you disliked him. You and I were foes, and I was getting the worst of it
when he walked in and separated the combatants. His entrance was
pleasant to me. He showed a contempt for you that perhaps he did not
feel, and he used to take your chair. There were days when I wondered at
his audacity in doing that, but I liked it, too, and by and by I may
tell him why I often asked him to sit there. He was your doctor as well
as mine, and every time he said that I was a little better, I knew he
meant that you were a little weaker. You knew it, too, for I saw you
scowling after he had gone. My doctor is also my friend, and so, when I
am well, I say things against him behind his back. Then I see his
weaknesses and smile comfortably at them with his other friends--whom I
also discuss with him. But while you had me down he was another man. He
became, as it were, a foot taller, and I felt that he alone of men had
anything to say that was worth listening to. Other friends came to look
curiously at me and talk of politics, or Stanley, or on other frivolous
topics, but he spoke of my case, which was the great affair. I was not,
in my own mind, a patient for whom he was merely doing his best; I was
entirely in his hands. I was a business, and it rested with him whether
I was to be wound up or carried on as usual. I daresay I tried to be
pleasant to him--which is not my way--took his prescriptions as if I
rather enjoyed them, and held his thermometer in my mouth as though it
were a new kind of pipe. This was diplomacy. I have no real pleasure in
being fed with a spoon, nor do I intend in the future to smoke
thermometers. But I knew that I must pander to my doctor's weakness if
he was to take my side against you. Now that I am able to snap my
fingers at you I am looking forward to sneering once more at him. Just
at this moment, however, I would prefer to lay a sword flat upon his
shoulders, and say gratefully, "Arise, Sir James." He has altered the
faces of the various visitors who whispered to each other in my
presence, and nodded at me and said aloud that I would soon be right
again, and then said something else on the other side of the door. He
has opened my windows and set the sparrows a-chirping again, and he has
turned on the sunshine. Lastly, he has enabled me to call your cab. I am
done. Get out.
FOUR-IN-HAND NOVELISTS.
The following is a word-puzzle. It narrates the adventures of a
four-in-hand novelist while trying to lose his reputation. Competitors
do not require to be told that a four-in-hand novelist is a writer of
fiction who keeps four serial tales running abreast in the magazines.
The names of specimen four-in-hand novelists will recur readily to every
one. The puzzle is to discover who this particular novelist is; the
description, as will be observed, answering to quite a number of them.
* * * * *
A few years ago, if any one in Fleet street had said that the day would
come when I would devote my time to trying to lose my reputation, I
would have smiled incredulously. That was before I had a reputation. To
be as statistical as time will allow--for before I go to bed I have
seven and a half yards of fiction to write--it took me fifteen years'
hard work to acquire a reputation. For two years after that I worked as
diligently to retain it, not being quite certain whether it was really
there, and for the last five years I have done my best to get rid of it.
Mr. R. L. Stevenson has a story of a dynamiter who tried in vain to
leave an infernal machine anywhere. It was always returned to him as
soon as he dropped it, or just as he was making off. My reputation is as
difficult to lose. I have not given up the attempt yet, but I am already
of opinion that it is even harder to lose a reputation in letters than
to make one. My colleagues will bear me out in this.
If I recollect aright--for I have published so much that my works are
now rather mixed up in my mind, and I have no time to verify
anything--the first place I thought to leave my reputation in was a
volume of pot-boilers, which I wrote many years ago for an obscure
publication. At that time I was working hard for a reputation elsewhere,
and these short stories were only scribbled off for a livelihood. My
publisher heard of them recently, and offered me a hundred pounds for
liberty to republish them in book form. I pointed out to him that they
were very poor stuff, but he said that that had nothing to do with it; I
had a reputation now, and they would sell. With certain misgivings--for
I was not hardened yet--I accepted my publisher's terms, and the book
was soon out. The first book I published, which was much the best thing
I ever wrote, was only reviewed by three journals, of which two were
provincial weeklies. They said it showed signs of haste, though every
sentence in it was a labor. I sent copies of it to six or seven
distinguished literary men--some of whom are four-in-hand now--and two
of them acknowledged receipt of it, though neither said he had read it.
My pot-boilers, however, had not been out many weeks before the first
edition was exhausted. The book was reviewed everywhere, and, in nine
cases out of ten, enthusiastically lauded. It showed a distinct advance
on all my previous efforts. They were model stories of their kind. They
showed a mature hand. The wit was sparkling. There were pages in the
book that no one could read without emotion. In the old days I was paid
for these stories at the rate of five shillings the thousand words; but
they would make a reputation in themselves now. It has been thus all
along. I drop my reputation into every book I write now, but there is no
getting rid of it. The critics and the public return it to me,
remarking that it grows bigger.
I tried to lose my reputation in several other books of the same kind,
and always with the same result. Barnacles are nothing to a literary
reputation. Then I tried driving four-in-hand. There are now only five
or six of us who are four-in-hand novelists, but there are also
four-in-hand essayists, four-in-hand critics, etc., and we all work on
the same principle. Every one of us is trying to shake himself free of
his reputation. We novelists have, perhaps, the best chance, for there
are so few writers of fiction who have a reputation to lose that all the
magazine editors come to us for a serial tale. Next year I expect to be
six-in-hand, for the provincial weeklies want me as well as the
magazines. Any mere outsider would say I was safe to get rid of my
reputation this year, for I am almost beating the record in the effort.
A novelist of repute, who did not want to lose his reputation, would not
think of writing more than one story at a time, and he would take twelve
months, at least, to do it. That is not my way. Hitherto, though I have
been a member of the literary four-in-hand club, I have always been some
way ahead with at least two of my tales before they begin to appear in
serial form. You may give up the attempt to lose your reputation,
however, if you do not set about it more thoroughly than that; and the
four novels which I began in January in two English magazines, one
American magazine, and an illustrated paper, were all commenced in the
second week of December. (I had finished two novels in the last week of
November.) My original plan was to take them day about, doing about four
chapters of each a month; but to give my reputation a still better
chance of absconding, I now write them at any time. Now-a-days I would
never think of working out my plot beforehand. My thinking begins when I
take up my pen to write, and ends when I lay it down, or even before
that. In one of my stories this year I made my hero save the heroine
from a burning house. Had I done that in the old days they would have
ridiculed me, but now they say I reveal fresh talent in the delightful
way in which I re-tell a story that has no doubt been told before. The
beaten tracks, it is remarked, are the best to tread when the public has
such a charming guide as myself. My second novel opens with a shipwreck,
and I am nearly three chapters in getting my principal characters into
the boats. In my first books I used to guard carefully against the
introduction of material that did not advance the story, yet at that
time I was charged with "padding." In this story of the shipwreck there
is so much padding that I could blush--if I had not given all that
up--to think of it. Instead of confining myself to my own characters, I
describe all the passengers in the vessel--telling what they were like
in appearance, and what was their occupation, and what they were doing
there. Then, when the shipwreck comes, I drown them one by one. By one
means or another, I contrive to get six chapters out of that shipwreck,
which is followed by two chapters of agony in an open boat, which I
treat as if it were a novelty in fiction, and that, again, leads up to a
chapter on the uncertainty of life. Most flagrant padding of all is the
conversation. It always takes my characters at least two pages to say
anything. They approach the point in this fashion:
Tom walked excitedly into the room, in which Peter was awaiting him. The
two men looked at each other.
"You wanted to see me," Tom said at last.
"Yes," said Peter slowly, "I wanted to see you."
Tom looked at the other uneasily.
"Why did you want to see me?" he asked after a pause.
"I shall tell you," replied Peter, pointing to a chair.
Tom sat down, and seemed about to speak. But he changed his mind. Peter
looked at him curiously.
"Perhaps," Peter said at last, "you know my reasons for requesting an
interview with you here?"
"I cannot say that I do," answered Tom.
There was another pause, during which the ticking of the clock could be
distinctly heard.
"You have no idea?" inquired Peter.
"I have no idea," replied Tom.
"Do you remember," asked the older man, a little nervously, "that when
old John Vansittart disappeared so suddenly from the Grange there were
some persons who believed that he had been foully murdered?"
Tom passed his hand through his hair. "John Vansittart," he muttered to
himself.
"The affair," continued Peter, "was never cleared up."
"It was never cleared up," said Tom. "But why," he added, "do you return
to this subject?"
"You may well ask," said Peter, "why I return to it."
And so on. There is so much of this kind of thing in my recent novels
that if all the lines of it were placed on end I daresay they would
reach round the world. Yet I am never charged with padding now. My
writing is said to be beautifully lucid. My shipwreck has made several
intelligent critics ask if I have ever been a sailor, though I don't
mind saying here, that like Douglas Jerrold, I only dote upon the sea
from the beach. I have been to Dover, but no further, and you will find
my shipwreck told (more briefly) in Marryatt. I dashed it off less than
two months ago, but for the life of me I could not say whether my ship
was scuttled, or went on fire, or sprang a leak. Henceforth I shall only
refer to it as the shipwreck, and my memory will do all that is required
of it if it prevents my mistaking the novel that contains the shipwreck.
Even if I did that, however, I know from experience that my reputation
would be as safe as the lives of my leading characters. I began my
third novel, meaning to make my hero something of a coward, but though I
worked him out after that patter for a time, I have changed my plan. He
is to be peculiarly heroic henceforth. This will not lose me my
reputation. It will be said of my hero that he is drawn with no ordinary
skill, and that the author sees the two-sideness of every man's
character. As for the fourth story, it is the second one over again,
with the shipwreck omitted. One night when I did not have a chapter to
write--a rare thing with me--I read over the first part of this fourth
tale--another rare thing--and found it so slip-shod as to be
ungrammatical. The second chapter is entirely taken up with a
disquisition on bald heads, but the humor of it will be said to increase
my reputation. Sometimes when I become despondent of ever losing my
reputation, I think of taking a whole year to write one novel in, just
to see what I really could do. I wonder whether the indulgent public
would notice any difference? Perhaps I could not write carefully now if
I tried. The small section of the public that guesses which of the
four-in-hand writers I am may think for a moment that this story of how
I tried in vain to lose my reputation will help me toward the goal.
They are wrong, however. The public will stand anything from us now--or
they would get something better.
RULES FOR CARVING.
_Rule I._--_It is not good form to climb onto the table._ There is no
doubt a great temptation to this. When you are struggling with a duck,
and he wobbles over just as you think you have him, you forget yourself.
The common plan is not to leap upon the table all at once. This is the
more usual process: The carver begins to carve sitting. By-and-by he is
on his feet, and his brow is contracted. His face approaches the fowl,
as if he wanted to inquire within about everything except that the duck
is reluctant to yield any of its portions. One of his feet climbs onto
his chair, then the other. His knees are now resting against the table,
and, in his excitement, he, so to speak, flings himself upon the fowl.
This brings us to
_Rule II._--_Carving should not be made a matter of brute force._ It
ought from the outset to be kept in mind that you and the duck are not
pitted against each other in mortal combat. Never wrestle with any dish
whatever; in other words, keep your head, and if you find yourself
becoming excited, stop and count a hundred. This will calm you, when you
can begin again.
_Rule III._--_It will not assist you to call the fowl names._ This rule
is most frequently broken by a gentleman carving for his own family
circle. If there are other persons present, he generally manages to
preserve a comparatively calm exterior, just as the felon on the
scaffold does; but in privacy he breaks out in a storm of invective. If
of a sarcastic turn of mind, he says that he has seen many a duck in his
day, but never a duck like this. It is double-jointed. It is so tough
that it might have come over to England with the Conqueror.
_Rule IV._--_Don't boast when it is all over._ You must not call the
attention of the company to the fact that you have succeeded. Don't
exclaim exultingly, "I knew I would manage it," or "I never yet knew a
duck that I couldn't conquer somehow." Don't exclaim in a loud gratified
voice how you did it, nor demonstrate your way of doing it by pointing
to the _debris_ with the carving knife. Don't even be mock-modest, and
tell everybody that carving is the simplest thing in the world. Don't
wipe your face repeatedly with your napkin, as if you were in a state
of perspiration, nor talk excitedly, as if your success had gone to your
head. Don't ask your neighbors what they think of your carving. Your
great object is to convince them that you look upon carving as the
merest bagatelle, as something that you do every day and rather enjoy.
ON RUNNING AFTER A HAT.
Some don't run. They pretend to smile when they see their hat borne
along on the breeze, and glance at the laughing faces around in a way
implying, "Yes, it is funny, and I enjoy the joke, although the hat is
mine." Nobody believes you, but if this does you good, you should do it.
You don't attempt to catch your hat as it were on the wing. You walk
after it, smiling, as if you liked the joke the more you think of it,
and confident that the hat will come to rest presently. You are not the
sort of man to make a fuss over a hat. You won't give the hat the
satisfaction of thinking that it can annoy you. Strange though it may
seem, there are idiots who will join you in pursuit of the hat. One will
hook it with a stick, and almost get it, only not quite. Another will
manage to hit it hard with an umbrella. A third will get his foot into
it or on it. This does not improve the hat, but it shows that there is a
good deal of the milk of human kindness flowing in the street as well
as water, and is perhaps pleasant to think of afterwards. Several times
you almost have the hat in your possession. It lies motionless, just
where it has dropped after coming in contact with a hansom. Were you to
make a sudden rush at it you could have it, but we have agreed that you
are not that sort of man. You walk forward, stoop, and----. One reads
how the explorer thinks he has shot a buffalo dead, and advances to put
his foot proudly on the carcass, how the buffalo then rises, and how the
explorer then rises also. I have never seen an explorer running after
his hat (though I should like to), but your experience is similar to his
with the buffalo. As your hand approaches the hat, the latter turns over
like a giant refreshed, and waddles out of your reach. Once more your
hand is within an inch of it, when it makes off again. There are ringing
cheers from the audience on the pavement, some of them meant for the
hat, and the others as an encouragement to you. Before you get your hat
you have begun to realize what deer-stalking is, and how important a
factor is the wind.