July 8th.
To-day I took it to the publisher's!
* * * * *
I had been pondering for a week who were the best publishers. To-day I
hardly had the courage to go in--I know nothing about such things--and my
hands shook so I could hardly hold the package.
* * * * *
I asked to see the manager. I told him I had a manuscript to submit. He
looked at me--I guess I must look rather seedy. “What sort of a
manuscript?” he asked. “A blank verse drama!”
Then he took it and glanced over it. “Blank verse dramas are difficult
things to publish,” he said.
“You had best read it, I think,” I answered, “you will find it worth
while.”
“Very well, if you wish,” said he, “we always read everything that is
offered to us.”
“How soon shall you be able to let me know?”
“Oh, in a week or ten days.”
* * * * *
And then I went out--shuddering with excitement. A week or ten days!
Well--I can wait. I have done all _my_ duty, at any rate.
* * * * *
July 9th.
I have certainly played a bold game with my poem! At the publisher's at
last--and I, having paid my room-rent, have just a dollar in my pocket!
* * * * *
I have been tramping about all day to-day, looking for some work. I don't
care what it is--I can do anything to keep alive for a week or ten days.--I
wonder if they will advance me some money at once.
* * * * *
They all stare at me suspiciously. I think some of the wildness of the
woods must still hang about me.--Anyway, I walk along on air, I fear
nothing. I could hug all the passers-by. My book is at the publisher's! I
could beg, I think, if I had to, and do it serenely, exultingly. I have
only a dollar--but have I not all the stars?
* * * * *
I was thinking to-day about Carlyle, and that ghastly accident to his
manuscript. Let others blame Carlyle for his sins--for those days of agony
and horror I forgive him all things, and love him.
I have the original manuscript of The Captive put safely away. If that poem
were destroyed it would kill me. I can think of anything else in the world
but such a thing as that.
* * * * *
July 10th.
What will they write me about it? I picture to myself all the emotions of
a publisher when he discovers a poem like that! Ah yes, good publisher,
I have scanned your lists for many months back; but you have published
nothing like The Captive.
And then I shall taste my first drop of success.
--I do not want it for myself--it is not that--I want it for the book! I
want people to love it--I want it to stir their souls! I want brothers and
friends and lovers in that great glory of mine! That is why I want all the
world to shake with it.
* * * * *
And then I can go on!
* * * * *
--I wonder if they will write to me sooner, when they find out what it
is.--
* * * * *
I have been picturing myself with some money! It is all over now--and I can
do that--will it not be strange to have some money! I have been thinking
where I should live, and what I should do.
The first thing I shall do is to get somebody to teach me music. And then
all the concerts that I long for! How long has it been since I have heard a
note of music?
* * * * *
I think that is all I want. I want no toys in my life. I want my freedom,
and my soul, and the forest once again.--
* * * * *
I read some of the psalms to-night--far, far into the morning. My heart is
a psalm.
* * * * *
--I have gotten something to do! I am a waiter in a restaurant on Sixth
Avenue! I got the place this morning. Ugh!--it is nasty beyond words. But I
do not care, it will keep me alive.
* * * * *
July 11th.
What a thing is hope! I have been for two days chained in the most horrible
kind of a place. Picture it--to stand all day and see low people stuffing
themselves with food--the dirt and the grease and the stench and the
endless hideous drudgery! And I five days out of the springing forest and
the ecstasy of inspiration!--Truly, it is a thing to put one's glory to a
test! But I hardly feel it--I walk on air--deep back in my soul there is an
organ song, I hear it all day, all day!
How soon will they write? I fly up-stairs each night, looking for a letter.
Hurry up! Hurry up!
--“_Pegasus im Joche_!”
* * * * *
July 13th.
The book! The book! I go thinking about it--when I come home I throw myself
down on the bed and laugh with suppressed excitement. I think all day--they
are reading it now, perhaps! Ah, my book! And perhaps I'll find somebody at
home there to see me about it to-night!
I look at the reviews--I am interested in all the books of the day
now--because The Captive is going to be among them! How will it seem to see
it there, in big letters?
* * * * *
And how will it seem to be known? I am not a fool--I know what will help
me to my peace when I am out there in the woods again--and it will not be
that the newspapers have been talking about me, and that the dames of high
society have asked me to their tea-parties. But there are one or two men in
this world that I should like to know. Perhaps as the author of a book that
is known it would be possible.
* * * * *
--Yes, before I was one of the mob, and now I have shown what I can do.
* * * * *
July 15th.
The horror of that awful “eating-joint” grows on me every hour. I could not
bear it much more--physically it makes me ill, and no amount of enthusiasm
can make that better. I will not sell a second more of my time than I have
to. I made up my mind that I would give up the place at the end of the
week. The money will do me for another week after that, and by that time I
will surely have heard from the publishers.
* * * * *
I'll have to tell them, that's all,--it is nothing to be ashamed of.
They'll have to give me some money in advance. I can not live in that
cesspool.
* * * * *
Yes, to-morrow and half of the next day,--that is all I will bear!
* * * * *
--I long sometimes to go and see them; but no, I can wait.
* * * * *
July 17th.
I treated myself to a long holiday this afternoon. I went up to the park,
and walked and walked. Everything was in a tumult within me--I was clear
of that last prison. And all the excitement and the power of that poem are
still in me. I am restless, all on fire, stern, hungry, like a wind-storm.
Come not near me unless you wish for truth! Come not near me if you fear
the gods!
To-day my thoughts went surging into the future. I shall have money!--I
shall be free!--And what shall I do next? I counted up what I might
have--even a slight success for the book would mean a fortune such as
turned my head to think of. What would I do?
My mind pounced upon a new work--a work that I have dreamed of often. Would
it be my next work? I thought--would I be able--would I dare? It is a grand
thing.
I went on, and got to thinking of it; I almost forgot that I was not still
in the woods. What a sweeping thing I see it!
The American! It would have to be a three-volume novel, I fear--it would be
as huge as Les Misérables!
It is the Civil War! I am haunted by that fearful struggle. Is there
anything more fearful in history, any more tremendous effort of the human
spirit? And so far it has not made one great poem, one great drama, one
great novel!
* * * * *
It was the furnace-fire in which this land was forged--this land which
holds in its womb the future of the world--this land that is to give laws
to the nations and teach mankind its destiny. I search the ages, and I find
no struggle so fraught with meaning, with the woe and the terror and the
agony of a desperate hope.
It must be all put into an art-work, I say! There is no theme that could
thrill the men of this country more, that could lift them more, that could
do more to make their hearts throb with pride. We sent all the best that we
had--armies and armies of them--and they toiled and suffered, they rotted
upon a thousand fields of horror. And their souls cry out to me, that it
must not be for naught, that the fearful consecration must not be for
naught.
The world is filled with historical fiction; it is the cant and the sham of
the hour.--Bah!
* * * * *
--This is what I long to do; to take the agony of that struggle and live it
and forge it into an art-work; to put upon a canvas the soul of it; to put
it there, living and terrible, that the men of this land might know the
heritage that is come down to them.
It would take years of toil, it would take money, too--I should have to go
down there. But some day I shall do it!
I saw some of it to-day, and it made my blood go!
I saw a poet, young, sensitive, throbbing at the old, old wrong, at the
black shame of our history; I saw him drawn into that fearful whirlpool of
blood and passion, driven mad with the pain and the horror of it; and I saw
him drilled and hammered to a grim savageness, saw him fighting, day by
day, with his spirit, forging it into an iron sword of war. He was haggard
and hollow-eyed, hard, ruthless, desperate. He saw into the future, he saw
the land he loved, the land he dreamed of--the Union! She stretched out her
arms to him; she cried with the voices of unborn ages, she wrung her hands
in the agony of her despair. And for her his heart beat, for her he was
a madman, for her he marched in sun and in snow, for her he was torn and
slashed, for her he waded through fields of slaughter. Of her he dreamed
and sung--sung to the camps in the night-time, till armies were thrilled
with his singing.
* * * * *
This was the thing of which he sang, the gaunt, grim poet: There is a
monster, huge beyond thought, terrible, all-destroying; the name of it is
Rebellion, and the end of it is Death! Day by day you grapple with it, day
by day you hammer it, day by day you crush it. Down with it, down with it!
Finish it!
I heard that as a battle-cry: “Finish it!” I saw a man, wild and
war-frenzied, riding a war-frenzied horse; he rode at the head of a
squadron, bare-headed, sword in hand, demon-like--thundering down-hill upon
a mass of men, stabbing, slashing, trampling, scattering! Above the roar of
it all I heard his cry: “Finish it! Finish it!”
And afterward he staggered from his horse and knelt by the men he had
killed, and wept.
* * * * *
--I saw him again. It was when the man of the hour had come at last;
when the monster had met his master; when, day by day, they hammered it,
the fire-spitting, death-dealing monster; when they closed with it in
death-grapple in a tangled wilderness, where armies fought like demons in
the dark, and the wounded were burned by the thousands. I saw companies of
fainting, starving, agonized men, retreating, still battling, day by day;
and I saw the wild horseman galloping on their track, slashing,
trampling--and still with the battle-yell: “Finish it! Finish it!”
* * * * *
I saw him yet a third time. It was done, it was finished; and he lay
wounded in a dark room, listening. Outside in the streets of Washington
a great endless army marched by, the army of victory, of salvation; and
the old war-flags waved, and the old war-songs echoed, and he heard the
trampling of ten thousand feet--the rumbling of the old cannon--and the
ocean-roaring of the vast throngs of men! A wild delirium of victory
throbbed in his soul,--burned him up, as he lay there alone, dying of his
passion and his wounds. Born of the joy that throbbed in the air about him,
born of the waving banners and the clashing trumpets and the trampling
hosts and the shouting millions--a figure loomed up before him--a figure
with eyes of flame and a form that towered like the mountains--with arms
outstretched in rapture and robes that touched the corn-fields as she
sped--angel, prophetess, goddess!--Liberty!
* * * * *
--And at her feet he sobbed out his life.
* * * * *
--The American!
* * * * *
July 18th.
Still another day, and no news from the publisher's. The time is nearly
up--I can not wait much longer.
* * * * *
They have rejected The Captive! They have rejected The Captive! In God's
name, what does it mean? They have rejected The Captive!
I stared at the paper in blank consternation! I couldn't realize the words,
I couldn't understand what they meant. Such a thing never occurred to me in
my wildest moment.
What is the matter with them--are they mad? Great God, that any human
creature!--And without a line about it!
--“We have carefully considered the MS. which you have kindly offered us,
and regret that we are not advised to undertake its publication. We are
returning the MS. with thanks for your courtesy in submitting it.”
* * * * *
That letter came to me like a blow in the face.--I have spent hours
to-night pacing the streets, almost speechless. Fools!
--But I will not let such a thing disturb me for an instant. Yes, they are
a great publishing-house--but such things as I have seen them publish! And
they “regret.” Well, you _will_ regret, some day, never fear!
* * * * *
July 19th.
The manuscript arrived this morning. I took it up-stairs and sat down,
trembling, and read it all again.
I wish that I could see the man or woman who read that poem and rejected
it--just that I might see what kind of looking person it is. Oh, the
wildness of it, the surge and the roar of it! The glory of it!
* * * * *
I can not afford to waste my time worrying about such things. I only say
“Fools!”
* * * * *
--I took it to another publisher. I don't know any in particular, but I
will try the best. This publisher didn't seem very anxious to read it. Go
ahead, try it!--Or are you a fool too?
--Of course I shall have to begin tramping around, looking for some work
again. I must find something better than the last.
* * * * *
July 20th.
Nervous, impatient--it is so that I have lived. Never to waste an instant
has been my passion. I have struggled, watched, fought for a minute. If
ever I were held back or kept idle it drove me wild, and I burst through
everything. It has always been a torture to me not to be thinking
something.
But less of that torture than I have now, I think I never had; it seems as
if I had won the mastery--I mind nothing any more. I walk upon the air,
and I never tire. Thoughts--endless thoughts--come to me without ever the
asking; nothing disturbs me, nothing hinders me--I take everything along
with me.--I am full of impulse, of life, of energy!--
I am the owner of the sphere,
Of the seven stars and the solar year,
Of Cæsar's hand and Plato's brain!--
And this when I have spent all the day looking for work!--answering
advertisements, and tramping to this place and that! Discouraging?--what
does the word mean?
* * * * *
--I am the man who has never learned to shiver and shake!
* * * * *
I thought of a young Irishman I worked with a long time ago. “Once I went
into a place, and says I, 'I'd like to be havin' a job.' An' he looked me
over, an' he says, says he, 'Git oot!' An' so I thought I'd better git
oot!”
* * * * *
It might take me some time to find a publisher, I was thinking to-day. I do
not know anything about publishers. But once get it before the world, that
is the thing! I fear nothing, I can wait. It is done, that is all I can
think of. --The rest “must follow, as the night the day.”
* * * * *
July 21st.
To-night I sat by the bedside trembling, thinking of what I had learned.
Oh, this faith that I have gained, it must go forth among men! A prayer
welled up in my soul--I have learned what I can do--I have learned that I
can do what I will! I have seen the infinite heights that lie beyond--oh,
let me not fail! The hopes of unborn generations are in my soul.
* * * * *
--That is true. What systems shall come of this vision of mine, what new
ways of beauty, what new happiness and new freedom! That thought has shaken
the very depths of my soul.
It makes me leap up--it makes me wish to go! Why should I not start now?
Why should I waste to-day?
* * * * *
July 22d.
I have been making plans. I must get to work. I was racing through all
sorts of vast schemes to-day as I walked about the streets hunting for
something to do. I will make my Greek perfect first--I can do that while I
am walking.
I made an athlete of myself pacing up and down with The Captive! I honestly
think I walked ten or twelve hours some days. I have walked all day to-day,
but I do not feel tired. I answered advertisements in the papers.
* * * * *
--Why are men impolite? I do not believe I could ever learn to speak
rudely.
* * * * *
July 23d.
The impossible occupations that I have thought of, in trying to solve
my problem! To-day I saw myself a lighthouse-keeper! What does a
lighthouse-keeper do, anyway? And could I manage to get such a place
where I could be alone by myself?
* * * * *
--But no, some one would have to attend to the light!--
* * * * *
I thought of being a hall-boy. But you are not paid very much.--I said,
however, that I would at least get some sort of a place up-town. I could
not stand it down in the “business” world.
* * * * *
God, how horrible it is! All that seething effort--and for what? All this
“business”--is it really necessary to the developing of the souls of men?
Does each man in that rushing mob need more money yet, to begin developing
his soul?
* * * * *
--Another occupation! I saw myself a lonely hunter, living by a mountain
lake, and shooting game for a living! I wonder if that wouldn't be
possible. I never shot any game, but I could learn.
It would suit me perfectly to sit by a mountain lake and read Greek and
watch for ducks.
* * * * *
July 27th.
I was getting down pretty close to the limit again, but I got something to
do to-day. I had to take what I could find; it is what would be called a
good position, I suppose; I am in a wholesale-paper store. I get twelve
dollars, and that is quite something.
* * * * *
The business of the will is to face the things that come--not any other
things. Now I have to drill and discipline myself anew, to learn to save my
soul alive in a wholesale-paper store!
It is a great, dingy place, full of chaffering, hungry-looking men. They
are all desperately serious; it is a great “business house,” I believe; the
very atmosphere of it is deadly poison.
--Oh bald-headed, grim-visaged senior-partner, that didst gaze at me over
black-rimmed spectacles--so I have “an opportunity to rise,” have I?
Yes,--I shall rise upon wings of a sapphire sheen, and toss myself up in
the wind and shake down showers of golden light into thy wondering eyes, oh
bald-headed, grim-visaged senior-partner!
* * * * *
--It is my business to show samples of paper. I shall learn all about them
in a few days, and then I shall go at the Greek.
* * * * *
July 28th.
Whenever I feel weary I run off into a corner and whisper into my ear, “It
is done! Be not afraid!” Instantly my heart goes up like swift music.
* * * * *
July 31st.
Twelve days since I left The Captive; they said it would take three weeks.
* * * * *
Something strange flashed over me to-day, something that sent a shudder
through me; I have done a strange thing to myself this summer, not in
metaphor, but in fact. I have seen a ghost; I have drunk a potion; I have
gazed upon a nymph; I have made myself mad!
* * * * *
I am no longer a man among men--I am “the reed that grows never more
again”!
* * * * *
--I try to lose myself in a book, but the book does not hold me. Nothing
satisfies me as it used to,--I am restless, hungry, ill at ease. Why should
I read this man's weak efforts--what profits me that man's half-truths?
* * * * *
--And all the time I know too well what I want--I want to fight!
I want to get back into the woods again! I want that vision again! That
work again! I want _myself_!
* * * * *
--And here I am, a bird in a cage, beating the bars. What folly to say that
I can be strong and endure this thing! That I can endure anything, dare
anything. Yes, so I can--if I can strive! Put me out there alone, and set
me a task, and I will do it though it kill me. But how can I conquer when I
can not strive?
Here I am, tied! I am tied--not hand and foot--but tied in soul. Tied in
time! Tied in attention! How can I be anything but beaten and wretched? How
can I expect anything but defeat and ruin? A song comes to me, it calls
me--and I can not go! I must stare at it and watch it leave me!--How can
that not drive me wild?
The great wings of my soul begin to beat--I go up, I am wild for the
air,--and then suddenly I am struck back by the hideous impertinences of
the wholesale-paper business! How can I endure such things as that--how can
I _conquer_ Why, it is like the clashing in my ears of twenty trumpets
out of tune!
* * * * *
Do not keep me here long! Do not keep me here long!
* * * * *
--It is something that I find very strange and curious to watch--how
spontaneously, and instinctively, all young men dislike me. Have I a brand
upon my forehead?
* * * * *
It is not my habit to stand upon the pedestal of my inspiration, and gaze
down upon those that I meet. Sympathy is my life--I can sympathize even
with men who aspire to rise in business. But I have to live many lives, and
new lives; and I can brook no delay.
I will make no compromises; I have sworn a vow against idle words--they may
dislike me as they will. I give my work, for which I am paid; I can not
give my soul.
* * * * *
August 2d.
Oh what a horrible thing is “business”! Here, where I am,--this is _the
world_. An industrial era!
* * * * *
This is a wholesale-paper house, and the three partners who run it call
themselves, with unconscious irony, “wholesale-paper MEN”! They live their
lives in wholesale-paper,--they talk it--they dream it--they plan it--they
have no hope in the world except to find people to buy wholesale-paper! And
the manager--keen and hungry--he is planning to be a wholesale-paper man
himself. And here are twenty-five men and youths apparently having but one
virtue in the world, the possibility of consecrating their souls to
wholesale-paper!
What they make is useful, it may even be sublime--in which way the business
is unique. But none of these men ever thinks of that--they would be just as
absorbed in the business if it were wholesale bonnets. None of them has the
least care in the world about books. And these men who come here to buy the
paper--are _they_ any better? Or is their interest in the paper the
profits it may bring to them?
* * * * *
--Dear God!--That brought me back to The Captive.
* * * * *
--I have been sick to-day, and sickness clips your wings. It is an error of
mine--I pay for my food with my soul, and so I try to eat little, and
thereby make myself ill.
* * * * *
August 3d.
I got my first twelve dollars to-day!
* * * * *
August 5th.
To-day I made a resolution, that I must stop this chafing, this panting,
this beating my wings to pieces. A man's inspiration must be under his
control, to stop it, as well as to start it. I can not write or dream
poetry while I am in this slavery, and somehow I have to realize it. When
I go home I will get to some work, and not wander around hungering.
After my glimpse of the forest it is frightful to be penned in this
steaming city. To have to work in an office all day--sometimes it makes me
reel. And then at night too, when I try to read, the room gets suffocating.
Then I go out among the tenement-house crowds, carrying my little
note-book. I stop at a lamp-post and look at a couple of words and then
walk on and learn them! So I go for hours.
* * * * *
--Hurry up, publishers!--I wrote to them to-night.
* * * * *
August 7th.
“In answer to your letter of the 5th instant, we beg to inform you that
your manuscript is now in the hands of our readers, and that you may expect
a report upon it in a week.”
* * * * *
I am reading Euripides.
* * * * *
August 8th.
Oh how will I find words for my delight when I have got a little money and
can escape from dirt and horror. To-night two vile men have been quarreling
in the room underneath, and I have been drinking in all their brutal
ugliness. Bah!--
* * * * *
To live in a place where there are not horrible women in wrappers, reeling,
foul-smelling men, snuffling children with beer-cans!
This is more of my “economy”!
* * * * *
To-night I sat upon the edge of the bed and whispered, “To be free! I shall
be free!”--until I was trembling in every nerve.
My beautiful poem! My beautiful poem will set me free!
Sometimes I love it just as if it were a child.
* * * * *
August 10th.
Twelve dollars more!
* * * * *
August 11th.
“We have read with the utmost interest the manuscript of The Captive which
you have been so good as to show us. We are very sorry to say that it does
not seem to us that the publication of this poem would be a venture in
which we could engage with profit. At the same time, however, we have been
very much struck with it, and consider it an altogether remarkable piece of
work. We should like very much to have the privilege of an interview with
you, should you find it convenient.”
* * * * *
Now what in the world do they mean by that? If they are not going to
publish the book, what do they want to see me for? And I've wasted two
weeks more of my life!
I had not reckoned on petty things such as these. I fear I have not much
knowledge of men. How can a man read The Captive and not know that others
would read it? What are they in business for, anyway?
* * * * *
August 12th.
I begged off from work for an hour. I have had an interview with the great
publishers! I have learned a great deal too.
I saw the manager of the firm. He meant to be very kind, that is the first
thing to say; the second is that he is very well-dressed, and
comfortable-looking.
* * * * *
“Now, Mr. Stirling,” said he, “you know a publishing house is always on
the lookout for the new man. That is why I wanted to have the pleasure of
meeting you. It is evident to me that you have literary talent of no common
kind.”
(I bow.)
“I wish that I could tell you that we could consider The Captive an
available piece of writing; I have read it myself with the greatest care.
But you must know, Mr. Stirling, that it is an exceedingly _difficult_
piece of work; I mean difficult from a publisher's point of view. There is
very little demand for poetry nowadays--a publisher generally brings out at
a loss even the poems that make a reputation for their authors. Whether you
are aware of that I don't know, but it is true; and I think of all kinds of
poetry a blank verse tragedy is the most to be shunned.”
(Here a pause. I have never any tongue when I am with men.)
“What I want to talk to you about, Mr. Stirling, is the work which you
contemplate in the future. As I said, I was interested at once in this
work; I should like very much indeed to advise you and to be of any
assistance to you that I can. I should like very much to know what your
plans are. I should like very much to see anything that you might write.
Are you contemplating anything just at present?”
“No, not just at present.”
“Not? Don't you think that you might find it possible to produce something
just a little more in accordance with the public taste? Don't you think,
for instance, that you might possibly write a novel?”
(Some hesitation.) “I have thought of a novel.”
“Ah! And might I ask--would it be a character study?--or perhaps
historical?--or--”
“It would be historical.”
“Ah! And of what period?”
“The Civil War.”
(A great look of satisfaction.) “Dear me! Why, that is very interesting
indeed, Mr. Stirling! I should like to see such a work from your pen. And
are you thinking of completing it soon?”
(General discomfort on my part.) “I had never thought of the time exactly.
I had feared it would take a great many years.”
(Perplexity.) “Oh, pshaw!--still, of course, that is the way all great work
is done. Yes, one has to obey one's own inspiration. I understand perfectly
how he can not adjust himself to the market. I have seen too often how
disastrous such attempts are.”
(More courteous platitudes, I assenting. Then at last, weary--)
“You don't think, then, that you will be able to undertake The Captive?”
“No, Mr. Stirling, I really do not think we can. You understand, of course,
if I take this work to the firm I have to tell them I think it will sell;
and that I can not honestly do. You know that a publishing house is just as
much limited as any other business firm--it can not afford to publish books
that the trade does not want. And this is an especially unusual sort of
thing, it is by no means easy to appreciate--you must be aware of that
yourself, Mr. Stirling. You see when I read a manuscript I have to keep
constantly before my mind the thought of how it is going to affect the
public--a very different thing from my own judgment, of course. From the
former standpoint I believe there are things in The Captive that would meet
with a reception not satisfactory to either of us, Mr. Stirling.”
(Perplexity on my part.) “You'll have to explain that to me, I fear.”
“Why--but the explaining of that would be to offer you my opinion about the
book--”
“I should be very pleased to hear it. Your reason for declining it, then,
is not altogether that it is a blank-verse drama?”
“Not altogether, Mr. Stirling. It's a little difficult for me to tell you
about these things, you know. I understand that the book must have meant a
great deal to you, and so I am naturally diffident. But if you will pardon
my saying so, it seems to me that the book--it is obviously, of course,
the work of a young man--it is very emotional, it strives to very high
altitudes. I will not say that it is exaggerated, but--the last part
particularly--it seems to me that you are writing in too high a key, that
your voice is strained.” (An uncomfortable pause.) “Of course, now, that is
but my opinion. It will not seem of any value to you, perhaps, but while
I read it I could not get away from the fact that it was not altogether
natural. It seemed hysterical and overwrought in places--it gives the
effect of crudeness. It is rather hard, you know, to expect a man who sits
at a desk all day to follow you in such very strenuous flights.” (A slight
laugh.)
“Mind you it is not that I do not appreciate high qualities, Mr. Stirling,
it is merely that it seemed to me that if it were toned down somewhat it
would be better--you know such things strike different people in different
ways; you do not find it easy to believe that it would affect men so--but I
am pretty sure that the impulse of the average critic would be to go still
further--to make fun of it. Here, for instance--let me read you the opinion
upon the book that was handed in by one of our most experienced
readers--etc., etc.--”
I have told enough of that story, giving the conversation as literally as
I can recall it. I am always a fool, the presence of other men overawes
me; I sit meek and take all that comes, and then make my escape. The great
publishers' manager still thinks he impressed me with his wisdom--he has
half an idea I'm going to “tone down” The Captive!
--He read me that criticism--great God, it makes me writhe! It was like a
review of the Book of Revelations by Bill Nye.
* * * * *
_That my work should be judged by such men!_
* * * * *
--“Exaggerated!” “Hysterical!” And is there nothing hysterical in life,
then? And would you go through battle and pestilence with the same serenity
that you sit there at your desk all day, you publisher?
As if a man who was being torn to pieces would converse after the manner of
Mr. Howells and Jane Austen!
* * * * *
--“Tone it down!” That bit of inanity has been haunting my ears. Tone down
The Captive! Tone down the faith and rapture of my whole life, until
it is what the reading public will find natural!--And tone down the
Liebes-Tod--and tone down the Choral Symphony--and Epipsychidion--and King
Lear!
Swounds, show me what thou'lt do:
Woo't weep? Woo't fight? Woo't fast? Woo't tear thyself?
Woo't drink up eisel? Eat a crocodile?
I'll do't. Dost thou come here to whine?
To outface me with leaping in her grave?
Be buried quick with her, and so will I:
And, if thou prate of mountains, let them throw
Millions of acres on us, till our ground,
Singeing his pate against the burning zone,
Make Ossa like a wart! Nay, an thou'lt mouth,
I'll rant as well as thou!--
“This is mere madness,” observes the queen. Tone it down!
* * * * *
August 12th.
I sat last night brooding over this thing till almost dawn. I could not
bring myself to the thought of offering my work again to be judged by such
people. I made up my mind to take a different course--I sat and wrote a
long letter to a certain poet whom I love and honor. He is known as a
critic--he will know. I told him the whole story, and asked him to read the
poem.
It was something that I had never thought about, the effect of The Captive
upon commonplace people. I was so full of my own rapture--I made my
audience out of my own fancy. And now these snuffy little men come peering
at it!
My appeal is not to the reading public--my appeal is to great minds and
heroic hearts--to the ages that will come when I have gone.
--And can it be that I am to repeat the old, old story--will every one
laugh at me and leave me to starve?
* * * * *
--I will get myself together and prepare for a siege. I will find an
opening somewhere. You can not shut up a volcano.
* * * * *
August 16th.
There seems to be little use of struggling. I can not control myself. I
wander around, restless, unhappy. That horrible prison that I am pent
in--God, how I hate it! Such heart-sickening waiting--waiting!--and
meanwhile that intolerable treadmill! It drives me wild! I am so full of
life, of passion; and to be dragged back--and back--and stamped on! Each
day I feel myself weaker; each day my power and my joy are going. Let me
go--let me go!
Is my inspiration of no value at all, my ardor, my tenderness, my
faith,--all nothing? You treat me as if I were an ox!
* * * * *
It is like being chained in the galleys! The dust and the heat, the
jostling crowds, the banging and rattling, the bare, hideous streets--and
above it all the wild, rampant vulgarity--the sordidness, the cheapness,
the chaffering! My eyes stare at advertisements and signs until they burn
me in my head.
Oh, the hell of egotism and vulgarity that is a city!
--“Why so much trouble? Other men bear dust and heat, and do their work
without complaining!” Ah, yes!--but they do not have to write poems in the
bargain!
* * * * *
If it were for truth and beauty, such a life would be heroism. But the
hoards of wealth that they heap up--they spend it upon fine houses, and
silly clothes, and gimcracks, and jewels, and rich food to eat, and wines
to drink, and cigars to smoke! Bah!--
It is the brutality of it all that drives me wild. I see great, hulking,
disgusting _bodies_ that live to be pampered and fed. And after that,
in the place of minds, I see little restless centers of vanity--hungering,
toiling, plotting, intriguing--to be stared at and praised and admired.
* * * * *
August 20th.
I thought that I would surely have heard from my poet by now. I am not a
good waiter.
* * * * *
The senior-partner's nephew is a young German, over to learn the language.
He is on a furlough from the army. He has close-cropped hair, a low
forehead, and two front teeth like a squirrel's. When he smiles he makes
you think of a horse. He has opinions, commercial and political, which he
enunciates in a loud voice. Think of listening to Prussian opinions!
* * * * *
And there is another clerk who was meant for a variety-show specialist.
He hums comic songs and cracks jokes, and conducts witty pantomime
incessantly. He is very popular. He is never quiet. Sometimes he slaps you
on the back.
* * * * *
I wrestle with my soul all day; the rage of it is like to burst me. The
infinite pettiness of it--that is the thing! I am bitten and stung by a
swarm of poisonous flies!
* * * * *
August 24th.
Another twelve dollars yesterday! I gasp with relief as if I were hauling
a load up successive slopes; here is so much gained, so much safe. I have
gotten along on twelve dollars; I have a little over thirty-five.
* * * * *
I believe these things are more wearing than the toil of writing; I know I
find it so. Then I accomplish something; here I work myself into nervous
frenzies, and chafe and pant for nothing. I can feel how it weakens me; I
can feel that I have less elasticity, less _élan_ every day. Ah, God,
let me go!
* * * * *
August 25th.
Why doesn't he answer my letter?
* * * * *
August 27th.
To-day I took myself off in a corner. I said: “Am I not here, have I not
this thing to _do_? The power that I have in my soul--it is to be
used for the doing of _this_; if I am to save my soul, it must be by
the doing of _this_! And I am a fool that I do not face the fact. I
shall be free some day--that I know--I have only to bide my time and wait.
Meanwhile I am to stay here--or until I have money enough; and now I will
turn my soul to iron, and do it! I am going to study what I can in this
place, and at night I am going to speed home and get into a book. I will
never stop again, and never give up--and above all never think, and never
feel! I will get books of fact to read--I will read histories, and no more
poetry. I will read Motley, and Parkman, and Prescott, and Gibbon, and
Macaulay.--Macaulay will not afflict me with wild yearnings, I guess.”
--Is there any author in the world more vulgar than Macaulay?--unless it be
Gibbon. Or possibly Chesterfield.
I have heard Chesterfield's letters referred to as a “school for
gentlemen.” When the world is a little bit civilized, men will read them as
they now read Machiavelli's Prince.
* * * * *
--All these resolutions while I was selling wholesale-paper! I fought quite
a battle, and heard some of the old-time music. What a task for a poet,--to
fight _not_ to live!
* * * * *
August 30th.
I have still heard nothing from my poet! I wrote to him to-day to ask him
if he had received my letter. Eighteen whole days gone by, and I watching
every mail, with The Captive lying idle in a drawer! I can not stand
waiting like this--Why do not people answer my letters promptly?
* * * * *
August 31st.
I have been reading George Moore's Evelyn Innes for the last two days. He
is striving toward deeper things; but the mark of the beast is in the
fiber.
The spiritual struggles of a young lady with two sloppy lovers at once! Of
a young and beautiful girl whose first walk on the street with a baronet is
a “temptation.” And who turns nun at last and worships the Holy Virgin, in
order to forget her nastiness! A Gallicized novelist ought to deal with
Gallic characters. While I was reading Evelyn Innes, I could never get away
from the impression that I was reading the career of a chambermaid.
And the whole story hinges upon the fact that a woman can not sing the
sacred ecstasy of Tristan and Isolde without being a harlot!
* * * * *
I read the Confessions of a Young Man, and I felt the vigor of it, and the
daring; but it was a very cheap kind of daring. The fundamental laws of
life are occasionally enunciated by commonplace people, and that gives an
opportunity to be startling. But I leave it for small boys to gape at such
fireworks; my interest is in the stars.
The last chapter runs into absolute brutality. I am accustomed to say that
Gautier is a ruffian author, but if there is any ruffianism in Gautier more
savage than that sentiment about the “skinful of champagne,” I do not know
where to find it.
About such stuff as that I would say that it makes me sick, but it is not
worth that--it simply makes me tired. One would not call it impudent,
because it is so silly--it is the driveling of a fool. He will get me off
in a corner now, will he, and probe my soul? “Out with it!--Why not confess
that you'd like to live a life of dissipation if you only had the money!”
Why, you poor fool, before I would live such a life, I'd have my eyes torn
out, and my ears torn off, and my fingers, and my hands, and my feet. “Why
not confess the wild joys of getting drunk on champagne!” Poor fool, I have
never tasted champagne.
* * * * *
--“Perhaps that is just the reason,” you add. When the folly of a fool
reaches its climax, the fool becomes a wit. But possibly that is it, I
never was drunk.
--And yet I know something about drunkenness. I once buried a drunkard. He
was my father. He died in a delirium.
* * * * *
There must be something young about my attitude--men smile at me. But I do
not find it easy to imagine evil of men. I do not mean the crowd--I do not
philosophize about the crowd. But I mean the artists. I was looking at a
picture of Musset the other day; it was a noble face--the face of a man;
and in the face of a man I read dignity and power--high things that I love
and bow before. Here are lips,--and lips are things that speak of beauty;
here are eyes,--and eyes are things that seek the light. And now to gaze
upon that face and say: “This man lived in foulness; he was the slave of
hateful lust--he died rotten, and sodden with drink.”--I say that I do not
find it easy.
* * * * *
I have nothing to do with any artist who has anything to do with
sin--anything, one way or the other. If a man must still think about sin,
let him go back, and let him go down,--let him be a Christian. Let him
wrestle with his body, overcome himself, obey laws, and learn fear. To such
men and to such ways I can only say: “I have nothing to do with you.” My
life is for free men--my words are for free men--for men defying law and
purged of fear, for men mad with righteousness. What right have foul men
in the temple of my muse? The thought of them is insult to me--away with
them--in their presence I will not speak of what I love. For I am a
drunkard--yes, and I am drunk all night and all day! And I am a lover--a
free lover--knowing no law and defying all restraint. And how can I say
such things in the presence of foul men?
Let not any man think that he can feel the love-clasp of my muse while
he hides a satyr's body underneath his cloak. Free is my muse, and bold,
fearing not the embrace of man, fearing not passion, nor the words of
passion,--not the throbbing heart, nor the burning brow, nor the choking
voice. But the warmth of her breath and the fire of her eyes, they were
kindled at a shrine of which the beast does not know. Let not any man think
that he can kiss the lips of my muse while his breath is tainted with the
fumes of wine!
* * * * *
An artist is a man with one pleasure--and it is not self-indulgence; an
artist is a man with one virtue--and it is not self-restraint. Sweetly and
simply will I and my muse take all temptation, knowing not that it tempts,
and wondering at the clamor of men. I will eat and drink that I may be
nourished, I will sleep that I may be rested, I will dress that I may be
warm. When I go among men it shall be to speak the truth, and when I press
a woman to my heart, it shall be that a man may be born into the world.
There is but one sin that I know, and that is dulness; there is but one
virtue, and that is fire. And for the rest, I love pleasure, and hold
it sweetest and holiest of all the words I know; the guide-post of all
righteousness is pleasure--which whoso learns to read may follow all his
days.
* * * * *
September 1st.
“The reason for delay in replying to your letter is that it was mislaid.
I am directed by Mr. ---- to say that he has so many requests to read
manuscripts that he is compelled to make it an invariable rule to decline.
“Secretary.”
So that hope is gone!
That letter--or rather the chain of thoughts which it brought me, made me
feel ill to-night. “So many requests!” “An invariable rule!”
So many swarming millions, helpless, useless, dying unknown and unheeded.
And I am in the midst of them--helpless, unknown, and unheeded! And now
that I have done my work, I can not find any one with faith
enough--interest enough--even to look at it!
How could a man who is a poet--who writes things that stir the hearts of
men--how could he send such an answer to such a letter as I wrote him? I do
not think that _I_ shall ever send such an answer!
Or is it really true, then, that the world is such a thing that it closes
the hearts even of poets? That his ardor and his consecration, his sympathy
and love and trust--he gives all to the things of his dreams and never to
the men and women he meets?
Oh how shall I find one--just one--warmhearted man!
* * * * *
I begin the trying of the publishers once more to-morrow.
* * * * *
September 2d.
I am in my sixth week! Two weeks of the money is nearly gone--I had to get
another pair of shoes and a necktie and to have some things laundered
twice. I have to be respectable now, I can not wash my own clothes at the
faucet when no one is about.
My “room” costs me seventy-five cents a week, and my food from a dollar and
a half to two dollars. At the end of the seventh week I shall have over
fifty dollars clear. I have made up my mind to give up the place at the end
of that time. Twelve dollars is the most I ever earned, but I can't stand
it longer than that.
I shall be clear for nearly four months, and that will surely put me safe
until I have found a publisher. I would go away into the country again,
only I must have books. I have nothing to write now.
* * * * *
--Oh the heat of this dreadful city; sometimes it takes all my strength to
bear that and my drudgery, and nothing else. When the night comes I am
panting, and can only shut my eyes.
If I am kept here long, I tell you I shall never, as long as I live, be as
strong and keen as I might have been.
So long as I was working, striving for an education, preparing myself,
I could bear it. But now I have done all that I can do amid these
surroundings. I cry out day and night, “I have earned my freedom!”
* * * * *
September 6th.
He had no business to send me that answer! He had no business to send it!
I care not how many such requests he gets! Pain throbbed in that letter,
hunger and agony were in it; and if he were a man he would have known it!
He had no business to send me that answer! I shall never forgive him for
it.
* * * * *
The last publisher said it would take a month; they had many manuscripts on
hand, and could not do any better. So I have only to set my teeth together
and wait.
* * * * *
I count the days before my escape from that hideous place down-town. The
thought of it drives me wild--it gets more and more a torture. Can I stay
out the week? I ask.
* * * * *
September 8th.
All day--all day--I have but one thought in my mind--but one thought in my
life! I am beset by it, I can not escape it. That horrible shame to which I
am subjected!
It turns all my life to gall! It beats down my enthusiasm, it jeers at my
faith, it spits into the face of my unselfishness! I come home every night
weak and worn and filled with despair, or else with a choking in my throat,
and helpless, cruel rage in my soul. Never mind that I am going to be
free--the wrong is that it should ever have been--it will stay with me all
my days and turn all my life to gall! It will wreck all my visions, all my
aspirations, my faith, my eagerness; the memory of it will sound like a
mocking voice in my ears, a sneer!
Day by day I strive and struggle and tear my-self to pieces, and sink back
worn out; and don't you suppose that has any effect upon me? I can feel it.
I see it plain as day, and shudder at it--I am being cowed! I am being
tamed, subdued, overpowered; the thing is like a great cold hand that is
laid upon me, pressing me down, smothering me! I know it--and I cry out
and struggle as if in a nightmare; but it only presses the harder. Why, I
was like a lion--restless--savage--all-devouring! Never-ceasing, eager,
untamable--hungry for life, for experience, for power! I rushed through in
days what others took months at--I watched every instant--I crowded hours
into it.
* * * * *
--And now look at me! I crouch and whine--there is an endless moan in
my soul. Can you break a man's spirit so that he never rises again? So
that all his attempts to be what he was mock at him? So that he never
_tries_ any more? Look at those poor wretches you pass on the
street--those peasants from Europe, from Russia! See the restless,
shifting eyes, the cringing gait--_that_ is what it is to be tamed!
* * * * *
Hateful tyrant of the commonplace--so you will lay your cold hand over me
and crush out all the fire from my heart. All this that was to build new
empires--new hopes, new virtues, new power; all that I was, and all that
I sought to be! Ah, but you will not crush me--understand it well, you
may beat me and kick me, you may starve me to death, but you will never
overcome me, you will never tame me into one of the pack-horses of society!
I will fight while I have a breath in me, while my heart has left one beat.
The time may come when I shall have to drag myself away like a sick beast
to die in the mountains; but if it does, I shall go defying you!
* * * * *
Bah!
--How I wish I could find a rich man who could spare it, and from whom I
could steal a thousand dollars. I would turn it into a thousand songs that
diamonds could not buy--that would build new empires--and then I would pay
the poor rich man back.
* * * * *
--I read a poem of Matthew Arnold's last night:
From the world's temptations,
From tribulations;
From that fierce anguish
Wherein we languish;
From that torpor deep
Wherein we lie asleep,
Heavy as death, cold as the grave,
Save, oh save!
* * * * *
September 10th.
A man was talking to me to-day about what I am doing. “I should think you
would try to get some work more congenial,” he said, “some literary work.”
Yes!--I sell wholesale-paper, and that is bad enough; but at least I do not
sell my character.
I to enter into the literary business world! I to forsake my ideals and my
standards--to learn to please the public and the men who make money out of
the public! Ah, no--let me go on selling paper, and “keep my love as a
thing apart--no heathen shall look therein!”
* * * * *
What could I do, besides? And who would give me a chance? I could not
review books--I know nothing about modern books, and still less about
modern book standards. Neither do I know anything to write that any
magazines would want.
* * * * *
--And besides, in four days more, shall I not have fifty or sixty dollars?
And what shall I want then?
* * * * *
Ah, how I count the days! And when I am out of this place, how I will run
away from it! The very books I read while I was there will always be
painful to me.
--They will be glad to get rid of me, too. Poor me--I have given up trying
to be understood. All these things pass. My business is with God.
* * * * *
Cicero thinks that the remembering of past sorrows is a pleasure. Yes,
when the sorrows are beautiful, noble. But I have sorrows in my life, the
thoughts of which send through my whole frame--literally and physically--a
_spasm_.
* * * * *
September 11th.
I told the bald-headed, grim-visaged senior-partner to-day that I was going
to leave. He seemed surprised--offered me a “raise.” I told him I was going
out of New York.
* * * * *
--I am a liar. Sometimes I philosophize about that. I am an unprincipled
idealist. I have not the least respect for fact; I am doing my work. If I
could help my work, I would lie serenely in all the six languages I know.
And if I were caught, I would say, “Why, yes, of course!”
I think I would rather have a finger cut off than say to a New York
business man, “I am a poet!”
* * * * *
September 12th.
I have been forcing myself to read Gibbon, but half of him was all I could
stand. I think with astonishment of the reputation of this history, a bare
recital of facts, without the least interest or importance, and a recital
by the shallowest of men!
The vulgarity of his character is more evident than ever since the
repressed parts of his biography have appeared. It is comical. And this
man, who has no more understanding of spirituality than a cow, to tell the
story of the greatest movement of the soul of man in history!
There is not one gleam of the Christian superstition left in me. I have
nothing to fear from the sneers of Gibbon any more than I have from those
of Voltaire; but I do not care to hear lectures on the steam-engine by a
man who does not believe in steam.
* * * * *
--Some of these days--the last thing that I can see on the horizon of my
future--I am going to write a tragedy called Jesus. The time is past, it
seems to me, when an artist must leave alone the greatest art-theme of the
ages.
Is it not the greatest? Is there any story in history more sublime than the
story of this man? A humble, ignorant peasant he was, and out of the faith
of his soul he made the future of the world for centuries! It is a thing
that makes your brain reel.
I write it casually, but I have shuddered over it far into the deep, deep
night. I have dreamed of two acts--one of them Gethsemane, and the other
Calvary.--Poor fool, perhaps I shall never write them!
* * * * *
I have burrowed into that soul, seeking out the truths of it; the truths,
as distinguished from the ten thousand fancies of men. When I write that
drama I shall deal with those truths.
The climax of the scene in the garden of Gethsemane will be a vision in
which looms up before him the whole history of Christianity; and that will
be the last agony. It will be then that he sweats blood.
That will be something, I think.
* * * * *
September 13th.
To-morrow is the last time I shall ever go into that hellish place!
To-morrow is the last time in all my life that I shall ever have to say,
“We have this same quality in ninety-pound paper at four sixty-nine!”
Throughout all this thing it seemed to me that when I came out I should no
longer have a soul. But it is not so; I shall still keep at it grimly.
* * * * *
September 14th.
And now to-day I make my plans. I must keep near a library; but I shall
hunt out a room uptown. There I can be near the Park, and I shall suffer
a little less from these hideous noises. I shall go over there and spend
every day--find out some place where there are not too many nurse-girls!
I can not begin any other book; I must stand or fall by The Captive. I
shall be a “homo unius libri”!
But I can not attempt to write again--ever--in these circumstances. It is
not that my force is spent--I am only at the beginning of my life, I see
everything in the future. But I could not wrestle with these outside things
again--it took all my courage and all my strength to do it once.
* * * * *
There is no reason why I should worry about that. I have fifty-six dollars,
and I am free for four months, barring accidents. And surely I shall have
found some one to love my book by that time!
* * * * *
And so I set to work reading.
* * * * *
September 15th.
A slight preliminary, of course. I spent a ghastly day hunting for a room.
I found one in a sufficiently dirty and cheap place, and then I spent
another hour finding a man who would take my trunk for a quarter. Having
succeeded in that, I walked up there to save five cents; and when the trunk
came the driver tried to charge me fifty cents!
* * * * *
Picture me haggling and arguing on the steps--“Didn't know it was so
far--Man didn't understand”--God knows what else! And then he tries to
carry off the trunk--and I rushing behind, looking for a policeman! Again
more arguing, and a crowd, of course. At last it appears that I have to pay
him what he asks and go down to the City Hall and make my complaint--hadn't
told him how many steps there were, etc. So finally I agree to carry it up
the steps myself, if he'll only leave it for a quarter!
Next you must picture me breaking my back and tearing my fingers and the
damned wall paper--while the damned frowsy-headed landlady yells and the
damned frowsy-headed boarders stick out their heads! And so in the end I
get into my steaming hot room and shut the door and fall down on the bed
and burst into tears.
* * * * *
O God, the stings of this bitter, haunting, horrible poverty! The ghastly
weight that has hung about my neck since ever I can remember! Oh, shall I
ever be free from it? Shall I ever know what it is to have what I ought
to have, to think of my work without the intrusion of these degrading
pettinesses?
They are so infinite, so endless, so hideous! The thing gets to be a habit
of my thoughts; my whole nature is steeped and soaked in it--in filthy
sordidness! I plot and I plan all the day--I can not buy a newspaper
without hesitating and debating--I am like a ragpicker going about the
streets!
Sometimes the thing goads me so that I think I must go mad--when I think of
the time that I lose, of the power, of the courage! I walk miles when I am
exhausted, to save a car-fare! I wear ragged collars and chafe my neck! I
stand waiting in foul-smelling grocery shops with crowds of nasty people!
I cook what I eat in a half-dirty frying-pan because I can not afford to
pay the servant to wash it! So it is that I drag myself about--chafing and
goaded--crouching and cringing like a whipped cur!
My God, when will I be free? My God! My God!
* * * * *
--The boarding-houses that I have been in! The choice collection of
memories that I have stored away in my mind, memories of boarding-houses!
The landladies' faces--the assorted stenches--the dark hallways--the
gabbling, quarreling, filthy, beer-carrying tenants! Oh, I wring my hands
and something clutches me in my heart! Let me go! Let me go!
Six times in the course of my life, when I have been starved sick on my own
feeding, I have become a “table-boarder”; and out of those six experiences
I could make myself another Zola. The infinite variety of animality in
those six vile stables--the champing jaws and the slobbering mouths and
the rank odor of food! The men who shoveled with their knives or plastered
things on their forks as hod-carriers do mortar! The women who sucked in
their soup, and the children who smeared their faces and licked their lips
and slopped upon the table-cloth! The fat Dutchman who grunted when he ate,
and then leaned back and panted! The yellow woman with the false teeth who
gathered everything about her on the table! The flashy gentleman with the
diamond scarf-pin and the dirty cuffs, who made a tower out of his dirty
dishes and then sucked his teeth! O God!
And the loathsome food!--For seven years I have had my nose stamped into
this mud, and all in vain; I can still starve, but I can not eat what is
not clean.
--Some day I shall put into a book all the rage and all the hate and all
the infamy of these things, and it will be a book that will make your flesh
sizzle. And you will wonder why I did it!
It will be better than Troilus and Cressida, better than the end of
Gulliver's Travels--better than Swellfoot the Tyrant!
* * * * *
I wonder why nobody else ever reads or mentions Swellfoot the Tyrant? I
call it the most whole-hearted, thorough-going, soul-satisfying piece of
writing in any language that I know.
* * * * *
--When you think of my work you must think of these things! I do not
mention them often, but they are never out of my mind. If you should read
anything beautiful of mine, you must bear in mind that it is about half a
chance that there was a dirty child screaming out in the hall while I wrote
it.
* * * * *
September 20th.
It took me a couple of days to realize that I have still not to go
down-town. But I have a fine facility in making myself new habits! Just now
I am on a four months' studying campaign. It is monotonous--to read about.
I get up at six, and when I have had my breakfast and fixed a lunch, I go
over into the Park. There are only birds and squirrels and a few tramps
about then, and it is glorious. Sometimes I am so happy that I do not want
to read; later come the squalling children and the hot sun; but I flit
about from place to place. I wonder what they think of me!--
Wer bist du, und was fehlt dir!
* * * * *
I read all day, right straight along, and all night, now that it is
not too hot. I have always done my reading by periods--I read our
nineteenth-century poets that way, sixteen hours a day; I read Shakespeare
in three weeks that way, and finished the month with Milton. So when I got
German, I read Goethe and Schiller, and Molière and Hugo again.
Now I am reading history; it gives me the nightmare, but one has to read
it.
Every night when I put down my book, I flee in thought to my own land as to
a city of refuge. A history where everything counts! A history that is not
a mad, blind chaos of blood and horror! A history that has other meaning
than the drunken lust and the demon pride of a Napoleon or a Louis le
Grand!
--Some day the ages will discern two movements in history: the first, the
Christian dispensation, and the second the American.
There is a great deal in knowing how to read, especially with such books
as history. I try to read as I write; to lash my author, to make him fill
my mind. If he gets sluggish I am soon through with him--I read whole
paragraphs in a sentence, and whole volumes in an hour.
* * * * *
September 25th.
The third week of the publisher's month has gone by. God, how cruel is
waiting! I wonder if their readers knew how hungry I am if they would not
hurry a little!
I say to myself--“There has been enough of this nonsense! Oh, surely there
will not be any more, surely these men must take it!”
* * * * *
September 28th.
I still read the literary journals and tingle with excitement thinking of
the time when The Captive is discussed in them. Can I believe that this
book will not stir the world? If I did not believe it, I could not believe
anything!
I feel a new interest now in the authors that people talk about. I want
to know who they are and what they do. And all the time I find myself
thinking: “Have I more than this man?--More than that man?” That always
throws me into despair, because I am a great admirer; and because I am
always hypnotized by the last thing that I read.
But I find very little that is great in modern books. Books are better
made now than they ever were before--I mean in the way of literary
craftsmanship. As far as form goes, there is no author living who would put
together such a hodge-podge as Wilhelm Meister, or La Nouvelle Heloïse. But
they all imitate each other; they are all mild and tame; there is no real
power, no genius among them. They have even forgotten it exists.
* * * * *
I came across this, for instance, the other day in a book of Mr. Howells's:
“In fact, the whole belief in genius seems to me rather a mischievous
superstition, and if not mischievous, always, still always, a superstition.
From the account of those who talk about it, genius appears to be the
attribute of a very potent and admirable prodigy which God has created
out of the common for the astonishment and confusion of the rest of us
poor human beings. Do they mean anything more or less than the mastery
which comes to any man in accordance with his powers and diligence in any
direction? If not, why not have an end to the superstition which has caused
our race to go on for so long writing and reading of the difference between
talent and genius?”
Is not that simply blasphemous?
* * * * *
--Have I genius? Ah, save the word!
How can I know? It is none of my affair--I do my work.
Genius is next to the last and most sacred word we know, next to God;
and next to the most abused word. Every man will possess it, in degree
proportionate to his vanity. I think if they knew the work and the terror
that goes with even a grasp at it, they would not make so free with it.
* * * * *
September 30th.
I wait--I wait for The Captive. I do all these other things--I read, I
think, I study--but all the while I am merely passing the time. I am
waiting for The Captive to win me the way. All my life hangs on that, I
can do nothing else but pray for that--pray for it and yearn for it!
--Yes--and do you know it?--I am sinking down every day! Down, down! The
Captive is my high-water mark; where I was when I wrote that I shall never
come again in my life--until I am given my freedom and new courage, and can
set to work to toil as I did then!
Tell me not about future books, foolish publishers! I have told you I put
all that I had and all that I was into that book! And by that book I stand
or I fall.
* * * * *
October 3d.
Their month is up. I walked down there to-day and saw them. “The manuscript
is now being read--we are awaiting a second report.”
A second! That made my heart go like mad. “Does that mean that the first is
favorable?” I asked.
“It means that we are interested in it,” the man answered; “we will let you
know shortly.”
Oh this waiting, this waiting!
* * * * *
October 8th.
Ah, God! I came home from the Park tonight, and I saw something that made
my heart go down like lead. It hurt me so that I cried out!
My manuscript! It was back again!
O Christ! How the sight of it hurt me! There was a letter with it, and my
hand shook as I opened it:
* * * * *
“We are returning you the manuscript of The Captive by messenger herewith,
regretting exceedingly that we can not make you a publishing offer upon
it.”
* * * * *
Is not this awful? Oh, it is terrible! It is beyond belief! A whole month
gone, and only a note like that to show for it! Four weeks of yearning and
hoping--of watching the mail in agony--of struggling and toiling to forget!
And then a note like this!
Oh, it drives me wild! I sat to-night in a chair motionless, forgetting
that I was hungry, forgetting everything. I looked to the future; I had
a feeling that I do not think I ever had in my life before--a horrible,
black, yawning despair--a thing so fearful that it took my breath away.
Suppose you were standing on a bridge over an abyss, and that suddenly it
gave way, and in one dreadful instant you realized that you were going
down--down like a flash--and that nothing could save you!
* * * * *
So it is to be this, so this is to be my life! I am to send this book to
publisher after publisher, and have it come back like this! And meanwhile
to spend my time alternating between this room--and the wholesale-paper
business!
* * * * *
Yes, I am getting to see the truth! I am a helpless atom, struggling
to survive--a glimmering light in the darkness--and I am going out! I
am losing--and what shall I do! Who will save me--who will help me?
* * * * *
I was talking to a friend yesterday; he predicted just what happened. “Make
one rule,” he said, “expect nothing of the world. When you send out a
manuscript, _know_ that it is coming back!--Otherwise you go mad.”
But I should go mad _that_ way. Why, what am I to do? How am I to work
unless I can get free? I can not live a single day unless I have that hope.
And if these blind creatures that make money out of books keep on sending
my poem back--why, it will kill me--it will turn me into a fool!
* * * * *
October 9th.
I did not go to bed last night until nearly daylight. I was desperate--I
was crazy with perplexity. This thing had never occurred to me as the
wildest possibility.
I would pace the floor for hours; and then again sink into a stupor. “They
send it back! They don't want it!”--I kept on muttering.--And, poor fool
that I am, I had pictured to myself how they would read it. I saw the
publisher himself glancing at a line of it by chance, and then rushing on.
I saw him declaiming it with excited eyes--as I used to declaim it! Poor
fool!
* * * * *
--Well, I made another desperate attempt. I wrote last night to another
poet that I respect--(the list is not very long). I wrote in the heat of
my despair--I told him the whole story. I said that I was crying for the
judgment of some one who had love and enthusiasm; some one who had another
idea than making money out of it. I told him that I knew he had many such
requests, but that he never had one from a man who had worked as I had. I
pleaded that he need only read a few lines--I begged him to let me hear
from him at once.
--And now I shall wait. I can't do anything else but wait!
* * * * *
October 10th.
I tried to read a novel to-day, but I could not fix my attention--I could
not do anything.
* * * * *
October 11th.
“I answer your letter at once as you ask me to. In the first place let me
assure you of my sympathy. You are at a stage at which all poets--or nearly
all--have to pass. Do not let yourself be disheartened--keep at it--and if
you work as you write you will come out the victor in the end.
“As to my reading the book, you must believe what I tell you--that I
am simply crowded. I have no time to explain, but I could not possibly
do it now, nor can I tell you when I could. Go ahead and try the
publishers--there are enough of them. And take my advice--do not go on
clinging to that book--do not pin all your hope to that--go on--go on!
Maybe it _is_ young and exaggerated--what of it? Go on!--Meanwhile
your circumstances seem to you hard--but in future years when you look back
at them you will see, as all men see, that it was in that struggle that you
got your strength.”
* * * * *
It is a lie! It is a lie! It is silly cant--it is brutal stupidity! What,
you try to tell me that it is in contest with these degradations--these
horrors--that I am to find my enthusiasm and my hope! Am I a dog that you
must kick me to my task?--It is a lie, I say--it is a lie!
* * * * *
If you could not find time to read my work, very well; but you did not have
to sugar the pill with silly platitudes such as those. “Go on, go on!” My
God, what a mockery! Is it not to go on that I am panting day and night--is
it not with the hunger to go on that I am mad?--You fool--do you think I
wrote to you because I wanted some one to admire me--because I had the need
of praise and encouragement in my work? Give me a year's freedom--give me
two hundred dollars--and I'll show you how much I care for your praise.
But then you chain me here to your torture stake, and bid me “Go on! Go
on!”
--And it is in that struggle that I am to get my strength! That sentence
burns in my blood, it stings me! What is this struggle that you prate
about, anyway? And what do you mean by “getting my strength?” Did I get my
strength to write The Captive that day when those fishwives moved in next
door to me? Did I get my strength to dream of my new work that day when I
was chasing after an express-driver to save a quarter? Do I get it now when
I am sitting here panting and ill with a headache, and with despair, and
with lack of food? Damn such asininity, I say!
What do you mean, I cry--what do you mean? Would it have helped Kant to
solve the problems of the universe to have had a swarm of mosquitoes
buzzing about his face? Would it have helped Beethoven to compose his
symphonies to have had a dance hall over his head? What ghastly farce
it is! That a poet is helped to realize his dreams and his joys in this
hellish, reeking, market-place of a city! Why, I tell you, sir, that every
hour that I have lived in it I have known that I have paid out unmeasured
powers of my soul! And I know now, as every other poet knows, that when I
am out of it I come with what pittance of strength I have been able to save
from the horrible ordeal. Do you think that I am a fool that I do not know
what inspires me and what degrades me? Why, sir, I sit here and watch my
spirit wither like a frost-bitten plant!
Such things bring tears of indignation into my eyes.
* * * * *
--As a matter of simple reference, if any one wants to know what I imagine
helps a poet--it is to live in the woods, to think and to dream, to read
books and hear music, to eat wholesome food--and, above all, to escape from
hot asphalt streets, cable-car gongs, and flaring advertisements of soaps
and cigars.
* * * * *
October 12th.
I had an adventure to-day. I woke up with a headache, dull, sick,
discouraged. I cared no more about anything. I got out The Captive and made
ready to take it to the publishers.
And then I thought I would read a little of it.
I sat down in the corner--I forgot the publishers--I sat
reading--reading--and my heart beat fast, and my hands shook, and all my
soul rose in one hymn of joy!
Oh world, do your worst, I do not care! You may turn me off--but the gates
of heaven are open! I will go on--I will bear anything--bear all things! I
will wait and live and learn meanwhile, knowing with all my soul what this
book is and what it must bring. So long as I can read it, I can wake my
soul again.
* * * * *
It is at the publishers'. I will read books meantime and be happy.
I saw a manuscript clerk this time. She was very airy. I fear I am a
sad-looking poet--my buttonholes are beginning to wear out. “We never read
manuscripts out of turn,” she said. “It will take them three or four
weeks.”
* * * * *
--Yes, good poet, that is my answer to you. I can not take your advice--I
will cling to my book--I will pin all my hopes to it! I will toil and
strive for it, I will haunt men with it, I will shout it from the
housetops. No other book--no future book--_this_ book! It is a great
book--a great book--it is--it _is_!
* * * * *
I am not ignorant of the price it costs to do that; it is my fate
that I have to pay it. I can see, for instance, how Wordsworth paid
it--Wordsworth, our greatest, our noblest poet since Milton. He had
his sacred inspiration, and the world laughed at it; and so, grimly,
systematically, he set to work to teach them--to say to all men--to say to
himself--to say day and night--“It _is_ poetry! It is _great_
poetry! It is--_it is_!”
And of course at last he made them believe him; and when they believed him,
he--Wordsworth--was a matter-of-fact, self-centered, dull and poor old man.
* * * * *
--It all rests with you, good world! How long must I stand here and knock
at the door?
* * * * *
October 18th.
I am reading, reading--and trying to forget meanwhile! When I get through
my long list of histories I shall go back to my Greek dramatists again.
My Greek is getting better now--I expect to have a happy time with
Aristophanes.--He is the funniest man that ever lived, Aristophanes.
Then I am coming back to read the French novelists. There are many of them
I do not know. (I do not expect to like them--I do not like Frenchmen.)
* * * * *
October 22d.
I was glancing to-day over a volume of Shelley's, and the memory of old
glories thrilled in me. Ah, let me not forget what Shelley was to me in my
young struggling days! Let me not forget while I am wrestling with a dull
world--let me not forget what a poet is to young men hungering for beauty!
Let me not forget!
Yes, it is to such that my appeal is, it is by such that I will be judged!
It is for such that I toil! For hearts upon whom the cold world has not
laid its hand! For the poets and the seekers of all ages! Oh come to me,
poets and seekers of all ages--dwell in my memory and strengthen my soul!
That I go not down altogether--that I be not overcome by the dull things
about me!
* * * * *
These thoughts are not becoming to a reader of history. But I am not a good
reader of history--the old beasts are still growling within me. Something
starts a longing in me--I cry out that I am getting dull, that I am going
down, that I am putting off--I, who never put off before! And so the old
storms rise and the great waves come rolling again!
* * * * *
October 25th.
I read that over just now. Yes, it is this that I dread. I dread the habit
of not striving! When that becomes my habit it is my death! And here I sit,
day by day--doing just the thing I dread! “Let me go _now_!” something
shouts in me. “_Now_--or I shall never go at all!”
Oh, if I could find some word to tell men the terror of that thought!
--It is my life--that is what it is! To obey this thing within me, to save
this thing within me, to _find_ this thing within me--that is my life!
* * * * *
It is a demon thing--it is a thing that has lifted me up by the hair
of my head and shaken me--that has glared at me with the wild eyes of a
beast--that has beaten me like a storm of wind and struck me down upon the
ground! It shakes me now--it shakes me all the time--it makes me scream
with pain--incoherently, frantically. “Oh save me!--Spare me!--Let me go!”
* * * * *
I rave, you say--yes, I know. That is because I can not say what I feel.
But what matters it?
* * * * *
Sometimes I say to myself, “I put all that in The Captive, and men have not
heard it! And now, what can I do that they _will_ hear--shall I have
to go out in the streets and scream? Or what other desperate thing is
there?”
* * * * *
--Mark this, oh you world that I can not make hear me! Some desperate thing
I shall do--I will not sit here and be respectable always!
--I wonder what locusts taste like, and just where one could find wild
honey.
* * * * *
October 29th.
I sang a song to-day--a mad, mad song! I wish I could bring it back. It
came to me unexpectedly, while I was kneeling by the bed, thinking.
I have forgotten it all now--one always forgets his best songs. I have not
a line of this one, except the chorus:
For I am lord of a thousand dollars!
So it is that my best songs go. I can count them on my fingers. But I have
not yet learned how precious they are--that is why I lose them.
--Do you remember that time on the great cliffs by the ocean? There was
nothing left but the ending again--
Oh bear me away in thy bosom,
Thou wind of the mountain high!
* * * * *
November 2d.
I am not always as I write here--I am not always angry. I have my tender
moments, when I see my woe as the world's woe--above all the poverty. Oh
let me always have a tender heart for the poor!
* * * * *
November 6th.
I have a distant relative in this city, an old gentleman who belongs to
clubs and is what is known as a “man of the world.” He has quite a sense
of humor--is famous for good stories. He told me that he was interested in
me--that he would be glad to find a place for me in life, if I would only
get over my youthful follies. It has been years since I saw him, but I can
still hear him.
The last words he ever said to me were these--said with his quiet, amused
smile: “Never mind, my boy, leave it to time. You needn't argue with
me--just leave it to time, and it'll come out all right.”
Never have I sunk into a fit of despair that I have not thought of that;
and the quiet smile has become the sneer of an imp. It has become all the
world watching me, and knowing full well the issue; wise world!
That memory has never yet lost its power to make me grip my hands suddenly.
“So! And my life has no other purpose, then, than to point a moral for a
rich clubman!”
* * * * *
Leave it to time! Leave it to time! O God, what a sentence that is--so
savage--and so true! Leave it to the long weary days that come one after
another--that never tire--that never are beaten--that never are less--never
faster--never slower--that wear you out as water wears a stone! Leave it to
time! Say nothing, fear nothing; leave it to time! Leave it to the hours of
dulness, the hours of sickness, the hours of despair! Leave it to failure
piled upon failure, to insult piled upon insult, to rebuff upon rebuff, to
sneer upon sneer! Leave it to the endless, never-ceasing sight of ugliness;
the endless, never-ceasing sight of selfishness; of pettiness, emptiness,
heartlessness, hatefulness! Leave it to heat and to cold, to dust and to
dirt, to hunger and penury, to headache and heartache, and bitter, bitter
loneliness! Leave it to time! Leave it to time!--_Oh my Father in
heaven!_
* * * * *
November 8th.
--What am I doing? I am reading books full of facts--I am reading books
that do not make me wretched. I am _not_ reading poetry.
I am leaving it to time!
* * * * *
November 10th.
It has been four weeks yesterday! I have been expecting to hear from the
last publishers every day for a week. I have been trembling while I watched
each mail. I have more than a hope that these publishers will take it--they
publish a deal of poetry.
But I have been practising my friend's plan, I have been saying to myself
all day: “You might as well know that it is coming back. What is the use of
trying to deceive yourself?”
It has been four months since I finished The Captive! If I had known then
what I know now, I do not believe I could ever have written a line of it.
What do I know _now_?
--I know more than I care to own to myself. There is a deadly growth taking
root in the depths of my soul.
* * * * *
November 13th
It is two months to-day since I gave up my last place. I have gotten along
on just three dollars a week, including everything. I find it is not
possible to do better than that, there are so many odds and ends one needs.
I have spent twenty-seven dollars. I have twenty-nine dollars. That means I
can try two, or possibly three, publishers--after this one.
* * * * *
November 16th.
My method did make it easier after all. The letter came this morning.
* * * * *
“We have read with care the manuscript of The Captive which you have
offered us. We are pleased to be able to tell you that we have found it
a very fine piece of work, but we are sorry to say that our previous
experience with publications of this character does not lead us to believe
that we could make a success of it.
“We are holding MS. subject to your order.”
* * * * *
I did a desperate thing to-day--two of them. First I had to go and get the
manuscript, so I asked to see the publisher. I sat down and looked straight
into his face and said: “How is a man who is trying to write what is fine
to keep alive if the publishers won't publish what he writes?”
He was very kind--he seemed to be interested. He explained that a publisher
who published books that the public did not want would be driven out of
business in a year. Then he said he knew many who were facing the same
problem as I; that there was nothing to do but write for the magazines and
the papers, and that it was a bitter shame that society made no provision
for such men. “Your work is as noble and sincere as work can be,” he said,
“but I do not believe that you will find a publisher in this country to
undertake it, unless there be one who feels wealthy enough to do it as a
service to literature and a labor of love.”
* * * * *
That made me turn white. I got my manuscript and I went out on the street,
and the houses reeled about me. “So,” I said, “and that settles it!”
As I walked along I stared into the future. It seemed very clear all of a
sudden.
I thought it all out. “No one will publish The Captive,” I said, “and no
one would heed it if it were published. Therefore I have but one question
to face, Have I the strength to go on, living as I have lived, distracted
and tormented as I have been--and still piling up new emotions in my soul,
daring new efforts, reaching new heights, producing new books? I can have
no idea that my second work will be any more available than my first; on
the contrary, I know that it would be just what The Captive is, only more
so. Therefore, perhaps it will be ten years--perhaps it will be twenty
years--before men begin to pay any heed to what I have written! And so
there is the question, Have I the strength to go on in that way--have I the
strength to face that future?”
Then I grew faint and had to lean against a railing. _I knew that I could
not do that!_
* * * * *
It is no question of what I will do! It is a question of what I _can_
do! I am weakened and sick with the yearning that I have in me already. My
last “business” experience drove me mad. And I am to go on, I am to rouse
new hunger, new passion, new agony in my soul! Why, the work that I have
dreamed of next is so hard and so far-away that I hardly dared even whisper
it! It would take years and years of toiling! And I am to do it here in
this seething city--to do it while I sell wholesale-paper--to do it while
I am sick for lack of food! I can not do it! I _can_ not!
I went home, and I was crazy; so it was that I did my second desperate
thing.
I sat down and wrote a letter to Mr. ----. I wrote a letter--I can not
see how it could fail to stir the soul of any man. I told him how I had
toiled--I told him how for four long months I had waited in agony--I told
him what the publishers had said to me. I begged him--I implored him--for
the sake of the unuttered message that cried out day and night in my
soul--not to throw the letter aside--to read it--to give me a chance to
talk to him. I said: “I will live in a hut, I will cook my own food, I will
wear the clothes of a day laborer! If I can only be free--if I can only be
free to be an artist! I could do it, all of it, for two hundred dollars a
year; and I could win the battle, I know, if I had but three years. I am
desperate as I write to you--I look ahead and I can see only ruin; and not
ruin for myself--I do not mind that--but ruin for my art! I can tell you
what that means to me in but one way--I ask you to read my book. I have put
all my soul into that book--I will stake my all upon it. If you will only
read it, you will see what I mean--you will see why I have written you this
letter. You will see that it is not a beggar's letter, but a high challenge
from an artist's soul.”
* * * * *
So there is one chance more. I do not see how he can refuse, and if he will
only read the manuscript, I will be safe, I think.
* * * * *
November 20th.
I have done nothing but wait for four days, but I have not heard from him
yet. To-day I made up my mind that I would take the manuscript to another
publisher's meanwhile. He is probably busy, and may not answer for a long
while; and I can get the manuscript from a publisher at any time.
* * * * *
November 24th.
Still I have not heard anything from Mr. ----. My soul was full of hope
again, but it is sinking down as before. Is he not going to answer me at
all?--Can it be that he has not even read my letter?
* * * * *
November 26th.
I wrote to him again to-day, inquiring. If he does not answer that, I shall
suppose his secretary threw it away.
There is nothing weakens my soul like this endless waiting. I wander around
desolate, helpless, I can not fix my mind on anything. Oh, the shame of it!
* * * * *
November 30th.
I could not give up that hope yet. It seemed to me so terrible that of all
the men of wealth in this city there should not be one willing to help me
save my message.--I wrote to-day the same letter to a clergyman who I know
is wealthy, and who I believe would be interested in my work.
* * * * *
December 2d.
“I have received your letter, and I regret very much that I can not grant
the request you make. The pressure upon my time is such that I can not
possibly undertake to read your book. There would be no use in my doing so,
anyhow, for I tell you frankly it seems to me the situation you are in is
just what you need. My advice to you is to be a man and face it. I do not
see any reason why one person should be set free from the labor which all
of us have to share; and I assure you that you are entirely mistaken if you
think that an artist has nothing to expect but ruin from contact with the
world, and with suffering and toiling humanity.”
Isn't that a slap in the face for you?
Great God, I think that is the most insulting thing that has ever happened
to me in all my days. “Set free from the labor which all of us have to
share!”--What do you think I am--a tramp, or a loafer, you hound!
“A high challenge from an artist's soul!”
I think I never had so much hatred in my heart in all my life as I have
to-day. Oh, my God, what a thing this world is! What stupid, blind
brutality, what hideous vulgarity! This man a _clergyman_! And this is
his faith, his nobility, his understanding!
Why, I came out of the forest with my naked heart in my hands! I came out
quivering with emotion, melting with love and with trust for all men! I
came all sensitive and raw--hungering for sympathy and kindness! And oh, my
soul!--my God!--you have beaten me and kicked me as if I were a filthy cur!
Had I not offered up my heart for a sacrifice? Had I not burned it with
fire? Had I not made all my being one consecration? And all for men, for
men! For men I had torn myself--lashed myself--killed myself--for men I
had forgotten what self was--yes, literally that--forgotten what self
was! So little self had I left that I was willing to ask favors! So much
consecration had I, so much trust, that I would beg! I had wept--I had
suffered--I had starved! I had dreamed and sung, toiled until I set fire to
my very brain! And you have beaten me and kicked me as if I were a filthy
cur!
Those thoughts turn my whole soul into one wild curse! Have done with
laying bare your heart to men, have done with telling your life to men! Why
should you go on trying to be a poet, go on putting your secret soul into
books, to be spurned at by the rabble? Your soul is your own--it is your
God's--and what have the rabble to do with it! And all its tenderness! all
its shrinking ecstasy! all its holiest consecration!--You will take them
out to sell them to the rabble!
When will you get back into yourself, you fool? When will you have learned
your lesson, and let this hellish world boot you out of its way no more?
Let ever any man know a gleam of your heart again!--see one trace of your
joy!
* * * * *
--And I came to it on my knees--to this world--crouching, cringing,
begging! Oh, oh!--I scream it--Oh!
--And after that I sank down by the bed and hid my face and sobbed: “Oh,
Shelley! Oh, my Shelley!”
* * * * *
December 3d.
--I saw myself a business man to-day, clearing a path for myself! But it
does not last--I am not that kind of a man. My folly is my being--rest
assured that I shall climb back to the heights again where I am willing to
bear any insult.
* * * * *
But it will be a long time before I write any more letters. I have come to
understand the world's point of view.
I suppose busy men get thousands of letters from cranks; they will get no
more from me.
* * * * *
December 5th.
I was reading an essay on Balzac to-day. I read about Balzac's fondness for
_things_; and I put the book down and spent an hour of perplexity. I
fear I am a very narrow person in my sympathies and understandings. Why
should a man care about _things_! About all sorts of houses and
furniture, and pictures, and clothes, and jewels!
I can understand a man's caring about love and joy and aspiration. But
_things_! I can understand a child's caring about things, or a fool's
caring; I see millions of such; but an artist? A thinker? A _man_?
* * * * *
I am reading novels nowadays--reading all sorts of things that
_entertain_. I have not read a poem for a long time, I have no
interest in reading unless I can _go_ with it.
I have been studying some of the French novelists--some of Maupassant
yesterday. What a strange creature is a Frenchman! A nervous, hysterical,
vain, diseased creature!
* * * * *
“The Gallic disease!” Let that be a phrase.
* * * * *
The Gallic disease is this: to see only one thing in life, to know only one
purpose, to understand only one pleasure; to have every road lead to that,
every thought, every phrase. To know that every character in a book is
thinking it; to know that every man who is introduced is looking for a
woman! And that as soon as he finds her, they must forthwith--whatever be
their age, rank, character, and position at the moment--begin to burn with
unclean desires!
That is what one might call the _convention_ of French fiction. It
gets very monotonous when you are used to it; it takes all of the interest
out of the story. For there is but one ending to such a story.
One's whole being is lowered by contact with that incessant animal appeal.
* * * * *
December 8th.
I have discovered another trouble--as if I did not have enough! I am to
suffer from indigestion! It plagues me continuously--I can not do anything
for an hour after a meal, no matter what simplest thing I have eaten.
And so all through my life I am to be hindered in my work by having to
wrestle with this handicap! Just as if I had not been a clean man, but some
vulgar _bon vivant_.
* * * * *
December 10th.
This is my fifth publisher. They said they thought it would take two weeks,
but it has been three already, and they have not even answered my letter of
inquiry. I see you can put no reliance on them in the matter of time.
* * * * *
December 11th.
In two days more it will be three months since I gave up my situation.
I count my little hoard day by day, as a castaway might, or a besieged
garrison. I have begun to try to get along on cheap foods again--(that is
the reason of my indigestion). Yesterday I burned a mess of oatmeal, and
now I shall live on burned oatmeal for I know not how long. I was cooking a
large quantity to save time.
* * * * *
I count my store. I have come the last month on eleven dollars! I have
been doing my own washing, and reading the newspapers at a library. I
buy nothing but food--chiefly bread and milk and cereals. Why is it that
everything that is cheap has no taste?
Sometimes I am angry because I can not have anything good to eat, but I
only write my dignified sentiments here.
* * * * *
I am getting down to the limit again; I sit shuddering. I shall have to get
some work again; I can not bear to think of it! What shall I do? If I go to
that slavery again it will be the death of my soul, for I have no hope, and
I can not fight as I did before.
And I can only try one or two publishers more. Oh, take it! Take it!
* * * * *
December 14th.
I went down to see them to-day. The manuscript mislaid--very sorry--had
written readers to examine it at once--expecting report any instant--will
write me--etc.
And so I walked home again.
* * * * *
Yes, elegant ladies and gentlemen, I am a poor poet; and my overcoat is
out at one elbow, and I am sick. I look preoccupied, too; would you like,
perhaps, to know what is in my mind? I will tell you five minutes of it
to-day:
* * * * *
“Bang! Bang! Look out of the way there, you fool!--Use Casey's Corn
Cure!--Extry! Extry! Evening Slop-Bucket and Swill-Barrel, six o'clock
edition!--And it was at seventy-two and the market--Cab! Cab!--Try
Jones's Little Five-cent Cigars!--Brown's Élite Tonsorial and Shaving
Parlors!--Have you seen Lucy Legs in the High Kicker? The Daily Hullabaloo
says--Shine, boss?--But she wouldn't cut it on the bias, because she
thought--Read the Evening Slop-Bucket! Five hundred million copies sold
every year! We rake all the mud-gutters and it only costs you one cent! The
Slop-Bucket is the paper of the people!--Move along, young man, don't block
up the passage! Bang! Bang! Hurry up there, if you want to get aboard--Come
along, my honey-baby girl! (hand-organ)--If you will try Superba
Soap--Simpkins's Whisky is all the rage!--Isaac Cohenstein's Cash Clothing
Store, Bargains in Gents' Fall Overcoats! Look at these! Walk in, sir!
Cash! Cash!--The most elegant topaz brooches, with little--Read the Daily
Swill-Barrel!--Extry! Extry! He Cut Her Throat with a Carving-Knife!--Bang!
Bang!--Toodles' Teething Sirup--Look at my elegant hat with the flamingo on
it!--O'Reilly's Restaurant--walk in and gorge yourself, if you can pay us.
Walk in!--Get out of the way there!--Have you read the Pirate's Pledge! The
Literary Sensation--Cash! Cash!--Just come and see our wonderful display of
newly imported--Smith and Robinson, Diamonds and Jewelry, latest and most
elegant--Use Tompkins's Tooth Powder! _Use Tompkins's Tooth Powder!!_
USE TOMPKINS'S--Read the Evening Slop-Bucket! We rake all the
mud-gutters!--Murphy's Wines and Liquors--Try Peerless Cocktails--Levy's
High-Class Clothing Emporium!--Come in and buy something--anything--we get
down on our knees--we beg you!--Cab, sir? Cab!--Bargains! Bargains!--Cash!
Cash!--_Yein, yein, yein_!”
* * * * *
So it keeps up for hours! And I put my fingers in my ears and run.
* * * * *
December 17th.
To-day I happened to read in one of the magazines an article on a literary
subject by a college professor of some reputation. It was a fine piece of
work, I thought, very true; and I got to thinking of him, wondering if
_he_ might not be the man.
I have no hope that these last publishers will take the book, and so I made
up my mind to write to him.
I wrote what I had written to all the others; I told him how I had
struggled, and how I was living. Perhaps he is less busy than the rest.
* * * * *
December 19th.
The manuscript came back to-day. The letter was simple--the old,
meaningless form. I am waiting to hear from the professor.
* * * * *
December 20th.
“I reply to your letter somewhat against my rule--chiefly because of what
you tell me about your circumstances. I will read your manuscript if you
still think it worth while to send it to me; but I must tell you at the
outset that I consider the chances very unfavorable, as regards my finding
the work what you believe it. I assure you that the literary situation
is not in the least what you picture it; the book-market was never more
wide-awake than it is now, the publishers are all as eager as possible
for the least sign of new power; and besides that, the magazines afford
outlet--not only for talent, but for mediocrity as well. You are entirely
mistaken in your idea that literary excellence is not equivalent to
commercial availability. If you could write one paragraph as noble as the
average of Dr. ----, or one stanza as excellent as the average of Professor
----, you would find an instant and hearty welcome.
“Moreover, I believe that you are entirely wrong in your ideas of what you
need. You will not make yourself a great artist by secluding yourself from
men--go out into the world, young man, go out into the world and see what
men are!
“As I say, it is not my rule to answer letters such as yours. The cry of
the suffering is in the air every instant, if we heeded it we should never
get our work done. But I am willing to read your poem, if this letter has
not chilled your ardor.”
* * * * *
--Last night I read The Captive again, and it brought the tears into my
eyes; and so my ardor is not chilled, good professor--and I will send you
the poem.
* * * * *
--But as for going out into the world--I think I am learning what men are
pretty fast!
* * * * *
December 23d.
My poem stirs me, but it does not last. My whole habit of mind seems to
me to be changed--a deep, settled melancholy has come over me; I go about
mournful, haunted. I read--but all the time I am as if I had forgotten
something, and as if half my mind were on that. I have lost all my ardor--I
look back at what I was, and it brings the tears into my eyes. It is gone!
It is gone! It will not ever come back!
And each day I am drawing nearer to the rapids--to the ghastly prospect of
having to drag myself back to work!
Oh my God, what shall I do?--tell me anything, and I will do it! Give me a
hope--any hope--even a little one!
* * * * *
The last day I can stretch my miserable pittance to is the first of
February.
* * * * *
December 25th.
Christmas Day--and I have no news, except that I am hungry, and that I am
sitting in my room with a blanket around me, and with a miserable cold in
my head.
* * * * *
It is the agony of an unheated room, an old acquaintance of mine, that
comes with each bitter winter. I live in a house full of noisy people and
foul odors; and so I keep my door shut while I try to read, and so my room
is like a barn.
I could not accomplish anything to-day--I could not read. I felt like a
little child. I wanted nothing but to hide my head on some one's shoulder
and sob out all my misery.
I am nothing but a forlorn child, anyway, lost in this great, cruel city.
--I am not much at pathos; but it was Christmas night, and I had one kind
of cold in my head, and another kind in my feet.
* * * * *
December 27th.
I tell you that my salvation was my impatience! My salvation was that I
wasted not an instant, that I fought--that I fought! And each hour that I
am forced to submit--that I am forced to endure and be still--that is an
hour of ruin! It was those fearful seven weeks that began it--and now I
shall have to go back to that again! Oh my God, how can I bear it? What can
I do? The pain of it heaps itself up in my soul--I am desperate--I will go
mad! Tell me what to do! Tell me what to do!
* * * * *
December 28th.
I had a strange adventure to-night, a long, long adventure. I was free for
once in my life! Free and glorious--and delivered from earth! It happened
all in a dream; I sat crouching in the corner, thinking.
* * * * *
I had been walking down the street during the day and had seen a flower in
a window, and had been made happy for a minute, thinking of last spring. My
step had grown light, and I had forgotten the street around me. But then I
had heard two little girls, sitting in a doorway, whisper excitedly: “Oh,
look--he's laughing!” And instantly all my soul had shrunk up, and my dream
had fled, and I had hurried past and turned the corner.
* * * * *
Is it not a strange thing? I mused--this as I sat by the window--that deep
instinct of secrecy--that cowardice! Why is it that I would die before I
would let any man see the life of my soul? What are these people to me?
I know them not at all, and never shall. But I crouch back--I put on a
mask--yes, think of it, I even _give_ up the life of my soul, rather
than that any man should see me acting differently than himself!
Somehow all at once that thought took hold of me with an overwhelming
power--I saw the truth as I had never seen it before in my life. I saw how
we live in society; and how social convention and triviality have us in
such a grasp that it never even dawns upon us that the laws it dictates
are not eternal and necessary! “You must be dignified, and calm, and
commonplace,” say social convention and triviality.
--But I am _not_ dignified--I am _not_ calm!--I am _not_
commonplace!
Well, then, you must _seem_ so. You must walk quietly; you must gaze
around indifferently; you must keep a vacant face; you must try to look
innocent of a thought. If you can't manage that--if you really want to
think--why then you must flee away to the woods, where you are sure no one
will come upon you and find you out. And if you can't do that--why then
there's nothing for you to do but give up thinking, give up living, become
like everybody else!
* * * * *
That idea shook me all of a sudden, it made me quite wild--it made me dig
my nails into my hands. It was the truth--I saw that--it was the truth!
Here I was, a miserable, pining, starving wretch--and for no reason in
the world but that I was a coward, but that I was a coward--a blind fool!
Because I had not let the empty-headed and sodden, the placid and smug,
the fat and greasy citizens of our great metropolis, tell _me_--the
servant of the muses--how I ought to look, how I ought to act, what I ought
to be! The very breath of my body is prayer--is effort--is vision; to dwell
in my own light, to behold my own soul, to know my own truth--that is my
one business in this world! To assert my own force--to be what I like--that
is my duty, that is my hope, my one hope in all the world! And I do not, I
can not, I dare not do it! I am sick and starved and dying, and I crouch
in corners while I pray for help, and if a gleam of sunshine comes from a
flower to me, it goes because a child sees me laughing!
I sat burning with the rage of that. What am I to do? I cried. How is it to
be changed? Shall I live my life in spite of all men?
And then I heard one of my devils--my commonplace devil--say, “But people
would think you were crazy!”
“What do I care what people think?” I burst out.
Then came another of my devils--my facetious devil--and he made me laugh.
“By all means,” said he, “let us get together a few eager poets, and
establish a Society for the Propagation of Lunacy. Let us break down these
conventions and confound the eyes of the fat and greasy citizens, and win
freedom for our souls at any price. Let us wear strange clothes, and recite
our poetry upon the streets. Let us--”