The Genial Idiot: His Views and Reviews

by John Kendrick Bangs

  VI

  HE DISCUSSES FAME

  "Mr. Poet," said the Idiot, the other morning as his friend, theRhymster, took his place beside him at the breakfast-table, "tell me:How long have you been writing poetry?"

  "Oh, I don't know," said the Poet, modestly. "I don't know that I'veever written any. I've turned out a lot of rhymes in my day, and havemanaged to make a fair living with them, but poetry is a differentthing. The divine afflatus doesn't come to every one, you know; and Idoubt if anybody will be able to say whether my work has shown anoccasional touch of inspiration, or not until I have been dead fifty ora hundred years."

  "Tut!" exclaimed the Idiot. "That's all nonsense. I am able to say nowwhether or not your work shows the occasional touch of inspiration. Itdoes. In fact, it shows more than that. It shows a semi-occasional touchof inspiration. How long have you been in the business?"

  "Eighteen years," sighed the Poet. "I began when I was twelve with alimerick. As I remember the thing, it went like this:

  "There was a young man of Cohasset Turned on the red-hot water-faucet. When asked: 'Is it hot?' He answered, 'Well, thot Is a pretty mild way for to class it.'"

  "Good!" said the Idiot. "That wasn't a bad beginning for a boy oftwelve."

  "So my family thought," said the Poet. "My mother sent it to the Underthe Evening Lamp Department of our town paper, and three weeks later Iwas launched. I've had the _cacoethes scribendi_ ever since--but, alas!I got more fame in that brief hour of success than I have ever been ableto win since. It is a mighty hard job, Mr. Idiot, making a name foryourself these days."

  "That's the point I was getting at," said the Idiot, "and I wanted tohave a talk with you on the subject. I've read a lot of your stuff inthe past eight or ten years, and, in my humble judgment, it is betterthan any of that rhymed nonsense of Henry Wintergreen Boggs, whose nameappears in the newspapers every day in the year; of Susan AldershotSpinks, whose portrait is almost as common an occurrence in the papersas that of Lydia Squinkham; of Circumflex Jones, the eminentsweet-singer of Arizona; or of Henderson Hartley MacFadd, the CanadianBrowning, of whom the world is constantly hearing so much. I havewondered if you were going about it in the right way. What is your planfor winning fame?"

  "Oh, I keep plodding away, doing the best I can all the while," said thePoet. "If there's any good in my stuff, or any stuff in my goods, I'llget my reward some day."

  "Fifty or a hundred years after you're dead, eh?" said the Idiot.

  "Yes," smiled the Poet.

  "Well--your board-bills won't be high then, anyhow," said the Idiot."That's one satisfaction, I presume. They tell me Homer hasn't eaten athing for over twenty centuries. Seems to me, though, that if I were apoet I'd go in for a little fame while I was alive. It's all very niceto work the skin off your knuckles, and to twist your gray matter insideout until it crocks and fades, so that your great-grandchildren canswell around the country sporting a name that has become a householdword, but I'm blessed if I care for that sort of thing. I don't believein storing up caramels for some twenty-first-century baby that bears myname to cut his teeth on, when I have a sweet tooth of my own that ispining away for the lack of nourishment; and, if I were you, I'd go infor the new method. What if Browning and Tennyson and Longfellow and Poedid have to labor for years to win the laurel crown, that's no reasonwhy you should do it. You might just as well reason that because yourforefathers went from one city to another in a stage-coach you shouldeschew railways."

  "I quite agree with you," replied the Poet. "But in literature there isno royal road to fame that I know of."

  "What!" cried the Idiot. "No royal road to fame in letters! Why, wherehave you been living all these years, Mr. Poet? This is the age of theGet Fame-Quick Scheme. You can make a reputation in five minutes, if youonly know the ropes. I know of at least two department stores where youcan go and buy all you want of it, and in all its grades--from notorietydown to the straight goods."

  "Fame? At a department store!" put in Mr. Whitechoker, incredulously.

  "Certainly," said the Idiot. "Ready-made laurels on demand. Why not?It's the easiest thing in the world. Fact is, between you and me, I amconsidering a plan now for the promoting of a corporation to be calledthe United States Fame Company, Limited, the main purpose of whichshall be to earn money for its stockholders by making its customersfamous at so much per head. It won't make any difference whether thecustomer wishes to be famous as an actor, a novelist, or a poet, or anyother old thing. We'll turn the trick for him, and guarantee him morethan a taste of immortality."

  "You may put me down for four dollars' worth of notoriety," said Mr.Brief, with a laugh.

  "All right," said the Idiot, dryly. "There's a lot in your professionwho like the cheap sort. But I warn you in advance that if you go in forcheap notoriety, you'll find it a pretty hard job getting anybody tosell you any eighteen-karat distinction later."

  "Well," said the Poet, "I don't know that I can promise to be one ofyour customers until I know something of the quality of the fame youhave to sell. Tell me of somebody you've made a name for, and I'll takethe matter into consideration if I like the style of laurel you haveplaced on his brow."

  "Lean over here and I'll whisper," said the Idiot. "I don't mind tellingyou, but I don't believe in giving away the secrets of the trade to therest of these gentlemen."

  The Poet did as he was bade, and the Idiot whispered a certain greatname in his ear.

  "No!" cried the Poet, incredulously.

  "Yes, sir. Fact!" said the Idiot. "He was made famous in a night. Thefirst thing we did was to get him to elongate his signature. He waswriting as--P. K. Dubbins we'll call him, for the sake of the argument.Now a name like that couldn't be made great under any circumstanceswhatsoever, so we made him write it out in full: Philander KenilworthDubbins--regular broadside, you see. P. K. Dubbins was a pop-shot, butPhilander Kenilworth Dubbins spreads out like a dum-dum bullet or hitsyou like a blast from a Gatling gun. Printed, it takes up a whole lineof a newspaper column; put at the top of an advertisement, it strikesthe eye with the convincing force of a circus-poster. You can't helpseeing it, and it makes, when spoken, a mouthful that is nothing shortof impressive and sonorous."

  "Still," suggested Mr. Brief, with a wink at the Bibliomaniac, "you haveonly multiplied your difficulties by three. If it was hard for yourfriend Dubbins to make one name famous, I can't see that he improvesmatters by trying to make three names famous."

  "On the modern business principle that to accomplish anything you mustwork on a large scale," said the Idiot. "Philander Kenilworth Dubbinswas a better proposition than P. K. Dubbins. The difference between themin the mere matter of potentialities is the difference between a cornergrocery and a department store, or a kite with a tail and one without.Well, having created the name, the next thing to do was to exploit it,and we advertised Dubbins for all there was in him. We got Mr. WilliamJones Brickbat, the eminent novelist, to say that he had read Dubbins'spoems, and had not yet died; we got Edward Pinkham, the author of "TheMan with the Watering-pot," to send us a type-written letter, sayingthat Dubbins was a coming man, and that his latest book, _Howls fromHelicon_, contained many inspired lines. But, best of all, we prevailedupon the manufacturers of celluloid soap to print a testimonial fromDubbins himself, saying that there was no other soap like it in themarket. That brought his name prominently before every magazine-readerin the country, because the celluloid-soap people are among the biggestadvertisers of the day, and everywhere that soap ad went, why, Dubbins'stestimonial went also, as faithfully as Mary's Little Lamb. After thatwe paid a shirt-making concern down-town to put out a new collar called"The Helicon," which they advertised widely with a picture of Dubbins'shead sticking up out of the middle of it; and, finally, as a crowningachievement, we leased Dubbins for a year to a five-cent cigar company,who have placarded the fences, barns, and chicken-coops from Maine toCalifornia with the name of Dubbins--'Flora Dubbins: The Best Five-CentSmoke in the Market.'" />
  "And thus you made the name of Dubbins famous in letters!" sneered theDoctor.

  "That was only the preliminary canter," replied the Idiot. "So far,Dubbins's greatness was confined to fences, barns, chicken-coops, andthe advertising columns of the magazines. The next thing was to get himwritten up in the newspapers. That sort of thing can't be bought, butyou can acquire it by subtlety. Plan one was to make an after-dinnerspeaker out of Dubbins. This was easy. There are a million publicdinners every year, but a limited supply of good speakers; so, with alittle effort, we got Dubbins on five toast-cards, hired a humorist outin Wisconsin to write five breezy speeches for him, Dubbins committedthem to memory, and they went off like hot-cakes. Morning papers wouldcome out with Dubbins's picture printed in between that of Bishop Potterand a member of the cabinet, who also spoke. Copies of Dubbins'sspeeches were handed to the reporters before the dinner began, so thatit didn't make any difference whether Dubbins spoke them or not--thepapers had 'em next morning just the same, and inside of six months youcouldn't read an account of any public banquet without running upagainst the name of Philander Kenilworth Dubbins."

  "Well, I declare!" ejaculated Mr. Whitechoker. "What a strange affair!"

  "Then we got Dubbins's publishers to take a hand," said the Idiot. "Theyissued a monthly budget of gossip concerning their authors, whichnewspaper editors all over quoted in their interesting items of the day.From these paragraphs the public learned that Dubbins wrote between4 A.M. and breakfast-time; that Dubbins never penned a linewithout having a tame rabbit, named Romola, sitting alongside of hisink-pot; that Dubbins got his ideas for his wonderful poem, 'The Mysteryof Life,' from hearing a canary inadvertently whistle a bar of'Hiawatha;' that Dubbins was the best-dressed author in the State of NewYork, affecting green plaid waistcoats, pink shirts, and red neckties;witty things that Dubbins's boy had said about Dubbins's work toDubbins himself were also spread all over the land, until finallyPhilander Kenilworth Dubbins became a select series of household wordsin every town, city, and hamlet in the United States. And there he isto-day--a great man, bearing a great name, made for him by his friends._Howls from Helicon_ is full of bad poems, but Dubbins is a son ofParnassus just the same. Now we propose to do it for others. For fivedollars down, Mr. Poet, I'll make you conspicuous; for ten, I'll makeyou notorious; for fifty, I'll make you famous; for a hundred, I'll giveyou immortality."

  "Good!" cried the Poet. "Immortality for a hundred dollars is cheap.I'll take that."

  "You will?" said the Idiot, joyfully. "Put up your money."

  "All right," laughed the Poet. "I'll pay--C. O. D."

  "Another hundred gone!" moaned the Idiot, as the party broke up and itsmembers went their several ways. "I think it's abominable that thiscommercial spirit of the age should have affected even you poets. Youought to have gone into business, old man, and left the Muses alone.You've got too good a head for poetry."