the conclusion of the whole matter.
let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter. but first of all let us think of the many mercies for which we have to be thankful, and then let us be just as well as generous; for certainly the magazines have been of enormous benefit to the reading public as well as to those whose profession it is to entertain, amuse, or instruct that public.
the magazines have not only raised the rates of compensation for literary labor, but they have spread the reading habit to an enormous extent, and are still educating vast numbers of people—of a class[pg 161] that do not read at all when they happen to be born in other countries—to become habitual buyers of books and periodicals. moreover it must be said of the editors of these publications that they place their time at the disposal of every aspiring author who brings his manuscript to them. in other words, they give careful attention to whatever work is submitted to them, and are glad to buy and pay promptly for such stories and poems as they may deem suitable to their needs. i have never seen any disposition on the part of any of them to crush budding genius, but, on the contrary, i have frequently met them on dark, rainy nights hunting through the town with lanterns in their hands for new writers. in fact, i do not know of any place in this world where a young man may look for fairer attention and encouragement than he will find in the office of a modern magazine.
i have heard these editors denounced,[pg 162] one and all, by infuriated poets and romancers, for the “favoritism” which had been shown to certain contributors, but i have generally found that when they erred in this way it was on the side of charity; and if certain writers whose contributions we generally skip occupy more room in the monthlies than we think they ought to, it is not because they are editorial pets, but because they have been careful students of the great literary principles described in these pages, and have thereby acquired the art of writing exactly what can be printed without injury to the susceptibilities of a single advertiser or subscriber.
but we have special cause for being thankful to the magazines when we read some of the hysterical, obstetrical, and epigrammatic romances which have enjoyed such an astonishing vogue in england of late years. thank heaven! no american magazine—so far as my knowledge[pg 163] goes—has had the effrontery to offer its readers any such noisome, diseased literature as that with which the alleged “clever” people of london have flooded our market. to my way of thinking the epigrammatic books are the most offensive of the whole lot, and certainly there is nothing better calculated to plunge one into the depths of despair and shame than the perusal of a modern british novel whose characters are forever “showing off,” as children say, and who seem to devote their lives to uttering sixpenny cynicisms and evolving, with infinite pains and travail, the sort of remarks that pass current in the “smart london set”—if these chroniclers are to be believed—as wit.
callow and ingenuous youth betrays itself by two unmistakable earmarks. one of these is in the form of a slight down on the cheek, and the other is the belief that oscar wilde writes brilliant epigram.
[pg 164]i attended the first american representation of a play by that distinguished author, and can well recall my feelings when an able-bodied mummer took the centre of the stage and said, with the air of a man who has been rolling a good thing under his tongue all the evening, and at last has a chance to utter it: “time is the thief of procrastination.” a murmur of admiration ran through the house, but i—i sobbed like a heart-broken child.
and yet mr. wilde is one of the cleverest of the whole brood of fat-witted chromo-cynics whose vulgar flippancies have somehow come to be regarded as witty and amusing, and that, too, by people who ought to know better. it positively makes me sick to see one of these paper-covered chronicles of fashionable imbecility lying on a parlor table, and to hear it spoken of as “so delightfully bright and clever, don’t you know.”
[pg 165]heine was a genuine cynic and the maker of epigrams which he wrote as easily and naturally as bobby burns wrote verses; and if there is anything in the world which can be accomplished, if at all, without manual labor and the accompanying sweat of the brow, it is the utterance of really witty or epigrammatic remarks. but these leaden-footed english wits somehow convey to me a vision of a cynic in toil-stained overalls going forth in the gray of the early morning, dinner-pail in hand, for a hard day’s work at being epigrammatic and funny.
and while i am on the subject of epigram and cynicism, i cannot help wondering what heine would have done for a living had his lot been cast in our own age and country. imagine him offering manuscript to the ladies’ home journal! (by the way, bok ought not to let those photographs go for twenty-five cents apiece. they’re worth a dollar if they’re[pg 166] worth a cent.) think of the sensation that the reisebilder would create in the century office!
my own opinion is that heine would, were he living here to-day, find occupation as a paragrapher on some western paper, acquire some nebulous renown as the “ann arbor clarion man” or the “omaha bumblebee man,” and be consigned in his old age to that home for literary incurables known as the mcclure syndicate.
there is a book of excerpts from the writings of this gifted man, published some years ago by henry holt & co., and now, unhappily enough, out of print. these excerpts are so well selected and convey to us so vividly the charm of this matchless writer that i took the trouble some time ago to inquire into the way in which the work was done. i learned on undisputed authority that mr. holt, who has not spent his life in the literary business for nothing, borrowed a pruning-hook[pg 167] from the century office, placed it, together with heine’s complete works, in the hands of an experienced and skilled magazine editor, and bade him “edit” them as if they were intended for publication in his own monthly. the skilled and experienced editor opened the volumes, and the pruning-hook—also a skilled and experienced instrument of mutilation—fairly leaped from its scabbard in its eagerness to eliminate the dangerous passages. when the editor had completed his task mr. holt gathered up the parings from the floor and published them under the title of scintillations from heine; and i sincerely hope that a new edition of this book will be brought out before long, if for no other purpose than to show people what a real epigram is and how sharp it can bite.
there is another variety of literature which i dislike, and which seems to have attained a ranker and more unwholesome[pg 168] growth in this country than elsewhere. i refer to those articles and books whose sole purpose seems to be the exploiting of men and women who are really unworthy of any serious consideration. the johnsonian period is rich in specimens of this sort of work, and the future historian will marvel at the absurd prominence given in this enlightened age to people who have never accomplished anything in their lives, and who themselves evince the greatest eagerness to transmit to posterity authentic records of their failures.
“how i lost the battle,” by captain runoff, of the russian army; “driven out of asia minor,” by general skates; and “ever so many miles from the north pole,” by lieutenant queary, are excellent examples of this style of literature; but a far lower depth was reached about two years ago, when the harpers burst into enthusiastic praise of a young man named chanler, who had announced his[pg 169] intention of discovering africa, and proposed to awe and conciliate the ferocious native chiefs by performing in their presence various difficult feats of legerdemain which he had taken the pains to learn from a professional master in london.
what has become of that gifted young man for whom the harpers predicted such a rosy future? perhaps at this very moment he is seated in a deep, shady african jungle making an omelet in a high silk hat or converting a soiled pocket-handkerchief into a glass globe full of goldfish. i can picture him standing, alone and unarmed, before thousands of hostile spears. his eye is clear and his cheek unblanched. in another moment he will be taking rabbits out of the chieftain’s ears, and the dusky warriors will cower, in abject submission, at his feet.
there is one thing that can be said in favor of mr. chanler, and that is that up[pg 170] to the present moment he has not annoyed his fellow-creatures with any lectures or articles or stories descriptive of the wonders that he did not discover during his journeyings in the dark continent. his reticence is commendable, and should serve as an example to various windy travelers who “explore” during a period of eight weeks and then talk for the rest of their lives.
verily this is a golden age for “fakirs,” quacks, and intellectual feather-weights, and my friendly advice to all who may be classified under any one of those three heads is to make hay while the sun shines, because, in my belief, the coming decade will see them relegated to the obscurity in which they naturally belong. but our little tuppenny gods and celebrities have kicked up so much dust of late years that they have contrived to obscure the fame of men who are infinitely better worth talking about.
[pg 171]singularly enough, the american who achieved more with his pen than any one else in his generation is almost unknown to the majority of his countrymen and countrywomen, although our government paid an unusual tribute to his memory by bringing his remains back to his native land in a man-of-war. the man of whom i write was simply a reporter employed by the new york herald to chronicle contemporaneous european history. it was he who told the civilized world the truth about the atrocities committed by the turkish invaders of bulgaria in a series of letters to the london daily news—letters which became, in the hands of mr. gladstone, a weapon with which he aroused the popular feeling until the beaconsfield ministry was swept from power and the jingo spirit held in check while russia carried on her “holy war” against the porte. there is not a statesman or sovereign in europe who does not know[pg 172] of the important r?le which this american reporter played in continental affairs at the time of the russo-turkish war. if you ask a bulgarian or montenegrin if he ever heard of j. a. macgahan he will very likely say to you what one of them said to me: “did you, an american, ever hear of george washington? well, macgahan was our washington, and there is not a peasant in all my country who is not familiar with his name.”
this countryman of ours, in whose achievements i have such a sturdy pride, died literally in the harness in 1879, and every year on the 9th of june, throughout all the land of which he was the acknowledged savior, the solemn prayers of the church are offered for the repose of his soul. it may be that he has won a higher fame than he would if he had lived to make himself known to the american public through the medium of the lecture platform, but nevertheless i often wish[pg 173] that his renown in the land of his birth were nearer in accord with his deserts than it is.
i doubt if any system, either literary, political, or social—unless it be negro slavery—has ever had a fairer trial in this country than has that of pruning-hook editing, of which i have treated in these pages; and that system may be responsible, in part, for the fact that three quarters of the fiction offered in bookstores to-day is the work of foreign writers, most of whom have been reared in the comparatively free and independent literary atmosphere of great britain, and have always addressed their books directly to the public instead of the editors of magazines. it is true that smith or mudie, whose influence in the book-trade is almost incalculable, occasionally refuse to circulate a novel out of consideration for the feelings of the “young person,” but such a proceeding is not nearly as disastrous[pg 174] to a writer as the refusal of his manuscript by all the magazines would be to an american. a ton of manuscript makes no more commotion when returned to its authors than the touch of a humming-bird on a lily-petal; but when a book like esther waters is cast out of an english circulating library it falls with a crash that is heard throughout the length and breadth of the three kingdoms, while the author and his friends, with a little assistance from the author’s enemies, make the welkin ring with their cries.
the recent discussion over “trilby” and the action of its publishers in cutting out this passage and pruning that have given the public a little insight into the methods in vogue in our large literary establishments—methods which i have tried to explain in this book. the very fact that mr. du maurier’s manuscript stood in need of the pruning-hook is, to me, proof positive that he never sat on[pg 175] the poets’ bench in the ledger office or practised his profession under the rule of dr. holland.
it may be that at this very moment a great many american story-readers are asking themselves why it is that native authors who know their trade so well that the magazines will publish anything that they offer should be unable to write a serial equal to that of a gray-haired novice like mr. du maurier, who, i will wager, knows absolutely nothing about the immortal principles which are the very lamps unto the feet of his american contemporaries. i shudder to think of what the world would have lost had the author of “trilby” gone about his work with the holland fetters on his wrists, the fear of the gas-fitter in his heart, the awful pruning-hook hanging by a single hair over his head, and the ominous shadow of robert bonner falling across the pages of his story.
[pg 176]there are other english writers who have “arrived” during the past half-dozen years—a sufficient number, indeed, to make us feel that there must be some deep-seated cause for the comparatively slow progress which our own literature has made in the same time.
it is no easy matter to fairly estimate the literary worth of writers who have been before the public such a short time, especially when we take into consideration the wide difference in personal tastes, and therefore i have sought the aid of a number of critical and learned friends in the preparation of a list of writers which i confess is not exactly the one that i would print had i consulted only my own personal tastes.
this is the list which i offer as a result of many consultations with people who are supposed to understand the subject: j. m. barrie, mrs. humphry ward, hall caine, rudyard kipling, conan doyle,[pg 177] barry paine, j. k. jerome, i. zangwill, marie corelli, quiller couch, s. r. crockett, sarah grand, beatrice harraden, anthony hope, and stanley j. weyman—fifteen in all besides mr. du maurier.
from this catalogue of talent and genius it is possible to select ten whose position in letters is assured, although tastes will differ as to the names on the last end of the list.
now let us see how many writers have been raised to maturity in the carefully watched and over-cultivated magazine soil during the same period of time—say half a dozen years. can we point to sixteen, or ten, or even five who have made their way into the great white light within that time?
no; we have precisely one writer to show as the fruit of american literary endeavor during six years, and that writer is a woman who has confined herself—and wisely, too, i suspect—to the portrayal[pg 178] of life and character among the new england hills and villages. a narrow field, it may be said, but she has surveyed it with the true artistic eye, and at her touch it has yielded truthful, appreciative, honest literature—stories with an underlying note of sadness that rings true as steel and is a bit of the very essence of rural new england life. of course this writer is in an enviable position because she enjoys all the advantages of magazine authorship and the prestige which accompanies it, and is, to all practical purposes, exempt from the ordeal of the pruning-hook to which other authors are obliged to submit. i do not say this in disparagement of her great talents; i only mean to say that her stories all lie within the necessary magazine limitations, and she can write to the very top of her bent without getting within gunshot of the barbed-wire fences which restrict the endeavors of authors whose natural impulse[pg 179] it is to work in the deeper and broader strata of humanity.
i do not deny that there are several bright and clever young men and women who have done excellent literary work in the magazines and will undoubtedly live to do even better in the future. i know of two or three who are, according to my way of thinking, better entitled to mention than some of the english authors whom i have named; but the woman whom i have in mind is the one recent acquisition to american letters, who draws truthful pictures from a proper point of view, writes fully as well to-day as she did six years ago, and has, moreover, given us one good novel. i do not know of a single other bright young american writer—and very clever some of them are, too—of whom nearly as much as this can be fairly said.
if the names of hamlin garland or edward bellamy occur to any of my[pg 180] readers it should be remembered that they sprang up by the wayside and are not the product of the rich magazine soil.
in bringing my modest preachment to a close, it is with a hope that my readers will pardon any errors of humor into which i may have fallen, or at least find in them a reasonable excuse for my effrontery in offering advice while i am still under ninety-seven years of age. i hope that i have done full justice to the established literary dynasty which began with robert bonner and of which mr. johnson is now the acknowledged head.
and let my last word be one of thankfulness because that dynasty has at least kept our national literature clean—as clean as a whistle or a pipe-stem.
