Volume I Part 8 (1/2)

I write myself; therefore I feel free to say what I please about authors; but if you, sir, or madam, who read, but do not write, were to give voice to the reflections that are even now beginning to distill from my pencil, I should doubtless resent them. And here, indeed, I am faced by the sudden reflection that much of what I say myself I might resent in the mouths of others. This leads to a whole new train of thought, which, however, I refuse to take, and board instead the one I set out for,--The Authors' Unlimited. There are many things to be remarked about authors, but in so short a paper it is possible to touch upon only a very few. One of the first facts that strikes the investigator in this field is that members of my profession do not always appear to endear themselves to those with whom they have dealings.

'What do you think of authors?' I once asked an editor.

'I hate 'em!' he answered without a moment's hesitation.

Another editor a.s.sured me, with a weary sigh, that authors were 'kittle cattle.' This affords a writer a little leap of amus.e.m.e.nt. So editors suffer from authors, even as authors from editors! Well, yes, we _are_ kittle cattle! But some of this is due, no doubt, to what people expect of us. I was presented once to a lady who immediately fixed me with an eager eye.

'I am making a study of the habits of authors,' she announced. (Here a dreadful sinking of the heart a.s.sailed me.) 'Kindly tell me at what hour you retire.'

'Usually at half-past ten,' I answered wretchedly.

At that, as I had expected, her eyebrows went up. 'The author of _When All Was Dark_,' she informed me, 'sits up all night. She says she cannot sleep until she has savored the dawn.' However, she was kind enough to give me another chance. 'What do you eat?' she asked.

'Three hearty meals a day,' I answered.

'Not _breakfast_!' she pleaded. 'Why, St. George Dreamer _never_ takes more than three drops of brandy on a lump of sugar in the morning. Just the sight of a coffee cup will upset his work for a week.'

And then she left me, sure, I have no doubt, that no real author could confess to such distressingly normal habits as mine.

Doubtless she is an eager reader of all those little paragraphs informing us how authors write. How this one has to have his black mammy rub his head for an hour before he can even think of work; and that one confesses that to write a love scene she must have the odor of decayed bananas in the room. Well, the world would be a sadder place without these little paragraphs. Would that I had something of a like nature to offer! But alas! I have no black mammy, and the smell of over-ripe fruit leaves my hero cold. Also, to give forth such gems of information one must be able to observe a certain rule. It is, Don't laugh or you might wake up. This rule is always sacredly in force at literary gatherings.

The fact of being an author, and of being at an authors' meeting, induces, it appears, an intense seriousness. In my younger days I did not realize this, and once at a gathering of this nature, I asked a carefree question. 'Do you think,' I inquired of the author next me, 'that it is possible for an unmusical person to write verse?'

I confess now that I put the question somewhat in the spirit of the Irishman, who, asking after his friend's health, added, 'Not that I care a d.a.m.n, but it makes conversation.' Heaven defend me from ever again making so much conversation! A gleam shot up in my author's eye. 'Let us go over and ask Professor ---- ' he cried. 'He wrote _What Poets Cannot Do_. He's just the man to tell us!' And before I could escape, he dragged me through the press of authors, and flung me before the professor, with the tag, 'Unmusical, but aspires to write verse,--is this possible?'

I know now how the beetle feels beneath the microscope. Seeing the little group we made, two young authors 'hurried up, and more, and more, and more.' They surrounded me to listen, to inspect, to comment; they asked one another eager questions about me, they compared notes, they appealed to the author of _What Poets Cannot Do_, and always their dreadful eyes were fixed upon me. Never, never again will I dare the dreadful seriousness of an authors' meeting with an idle question!

I have also learned another lesson. It is how to converse with authors.

I shudder now to think of my early and crude attempts in this matter.

The remembrance of one particular occasion stands out with dreadful vividness. I had been introduced to a distinguished writer. She raised her eyes to mine for a wan instant, a pale flicker of recognition pa.s.sed over her face, and then--silence. Readers,--nay, let me call you friends while I make this terrible confession,--_I broke that silence!_ I was young; I did not understand. I do now. I have never been able since to read 'The Ancient Mariner'--I know too well the awfulness of having shot an albatross. 'The lady,' I said to my inexperienced self, 'does not care to converse; she expects you to do so.' Accordingly, I broke into light and cheerful talk, something in conversation corresponding, I fear, to what in dry goods the clerk recommends as 'a nice line of spring styles.' I realize that only a series of ill.u.s.trations can make the situation clear. Imagine then, if you please, a tinkling cymbal serenading a smouldering volcano; a puppy trying to woo the Sphinx to a game of tag; sunlit waves breaking upon a 'stern and rock-bound coast,'

and you may get a faint idea of the situation. I began almost immediately to experience that far-from-home sensation of which Humpty-Dumpty speaks with so much feeling. As I beheld one after another of my little remarks dash itself to nothingness against that stern and rock-bound coast, only the time and the place kept me from bursting into tears. Fortunately it did not last too long. In another minute one or the other of us would have shattered into the maniac's wild laughter.

And I have every reason to fear that I should have been that one.

Others, however, realizing the awful thing I was doing, rushed up and separated us. Sympathetic hands were stretched to her; low words were murmured, and she was drawn into a secluded corner where her silence might be preserved from any further onslaughts of a like sacrilegious nature. But no one stretched a hand to _me_; no sympathetic words were murmured in _my_ ear!

I now know that in conversations with authors there should be long pauses. This is because every remark, after being received by the ear, must be submitted to a strict brain a.n.a.lysis, and then given a soul-bath before it is proper to venture a reply. I have found, also, that in answering too quickly, I myself lose caste. I now make it a point never to respond to a question addressed to me by an author until I have counted twenty. If the author is very distinguished, I make it fifty for good measure.

Much more remains to be said about authors. I realize that I have, as it were, merely sc.r.a.ped the surface of the subject. s.p.a.ce, however, allows me only room to add one last anecdote. But this one may indeed prove more illuminating than all that has gone before. Once, then, in a certain city where I was visiting, I was invited to attend a meeting of its authors' club. 'Now at this meeting,' I instructed myself before going, 'you will probably encounter the most serious species of author native to this climate.' Accordingly I set forth with a light and expectant heart. As I entered the hall I was aware of another person entering from an opposite door,--a serious, awkward person, with just that peculiar, vague, and almost feeble-minded expression that I have come to a.s.sociate with writers in general. 'Behold, my child, the SERIOUS AUTHOR,' I commented happily to myself. I looked again, and saw it was _myself in a mirror_!

The Provincial American

By Meredith Nicholson

_Viola._ What country, friends, is this?

_Captain._ Illyria, lady.

_Viola._ And what should I do in Illyria?