The idea was certainly an original one. It was Bedford Parke who
suggested it to Tenafly Paterson, and Tenafly was so pleased with it
that he in turn unfolded it in detail to his friend Dobbs Ferry,
claiming its inception as his very own. Dobbs was so extremely
enthusiastic about it that he invited Tenafly to a luncheon at the
Waldoria to talk over the possibilities of putting the plan into
practical operation, and so extract from it whatever of excellence it
might ultimately be found to contain.
"As yet it is only an idea, you know," said Dobbs; "and if you have ever
had any experience with ideas, Tenny, you are probably aware that,
unless reduced to a practical basis, an idea is of no more value than a
theory."
"True," Tenafly replied. "I can demonstrate that in five minutes at the
Waldoria. For instance, you see, Dobbsy, I have an idea that I am as
hungry as a bear, but as yet it is only a theory, from which I derive no
substantial benefit. Place a portion of whitebait, a filet Bearnaise,
and a quart of Sauterne before me, and--"
"I see," said Dobbsy. "Come along."
[Illustration: DISCUSSING THE IDEA]
And they went; and the result of that luncheon at the Waldoria was the
formation of "The Dreamers: A Club." The colon was Dobbs Ferry's
suggestion. The objects of the club were literary, and Dobbs, who was an
observant young man, had noticed that the use of the colon in these days
of unregenerate punctuation was confined almost entirely to the literary
contingent and its camp-followers. With small poets particularly was
it in vogue, and Dobbs--who, by-the-way, had written some very dainty
French poems to the various _fiancees_ with whom his career had been
checkered--had a sort of vague idea that if his brokerage business would
permit him to take the necessary time for it he might become famous as a
small poet himself. The French poems and his passion for the colon,
combined with an exquisite chirography which he had assiduously
cultivated, all contributed to assure him that it was only lack of time
that kept him in the ranks of the mute, inglorious Herricks.
As formulated by Dobbs and Tenafly, then, Bedford Parke's suggestion
that a Dreamers' Club be formed was amplified into this: Thirteen choice
spirits, consisting of Dobbs, Tenafly, Bedford Parke, Greenwich Place,
Hudson Rivers of Hastings, Monty St. Vincent, Fulton Streete, Berkeley
Hights, Haarlem Bridge, the three Snobbes of Yonkers--Tom, Dick, and
Harry--and Billy Jones of the _Weekly Oracle_, were to form themselves
into an association which should endeavor to extract whatever latent
literary talent the thirteen members might have within them. It was a
generally accepted fact, Bedford Parke had said, that all literature,
not even excepting history, was based upon the imagination. Many of the
masterpieces of fiction had their basis in actual dreams, and, when they
were not founded on such, might in every case be said to be directly
attributable to what might properly be called waking dreams. It was the
misfortune of the thirteen gentlemen who were expected to join this
association that the business and social engagements of all, with the
possible exception of Billy Jones of the _Weekly Oracle_, were such as
to prevent their indulgence in these waking dreams, dreams which should
tend to lower the colors of Howells before those of Tenafly Paterson,
and cause the memory of Hawthorne to wither away before the scorching
rays of that rising sun of genius, Tom Snobbe of Yonkers. Snobbe,
by-the-way, must have inherited literary ability from his father, who
had once edited a church-fair paper which ran through six editions in
one week--one edition a day for each day of the fair--adding an
unreceipted printer's bill for eighty-seven dollars to the proceeds to
be divided among the heathen of Central Africa.
"It's a well-known fact," said Bedford--"a sad fact, but still a
fact--that if Poe had not been a hard drinker he never would have
amounted to a row of beans as a writer. His dreams were induced--and I
say, what's the matter with our inducing dreams and then putting 'em
down?"
That was the scheme in a nutshell--to induce dreams and put them down.
The receipt was a simple one. The club was to meet once a month, and eat
and drink "such stuff as dreams are made of"; the meeting was then to
adjourn, the members going immediately home and to bed; the dreams of
each were to be carefully noted in their every detail, and at the
following meeting were to be unfolded such soul-harrowing tales as
might with propriety be based thereon. An important part of the
programme was a stenographer, whose duty it would be to take down the
stories as they were told and put them in type-written form, which Dobbs
was sure he had heard an editor say was one of the first steps towards a
favorable consideration by professional readers of the manuscripts of
the ambitious.
"I am told," said he, "that many a truly meritorious production has gone
unpublished for years because the labor of deciphering the author's
handwriting proved too much for the reader's endurance--and it is very
natural that it should be so. A professional reader is, after all, only
human, and when to the responsibilities of his office is added the
wearisome task of wading through a Spencerian morass after the
will-o'-wisp of an idea, I don't blame him for getting impatient. Why, I
saw the original manuscript of one of Charles Dickens's novels once, and
I don't see how any one knew it was good enough to publish until it got
into print!"
"That's simply a proof of what I've always said," observed one of the
Snobbe boys. "If Charles Dickens's works had been written by me, no one
would ever have published them."
"I haven't a doubt of it," returned Billy Jones of the _Oracle_, dryly.
"Why, Snobbey, my boy, I believe if you had written the plays of
Shakespeare they'd have been forgotten ages ago!"
"So do I," returned Snobbe, innocently. "This is a queer world."
"The stenographer will save us a great deal of trouble," said Bedford.
"The hard part of literary work is, after all, the labor of production
in a manual sense. These real geniuses don't have to think. Their ideas
come to them, and they let 'em develop themselves. In realistic writing,
as I understand it, the author sits down with his pen in his hand and
his characters in his mind's eye, and they simply run along, and he does
the private-detective act--follows after them and jots down all they
do. In imaginative writing it's done the same way. The characters of
these ridiculous beings we read of are quite as real to the imaginative
writer as the characters of the realist are to the latter, and they do
supernatural things naturally. So you see these things require very
little intellectual labor. It's merely the drudgery of chasing a
commonplace or supernatural set of characters about the world in order
to get 400 pages full of reading-matter about 'em that makes the
literary profession a laborious one. Our stenographer will enable us to
avoid all this. There isn't a man of us but can talk as easily as he can
fall off a log, and a tale once told at our dinners becomes in the
telling a bit of writing."
"But, my dear Parke," said Billy Jones of the _Oracle_, who had been a
"literary journalist," as his fond grandmother called it, for some
years, "a story told is hardly likely to be in the form calculated to
become literature."
"That's just what we want you for, Billy," Bedford replied. "You know
how to give a thing that last finishing-touch which will make it go,
where otherwise it might forever remain a fixture in the author's
pigeon-hole. When our stories are told and type-written, we want you to
go over them, correct the type-writer's spelling, and make whatever
alterations you may think, after consulting with us, to be necessary.
Then, if the tales are ever published as a collection, you can have your
name on the title-page as editor."
"Thanks," answered Billy, gratefully. "I shall be charmed."
And then he hurried back to his apartments, and threw himself on his bed
in a paroxysm of laughter which seemed never-ending, but which in
reality did not last more than three hours at the most.
Hudson Rivers of Hastings, when the idea was suggested to him, was the
most enthusiastic of all--so enthusiastic that the Snobbe boys thought
that, in their own parlance, he ought to be "called down."
"It's bad form to go crazy over an idea," they said. "If Huddy's going
to behave this way about it, he ought to be kept out altogether. It is
all very well to experience emotions, but no well-bred person ever shows
them--that is, not in Yonkers."
"Ah, but you don't understand Huddy," said Tenafly Paterson. "Huddy has
two great ambitions in this life. One is to get into the Authors' Club,
and the other is to marry a certain young woman whose home is in Boston
and whose ambitions are Bostonian. To appear before the world as a
writer, which the Dreamers will give him a chance to do at small
expense, will help him on to the realization of his most cherished
hopes; in fact, Huddy told me that he thought we ought to publish the
proceedings of the club at least four times a year, so establishing a
quarterly magazine, to which we shall all be regular contributors. He
thinks it will pay for itself, and knows it will make us all famous,
because Billy Jones is certain to see that everything that goes out is
first chop, and I'm inclined to believe Huddy is right. The continual
drip, drip, drip of a drop of water on a stone will gradually wear away
the stone, and, by Jove! before we know it, by constant hammering away
at this dream scheme of ours we'll gain a position that won't be
altogether unenviable."
"That's so," said Billy. "I wouldn't wonder if with the constant drip,
drip, drip of your drops of ink and inspiration you could wear the
public out in a very little while. The only troublesome thing will be in
getting a publisher for your quarterly."
"I haven't any idea that we want a publisher," said Bedford Parke.
"We've got capital enough among ourselves to bring the thing out, and so
I say, what's the use of letting anybody else in on the profits? A
publisher wouldn't give us more than ten per cent. in royalties. If we
publish it ourselves we'll get the whole thing."
"Yes," assented Tom Snobbe, "and, what's more, it will have a higher
tone to it if we can say on the title-page 'Privately printed,' eh?
That'll make everybody in society want one for his library, and
everybody not in society will be crazy to get it because it's
aristocratic all through."
"I hadn't thought of that," said Billy Jones. "I've no doubt you are
right, only I'd think you'd sell more copies if you'd also put on the
title-page 'For circulation among the elite only.' Then every man,
woman, or child who happened to get a copy would take pride in showing
it to others, who would immediately send for it, because not having it
would seem to indicate that one was not in the swim."
Nor were the others to whom the proposition was advanced any less
desirous to take part. They saw, one and all, opportunities for a very
desirable distinction through the medium of the Dreamers, and within two
weeks of the original formation of the plan the club was definitely
organized. Physicians were consulted by the various members as to what
edibles contained the properties most likely to produce dreams of the
nature desired, and at the organization meeting all but Billy Jones were
well stocked with suggestions for the inauguration dinner. Hudson Rivers
was of the opinion that there should be six courses at that dinner, each
one of Welsh-rabbit, but varying in form, such as Welsh-rabbit puree,
for instance, in which the cheese should have the consistency of
pea-soup rather than of leather; such as Welsh-rabbit pate, in which the
cheese should rest within walls of pastry instead of lying quiescent and
inviting like a yellow mantle upon a piece of toast; then a Welsh-rabbit
roast; and so on all through the banquet, rabbit upon rabbit, the whole
washed down with the accepted wines of the ordinary banquet, which
experience had taught them were likely in themselves to assist in the
work of dream-making.
[Illustration: AND SO TO DREAM]
Monty St. Vincent observed that he had no doubt that the Welsh-rabbit
dinner would work wonders, but he confessed his inability to see any
reason why the club should begin its labors by committing suicide. He
added that, for his part, he would not eat six Welsh rabbits at one
sitting if he was sure of Shakespeare's immortality as his reward,
because, however attractive immortality was, he preferred mortality in
the flesh to the other in the abstract. If the gentlemen would begin the
meal with a grilled lobster apiece, he suggested, going thence by an
easy stage to a devilled bird, rounding up with a "slip-on"--which, in
brief, is a piece of mince-pie smothered in a blanket of molten
cheese--he was ready to take the plunge, but further than this he would
not go. The other members were disposed to agree with Monty. They
thought the idea of eating six Welsh rabbits in a single evening was
preposterous, and that in making such a suggestion Huddy was inspired by
one of but two possible motives--that he wished to leap to the foremost
position in imaginative literature at one bound, or else was prompted,
by jealousy of what the others might do, to wish to kill the club at its
very start. Huddy denied these aspersions upon his motives with
vociferous indignation, and to show his sincerity readily acquiesced in
the adoption of Monty St. Vincent's menu as already outlined.
The date of the dinner was set, Billy Jones was made master of
ceremonies, the dinner was ordered, and eaten amid scenes of such
revelry as was possible in the presence of the Snobbe boys, to whom
anything in the way of unrestrained enjoyment was a bore and bad form,
and at its conclusion the revellers went straight home to bed and to
dream.
Two weeks later they met again over viands of a more digestible nature
than those which lent interest to the first dinner, and told the tales
which follow. And I desire to add here that my report of this dinner and
the literature there produced is based entirely upon the stenographer's
notes, coupled with additional information of an interesting kind
furnished me by my friend William Jones, Esq., Third Assistant Exchange
Editor of _The Weekly Oracle, a Journal of To-day, Yesterday, and
To-morrow_.