MR. AND MRS. HELMER
The next morning, Mary set out to find Letty, from whom, as I have
said, she had heard but twice since her marriage. Mary had written
again about a month ago, but had had no reply. The sad fact was, that,
ever since she left Testbridge, Letty, for a long time, without knowing
it, had been going down hill. There have been many whose earnestness
has vanished with the presence of those whose influence awoke it.
Letty's better self seemed to have remained behind with Mary; and not
even if he had been as good as she thought him, could Tom himself have
made up to her for the loss of such a friend.
But Letty had not found marriage at all the grand thing she had
expected. With the faithfulness of a woman, however, she attributed her
disappointment to something inherent in marriage, nowise affecting the
man whom marriage had made her husband.
That he might be near the center to which what little work he did
gravitated, Tom had taken a lodging in a noisy street, as unlike all
that Letty had been accustomed to as anything London, except in its
viler parts, could afford. Never a green thing was to be looked upon in
any direction. Not a sweet sound was to be heard.
The sun, at this time of the year, was seldom to be seen in London
anywhere; and in Lydgate Street, even when there was no fog, it was but
askance, and for a brief portion of the day, that he shone upon that
side where stood their dusty windows. And then the noise!--a ceaseless
torrent of sounds, of stony sounds, of iron sounds, of grinding sounds,
of clashing sounds, of yells and cries--of all deafening and unpoetic
discords! Letty had not much poetry in her, and needed what could be
had from the outside so much the more. It is the people of a land
without springs that must have cisterns. It is the poetic people
without poetry that pant and pine for the country. When such get hold
of a poet, they expect him to talk poetry, or, at least, to talk about
poetry! I fancy poets do not read much poetry, and except to their
peers do not often care to talk about it. But to one like Letty,
however little she may understand or even be aware of the need, the
poetic is as necessary as rain in summer; while, to one so little
skilled in the finding of it, there was none visible, audible, or
perceptible about her--except, indeed, what, of poorest sort for her
uses, she might discover bottled in some circulating library: there was
one--blessed proximity!--within ten minutes' walk of her.
Once a week or so, some weeks oftener, Tom would take her to the play,
and that was, indeed, a happiness--not because of the pleasure of the
play only or chiefly, though that was great, but in the main because
she had Tom beside her all the time, and mixed up Tom with the play,
and the play with Tom.
Alas! Tom was not half so dependent upon her, neither derived half so
much pleasure from her company. Some of his evenings every week he
spent at houses where those who received him had not the faintest idea
whether he had a wife or not, and cared as little, for it would have
made no difference: they would not have invited her. Small, silly,
conceited Tom, regarding himself as a somebody, was more than content
to be asked to such people's houses. He thought he went as a lion,
whereas it was merely as a jackal: so great is the love of some for
wild beasts in general, that they even think something of jackals. He
was aware of no insult to himself in asking him whether as a lion or
any other wild beast, nor of any to his wife and himself together in
not asking her with him. While she sat in her dreary lodging, dingily
clad and lonely, Tom, dressed in the height of the fashion, would be
strolling about grand rooms, now exchanging a flying shot of
recognition, now pausing to pay a compliment to this lady on her
singing, to that on her verses, to a third, where he dared, on her
dress; for good-natured Tom was profuse of compliments, not without a
degree and kind of honesty in them; now singing one of his own songs to
the accompaniment of some gracious goddess, now accompanying the same
or some other gracious goddess as she sang--for Tom could do that well
enough for people without a conscience in their music; now in the
corner of a conservatory, now in a cozy little third room behind a back
drawing-room, talking nonsense with some lady foolish enough to be
amused with his folly. Tom meant no harm and did not do much--was only
a human butterfly, amusing himself with other creatures of a day, who
have no notion that death can not kill them, or they might perhaps be
more miserable than they are. They think, if they think at all, that it
is life, strong in them, that makes them forget death; whereas, in
truth, it is death, strong in them, that makes them forget life. Like a
hummingbird, all sparkle and flash, Tom flitted through the tropical
delights of such society as his "uncommon good luck" had gained him
admission to, forming many an evanescent friendship, and taking many a
graceful liberty for which his pleasant looks, confident manners, and
free carriage were his indemnity--for Tom seemed to have been born to
show what a nice sort of a person a fool, well put together, may
be--with his high-bred air, and his ready replies, for he had also a
little of that social element, once highly valued, now less
countenanced, and rare--I mean wit.
He had, indeed, plenty of all sorts of brains; but no amount of talent
could reveal to him the reason or the meaning of the fact that wedded
life was less interesting than courtship; for the former, the reason
lay in himself, and of himself proper he knew, as I have said, next to
nothing; while the latter, the meaning of the fact, is profound as
eternity. He had no notion that, when he married, his life was thereby,
in a lofty and blessed sense, forfeit; that, to save his wife's life,
he must yield his own, she doing the same for him--for God himself can
save no other way. But the notion of any saving, or the need of it, was
far from Tom; nor had Letty, for her part, any thought of it either,
except from the tyranny of her aunt. Not the less, in truth, did they
both want saving--very much saving--before life could be to either of
them a good thing. It is only its inborn possibility of and divine
tendency toward blossoming that constitute life a good thing. Life's
blossom is its salvation, its redemption, the justification of its
existence--and is a thing far off with most of us. For Tom, his highest
notion of life was to be recognized by the world for that which he had
chosen as his idea of himself--to have the reviews allow him a poet,
not grudgingly, nor with abatement of any sort, but recognizing him as
the genius he must contrive to believe himself, or "perish in" his
"self-contempt." Then would he live and die in the blessed assurance
that his name would be for over on the lips and in the hearts of that
idol of fools they call _posterity_-divinity as vague as the old gray
Fate, and less noble, inasmuch as it is but the supposed concave whence
is to rebound the man's own opinion of himself.
While jewelly Tom was idling away time which yet could hardly be called
precious, his little brown wife, as I have said, sat at home--such home
as a lodging can be for a wife whose husband finds his interest mainly
outside of it--inquired after by nobody, thought of by nobody, hardly
even taken up by her own poor, weary self; now trying in vain after
interest in the feeble trash she was reading; now getting into the
story for the last half of a chapter, to find herself, when the scene
changed at the next, as far out and away and lost as ever; now dropping
the book on her knee, to sit musing--if, indeed, such poor mental
vagaries as hers can be called even musing!--ignorant what was the
matter with her, hardly knowing that anything was the matter, and yet
pining morally, spiritually, and psychically; now wondering when Tom
would be home; now trying to congratulate herself on his being such a
favorite, and thinking what an honor it was to a poor country girl like
her to be the wife of a man so much courted by the best society--for
she never doubted that the people to whose houses Tom went desired his
company from admiration of his writings. She had not an idea that never
a soul of them or of their guests cared a straw about what he
wrote--except, indeed, here and there, a young lady in her first
season, who thought it a grand thing to know an author, as poor Letty
thought it a grand thing to be the wife of one. Hail to the coming time
when, those who write books outnumbering those who do not, a man will
be thought no more of because he can write than because he can sit a
horse or brew beer! In that happy time the true writer will be neither
an atom the more regarded nor disregarded; he will only be less
troubled with birthday books, requests for autographs, and such-like
irritating attentions. From that time, also, it may be, the number of
writers will begin to diminish; for then, it is to be hoped, men will
begin to see that it is better to do the inferior thing well than the
superior thing after a middling fashion. The man who would not rather
be a good shoemaker than a middling author would be no honor to the
shoemakers, and can hardly be any to the authors. I have the comfort
that in this all authors will agree with me, for which of us is now
able to see himself _middling_? Honorable above all honor that
authorship can give is he who can.
It was through some of his old college friends that Tom had thus easily
stepped into the literary profession. They were young men with money
and friends to back them, who, having taken to literature as soon as
they chipped the university shell, were already in the full swing of
periodical production, when Tom, to quote two rather contradictory
utterances of his mother, ruined his own prospects and made Letty's
fortune by marrying her. I can not say, however, that they had found
him remunerative employment. The best they had done for him was to
bring him into such a half sort of connection with a certain weekly
paper that now and then he got something printed in it, and now and
then, with the joke of acknowledging an obligation irremunerable, the
editor would hand him what he called an honorarium, but what in reality
was a five-pound note. When such an event occurred, Tom would feel his
bosom swell with the imagined dignity of supporting a family by
literary labor, and, forgetful of the sparseness of his mother's doles,
who delighted to make the young couple feel the bitterness of
dependence, would immediately, on the strength of it, invite his
friends to supper--not at the lodging where Letty sat lonely, but at
some tavern frequented by people of the craft. It was at such times,
and in the company of men certainly not better than himself, that Tom's
hopes were brightest, and his confidence greatest: therefore such
seasons were those of his highest bliss. Especially, when his sensitive
but poor imagination was stimulated from the nerve-side of the brain,
was Tom in his glory; and it was not the "few glasses of champagne," of
which he talked so airily, that had all the honor of crowning him king
of fate and poet of the world. Long after midnight, upon such and many
other occasions, would he and his companions sit laughing and jesting
and drinking, some saying witty things, and all of them foolish things
and worse; inventing stories apropos of the foibles of friends, and
relating anecdotes which grew more and more irreverent to God and women
as the night advanced, and the wine gained power, and the shame-faced
angels of their true selves, made in the image of God, withdrew into
the dark; until at last, between night and morning, Tom would reel
gracefully home, using all the power of his will--the best use to which
it ever was put--to subdue the drunkenness of which, even in its
embrace, he had the lingering honor to be ashamed, that he might face
his wife with the appearance of the gentleman he was anxious she should
continue to consider him.
It was an unhappy thing for Tom that his mother, having persuaded her
dying husband, "for Tom's sake," to leave the money in her power,
should not now have carried her tyranny further, and refused him money
altogether. He would then have been compelled to work harder, and to
use what he made in procuring the necessaries of life. There might have
been some hope for him then. As it was, his profession was the mere
grasping after the honor of a workman without the doing of the work;
while the little he gained by it was, at the same time, more than
enough to foster the self-deception that he did something in the world.
With the money he gave her, which was never more than a part of what
his mother sent him, Letty had much ado to make both ends meet; and,
while he ran in debt to his tailor and bootmaker, she never had
anything new to wear. She did sometimes wish he would take her out with
him a little oftener of an evening; for sometimes she felt so lonely as
to be quite unable to amuse herself: her resources were not many in her
position, and fewer still in herself; but she always reflected that he
could not afford it, and it was long ere she began to have any doubt or
uneasiness about him--long before she began even to imagine it might be
well if he spent his evenings with her, or, at least, in other ways and
other company than he did. When first such a thought presented itself,
she banished it as a disgrace to herself and an insult to him. But it
was no wonder if she found marriage dull, poor child!--after such
expectations, too, from her Tom!
What a pity it seems to our purblind eyes that so many girls should be
married before they are women! The woman comes at length, and finds she
is forestalled--that the prostrate and mutilated Dagon of a girl's
divinity is all that is left her to do the best with she can! But,
thank God, in the faithfully accepted and encountered responsibility,
the woman must at length become aware that she has under her feet an
ascending stair by which to climb to the woman of the divine ideal.
There was at present, however, nothing to be called thought in the mind
of Letty. She had even lost much of what faculty of thinking had been
developed in her by the care of Cousin Godfrey. That had speedily
followed the decay of the aspiration kindled in her by Mary. Her whole
life now--as much of it, that is, as was awake--was Tom, and only Tom.
Her whole day was but the continuous and little varied hope of his
presence. Most of the time she had a book in her hands, but ever again
book and hands would sink into her lap, and she would sit staring
before her at nothing. She was not unhappy, she was only not happy. At
first it was a speechless delight to have as many novels as she
pleased, and she thought Tom the very prince of bounty in not merely
permitting her to read them, but bringing them to her, one after the
other, sometimes two at once, in spendthrift profusion. The first thing
that made her aware she was not quite happy was the discovery that
novels were losing their charm, that they were not sufficient to make
her day pass, that they were only dessert, and she had no dinner. When
it came to difficulty in going on with a new one long enough to get
interested in it, she sighed heavily, and began to think that perhaps
life was rather a dreary thing--at least considerably diluted with the
unsatisfactory. How many of my readers feel the same! How few of them
will recognize that the state of things would indeed be desperate were
it otherwise! How many would go on and on being only butterflies, but
for life's dismay! And who would choose to be a butterfly, even if life
and summer and the flowers were to last for ever!
"I would," I fancy this and that reader saying.
"Then," I answer, "the only argument you are equal to, is the fact that
life nor summer nor the flowers do last for ever."
"I suppose I am made a butterfly," do you say? "seeing I prefer to be
one."
"Ah! do you say so, indeed? Then you begin to excuse yourself, and what
does that mean? It means that you are no butterfly, for a
butterfly--no, nor an angel in heaven--could never begin excusing the
law of its existence. Butterfly-brother, the hail will be upon you."
I may not then pity Letty that she had to discover that novels taken
alone serve one much as sweetmeats _ad libitum_ do children, nor that
she had to prove that life has in it that spiritual quinine, precious
because bitter, whose part it is to wake the higher hunger.
Tom talked of himself as on the staff of "The Firefly"--such was the
name of the newspaper whose editor sometimes paid him--a weekly of
great pretense, which took upon itself the mystery of things, as if it
were God's spy. It was popular in a way, chiefly in fashionable
circles. As regarded the opinions it promulgated, I never heard one,
who understood the particular question at any time handled, say it was
correct. Its writers were mostly young men, and their passion was to
say clever things. If a friend's book came in their way, it was treated
worse or better than that of a stranger, but with impartial disregard
for truth in either case; yet many were the authors who would go up
endless back stairs to secure from that paper a flattering criticism,
and then be as proud of it as if it had been the genuine and unsought
utterance of a true man's conviction; and many were the men,
immeasurably the superiors of the reviewers, and in a general way
acquainted with their character, who would accept as conclusive upon
the merits of a book the opinions they gave, nor ever question a mode
of quotation by which a book was made to show itself whatever the
reviewer chose to call it. A scandalous rumor of any kind, especially
from the region styled "high life," often false, and always incorrect,
was the delight both of the paper and of its readers; and the interest
it thus awoke, united to the fear it thus caused, was mainly what
procured for such as were known to be employed upon it the _entree_ of
houses where, if they had had a private existence only, their faces
would never have been seen. But, to do Tom justice, he wrote nothing of
this sort: he was neither ill-natured nor experienced enough for that
department; what he did write was clever, shallow sketches of that same
society into whose charmed precincts he was but so lately a comer that
much was to him interesting which had long ceased to be observed by
eyes turned horny with the glare of the world's footlights; and, while
these sketches pleased the young people especially, even their jaded
elders enjoyed the sparkling reflex of what they called life, as seen
by an outsider; for they were thereby enabled to feel for a moment a
slight interest in themselves objectively, along with a galvanized
sense of existence as the producers of history. These sketches did more
for the paper than the editor was willing to know or acknowledge.
But "The Firefly" produced also a little art on its own account--not
always very original, but, at least, not a sucking of life from the
labor of others, as is most of that parasitic thing miscalled
criticism. In this branch Tom had a share, in the shape of verse. A
ready faculty was his, but one seldom roused by immediate interest, and
never by insight. It was not things themselves, but the reflection of
things in the art of others, that moved him to produce. Coleridge, I
think, says of Dryden, that he took fire with the running of his own
wheels: so did Tom; but it was the running of the wheels of others that
set his wheels running. He was like some young preachers who spend a
part of the Saturday in reading this or that author, in order to _get
up_ the mental condition favorable to preaching on the Sunday. He was
really fond of poetry; delighted in the study of its external elements
for the sake of his craft; possessed not only a good but cultivated ear
for verse, which is a rare thing out of the craft; had true pleasure in
a fine phrase, in a strong or brilliant word; last and chief, had a
special faculty for imitation; from which gifts, graces, and
acquirements, it came, that he could write almost in any style that
moved him--so far, at least, as to remind one who knew it, of that
style; and that every now and then appeared verses of his in "The
Firefly."
As often as this took place, Letty was in the third heaven of delight.
For was not Tom's poetry unquestionably superior to anything else the
age could produce? was the poetry Cousin Godfrey made her read once to
be compared to Tom's? and was not Tom her own husband? Happy woman she!
But, by the time at which my narrative has arrived, the first mist of a
coming fog had begun to gather faintly dim in her heart. When Tom would
come home happy, but talk perplexingly; when he would drop asleep in
the middle of a story she could make nothing of; when he would burst
out and go on laughing, and refuse to explain the motive--how was she
to avoid the conclusion forced upon her, that he had taken too much
strong drink? and, when she noted that this condition reappeared at
shorter and shorter intervals, might she not well begin to be
frightened, and to feel, what she dared not allow, that she was being
gradually left alone--that Tom had struck into a diverging path, and
they were slowing parting miles from each other?