DEAR FELIX, DEAR FRANK:--It is a pleasant circumstance that as one sets
about collecting material for a book, scissoring night after night
among scrapbooks to determine what may or may not be worth revisiting
the glimpses of the press, there comes to mind with perfect naturalness
who should carry the onus of the dedication. For a book is a frail
and human emanation, and has its own instinctive disposition toward a
certain kind of people. These Powders of Sympathy I hopefully sprinkle
in your direction.
Another good friend warned me seriously, some time ago, against the
danger of being too apologetic in a preface. For, said he, people
always read prefaces and dedications, even if nought else; if you
deprecate, you at once persuade them to the same attitude. And to you
two, of all readers, I need not explain just how these pieces were
written, day by day, out of the pressure and hilarity and contention
of the mind. I have made no attempt to conceal their ephemeral
origin. They were almost all written for a newspaper, and contain
many references to journalism. And, if I may speak my inmost heart, I
have had a sincere hope that they might, in collected form, play some
small part in encouraging the youngest generation of journalists to be
themselves and set things down as they see them. If these powders have
any pharmacal virtue--other than that of Seidlitz--it is likely to be
relative, not absolute. I mean, it is remarkable that they should have
been written at all: remarkable that any newspaper should take the
pains to offer space to speculations of this sort. I have not scrupled,
on occasion, to chaff some of the matters newspapers are supposed to
hold sacred. And it is my privilege, by the way, to say my gratitude
and affection to Mr. Edwin F. Gay, editor of the New York _Evening
Post_, under whose jurisdiction these were written. With the generosity
of the ideal employer he has encouraged my ejaculations even when he
did not agree with them.
But a columnist (it is frequently said) is not a real Newspaper Man:
he is only a deboshed Editorial Writer, a fallen angel abjected from
the secure heaven of anonymity. That is true. The notable increase, in
recent years, of these creatures, has been held to be a sign that the
papers required more scapegoats, or safety valves through whom readers
might blow off their disrespect. And that by posting these innocent
effigies as decoys, the wicked press might go about its privy misdeeds
with more security, and conspire unobserved with the dangerous minions
of Capital (or Labour, or the Agrarian Bloc).
However that may be, and unsuspecting whether intended by his scheming
employer as a decoy, or a doormat, or a gargoyle, or a lightning rod
(how is he to know, never having been given instruction of any sort
except to go ahead and write as he pleases?) the columnist pursues
his task and gradually distils a philosophy of his own out of his
duties. Oddly enough, instead of growing more cautious by reason of his
exposure, he becomes almost dangerously candid. He knows that if he
is wrong he will be set right the next morning by a stack of letters
varying in number according to the nature of his indiscretion. If he is
wrong about _shall_ and _will_, he will get five letters of reproof.
If about some nautical nicety, ten letters. If about the Republican
Party, twenty letters. If about food, thirty-two. If about theology
or Ireland, sixty to seventy. In all cases most of these letters will
be wittier and wiser than anything he could have composed himself.
Surely there is no other walk of life in which mistakes are so promptly
retrovolant.
I have christened these soliloquies after dear old Sir Kenelm Digby’s
famous nostrum, the Powder of Sympathy. But in spite of its amiable
name and properties that powder was not a talcum. Its basis was
vitriol; and I fear that in some of these prescriptions I have mixed
a few acid crystals. It was either Lord Bacon or Don Marquis (two deep
thinkers whose maxims are occasionally confounded in my mind) who told
a story about a dog of low degree who made his reputation by biting a
circus lion--thinking him only another dog, though a large one. Two or
three times herein I have snapped at circus lions; and probably escaped
only because the lion was too proud to return the indenture. Let it
be remembered, though, that often you may love a man even while you
dispute with him.
But the chief consideration (Frank and Felix) that seems to emerge from
our friendship is that the eager squabbles of critics and littérateurs
are of minor account; that the great thing is to circulate freely in
the surrounding ocean of inexhaustible humanity, enjoying with our
own eyes and ears the gay and tragic richness of life. We have had
expeditions together, not commemorated in print, that have been both
doctrine and delight. The incident of the Five-Dollar Bill we hid in a
certain bookshop will recur to your minds; the day spent in New York
Harbour aboard Tug Number 18, and her skipper’s shrewd, endearing
sagacity. Then consider the Mystery of the House on 71st Street; the
smell of Gorgonzola cheese on a North River pier; the taste of _asti
spumante_; the arguments on the Test of Courage! These are matters it
pleases me to set down, just as a secret among us. And though I am
(you are aware) no partisan of the telephone, there are especially
two voices I have learned to hear with a thrill. They say: “_Hello!
This is Frank_;” or “_Hello! This is Felix!_” And I reply with honest
excitement, for so often those voices are an announcement of Adventure.
Give me a ring soon.