We met at length, as Souls that sit
At funeral feast, and taste of it,
And empty were the words we said,
As fits the converse of the dead,
For it is long ago, my dear,
Since we two met in living cheer,
Yea, we have long been ghosts, you know,
And alien ways we twain must go,
Nor shall we meet in Shadow Land,
Till Time's glass, empty of its sand,
Is filled up of Eternity.
Farewell--enough for once to die--
And far too much it is to dream,
And taste not the Lethaean stream,
But bear the pain of loves unwed
Even here, even here, among the dead!
That is a cheerful intelligible kind of melody, which is often practised
with satisfactory results. Every form of imitation (imitating of course
only the faults of a favourite writer) is to be recommended.
Imitation does a double service, it secures the failure of the imitator
and also aids that of the unlucky author who is imitated. As soon as a
new thing appears in literature, many people hurry off to attempt
something of the same sort. It may be a particular trait and accent in
poetry, and the public, weary of the mimicries, begin to dislike the
original.
"Most can grow the flowers now,
For all have got the seed;
And once again the people
Call it but a weed."
In fiction, if somebody brings in a curious kind of murder, or a study of
religious problems, or a treasure hunt, or what you will, others imitate
till the world is weary of murders, or theological flirtations, or the
search for buried specie, and the original authors themselves will fail,
unless they fish out something new, to be vulgarised afresh. Therefore,
imitation is distinctly to be urged on the young author.
As a rule, his method is this, he reads very little, but all that he
reads is _bad_. The feeblest articles in the weakliest magazines, the
very mildest and most conventional novels appear to be the only studies
of the majority. Apparently the would-be contributor says to himself, or
herself, "well, _I_ can do something almost on the level of this or that
maudlin and invertebrate novel." Then he deliberately sits down to rival
the most tame, dull, and illiterate compositions that get into print. In
this way bad authors become the literary parents of worse authors. Nobody
but a reader of MSS. knows what myriads of fiction are written without
one single new situation, original character, or fresh thought. The most
out-worn ideas: sudden loss of fortune; struggles; faithlessness of First
Lover; noble conduct of Second Lover: frivolity of younger sister;
excellence of mother: naughtiness of one son, virtue of another, these
are habitually served up again and again. On the sprained ankles, the
mad bulls, the fires, and other simple devices for doing without an
introduction between hero and heroine I need not dwell. The very
youngest of us is acquainted with these expedients, which, by this time
of day, will spell failure.
The common novels of Governess life, the daughters and granddaughters of
_Jane Eyre_, still run riot among the rejected manuscripts. The lively
large family, all very untidy and humorous, all wearing each other's
boots and gloves, and making their dresses out of bedroom curtains and
marrying rich men, still rushes down the easy descent to failure. The
sceptical curate is at large, and is disbelieving in everything except
the virtues of the young woman who "has a history." Mr. Swinburne hopes
that one day the last unbelieving clergyman will disappear in the embrace
of the last immaculate Magdalen, as the Princess and the Geni burn each
other to nothingness, in the _Arabian Nights_. On that happy day there
will be one less of the roads leading to failure. If the pair can carry
with them the self-sacrificing characters who take the blame of all the
felonies that they did not do, and the nice girl who is jilted by the
poet, and finds that the squire was the person whom she _really_ loved,
so much the better. If not only Monte Carlo, but the inevitable scene in
the Rooms there can be abolished; if the Riviera, and Italy can be
removed from the map of Europe as used by novelists, so much the better.
But failure will always be secured, while the huge majority of authors do
not aim high, but aim at being a little lower than the last domestic
drivel which came out in three volumes, or the last analysis of the
inmost self of some introspective young girl which crossed the water from
the States.
These are general counsels, and apply to the production of books. But,
when you have done your book, you may play a number of silly tricks with
your manuscript. I have already advised you to make only one copy, a
rough one, as that secures negligence in your work, and also disgusts an
editor or reader. It has another advantage, you may lose your copy
altogether, and, as you have not another, no failure can be more
complete. The best way of losing it, I think and the safest, is to give
it to somebody you know who has once met some man or woman of letters..
This somebody must be instructed to ask that busy and perhaps casual and
untidy person to read your manuscript, and "place" it, that is, induce
some poor publisher or editor to pay for and publish it. Now the man, or
woman of letters, will use violent language on receiving your clumsy
brown paper parcel of illegible wares, because he or she has no more to
do with the matter than the crossing sweeper. The MS. will either be put
away so carefully that it can never be found again, or will be left lying
about so that the housemaid may use it for her own domestic purposes,
like Betty Barnes, the cook of Mr. Warburton, who seems to have burned
several plays of Shakespeare.
The MS. in short will go where the old moons go.
And all dead days drift thither,
And all disastrous things.
Not only can you secure failure thus yourself, but you can so worry and
badger your luckless victim, that he too will be unable to write well
till he has forgotten you and your novel, and all the annoyance and
anxiety you have given him. Much may be done by asking him for
"introductions" to an editor or publisher. These gentry don't want
introductions, they want good books, and very seldom get them. If you
behave thus, the man whom you are boring will write to his publisher:
Dear Brown,
A wretched creature, who knows my great aunt, asks me to recommend his
rubbish to you. I send it by to-day's post, and I wish you joy of it.
This kind of introduction will do you excellent service in smoothing the
path to failure. You can arrive at similar results by sending your MS.
_not_ to the editor of this or that magazine, but to some one who, as you
have been told by some nincompoop, is the editor, and who is _not_. He
_may_ lose your book, or he may let it lie about for months, or he may
send it on at once to the real editor with his bitter malison. The
utmost possible vexation is thus inflicted on every hand, and a prejudice
is established against you which the nature of your work is very unlikely
to overcome. By all means bore many literary strangers with
correspondence, this will give them a lively recollection of your name,
and an intense desire to do you a bad turn if opportunity arises. {6}
If your book does, in spite of all, get itself published, send it with
your compliments to critics and ask them for favourable reviews. It is
the publisher's business to send out books to the editors of critical
papers, but never mind _that_. Go on telling critics that you know
praise is only given by favour, that they are all more or less venal and
corrupt and members of the Something Club, add that _you_ are no member
of a _coterie_ nor clique, but that you hope an exception will be made,
and that your volume will be applauded on its merits. You will thus have
done what in you lies to secure silence from reviewers, and to make them
request that your story may be sent to some other critic. This, again,
gives trouble, and makes people detest you and your performance, and
contributes to the end which you have steadily in view.
I do not think it is necessary to warn young lady novelists, who possess
beauty, wealth, and titles, against asking Reviewers to dine, and
treating them as kindly, almost, as the Fairy Paribanou treated Prince
Ahmed. They only act thus, I fear, in Mr. William Black's novels.
Much may be done by re-writing your book on the proof sheets, correcting
everything there which you should have corrected in manuscript. This is
an expensive process, and will greatly diminish your pecuniary gains, or
rather will add to your publisher's bill, for the odds are that you will
have to publish at your own expense. By the way, an author can make
almost a certainty of disastrous failure, by carrying to some small
obscure publisher a work which has been rejected by the best people in
the trade. Their rejections all but demonstrate that your book is
worthless. If you think you are likely to make a good thing by employing
an obscure publisher, with little or no capital, then, as some one in
Thucydides remarks, congratulating you on your simplicity, I do not envy
your want of common sense. Be very careful to enter into a perfectly
preposterous agreement. For example, accept "half profits," but forget
to observe that before these are reckoned, it is distinctly stated in
your "agreement" that the publisher is to pay _himself_ some twenty per
cent. on the price of each copy sold before you get your share.
Here is "another way," as the cookery books have it. In your gratitude
to your first publisher, covenant with him to let him have all the cheap
editions of all your novels for the next five years, at his own terms.
If, in spite of the advice I have given you, you somehow manage to
succeed, to become wildly popular, you will still have reserved to
yourself, by this ingenious clause, a chance of ineffable pecuniary
failure. A plan generally approved of is to sell your entire copyright
in your book for a very small sum. You want the ready money, and perhaps
you are not very hopeful. But, when your book is in all men's hands,
when you are daily reviled by the small fry of paragraphers, when the
publisher is clearing a thousand a year by it, while you only got a
hundred down, then you will thank me, and will acknowledge that, in spite
of apparent success, you are a failure after all. There are publishers,
however, so inconsiderate that they will not leave you even this
consolation. Finding that the book they bought cheap is really valuable,
they will insist on sharing the profits with the author, or on making him
great presents of money to which he has no legal claim. Some persons,
some authors, cannot fail if they would, so wayward is fortune, and such
a Quixotic idea of honesty have some middlemen of literature. But, of
course, you _may_ light on a publisher who will not give you _more_ than
you covenanted for, and then you can go about denouncing the whole
profession as a congregation of robbers and clerks of St. Nicholas.
The ways of failure are infinite, and of course are not nearly exhausted.
One good plan is never to be yourself when you write, to put in nothing
of your own temperament, manner, character--or to have none, which does
as well. Another favourite method is to offer the wrong kind of article,
to send to the _Cornhill_ an essay on the evolution of the Hittite
syllabary, (for only one author could make _that_ popular;) or a sketch
of cock fighting among the ancients to the _Monthly Record_; or an essay
on _Ayahs in India_ to an American magazine; or a biography of Washington
or Lincoln to any English magazine whatever. We have them every month in
some American periodicals, and our poor insular serials can get on
without them: "have no use for them."
It is a minor, though valuable scheme, to send poems on Christmas to
magazines about the beginning of December, because, in fact, the editors
have laid in their stock of that kind of thing earlier. Always insist on
_seeing_ an editor, instead of writing to him. There is nothing he hates
so much, unless you are very young and beautiful indeed, when, perhaps,
if you wish to fail you had better _not_ pay him a visit at the office.
Even if you do, even if you were as fair as the Golden Helen, he is not
likely to put in your compositions if, as is probable, they fall _much_
below the level of his magazine.
A good way of making yourself a dead failure is to go about accusing
successful people of plagiarising from books or articles of yours which
did not succeed, and, perhaps, were never published at all. By
encouraging this kind of vanity and spite you may entirely destroy any
small powers you once happened to possess, you will, besides, become a
person with a grievance, and, in the long run, will be shunned even by
your fellow failures. Again, you may plagiarise yourself, if you can, it
is not easy, but it is a safe way to fail if you can manage it. No
successful person, perhaps, was ever, in the strict sense, a plagiarist,
though charges of plagiary are always brought against everybody, from
Virgil to Milton, from Scott to Moliere, who attains success. When you
are accused of being a plagiarist, and shewn up in double columns, you
may be pretty sure that all this counsel has been wasted on you, and that
you have failed to fail, after all. Otherwise nobody would envy and
malign you, and garble your book, and print quotations from it which you
did not write, all in the sacred cause of morality.
Advice on how to secure the reverse of success should not be given to
young authors alone. Their kinsfolk and friends, also, can do much for
their aid. A lady who feels a taste for writing is very seldom allowed
to have a quiet room, a quiet study. If she retreats to her chill and
fireless bed chamber, even there she may be chevied by her brothers,
sisters, and mother. It is noticed that cousins, and aunts, especially
aunts, are of high service in this regard. They never give an
intelligent woman an hour to herself.
"Is Miss Mary in?"
"Yes, ma'am, but she is very busy."
"Oh, she won't mind me, I don't mean to stay long."
Then in rushes the aunt.
"Over your books again: my dear! You really should not overwork
yourself. Writing something"; here the aunt clutches the manuscript, and
looks at it vaguely.
"Well, I dare say it's very clever, but I don't care for this kind of
thing myself. Where's your mother? Is Jane better? Now, do tell me, do
you get much for writing all that? Do you send it to the printers, or
where? How interesting, and that reminds me, you that are a novelist,
have you heard how shamefully Miss Baxter was treated by Captain Smith?
No, well you might make something out of it."
Here follows the anecdote, at prodigious length, and perfectly
incoherent.
"Now, write _that_, and I shall always say I was partly the author. You
really should give me a commission, you know. Well, good bye, tell your
mother I called. Why, there she is, I declare. Oh, Susan, just come and
hear the delightful plot for a novel that I have been giving Mary."
And then she begins again, only further back, this time.
It is thus that the aunts of England may and do assist their nieces to
fail in literature. Many and many a morning do they waste, many a
promising fancy have they blighted, many a temper have they spoiled.
Sisters are rather more sympathetic: the favourite plan of the brother is
to say, "Now, Mary, read us your new chapter."
Mary reads it, and the critic exclaims, "Well, of all the awful Rot! Now,
why can't you do something like _Bootles's Baby_?"
Fathers never take any interest in the business at all: they do not
count. The sympathy of a mother may be reckoned on, but not her
judgement, for she is either wildly favourable, or, mistrusting her own
tendencies, is more diffident than need be. The most that relations can
do for the end before us is to worry, interrupt, deride, and tease the
literary member of the family. They seldom fail in these duties, and not
even success, as a rule, can persuade them that there is anything in it
but "luck."
Perhaps reviewing is not exactly a form of literature. But it has this
merit that people who review badly, not only fail themselves, but help
others to fail, by giving a bad idea of their works. You will, of
course, never read the books you review, and you will be exhaustively
ignorant of the subjects which they treat. But you can always find fault
with the _title_ of the story which comes into your hands, a stupid
reviewer never fails to do this. You can also copy out as much of the
preface as will fill your eighth of a column, and add, that the
performance is not equal to the promise. You must never feel nor shew
the faintest interest in the work reviewed, that would be fatal. Never
praise heartily, that is the sign of an intelligence not mediocre. Be
vague, colourless, and languid, this deters readers from approaching the
book. If you have glanced at it, blame it for not being what it never
professed to be; if it is a treatise on Greek Prosody, censure the lack
of humour; if it is a volume of gay verses, lament the author's
indifference to the sorrows of the poor or the wrongs of the Armenians.
If it has humour, deplore its lack of thoughtfulness; if it is grave,
carp at its lack of gaiety. I have known a reviewer of half a dozen
novels denounce half a dozen _kinds_ of novels in the course of his two
columns; the romance of adventure, the domestic tale, the psychological
analysis, the theological story, the detective's story, the story of
"Society," he blamed them all in general, and the books before him in
particular, also the historical novel. This can easily be done, by dint
of practice, after dipping into three or four pages of your author. Many
reviewers have special aversions, authors they detest. Whatever they are
criticising, novels, poems, plays, they begin by an attack on their pet
aversion, who has nothing to do with the matter in hand. They cannot
praise A, B, C, and D, without first assailing E. It will generally be
found that E is a popular author. But the great virtue of a reviewer,
who would be unreadable and make others unread, is a languid ignorant
lack of interest in all things, a habit of regarding his work as a
tedious task, to be scamped as rapidly and stupidly as possible.
You might think that these qualities would displease the reviewer's
editor. Not at all, look at any column of short notices, and you will
occasionally find that the critic has anticipated my advice. There is no
topic in which the men who write about it are so little interested as
contemporary literature. Perhaps this is no matter to marvel at. By the
way, a capital plan is not to write your review till the book has been
out for two years. This is the favourite dodge of the ---, that
distinguished journal.
If any one has kindly attended to this discourse, without desiring to be
a failure, he has only to turn the advice outside in. He has only to be
studious of the very best literature, observant, careful, original, he
has only to be himself and not an imitator, to aim at excellence, and not
be content with falling a little lower than mediocrity. He needs but
bestow the same attention on this art as others give to the other arts
and other professions. With these efforts, and with a native and natural
gift, which can never be taught, never communicated, and with his mind
set not on his reward, but on excellence, on style, on matter, and even
on the not wholly unimportant virtue of vivacity, a man will succeed, or
will deserve success. First, of course, he will have to "find" himself,
as the French say, and if he does _not_ find an ass, then, like Saul the
son of Kish, he may discover a kingdom. One success he can hardly miss,
the happiness of living, not with trash, but among good books, and "the
mighty minds of old." In an unpublished letter of Mr. Thackeray's,
written before he was famous, and a novelist, he says how much he likes
writing on historical subjects, and how he enjoys historical research.
_The work is so gentlemanly_, he remarks. Often and often, after the
daily dreadful lines, the bread and butter winning lines on some
contemporary folly or frivolity, does a man take up some piece of work
hopelessly unremunerative, foredoomed to failure as far as money or fame
go, some dealing with the classics of the world, Homer or Aristotle,
Lucian or Moliere. It is like a bath after a day's toil, it is tonic and
clean; and such studies, if not necessary to success, are, at least,
conducive to mental health and self-respect in literature.
To the enormous majority of persons who risk themselves in literature,
not even the smallest measure of success can fall. They had better take
to some other profession as quickly as may be, they are only making a
sure thing of disappointment, only crowding the narrow gates of fortune
and fame. Yet there are others to whom success, though easily within
their reach, does not seem a thing to be grasped at. Of two such, the
pathetic story may be read, in the Memoir of _A Scotch Probationer_, Mr.
Thomas Davidson, who died young, an unplaced Minister of the United
Presbyterian Church, in 1869. He died young, unaccepted by the world,
unheard of, uncomplaining, soon after writing his latest song on the
first grey hairs of the lady whom he loved. And she, Miss Alison Dunlop,
died also, a year ago, leaving a little work newly published, _Anent Old
Edinburgh_, in which is briefly told the story of her life. There can
hardly be a true tale more brave and honourable, for those two were
eminently qualified to shine, with a clear and modest radiance, in
letters. Both had a touch of poetry, Mr. Davidson left a few genuine
poems, both had humour, knowledge, patience, industry, and literary
conscientiousness. No success came to them, they did not even seek it,
though it was easily within the reach of their powers. Yet none can call
them failures, leaving, as they did, the fragrance of honourable and
uncomplaining lives, and such brief records of these as to delight, and
console and encourage us all. They bequeath to us the spectacle of a
real triumph far beyond the petty gains of money or of applause, the
spectacle of lives made happy by literature, unvexed by notoriety,
unfretted by envy. What we call success could never have yielded them so
much, for the ways of authorship are dusty and stony, and the stones are
only too handy for throwing at the few that, deservedly or undeservedly,
make a name, and therewith about one-tenth of the wealth which is
ungrudged to physicians, or barristers, or stock-brokers, or dentists, or
electricians. If literature and occupation with letters were not its own
reward, truly they who seem to succeed might envy those who fail. It is
not wealth that they win, as fortunate men in other professions count
wealth; it is not rank nor fashion that come to their call nor come to
call on them. Their success is to be let dwell with their own fancies,
or with the imaginations of others far greater than themselves; their
success is this living in fantasy, a little remote from the hubbub and
the contests of the world. At the best they will be vexed by curious
eyes and idle tongues, at the best they will die not rich in this world's
goods, yet not unconsoled by the friendships which they win among men and
women whose faces they will never see. They may well be content, and
thrice content, with their lot, yet it is not a lot which should provoke
envy, nor be coveted by ambition.
It is not an easy goal to attain, as the crowd of aspirants dream, nor is
the reward luxurious when it is attained. A garland, usually fading and
not immortal, has to be run for, not without dust and heat.