comfortable appointments of Alcluid, belonged to him. He had seen enough
of the scrambling hand-to-mouth makeshifts of poverty, in poverty’s
heart-depressing habitations, during the thirty-eight years he weathered
before the simultaneous deaths, through a motor accident, of a
semi-mythical personage known since childhood as “your Uncle Henry in
Lichfield,” and of Uncle Henry’s only son as well, had raised Felix
Kennaston beyond monetary frets. As yet Kennaston did not very
profoundly believe in this unlooked-for turn; and in the library of his
fine house in particular he had still a sense of treading alien
territory under sufferance.
Yet it was a territory which tempted exploration with alluring vistas.
Kennaston had always been, when there was time for it, “very fond of
reading,” as his wife was used to state in tones of blended patronage
and apology. Kathleen Kennaston, in the old days of poverty, had
declaimed too many pilfered dicta concerning literary matters to retain
any liking for them.
As possibly you may recall, for some years after the death of her first
husband, Kathleen Eppes Saumarez had earned precarious bread and butter
as a lecturer before women’s clubs, and was more or less engaged in
journalism, chiefly as a reviewer of current literature. For all books
she had thus acquired an abiding dislike. In particular, I think, she
loathed the two volumes of “woodland tales” collected in those
necessitous years, from her Woman’s Page in the _Lichfield
Courier-Herald_, for the fickle general reading public, which then used
to follow the life-histories of Bazoo the Bear and Mooshwa the Mink, and
other “citizens of the wild,” with that incalculable unanimity which
to-day may be reserved for the biographies of optimistic orphans, and
to-morrow veers to _vies intimes_ of high-minded courtesans with hearts
of gold.... In fine, through a variety of reasons, Mrs. Kennaston quite
frankly cared even less for books, as manifestations of art, than does
the average tolerably honest woman to whom books do not represent a
source of income.
And you may or may not remember, likewise, what Kennaston wrote, about
this time, in the “Colophon” to _Men Who Loved Alison_. With increased
knowledge of the author, some sentences therein, to me at least, took on
larger significance:
“No one, I take it, can afford to do without books unless he be
quite sure that his own day and personality are the best
imaginable; and for this class of persons the most crying need
is not, of course, seclusion in a library, but in a sanatorium.
“It was, instead, for the great generality, who combine a taste
for travel with a dislike for leaving home, that books were by
the luckiest hit invented, to confound the restrictions of
geography and the almanac. In consequence, from the Ptolemies to
the Capets, from the twilight of a spring dawn in Sicily to the
uglier shadow of Montfaucon’s gibbet, there intervenes but the
turning of a page, a choice between Theocritus and Villon. From
the Athens of Herodotus to the Versailles of St.-Simon, from
Naishapur to Cranford, it is equally quick traveling. All times
and lands that ever took the sun, indeed, lie open, equally, to
the explorer by the grace of Gutenberg; and transportation into
Greece or Rome or Persia or Chicago, equally, is the affair of a
moment. Then, too, the islands of Avalon and Ogygia and Theleme
stay always accessible, and magic casements open readily upon
the surf of Sea-coast Bohemia. For the armchair traveler alone
enjoys enfranchisement of a chronology, and of a geography, that
has escaped the wear-and-tear of ever actually existing.
“Peregrination in the realms of gold possesses also the quite
inestimable advantage that therein one’s personality is
contraband. As when Dante makes us free of Hell and Heaven, it
is on the fixed condition of our actual love and hate of divers
Renaissance Italians, whose exploits in the flesh require to-day
the curt elucidation of a footnote, just so, admission to those
high delights whereunto Shelley conducts is purchased by
accrediting to clouds and skylarks—let us sanely admit—a
temporary importance which we would never accord them unbiased.
The traveler has for the half-hour exchanged his personality for
that of his guide: such is the rule in literary highways, a very
necessary traffic ordinance: and so long as many of us are, upon
the whole, inferior to Dante or Shelley—or Sophocles, or
Thackeray, or even Shakespeare—the change need not make entirely
for loss....”
Yes, it is lightly phrased; but, after all, it is only another way of
confessing that his books afforded Kennaston an avenue to forgetfulness
of that fat pasty fellow whom Kennaston was heartily tired of being. For
one, I find the admission significant of much, in view of what befell
him afterward.
And besides—so Kennaston’s thoughts strayed at times—these massed books,
which his predecessor at Alcluid had acquired piecemeal through the term
of a long life, were a part of that predecessor’s personality. No other
man would have gathered and have preserved precisely the same books, and
each book, with varying forcefulness, had entered into his predecessor’s
mind and had tinged it. These parti-colored books, could one but
reconstruct the mosaic correctly, would give a candid portrait of “your
Uncle Henry in Lichfield,” which would perhaps surprise all those who
knew him daily in the flesh. Of the fact that these were unusual books
their present owner and tentative explorer had no doubt whatever. They
were perturbing books.
Now these books by their pleasant display of gold-leaf, soberly aglow in
lamplight, recalled an obscure association of other tiny brilliancies;
and Felix Kennaston recollected the bit of metal he had found that
evening.
Laid by the lamp, it shone agreeably as Kennaston puckered his
protruding brows over the characters with which it was inscribed. So far
as touched his chances of deciphering them, he knew all foreign
languages were to him of almost equal inscrutability. French he could
puzzle out, or even Latin, if you gave him plenty of time and a
dictionary; but this inscription was not in Roman lettering. He wished,
with time-dulled yearning, that he had been accorded a college
education....
------------------------------------------------------------------------
IV
How There Was a Light in the Fog
AS she came toward him through the fog, “How annoying it is,” she was
saying plaintively, “that these moors are never properly lighted.”
“Ah, but you must not blame Ole-Luk-Oie,” he protested. “It is all the
fault of Beatricê Cenci....”
Then Kennaston knew he had unwittingly spoken magic words, for at once,
just as he had seen it done in theaters, the girl’s face was shown him
clearly in a patch of roseate light. It was the face of Ettarre.
“Things happen so in dreams,” he observed. “I know perfectly well I am
dreaming, as I have very often known before this that I was dreaming.
But it was always against some law to tell the people in my nightmares I
quite understood they were not real people. To-day in my daydream, and
here again to-night, there is no such restriction; and lovely as you
are, I know that you are just a daughter of sub-consciousness or of
memory or of jumpy nerves or, perhaps, of an improperly digested
entrée.”
“No, I am real, Horvendile—but it is I who am dreaming you.”
“I had not thought to be a part of any woman’s dream nowadays.... Why do
you call me Horvendile?”
She who bore the face of Ettarre pondered momentarily; and his heart
moved with glad adoration.
“Now, by the beard of the prophet! I do not know,” the girl said, at
last.
“The name means nothing to you?”
“I never heard it before. But it seemed natural, somehow—just as it did
when you spoke of Ole-Luk-Oie and Beatricê Cenci.”
“But Ole-Luk-Oie is the lord and master of all dreams, of course. And
that furtive long-dead Roman girl has often troubled my dreams. When I
was a boy, you conceive, there was in my room at the first
boarding-house in which I can remember dieting, a copy of the Guido
portrait of Beatricê Cenci—a copy done in oils, a worthless daub, I
suppose. But there was evil in the picture—a lurking devilishness, which
waited patiently and alertly until I should do what that silent watcher
knew I was predestined to do, and, being malevolent, wanted me to do. I
knew nothing then of Beatricê Cenci, mark you, but when I came to learn
her history I thought the world was all wrong about her. That woman was
evil, whatever verse-makers may have fabled, I thought for a long
while.... To-day I believe the evil emanated from the person who painted
that particular copy. I do not know who that person was, I never shall
know. But the black magic of that person’s work was very potent.”
And Kennaston looked about him now, to find fog everywhere—impenetrable
vapors which vaguely showed pearl-colored radiancies here and there, but
no determinable forms of trees or of houses, or of anything save the
face of Ettarre, so clearly discerned and so lovely in that strange
separate cloud of roseate light.
“Ah, yes, those little magics”—it was the girl who spoke—“those futile
troubling necromancies that are wrought by portraits and unfamiliar
rooms and mirrors and all time-worn glittering objects—by running waters
and the wind’s persistency, and by lonely summer noons in forests—how
inconsequently they fret upon men’s heart-strings!”
“As if some very feeble force—say, a maimed elf—were trying to attract
your attention? Yes, I think I understand. It is droll.”
“And how droll, too, it is how quickly we communicate our thoughts—even
though, if you notice, you are not really speaking, because your lips
are not moving at all.”
“No, they never do in dreams. One never seems, in fact, to use one’s
mouth—you never actually eat anything, you may also notice, in dreams,
even though food is very often at hand. I suppose it is because all
dream food is akin to the pomegranates of Persephone, so that if you
taste it you cannot ever return again to the workaday world.... But why,
I wonder, are we having the same dream?—it rather savors of Morphean
parsimony, don’t you think, thus to make one nightmare serve for two
people? Or perhaps it is the bit of metal I found this afternoon—”
And the girl nodded. “Yes, it is on account of the sigil of Scoteia. I
have the other half, you know.”
“What does this mean, Ettarre—?” he began; and reaching forward, was
about to touch her, when the universe seemed to fold about him, just as
a hand closes....
* * * * *
And Felix Kennaston was sitting at the writing-table in the library,
with a gleaming scrap of metal before him; and, as the clock showed, it
was bedtime.
“Well, it is undoubtedly quaint how dreams draw sustenance from
half-forgotten happenings,” he reflected; “to think of my recollecting
that weird daub which used to deface my room in Fairhaven! I had
forgotten Beatricê entirely. And I certainly never spoke of her to any
human being, except of course to Muriel Allardyce.... But I would not be
at all surprised if I had involuntarily hypnotized myself, sitting here
staring at this shiny piece of lead—you read of such cases. I believe I
will put it away, to play with again sometime.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
V
Of Publishing: With an Unlikely Appendix
SO Kennaston preserved this bit of metal. “No fool like an old fool,”
his commonsense testily assured him. But Felix Kennaston’s life was
rather barren of interests nowadays....
He thought no more of his queer dream, for a long while. Life had gone
on decorously. He had completed _The Audit at Storisende_, with leisured
joy in the task, striving to write perfectly of beautiful happenings
such as life did not afford. There is no denying that the typed
manuscript seemed to Felix Kennaston—as he added the last touches,
before expressing it to Dapley & Pildriff—to inaugurate a new era in
literature.
Kennaston was yet to learn that publishers in their business capacity
have no especial concern with literature. To his bewilderment he
discovered that publishers seemed sure the merits of a book had nothing
to do with the advisability of printing it. Herewith is appended a
specimen or two from Felix Kennaston’s correspondence.
DAPLEY & PILDRIFF—“We have carefully read your story, ‘The Audit
at Storisende,’ which you kindly submitted to us. It is needless
for us to speak of the literary quality of the story: it is in
fact exquisitely done, and would delight a very limited circle
of readers trained to appreciate such delicate productions. But
that class of readers is necessarily small, and the general
reader would, we fear, fail to recognize the book’s merit and be
attracted to it. For this reason we do not feel—and we regret to
confess it—that the publication of this book would be a wise
business enterprise for us to undertake. We wish that we could,
in justice to you and ourselves, see the matter in another
light. We are returning the manuscript to you, and we remain,
with appreciation of your courtesy, etc.”
PAIGE TICKNOR’S SONS—“We have given very careful consideration
to your story, ‘The Audit at Storisende,’ which you kindly
submitted to us. We were much interested in this romance, for it
goes without saying that it is marked with high literary
quality. But we feel that it would not appeal with force and
success to the general reader. Its appeal, we think, would be to
the small class of cultured readers, and therefore its
publication would not be attended with commercial success.
Therefore in your interest, as well as our own, we feel that we
must give an unfavorable decision upon the question of
publication. Naturally we regret to be forced to that
conclusion, for the work is one which would be creditable to any
publisher’s list. We return the manuscript by express, with our
appreciation of your courtesy in giving us the opportunity of
considering it, and are, etc.”
And so it was with The Gayvery Company, and with Leeds, McKibble & Todd,
and with Stuyvesant & Brothers. Unanimously they united to praise and to
return the manuscript. And Kennaston began reluctantly to suspect that,
for all their polite phrases about literary excellence, his romance
must, somehow, be not quite in consonance with the standards of that
person who is, after all, the final arbiter of literature, and to whom
these publishers very properly deferred, as “the general reader.” And
Kennaston wondered if it would not be well for him, also, to study the
all-important and exigent requirements of “the general reader.”
Kennaston turned to the publishers’ advertisements. Dapley & Pildriff at
that time were urging every one to read _White Sepulchers_, the author
of which had made public the momentous discovery that all churchgoers
were not immaculate persons. Paige Ticknor’s Sons were announcing a new
edition of _The Apostates_, a scathing arraignment of plutocratic
iniquities, which was heralded as certain to sear the soul to its core,
more than rival Thackeray, and turn our highest social circles inside
out. Then the Gayvery Company offered _Through the Transom_, a daring
study of “feminism,” compiled to all appearance under rather novel
conditions, inasmuch as the brilliant young author had, according to the
advertisements, written every sentence with his jaws set and his soul on
fire. The majority of Leeds, McKibble & Todd’s adjectives were devoted
to _Sarah’s Secret_, the prize-winner in the firm’s $15,000 contest—a
“sprightly romance of the greenwood,” whose undoubted aim, Kennaston
deduced from tentative dips into its meandering balderdash, was to
become the most sought-after book, in all institutes devoted to care of
the feeble-minded. And Stuyvesant & Brothers were superlatively
acclaiming _The Silent Brotherhood_, the latest masterpiece of a
pornographically gifted genius, who had edifyingly shown that he ranked
religion above literature, by retiring from the ministry to write
novels.
Kennaston laughed—upon which side of the mouth, it were too curious to
inquire. Momentarily he thought of printing the book at his own expense.
But here the years of poverty had left indelible traces. Kennaston had
too often walked because he had not carfare, for a dollar ever again to
seem to him an inconsiderable matter. Comfortably reassured as to
pecuniary needs for the future, he had not the least desire to control
more money than actually showed in his bank-balances: but, even so, he
often smiled to note how unwillingly he spent money. So now he shrugged,
and sent out his loved romance again.
* * * * *
An unlikely thing happened: the book was accepted for publication. The
Baxon-Muir Company had no prodigious faith in _The Audit at Storisende_,
as a commercial venture; but their “readers,” in common with most of the
“readers” for the firms who had rejected it, were not lacking in
discernment of its merits as an admirable piece of writing. And the more
optimistic among them protested even to foresee a possibility of the
book’s selling. The vast public that reads for pastime, they contended,
was beginning to grow a little tired of being told how bad was
this-or-that economic condition: and pretty much everything had been
“daringly exposed,” to the point of weariness, from the inconsistencies
of our clergy to the uncleanliness of our sausage. In addition, they
considered the surprising success of Mr. Marmaduke Fennel’s
eighteenth-century story, _For Love of a Lady_, as compared with the
more moderate sales of Miss Elspeth Lancaster’s _In Scarlet Sidon_, that
candid romance of the brothel; deducing therefrom that the “gadzooks”
and “by’r lady” type of reading-matter was ready to revive in vogue. At
all events, the Baxon-Muir Company, after holding a rather unusual
number of conferences, declared their willingness to publish this book;
and in due course they did publish it.
There were before this, however, for Kennaston many glad hours of
dabbling with proofsheets: the tale seemed so different, and so
infernally good, in print. Kennaston never in his life found any other
playthings comparable to those first wide-margined “galley proofs” of
_The Audit at Storisende_. Here was the word, vexatiously repeated
within three lines, which must be replaced by a synonym; and the clause
which, when transposed, made the whole sentence gain in force and
comeliness; and the curt sentence whose addition gave clarity to the
paragraph, much as a pinch of alum clears turbid water; and the vaguely
unsatisfactory adjective, for which a jet of inspiration suggested a
substitute, of vastly different meaning, in the light of whose
inevitable aptness you marveled over your preliminary obtuseness:—all
these slight triumphs, one by one, first gladdened Kennaston’s labor and
tickled his self-complacency. He could see no fault in the book.
His publishers had clearer eyes. His Preface, for one matter, they
insisted on transposing to the rear of the volume, where it now figures
as the book’s tolerably famous Colophon—that curious exposition of
Kennaston’s creed as artist. Then, for a title, _The Audit at
Storisende_ was editorially adjudged abominable: people would not know
how to pronounce Storisende, and in consequence would hold back from
discussing the romance or even asking for it at bookdealers. _Men Who
Loved Ettarre_ was Kennaston’s ensuing suggestion; but the Baxon-Muir
Company showed no fixed confidence in their patrons’ ability to
pronounce Ettarre, either. Would it not be possible, they inquired, to
change the heroine’s name?—and Kennaston assented. Thus it was that in
the end his book came to be called _Men Who Loved Alison_.
But to Kennaston her name stayed always Ettarre....
The book was delivered to the world, which received the gift without
excitement. The book was delivered to reviewers, who found in it a
well-intentioned echo of Mr. Maurice Hewlett’s earlier mediæval tales.
And there for a month or some six weeks, the matter rested.
Then one propitious morning an indignant gentlewoman in Brooklyn wrote
to _The New York Sphere_ a letter which was duly printed in that
journal’s widely circulated Sunday supplement, _The Literary
Masterpieces of This Week_, to denounce the loathsome and depraved
indecency of the nineteenth and twentieth chapters, in which—while
treating of Sir Guiron’s imprisonment in the Sacred Grove of Caer Idryn,
and the worship accorded there to the sigil of Scoteia—Kennaston had
touched upon some of the perverse refinements of antique sexual
relations. The following week brought forth a full page of letters. Two
of these, as Kennaston afterward learned, were contributed by the
“publicity man” of the Baxon-Muir Company, and all arraigned obscenities
which Kennaston could neither remember or on re-reading his book
discover. Later in this journal, as in other newspapers, appeared still
more denunciations. An up-to-the-minute bishop expostulated from the
pulpit against the story’s vicious tendencies, demanding that it be
suppressed. Thereafter it was no longer on sale in the large
department-stores alone, but was equally procurable at all the
bookstands in hotels and railway stations. Even the author’s
acquaintances began to read it. And the Delaunays (then at the height of
their vogue as exponents of the “new” dances) introduced “the Alison
amble”; and from Tampa to Seattle, in certain syndicated cartoons of
generally appealing idiocy, newspaper readers were privileged to see one
hero of the series knock the other heels over head with a copy of
Kennaston’s romance. And women wore the “Alison aigrette” for a whole
season; and a new brand of cheap tobacco christened in her honor had
presently made her name at least familiar in saloons. _Men Who Loved
Alison_ became, in fine, the novel of the hour. It was one of those rare
miracles such as sometimes palm off a well-written book upon the vast
public that reads for pastime.
And shortly afterward Mr. Booth Tarkington published another of his
delightful romances: one forgets at this distance of time just which it
was: but, like all the others, it was exquisitely done, and sold neck
and neck with _Men Who Loved Alison_; so that for a while it looked
almost as if the American reading public was coming to condone adroit
and careful composition.
But presently the advertising columns of magazines and newspapers were
heralding the year’s vernal output of enduring masterworks in the field
of fiction: and readers were again assured that the great American novel
had just been published at last, by any number of persons: and so, the
autumnal predecessors of these new _chefs d’œuvre_ passed swiftly into
oblivion, via the brief respite of a “popular” edition. And naturally,
Kennaston’s romance was forgotten, by all save a few pensive people.
Some of them had found in this volume food for curious speculation.
That, however, is a matter to be taken up later.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
VI
Suggesting Themes of Universal Appeal
SO Felix Kennaston saw his dream vulgarized, made a low byword; and he
contemplated this travestying, as the cream of a sardonic jest, with
urbanity. Indeed, that hour of notoriety seemed not without its pleasant
features to Felix Kennaston, who had all a poet’s ordinary appetite for
flattery. Besides, it was droll to read the “literary notes” which the
Baxon-Muir people were industriously disseminating, by means of the
daily journals, concerning Felix Kennaston’s personality, ancestry,
accomplishments, recreations and preferences in diet. And then, in
common with the old woman famed in nursery rhyme, he was very often wont
to observe, “But, lawk a mercy on me! this is none of I!”