As I waited for an omnibus at the corner of Fleet Street the other day, I
was the spectator of a curious occurrence. Suddenly there was a scuffle
hard by me, and, turning round, I saw a powerful gentlemanly man wrestling
with two others in livery, who were evidently intent on arresting him.
These men, I at once perceived, belonged to the detective force of the
Incorporated Society of Authors, and were engaged in the capture of a
notorious plagiarist. I knew the prisoner well. He had, in fact, pillaged
from my own writings; but I was none the less sorry for his plight, to
which, I would assure the reader, I was no party. Yet he was, I admit, an
egregiously bad case, and my pity is doubtless misplaced sentiment. Like
many another, he had begun his career as a quotation and ended as a
plagiarism, daring even, in one instance, to imitate that shadow in the
fairy-tale which rose up on a sudden one day and declared himself to be
the substance and the substance his shadow. Indeed, he had so far
succeeded as to make many people question whether or not he was the
original and the other man the plagiarism. However, there was no longer to
be any doubt of it, for his captors had him fast this time; and,
presently, we saw him taken off in a hansom, well secured between strong
inverted commas.
This curious circumstance set me reflecting, and, as we trundled along
towards Charing Cross, my mind gave birth to sundry sententious
reflections.
After all, I thought, that unlucky plagiarist is no worse than most of us:
for is it not true that few of us live as conscientiously as we should
within our inverted commas? We are far more inclined to live in that
author, not ourselves, who makes for originality. It is, of course,
difficult, even with the best intentions, to make proper acknowledgment of
all our 'authorities'--to attach, so to say, the true _'del. et sculp.'_
to all our little bits of art. There is so much in our lives that we
honestly don't know how we came by.
As I reflected in this wise, I was drawn to notice my companions in the
omnibus, and lo! there was not an original person amongst us. Yet I looked
in vain to see if they wore their inverted commas. Not one of them,
believe me, had had the honesty to bring them. Each looked at me
unblushingly, as though he were really original, and not a cheap German
print of originals I had seen in books and pictures since I could read. I
really think that they must have been unaware of their imposture. They
could hardly have pretended so successfully.
There was the young dandy just let loose from his band-box, wearing
exactly the same face, the same smile, the same neck-tie, holding his
stick in exactly the same fashion, talking exactly the same words, with
precisely the same accent, as his neighbour, another dandy, and as all the
other dandies between the Bank and Hyde Park Corner. Yet he seemed
persuaded of his own originality. He evidently felt that there was
something individual about him, and apparently relied with confidence on
his friend not addressing a third dandy by mistake for him. I hope he had
his name safe in his hat.
Looking at these three examples of Nature's love of repeating herself, I
said to myself: Somewhere in heaven stands a great stencil, and at each
sweep of the cosmic brush a million dandies are born, each one alike as a
box of collars. Indeed, I felt that this stencil process had been employed
in the manufacture of every single person in that omnibus: two middle-aged
matrons, each of whom seemed to think that having given birth to six
children was an indisputable claim to originality; two elderly business
men to correspond; a young miss carrying music and wearing eye-glasses;
and a clergyman discussing stocks with one of the business men; I alone in
my corner being, of course, the one occupant for whom Nature had been at
the expense of casting a special mould, and at the extravagance of
breaking it.
Presently a matron and a business man alighted, and two dainty young
women, evidently of artistic tendencies, joined the Hammersmith pilgrims.
One saw at a glance that they were very sure of their originality. There
were no inverted commas around their pretty young heads, bless them! But
then Queen Anne houses are as much on a pattern as more commonplace
structures, and Bedford Parkians are already being manufactured by
celestial stencil. What I specially noticed about them was their
plagiarised voices--curious, yearning things, evidently intended to
suggest depths of infinite passion, controlled by many a wild and weary
past,
'Infinite passion, and the pain
Of finite souls that yearn'--
the kind of voice, you know, in which Socialist actresses yearn out
passages from 'The Cenci,' feeling that they do a fearful thing. The voice
began, I believe, with Miss Ellen Terry. With her, though, it is charming,
for it is, we feel, the voice of real emotion. There are real tears in it.
It is her own. But with these ladies, who were discussing the last
'Independent' play, it was so evidently a stop pulled out by
affectation--the _vox inhumana_, one might say, for it is a voice unlike
anything else to be found in the four elements. It has its counterpart in
the imitators of Mr. Beerbohm Tree--young actors who likewise endeavour to
make up for the lack of anything like dramatic passion by pretending to
control it: the control being feigned by a set jaw or a hard, throaty,
uncadenced voice of preternatural solemnity. These ladies, too, wore
plagiarised gowns of the most 'original' style, plagiarised hats,
glittering plagiarised smiles; and yet they so evidently looked down on
every one else in the omnibus, whom, perhaps, after all, it had been
kinder of me to describe as the hackneyed quotations of humanity, who had
probably thought it unnecessary to wear their inverted commas, as they
were so well known.
At last I grew impatient of them, and, leaving the omnibus, finished my
journey home by the Underground. What was my surprise when I reached it to
find our little house wearing inverted commas--two on the chimney, and two
on the gate! My wife, too! and the words of endearing salutation with
which I greeted her, why, they also to my diseased fancy seemed to leave
my lips between quotation marks. There is nothing in which we fancy
ourselves so original as in our terms of endearment, nothing in which we
are so like all the world; for, alas! there is no euphuism of affection
which lovers have not prattled together in springtides long before the
Christian era. If you call your wife 'a chuck,' so did Othello; and,
whatever dainty diminutive you may hit on, Catullus, with his warbling
Latin, 'makes mouths at our speech.'
I grew so haunted with this oppressive thought, that my wife could not but
notice my trouble. But how could I tell her of the spectral inverted
commas that dodged every move of her dear head?--tell her that our own
original firstborn, just beginning to talk as never baby talked, was an
unblushing plagiarism of his great-great-great-grandfather, that our love
was nothing but the expansion of a line of Keats, and that our whole life
was one hideous mockery of originality? 'Woman,' I felt inclined to
shriek, 'be yourself, and not your great-grandmother. A man may not marry
his great-grandmother. For God's sake let us all be ourselves, and not
ghastly mimicries of our ancestors, or our neighbours. Let us shake
ourselves free from this evil dream of imitation. Merciful Heaven, it is
killing me!' But surely that was a quotation too, and, accidentally
catching sight of the back of my hand, suddenly the tears sprang to my
eyes, for it was just so the big soft veins used to be on the hands of my
father, when a little boy I prayed between his knees. He was gone, but
here was his hand--_his_ hand, not mine!
Then an idea possessed me. There was but one way. I could die. There was a
little phial of laudanum in the medicine-cupboard that always leered at me
from among the other bottles like a serpent's eye. Thrice happy thought!
Who would miss such a poor imitation? Even the mere soap-vending tradesmen
bid us 'beware of imitations.' Dark wine of forgetfulness.... No, that was
a quotation. However, here was the phial. I drew the cork, inhaled for a
moment the hard dry odour of poppies, and prepared to drink. But just at
that moment I seemed to hear a horrid little laugh coming out of the
bottle, and a voice chuckled at my ear: 'You ass, do you call that
original?' It was so absurd that I burst out into hysterical laughter.
Here had I been about to do the most 'banal' thing of all. Was there
anything in the world quite so commonplace as suicide?
And with the good spirits of laughter came peace. Nay, why worry to be
'original'? Why such haste to be unlike the rest of the world, when the
best things of life were manifestly those which all men had in common? Was
love less sweet because my next-door neighbour knew it as well? Would the
same reason make death less bitter? And were not those tender diminutives
all the more precious, because their vowels had been rounded for us by the
sweet lips of lovers dead and gone?--sainted jewels, still warm from the
beat of tragic bosoms, flowers which their kisses had freighted with
immortal meanings.
And then I bethought me how the meadow-daisies were one as the other, and
how, when the pearly shells of the dog rose settled on the hedge like a
flight of butterflies, one was as the other; how the birds sang alike, how
star was twin with star, and in peas is no distinction. My rhetoric
stopped as I was about to say 'as wife is to wife'--for I thought I would
first kiss her and see: and lo! I was once more perplexed, for as I looked
down into her eyes, simple and blue and deep, as the sky is simple and
blue and deep, I declared her to be the only woman in the world--which was
obviously not exact. But it was true, for all that.