Part 4 (1/2)

Let us return to the old novels. What curious pranks time plays with tastes and vogues. Forty years ago N. P. Willis was just faded. Yet he was long a great comet of literary glitter and obscured many men of much greater ability. Everybody read him; the annuals hung upon his name; the ladies regarded him as a finer and more das.h.i.+ng Byron than Byron.

The place he filled was much like that of Congreve, before whom Shakespeare's great nose was out of joint for a long time; Congreve, who was the margarita aluminata major of English poesy and drama and public life, and is now found in junk stores and in the back line on book shelves and whom n.o.body reads now. Willis had his languid affectations, his superficial cynicism and added to them ostentatious sentimentality.

Does anybody read William Gilmore Simm's elaborate rhetoric disguised as novels? He must have written two dozen of them, the Richardson of the United States. Lovers of delicious wit and intellectual humor still read Dr. Holmes' essays, but it would probably take a physician's prescription to make them swallow the novels. In what dark corners of the library are Bayard Taylor's novels and travels hidden? Will you come into the garden, Maud, and read Chancellor Walworth's mighty tragedies and Miss Mulock's Swiss-toy historical novels, or will you beg off, like the honest girl you are, and take a nap? Your sleepiness, dear Miss Maud, does you credit. By the way, what the deuce is the name of anyone of these novels? I can recall ”Elsie Vernier,” by Dr. Holmes and then there is a blank.

But what cla.s.sics they were--then! In the thick of them had appeared a newspaper story that struggled through and was printed in book form. Old friends have told me how they waited at the country post-offices to get a copy, delayed for weeks. It was a scandal to read it in some localities. It was fiercely attacked as an outrageous exaggeration produced by temporary excitement and hostile feeling, or praised as a new gospel. It has been translated into every tongue having a printing press, and has sold by millions of copies. It was ”Uncle Tom's Cabin.”

It was not a cla.s.sic, but what a vigorous immortal mongrel of human sentiment it was! What a row was kicked up over Miss Braddon's ”Octoroon,” and what an impossible yellowback it was! The toughest piece of fiction I met with as a boy was ”Sanford and Merton,” and I've been aching to say so for four pages. If this world were full of Sanfords and Mertons, then give me Jupiter or some other comfortable planet at a secure sanitary distance removed.

I can't even remember the writers who were grammatically and rhetorically perfect forty years ago, and also very dull with it all.

Is there a bookshelf that holds ”Leni Leoti, or The Flower of the Prairies?” There are ”Jane Eyre,” ”Lady Audley's Secret,” and ”John Halifax, Gentleman,” which will go with many and are all well worth the reading, too. Are Mrs. Eliza A. Dupuy, Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth, Mrs. Caroline Lee Hentz and Augusta J. Evans dead? Their novels still live--look at the book stores. ”Linda, or the Young Pilot of the Belle Creole,” ”India, the Pearl of Pearl River,” ”The Planter's Northern Bride,” ”St. Elmo”--they were fiction for you! A boy old enough to have a first sweetheart could swallow them by the mile.

You remember, when we were boys, the circus acrobats always--always, remember--rubbed young children with snake-oil and walloped them with a rawhide to educate them in tumbling and contortion? Well, if I could get the snake-oil for the joints and a curly young wig, I'd like to get back at five hundred of those books and devour them again--”as of yore!”

VI. RASCALS

BEING A DISCOURSE UPON GOOD, HONEST SCOUNDRELISM AND VILLAINS.

The people that inhabit novels are like other peoples of the earth--if they are peaceful, they have no history. So that, therefore, in novels, as in nations, it is the great restless heights of society that are to be approached with greatest awe and that engage admiration and regard.

Everybody is interested in Nero, but not one person in ten thousand can tell you anything definite about Constantine or even Marcus Aurelius. If you should speak off-handedly about Amelia Sedley in the presence of a thousand average readers you would probably miss 85 per cent. of effect; if you said Becky Sharp the whole thousand would understand.

There is this to be said of disreputable folk, that they are clever and picturesque and interesting, at least.

An elderly jeweler in New York City was arrested several years ago upon the charge of receiving stolen gold and silver plate, watches and jewelry from well-known thieves. For forty years he had been a respected merchant, a church officer, a husband, father, and citizen, of irreproachable reputation, with enduring friends.h.i.+ps. He was charitable, liberal and kindly. For decade after decade he was the experienced, wise and fatherly ”fence” of professional burglars and thieves. Why, it would be an education in itself to know that man, to shake his honest hand, fresh from charity or concealment, and smoke a pipe with him and hear him talk about things frankly. When he gave to the missionary collection, rest a.s.sured he gave sincerely; when he ”covered swag,”

into the melting pot for an industrious burglar, he did so only in the regular course of business.

Strange as it may seem, even criminals have human feelings in common with all of us. The old Thug who stepped aside into the bushes and prayed earnestly while his son was throwing his first strangling cloth around the throat of the English traveler--prayed for that son's honorable, successful beginning in his life devotion--was a good father.

And when he was told that the son had acted with unusual skill, who can doubt that his tears of joy were sincere and humble tears of thankfulness? At least Bowanee knew. Can you not imagine a kind-hearted Chinese matron saying to her neighbor over the bamboo fence, ”Yes, we sent the baby down to the beach (or the river bank or the forest) yesterday. We couldn't afford to keep it. I hope the G.o.ds have taken its little soul. At any rate it is sure of salvation hereafter.”

Some twenty years ago I took the night train from Pineville to Barbourville, in the Kentucky mountains, reaching the latter place about 11 o'clock of a cold, rainy, dark November night. Only one other pa.s.senger alighted. There was an express wagon to take us to the town, a mile or so distant, and the wagon was already heavy with freight packages. The road was through a narrow lane, hub-deep with mud, and what, with stalling and resting, we were more than half an hour getting to the hotel. My fellow pa.s.senger was about my age, and was a shrewd, well-informed native of the vicinity. He knew the mineral, timber and agricultural resources, was evidently an enterprising business man and an intelligent but not voluble talker. He accepted a cigar, and advised me to see the house in Barbourville where the late Justice Samuel Miller was born. At the hotel he registered first, and, as he was going to leave next day and I was to remain several days, he told the clerk to give me the better of the two rooms vacant. It was a very pleasant act of thoughtfulness. The name on the register was ”A. Johnson.” The next day I asked the clerk about Mr. Johnson. My fellow pa.s.senger was Andy Johnson, whose fame as a feud-fighter and slayer of men has never been exceeded in the history of mountain feuds. He then had three or four men to his credit, definitely, and several doubtful ascriptions. He added a few more, I believe, before he met the inevitable.

Now, while Mr. Johnson, in all matters where killing seemed to him to be appropriate, was a most prompt and accurate man in accomplis.h.i.+ng it, yet he was not the murderer that ignorant and isolated folks conceive such persons to be. The cigar I had given him was a very bad, cheap cigar, and, if he had merely wanted murder, he had every reason to kill me for giving it to him, and he had a perfect night for the deed. But he smoked it to the stub without a complaint or remark and saw that I got the best room in the hotel. Johnson was a cautious and considerate fellow-man, whose murders were doubtless private hobbies and exercises growing out of his environment and heredity.

One of the houses I most delight to enter in a certain town is one where I am always sure to see a devoted and happy wife and beautiful, playful children cl.u.s.tering around the armchair in which sits a man who committed one of the most cold-blooded a.s.sa.s.sinations you can imagine.

He is an honored, esteemed and model citizen. His acquittal was a miracle in a million chances. He has justified it. It is beautiful to see those happy children clinging to the hand that--

Well, dear friends, the dentist is not a cruel man in his social capacity, and you can get delicious viands instead of nauseous medicines at the doctor's private table.

That is why beginning novel readers should take no advice. Strike out alone through the highways and lanes of story, character and experience.

The best novelist is the one who fears not to tell you the truth, which is more wonderful than fiction. It is always the best hearts that bend to mistakes. Absolute virtue is as sterile as granite rock; absolute vice is as poisonous as a stagnant pond. No healthy interest or speculation can linger about either. Enter into the struggle and know human nature; don't stay outside and try to appear superior.

For, which of us has not his crimes of thought to account for? Think not, because Andy Johnson or William Sykes or Dr. Webster actually killed his man, that you are guiltless, because you haven't. Have you never wanted to? Answer that, in your conscience and in solitude--not to me. Speak up to yourself and then say whether the difference between you and the recorded criminal is not merely the difference between the overt act and the faltering wish. It is a matter of courage or of custom.