PIERRE, AS A JUVENILE AUTHOR, RECONSIDERED.
I.
Inasmuch as by various indirect intimations much more than ordinary
natural genius has been imputed to Pierre, it may have seemed an
inconsistency, that only the merest magazine papers should have been
thus far the sole productions of his mind. Nor need it be added, that,
in the soberest earnest, those papers contained nothing uncommon;
indeed--entirely now to drop all irony, if hitherto any thing like that
has been indulged in--those fugitive things of Master Pierre's were the
veriest common-place.
It is true, as I long before said, that Nature at Saddle Meadows had
very early been as a benediction to Pierre;--had blown her wind-clarion
to him from the blue hills, and murmured melodious secrecies to him by
her streams and her woods. But while nature thus very early and very
abundantly feeds us, she is very late in tutoring us as to the proper
methodization of our diet. Or,--to change the metaphor,--there are
immense quarries of fine marble; but how to get it out; how to chisel
it; how to construct any temple? Youth must wholly quit, then, the
quarry, for awhile; and not only go forth, and get tools to use in the
quarry, but must go and thoroughly study architecture. Now the
quarry-discoverer is long before the stone-cutter; and the stone-cutter
is long before the architect; and the architect is long before the
temple; for the temple is the crown of the world.
Yes; Pierre was not only very unarchitectural at that time, but Pierre
was very young, indeed, at that time. And it is often to be observed,
that as in digging for precious metals in the mines, much earthy rubbish
has first to be troublesomely handled and thrown out; so, in digging in
one's soul for the fine gold of genius, much dullness and common-place
is first brought to light. Happy would it be, if the man possessed in
himself some receptacle for his own rubbish of this sort: but he is like
the occupant of a dwelling, whose refuse can not be clapped into his own
cellar, but must be deposited in the street before his own door, for the
public functionaries to take care of. No common-place is ever
effectually got rid of, except by essentially emptying one's self of it
into a book; for once trapped in a book, then the book can be put into
the fire, and all will be well. But they are not always put into the
fire; and this accounts for the vast majority of miserable books over
those of positive merit. Nor will any thoroughly sincere man, who is an
author, ever be rash in precisely defining the period, when he has
completely ridded himself of his rubbish, and come to the latent gold in
his mine. It holds true, in every case, that the wiser a man is, the
more misgivings he has on certain points.
It is well enough known, that the best productions of the best human
intellects, are generally regarded by those intellects as mere immature
freshman exercises, wholly worthless in themselves, except as
initiatives for entering the great University of God after death.
Certain it is, that if any inferences can be drawn from observations of
the familiar lives of men of the greatest mark, their finest things,
those which become the foolish glory of the world, are not only very
poor and inconsiderable to themselves, but often positively distasteful;
they would rather not have the book in the room. In minds comparatively
inferior as compared with the above, these surmising considerations so
sadden and unfit, that they become careless of what they write; go to
their desks with discontent, and only remain there--victims to headache,
and pain in the back--by the hard constraint of some social necessity.
Equally paltry and despicable to them, are the works thus composed; born
of unwillingness and the bill of the baker; the rickety offspring of a
parent, careless of life herself, and reckless of the germ-life she
contains. Let not the short-sighted world for a moment imagine, that any
vanity lurks in such minds; only hired to appear on the stage, not
voluntarily claiming the public attention; their utmost life-redness and
glow is but rouge, washed off in private with bitterest tears; their
laugh only rings because it is hollow; and the answering laugh is no
laughter to them.
There is nothing so slipperily alluring as sadness; we become sad in the
first place by having nothing stirring to do; we continue in it, because
we have found a snug sofa at last. Even so, it may possibly be, that
arrived at this quiet retrospective little episode in the career of my
hero--this shallowly expansive embayed Tappan Zee of my otherwise
deep-heady Hudson--I too begin to loungingly expand, and wax harmlessly
sad and sentimental.
Now, what has been hitherto presented in reference to Pierre, concerning
rubbish, as in some cases the unavoidable first-fruits of genius, is in
no wise contradicted by the fact, that the first published works of many
meritorious authors have given mature token of genius; for we do not
know how many they previously published to the flames; or privately
published in their own brains, and suppressed there as quickly. And in
the inferior instances of an immediate literary success, in very young
writers, it will be almost invariably observable, that for that instant
success they were chiefly indebted to some rich and peculiar experience
in life, embodied in a book, which because, for that cause, containing
original matter, the author himself, forsooth, is to be considered
original; in this way, many very original books, being the product of
very unoriginal minds. Indeed, man has only to be but a little
circumspect, and away flies the last rag of his vanity. The world is
forever babbling of originality; but there never yet was an original
man, in the sense intended by the world; the first man himself--who
according to the Rabbins was also the first author--not being an
original; the only original author being God. Had Milton's been the lot
of Caspar Hauser, Milton would have been vacant as he. For though the
naked soul of man doth assuredly contain one latent element of
intellectual productiveness; yet never was there a child born solely
from one parent; the visible world of experience being that procreative
thing which impregnates the muses; self-reciprocally efficient
hermaphrodites being but a fable.
There is infinite nonsense in the world on all of these matters; hence
blame me not if I contribute my mite. It is impossible to talk or to
write without apparently throwing oneself helplessly open; the
Invulnerable Knight wears his visor down. Still, it is pleasant to chat;
for it passes the time ere we go to our beds; and speech is farther
incited, when like strolling improvisatores of Italy, we are paid for
our breath. And we are only too thankful when the gapes of the audience
dismiss us with the few ducats we earn.
II.
It may have been already inferred, that the pecuniary plans of Pierre
touching his independent means of support in the city were based upon
his presumed literary capabilities. For what else could he do? He knew
no profession, no trade. Glad now perhaps might he have been, if Fate
had made him a blacksmith, and not a gentleman, a Glendinning, and a
genius. But here he would have been unpardonably rash, had he not
already, in some degree, actually tested the fact, in his own personal
experience, that it is not altogether impossible for a magazine
contributor to Juvenile American literature to receive a few pence in
exchange for his ditties. Such cases stand upon imperishable record, and
it were both folly and ingratitude to disown them.
But since the fine social position and noble patrimony of Pierre, had
thus far rendered it altogether unnecessary for him to earn the least
farthing of his own in the world, whether by hand or by brain; it may
seem desirable to explain a little here as we go. We shall do so, but
always including, the preamble.
Sometimes every possible maxim or thought seems an old one; yet it is
among the elder of the things in that unaugmentable stock, that never
mind what one's situation may be, however prosperous and happy, he will
still be impatient of it; he will still reach out of himself, and beyond
every present condition. So, while many a poor be-inked galley-slave,
toiling with the heavy oar of a quill, to gain something wherewithal to
stave off the cravings of nature; and in his hours of morbid
self-reproach, regarding his paltry wages, at all events, as an
unavoidable disgrace to him; while this galley-slave of letters would
have leaped with delight--reckless of the feeble seams of his
pantaloons--at the most distant prospect of inheriting the broad farms
of Saddle Meadows, lord of an all-sufficing income, and forever exempt
from wearing on his hands those treacherous plague-spots of
indigence--videlicet, blots from the inkstand;--Pierre himself, the
undoubted and actual possessor of the things only longingly and
hopelessly imagined by the other; the then top of Pierre's worldly
ambition, was the being able to boast that he had written such matters
as publishers would pay something for in the way of a mere business
transaction, which they thought would prove profitable. Yet altogether
weak and silly as this may seem in Pierre, let us preambillically
examine a little further, and see if it be so indeed.
Pierre was proud; and a proud man--proud with the sort of pride now
meant--ever holds but lightly those things, however beneficent, which he
did not for himself procure. Were such pride carried out to its
legitimate end, the man would eat no bread, the seeds whereof he had not
himself put into the soil, not entirely without humiliation, that even
that seed must be borrowed from some previous planter. A proud man likes
to feel himself in himself, and not by reflection in others. He likes to
be not only his own Alpha and Omega, but to be distinctly all the
intermediate gradations, and then to slope off on his own spine either
way, into the endless impalpable ether. What a glory it was then to
Pierre, when first in his two gentlemanly hands he jingled the wages of
labor! Talk of drums and the fife; the echo of coin of one's own earning
is more inspiring than all the trumpets of Sparta. How disdainfully now
he eyed the sumptuousness of his hereditary halls--the hangings, and the
pictures, and the bragging historic armorials and the banners of the
Glendinning renown; confident, that if need should come, he would not be
forced to turn resurrectionist, and dig up his grandfather's
Indian-chief grave for the ancestral sword and shield, ignominiously to
pawn them for a living! He could live on himself. Oh, twice-blessed now,
in the feeling of practical capacity, was Pierre.
The mechanic, the day-laborer, has but one way to live; his body must
provide for his body. But not only could Pierre in some sort, do that;
he could do the other; and letting his body stay lazily at home, send
off his soul to labor, and his soul would come faithfully back and pay
his body her wages. So, some unprofessional gentlemen of the
aristocratic South, who happen to own slaves, give those slaves liberty
to go and seek work, and every night return with their wages, which
constitute those idle gentlemen's income. Both ambidexter and
quadruple-armed is that man, who in a day-laborer's body, possesses a
day-laboring soul. Yet let not such an one be over-confident. Our God is
a jealous God; He wills not that any man should permanently possess the
least shadow of His own self-sufficient attributes. Yoke the body to the
soul, and put both to the plough, and the one or the other must in the
end assuredly drop in the furrow. Keep, then, thy body effeminate for
labor, and thy soul laboriously robust; or else thy soul effeminate for
labor, and thy body laboriously robust. Elect! the two will not
lastingly abide in one yoke. Thus over the most vigorous and soaring
conceits, doth the cloud of Truth come stealing; thus doth the shot,
even of a sixty-two-pounder pointed upward, light at last on the earth;
for strive we how we may, we can not overshoot the earth's orbit, to
receive the attractions of other planets; Earth's law of gravitation
extends far beyond her own atmosphere.
In the operative opinion of this world, he who is already fully provided
with what is necessary for him, that man shall have more; while he who
is deplorably destitute of the same, he shall have taken away from him
even that which he hath. Yet the world vows it is a very plain,
downright matter-of-fact, plodding, humane sort of world. It is governed
only by the simplest principles, and scorns all ambiguities, all
transcendentals, and all manner of juggling. Now some imaginatively
heterodoxical men are often surprisingly twitted upon their willful
inverting of all common-sense notions, their absurd and all-displacing
transcendentals, which say three is four, and two and two make ten. But
if the eminent Jugglarius himself ever advocated in mere words a
doctrine one thousandth part so ridiculous and subversive of all
practical sense, as that doctrine which the world actually and eternally
practices, of giving unto him who already hath more than enough, still
more of the superfluous article, and taking away from him who hath
nothing at all, even that which he hath,--then is the truest book in the
world a lie.
Wherefore we see that the so-called Transcendentalists are not the only
people who deal in Transcendentals. On the contrary, we seem to see that
the Utilitarians,--the every-day world's people themselves, far
transcend those inferior Transcendentalists by their own
incomprehensible worldly maxims. And--what is vastly more--with the one
party, their Transcendentals are but theoretic and inactive, and
therefore harmless; whereas with the other, they are actually clothed in
living deeds.
The highly graveling doctrine and practice of the world, above cited,
had in some small degree been manifested in the case of Pierre. He
prospectively possessed the fee of several hundred farms scattered over
part of two adjoining counties; and now the proprietor of that popular
periodical, the Gazelle Magazine, sent him several additional dollars
for his sonnets. That proprietor (though in sooth, he never read the
sonnets, but referred them to his professional adviser; and was so
ignorant, that, for a long time previous to the periodical's actually
being started, he insisted upon spelling the Gazelle with a _g_ for the
_z_, as thus: _Gagelle_; maintaining, that in the Gazelle connection,
the _z_ was a mere impostor, and that the _g_ was soft; for he was a
judge of softness, and could speak from experience); that proprietor was
undoubtedly a Transcendentalist; for did he not act upon the
Transcendental doctrine previously set forth?
Now, the dollars derived from his ditties, these Pierre had always
invested in cigars; so that the puffs which indirectly brought him his
dollars were again returned, but as perfumed puffs; perfumed with the
sweet leaf of Havanna. So that this highly-celebrated and world-renowned
Pierre--the great author--whose likeness the world had never seen (for
had he not repeatedly refused the world his likeness?), this famous
poet, and philosopher, author of "_The Tropical Summer: a Sonnet_;"
against whose very life several desperadoes were darkly plotting (for
had not the biographers sworn they would have it!); this towering
celebrity--there he would sit smoking, and smoking, mild and
self-festooned as a vapory mountain. It was very involuntarily and
satisfactorily reciprocal. His cigars were lighted in two ways: lighted
by the sale of his sonnets, and lighted by the printed sonnets
themselves.
For even at that early time in his authorial life, Pierre, however vain
of his fame, was not at all proud of his paper. Not only did he make
allumettes of his sonnets when published, but was very careless about
his discarded manuscripts; they were to be found lying all round the
house; gave a great deal of trouble to the housemaids in sweeping; went
for kindlings to the fires; and were forever flitting out of the
windows, and under the door-sills, into the faces of people passing the
manorial mansion. In this reckless, indifferent way of his, Pierre
himself was a sort of publisher. It is true his more familiar admirers
often earnestly remonstrated with him, against this irreverence to the
primitive vestments of his immortal productions; saying, that whatever
had once felt the nib of his mighty pen, was thenceforth sacred as the
lips which had but once saluted the great toe of the Pope. But hardened
as he was to these friendly censurings, Pierre never forbade that ardent
appreciation of "The Tear," who, finding a small fragment of the
original manuscript containing a dot (_tear_), over an _i_ (_eye_),
esteemed the significant event providential; and begged the
distinguished favor of being permitted to have it for a brooch; and
ousted a cameo-head of Homer, to replace it with the more invaluable
gem. He became inconsolable, when being caught in a rain, the dot
(_tear_) disappeared from over the _i_ (_eye_); so that the strangeness
and wonderfulness of the sonnet was still conspicuous; in that though
the least fragment of it could weep in a drought, yet did it become all
tearless in a shower.
But this indifferent and supercilious amateur--deaf to the admiration of
the world; the enigmatically merry and renowned author of "The Tear;"
the pride of the Gazelle Magazine, on whose flaunting cover his name
figured at the head of all contributors--(no small men either; for their
lives had all been fraternally written by each other, and they had
clubbed, and had their likenesses all taken by the aggregate job, and
published on paper, all bought at one shop) this high-prestiged
Pierre--whose future popularity and voluminousness had become so
startlingly announced by what he had already written, that certain
speculators came to the Meadows to survey its water-power, if any, with
a view to start a paper-mill expressly for the great author, and so
monopolize his stationery dealings;--this vast being,--spoken of with
awe by all merely youthful aspirants for fame; this age-neutralizing
Pierre;--before whom an old gentleman of sixty-five, formerly librarian
to Congress, on being introduced to him at the Magazine publishers',
devoutly took off his hat, and kept it so, and remained standing, though
Pierre was socially seated with his hat on;--this wonderful, disdainful
genius--but only life-amateur as yet--is now soon to appear in a far
different guise. He shall now learn, and very bitterly learn, that
though the world worship Mediocrity and Common Place, yet hath it fire
and sword for all cotemporary Grandeur; that though it swears that it
fiercely assails all Hypocrisy, yet hath it not always an ear for
Earnestness.
And though this state of things, united with the ever multiplying
freshets of new books, seems inevitably to point to a coming time, when
the mass of humanity reduced to one level of dotage, authors shall be
scarce as alchymists are to-day, and the printing-press be reckoned a
small invention:--yet even now, in the foretaste of this let us hug
ourselves, oh, my Aurelian! that though the age of authors be passing,
the hours of earnestness shall remain!