I have had to
give her a "bun." She is a lady solicitor; but I don't know how she came
to be talking to the Bolshevik.
[Illustration: FIG. 6]
When you have learned how to do men, the only other things in Drawing
are Perspective and Landscape.
PERSPECTIVE is great fun: the best thing to do is a long French road
with telegraph poles (Fig. 7).
I have put in a fence as well.
LANDSCAPE is chiefly composed of hills and trees. Trees are the most
amusing, especially fluffy trees.
Here is a Landscape (Fig. 8).
Somehow or other a man has got into this landscape; and, as luck would
have it, it is Napoleon. Apart from this it is not a bad landscape.
[Illustration: FIG. 7]
[Illustration: FIG. 8]
But it takes a very long speech to get an ambitious piece of work like
this through.
There is one other thing I ought to have said. Never attempt to draw a
man front-face. It can't be done.
O. HENRY
_By_ O. W. FIRKINS
Several years ago I turned to _Who's Who in America_ in hope of
finding some information about O. W. Firkins, whose brilliant
reviews--chiefly of poetry--were appearing in _The Nation_. I found
no entry, but every few months I would again rummage that stout red
volume with the same intention, forgetting that I had done so
before without success. It seemed hardly credible that a critic so
brilliant had been overlooked by the industrious compilers of that
work, which includes hundreds of hacks and fourflushers. When
gathering the contents of this book I tried _Who's Who_ again,
still without result. I wrote to Mr. Firkins pleading for
biographical details; modestly, but firmly, he denied me.
So all I can tell you is this, that Mr. Firkins is to my mind one
of the half-dozen most sparkling critics in this country. One
sometimes feels that he is carried a little past his destination by
the sheer gusto and hilarity of his antitheses and paradoxes. That
is not so, however, in this essay about O. Henry, an author who has
often been grotesquely mispraised (I did not say overpraised) by
people incompetent to appreciate his true greatness. Mr. Robert
Cortes Holliday, in an essay called "The Amazing Failure of O.
Henry," said that O. Henry created no memorable characters. Mr.
Firkins suggests the obvious but satisfying answer--New York itself
is his triumph. The New York of O. Henry, already almost erased
physically, remains a personality and an identity.
Mr. Firkins is professor of English at the University of Minnesota,
and a contributing editor of _The Weekly Review_, in which this
essay first appeared in September, 1919. The footnotes are, of
course, his own.
There are two opinions concerning O. Henry. The middle class views him
as the impersonation of vigor and brilliancy; part of the higher
criticism sees in him little but sensation and persiflage. Between these
views there is a natural relation; the gods of the heathens are _ipso
facto_ the demons of Christianity. Unmixed assertions, however, are
commonly mixtures of truth and falsehood; there is room to-day for an
estimate which shall respect both opinions and adopt neither.
There is one literary trait in which I am unable to name any writer of
tales in any literature who surpasses O. Henry.[B] It is not primary or
even secondary among literary merits; it is less a value _per se_ than
the condition or foundation of values. But its utility is manifest, and
it is rare among men: Chaucer and Shakespeare prove the possibility of
its absence in masters of that very branch of art in which its presence
would seem to be imperative. I refer to the designing of stories--not to
the primary intuition or to skill in development, in both of which finer
phases of invention O. Henry has been largely and frequently surpassed,
but to the disposition of masses, to the blocking-out of plots. That a
half-educated American provincial should have been original in a field
in which original men have been copyists is enough of itself to make his
personality observable.
Illustration, even of conceded truths, is rarely superfluous. I supply
two instances. Two lads, parting in New York, agree to meet "After
Twenty Years" at a specified hour, date, and corner. Both are faithful;
but the years in which their relation has slept in mutual silence and
ignorance have turned the one into a dashing criminal, the other into a
sober officer of the law. Behind the picturesque and captivating
rendezvous lurks a powerful dramatic situation and a moral problem of
arresting gravity. This is dealt with in six pages of the "Four
Million." The "Furnished Room," two stories further on, occupies twelve
pages. Through the wilderness of apartments on the lower West Side a man
trails a woman. Chance leads him to the very room in which the woman
ended her life the week before. Between him and the truth the avarice of
a sordid landlady interposes the curtain of a lie. In the bed in which
the girl slept and died, the man sleeps and dies, and the entrance of
the deadly fumes into his nostrils shuts the sinister and mournful
coincidence forever from the knowledge of mankind. O. Henry gave these
tales neither extension nor prominence; so far as I know, they were
received without bravos or salvos. The distinction of a body of work in
which such specimens are undistinguished hardly requires comment.
A few types among these stories may be specified. There are the Sydney
Cartonisms, defined in the name; love-stories in which divided hearts,
or simply divided persons, are brought together by the strategy of
chance; hoax stories--deft pictures of smiling roguery; "prince and
pauper" stories, in which wealth and poverty face each other, sometimes
enact each other; disguise stories, in which the wrong clothes often
draw the wrong bullets; complemental stories, in which Jim sacrifices
his beloved watch to buy combs for Della, who, meanwhile, has sacrificed
her beloved hair to buy a chain for Jim.
This imperfect list is eloquent in its way; it smooths our path to the
assertion that O. Henry's specialty is the enlistment of original method
in the service of traditional appeals. The ends are the ends of fifty
years ago; O. Henry transports us by aeroplane to the old homestead.[C]
Criticism of O. Henry falls into those superlatives and antitheses in
which his own faculty delighted. In mechanical invention he is almost
the leader of his race. In a related quality--a defect--his leadership
is even more conspicuous. I doubt if the sense of the probable, or, more
precisely, of the available in the improbable, ever became equally
weakened or deadened in a man who made his living by its exercise. The
improbable, even the impossible, has its place in art, though that place
is relatively low; and it is curious that works such as the "Arabian
Nights" and Grimm's fairy tales, whose stock-in-trade is the incredible,
are the works which give almost no trouble on the score of
verisimilitude. The truth is that we reject not what it is impossible to
prove, or even what it is possible to disprove, but what it is
impossible to imagine. O. Henry asks us to imagine the unimaginable--that
is his crime.