“My child,” said the Melancholy Author, “the sharpest affliction
besetting a man of genius is genius.”
The Timorous Reporter ventured to explain that he had been taught
otherwise.
“In the first place,” continued the Melancholy Author, inattentive
to dissent, “the man of genius cannot hope to be understood by his
contemporaries. The more they concede his genius, the less will they
comprehend any particular manifestation of it. Carlyle has said that
the first impression of a work of genius is disagreeable. There are
magazines and publishing houses that say they receive as many as
twenty-five thousand manuscripts a year. Of course, as Dr. Holmes
pointed out, one does not have to eat an entire cheese to know if he
likes it—it is needless to read all manuscripts through to the bitter
end. But how if in those that are really great the apparently bitter
end is the beginning? If the first impression is disagreeable—to one
who is _not_ a genius, just an editor—what chance of acceptance has the
work?”
Not daring to affirm his steadfast conviction that all editors are men
of genius, the interviewer suffered in (and from) silence, and the
great man went on:
“Furthermore, the work of a man of genius is necessarily different from
that of all others; by that difference, indeed, it is credentialed—to
posterity—as a work of genius. But the editor, or the publisher’s
reader—will he feel sure of his ground when dealing with that to which
he is unaccustomed?—of whose acceptability to the public he is without
the _criteria_ to judge? With an abiding though secret sense of his
own fallibility, will he not think it expedient to take the safe side
and reject the work? That will at least entail no possible ‘difference
of opinion’ with his employer. Dead manuscripts tell no tales. Sir, in
the noble profession of letters it is the rule, attested by a thousand
familiar instances, that the man of genius is starved by those whose
successors in the seats of authority pay enormous prices for any
scrap of his work that may survive him. Consider the case of Poe, of
Lafcadio Hearn—who confessed that in the last dozen years of his life
his average annual earnings by his pen did not exceed five hundred
dollars. And I am no millionaire myself.”
As the Melancholy Author paused to celebrate his poverty at the
sideboard his auditor cautiously advanced the view that several living
writers of indubitable genius were pretty prosperous.
“Despite their genius,” said the great man, drying his lips with
his coat-sleeve, “and because of something else. One of them may
have the good fortune to take the attention of some distinguished
person having the world’s ear at his tongue’s end, and the habit of
loquacity—a person like Colonel Roosevelt, or the late Mr. Gladstone.
Did not the latter, by a few words of commendation, provide for life
for Mrs. Humphry Ward and for eternity for Marie Bashkirtseff? True,
the one is impenitently dull and the other was a shrilling lunatic;
but by accident he _might_ have praised an author of consummate
ability. Another really great writer may be prosperous—that is to
say, popular—because of some engaging mannerism or artifice; as Mr.
Kipling bends from his Olympian omniscience to flatter his readers
with colloquial familiarity. Another, like Dickens, may have the good
luck to be an amusing vulgarian, or, like Mr. Riley, be willing to
write lyrics of the pumpkin-field in the ‘dialect’ of those who eat
pumpkins. It may happen, too, although in point of fact it never does
happen, that a man of genius is at the little end of a long, brass
trumpet—I mean, is editor of Our Leading Magazine. Even conceding your
entire claim for these fortunate persons (which I do not) it is clear
that their genius has had nothing to do with their success. You are a
hebetudinous futilitarian!”
The Timorous Reporter “shrank to his second cause and was no more.”
On reviving, he humbly submitted that he had affirmed nothing of the
authors named, nor even mentioned them.
“Genius has been a thousand times defined,” resumed the oracle,
regardless; “nevertheless we know fairly well what, partly, it is.
_Inter alia_, it is the faculty of knowing things without having to
learn them. When Hugo wrote his immortal narrative of Waterloo he had
never seen a battle; nor was Dickens ever in solitary confinement
in the Pennsylvania penitentiary. But will the possessor of this
miraculous faculty profit by it, or even be able rightly to use it in
the service of another’s gain? No; in his dealings with his fellow
men, editors and publishers included, he will find them unaware, and
unable to perceive, that he knows any more than they do. He will
encounter, indeed, the most insuperable distrust, even from those who
concede his genius; for genius is almost universally held to be a
particular kind of brilliant disability. The story of Homer instructing
the sandal-maker how to make foot-gear is, of course, apocryphal, but
no more credence is given to the authentic instance of Lord Brougham
showing the brewer how to make beer. Even those who assent to the
best definition of genius ever made—‘great general ability directed
into a particular channel’—will unconsciously assume that it is
confined to that channel, and will assist in keeping it there. Its
most distinguishing feature—versatility—the power to do many kinds
of work equally well—will get no contemporary recognition. Having a
reputation for writing great stories (for example) you will write
equally great essays, satires and what not, all in vain. It is only to
mediocrity that ‘great general ability’ is conceded. That is why the
late William Sharp, turning to another kind of work than that in which
he had distinguished himself, took a feminine name, and, secure from
disparaging comparison with himself, was accessible to commendation.
As the work of William Sharp, that of ‘Fiona McLeod’ would have evoked
a chorus of deprecation as evidence of failing power. In literature, a
single specialty is all that contemporary criticism is willing to allow
to genius. Posterity tells a juster tale, albeit disposed to go to the
other extreme, seeing something of the fire divine in even the paste
jewels wherewith the great lapidary pelted the wolf from his door.”
“Then you would advise the writer of distinction to stick to
his—latest?”
“That will not save him. The criticism that will not concede
versatility will deny stability. After a few years, the man of genius,
however he may confine himself to the kind of work in which, despite
its excellence, he has been successful, must face the inevitable and
solemn judgment that he has ‘exhausted the vein,’ ‘fallen down,’
‘gone stale.’ It matters not if practice and years have ripened his
imagination, broadened his knowledge and refined his taste—for great
minds do not decay with age; his contemporaries will have it that he
is ‘written out,’ for he is no longer a new thing under the sun.”
The Melancholy Author himself looks hardly more than seventy-five.
“‘Written out, written out’—England said so of Dickens and Tennyson;
America said so of Bret Harte; both have for five years been saying so
of Kipling. The great writer is likely, by the way, to share that view
himself, as Thackeray, reading over some of his early work, exclaimed:
‘What a giant I was in those days!’
“Another lion in the path of genius is its own success—the low kind of
success that is called popularity, for which some sons of the gods,
with their bellies sticking to their backs, really do strive. Let one
of them achieve a result of this kind and he will find it all the
harder to achieve another. Read Stockton’s story of ‘My Wife’s Deceased
Sister.’ The narrator tells how, having published a popular tale with
that title, he was ever thereafter what is called in the slang to which
your detestable profession is addicted, ‘a dead one.’ Editors would
take nothing that he offered, but always begged for something like ‘My
Wife’s Deceased Sister.’ Sir, I know how it feels to go up against
that invincible competitor, oneself. After publication of my famous
story, ‘The Maiden Pirate,’ my greater (and even longer) work, ‘A
Treatise on the Chaldean Dative Case,’ was rejected by twenty editors!
Let the man of genius beware of popularity; one slip of that kind and
a brilliant future is behind him. But it does not greatly matter, for
even without incurring the mischance of a ‘hit,’ the great writer is,
as I said, foredoomed to the charge of degeneracy.”
The Timorous Reporter humbly murmured the names of Hall Caine, Henry
James, the late F. Marion Crawford, Mrs. Mary Wilkins Freeman, Miss
Mary Murfree, Miss Mary Edward Bok, Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Ella Wheeler
Sylvester Vierick, and the venerable Hildegarde Hawthorne—then edged
himself softly toward an open door. With unforeseen resourcefulness,
the sad-eyed deprecator of dissent seized a convenient missile, but it
happened to be a decanter of Medford rum, and the situation was saved.
With fortified solemnity the father of the maiden pirate again took up
his parable:
“Certain literary domains are posted with warnings to the trespasser,
and against men of genius the inhibition is fiercely enforced.
Irruptions of mediocrity entail no penalty because unobserved by
the constabulary. The supposed proprietors of these guarded estates
are long dead, leaving no heirs; the ‘notices’ are put up without
authority, for the land is really a common. One of these closed areas
is that of Jonathan Swift, who dispossessed some of the successors of
Lucian. Whom Lucian dispossessed we do not know, all evidences of an
earlier occupancy than his having been effaced by the burning of the
great library at Alexandria. All, doubtless, incurred ‘the penalty of
the law,’ each in his turn, from the dunces of his day. The ‘penalty’
is execration as an imitator. Long before Swift, and probably long
before Lucian, an accepted method of satire was comparison of actual
with imaginary civilizations, through tales of fictitious travelers
in unreal regions. But since Swift, woe to the writer having the
hardihood to adopt the method, however candidly avowed, and however
different the manner! It is as if guardians of Homer’s fame had chased
Dante and Camoëns out of the field of the epic, and had put up the
bars against Milton. Nay, it is as if an engineer platting a survey
were accused of imitating Euclid. True, Virgil, who did imitate Homer
most shamelessly, escapes censure. I fancy the Proponents-Militant of
Originality have not heard of him.
“In our own day Bret Harte wrote charming sketches of life and
character in Californian mining camps. Many others had done so before
him, but for many years after his first work in that field none could
enter it without incurring austere denunciation as imitator and
plagiarist; and even to-day one having the experience to observe or
the genius to imagine the life of a Californian mining camp, or any
interesting feature of it, delivers his tidings, like the heralds of
old, at his peril.
“Another of these posted preserves is that of satire in iambic
pentameter verse. This mode of expression is supposed to belong
by right divine to Alexander Pope, who made the most constant and
cleverest use of it. With its concomitants of epigram and antithesis,
it was old before Pope was young. He was himself a ‘trespasser’; he
was roundly reviled for imitating Dryden. The form was used by other
Queen Anne’s men, acceptably by Johnson and by many a later; but of
this the patrolmen and gatekeepers of the Pope reservation in our day
have not been apprised by ‘report divine’—the only way that they can
be made to know anything, for read, the devil a bit do they. In the
literary landscape they see only the highest peaks of the Delectable
Mountains. They know only the large, familiar figures, and these only
by their most characteristic work. To their indurated understandings
each individual of this bright band stands for a particular field of
composition. His title to exclusive possession is _res adjudicata_. If
anybody set foot across the sacred boundary—little fellows excepted—he
will find himself the fundamental element in a cone of pummeling
custodians. Young man, in your report of this interview you will be
good enough to quote me as deprecating that situation.”
The interviewer pledged his life, his sacred fortune and his honor to
the performance of that duty, and the great man resumed:
“Of all these inhibiting _censores literarum_, the most austere and
implacable are those guarding the sovereignty of Poe. They have made
his area of activity a veritable _mare clausum_—as if he were
the first that ever burst
Into that silent sea.”
The Timorous Reporter signified his sense of the speaker’s fertility of
metaphor: there had been an inundation (of words) and the “estate” had
become a “sea.” He whistled softly “A Life on the Ocean Wave.”
“It was not an unknown sea; it was cris-crossed by the wakes of a
thousand ships and charted to the last reef. Tales of the tragic and
the supernatural are the earliest utterances in every literature. When
the savage begins to talk he begins to tell wonder tales of death and
mystery—of terror and the occult. Tapping, as they do, two of the
three great mother-lodes of human interest, these tales are a constant
phenomenon—the most permanent, because the most fascinating, element
in letters. Great Scott! has the patrol never heard of _The Thousand
and One Nights_, of _The Three Spaniards_, of Horace Walpole, of ‘Monk’
Lewis, of De Quincey, of Maturin, Ingemann, Blicher, Balzac, Hoffmann,
Fitz James O’Brien?”
The reporter summoned the boldness to say that the charge of imitation
had not been made against De Maupassant, who certainly was not an
unobserved “little fellow,” and was contemporary with the offending
critics.
“Why, sir,” said the Melancholy Author, “you forget—he wrote in
French. Translations? Dear me, have there been translations? How sad!
“As to ‘originality’ that is merely a matter of manner. The ancients
exhausted the possibilities of method. In respect of that, one cannot
hope to do much that is both new and worth doing, but there are as
many styles—that is, ways of doing—as writers. One can no more help
having some individuality in manner than one can help looking somewhat
different from anybody else, although hopeless of being much of a
giant, or unique as to number and distribution of arms, legs and head.
But, sir, this demand for ‘originality’ is a call for third-rate men,
who alone supply such a semblance of it as is still possible. The
writer of sane understanding and wholesome ambition is content to
meet his great predecessors on their own ground. He enters the public
stadium, and although perversely handicapped because of his no record
and mocked by the _claque_; and although the spectators are sure to
declare him beaten, that ultimate umpire, Posterity, will figure the
matter out, and may announce a different result.”
The reporter has reason to think that much more was said, but he had
the misfortune to fall asleep; and when wakened by the sound of a
closing door he was alone. “My!” he said; “I have had a narrow escape;
if the man that once proclaimed me a genius had not happened to be a
fool I know not what evils might have befallen me.”
1909.