Without Prejudice

by Израэль Зангвилл

  I do not, indeed, propose that the author shall pocket the money, though I see no shame in the deed: everything is worth what it can fetch, and if an adventitious value comes to attach to a signature, the author were amply justified in pocketing this legitimate supplement to the scanty rewards of his travail of soul and body-just as he were justified, should locks of his hair come into demand, in alternating the scissors and the hair-restorer. But as a suspicion still prevails that authors live on ambrosia and nectar (carriage paid), that the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker tumble over one another in their eagerness to offer their goods at the shrine of genius, it may be unwise to shock one's admirers too much by pocketing their oboli; and I would suggest-in all seriousness-that a charge be made in the future for all autographs: each celebrity could fix it according to the special demand, and the returns should go for charitable purposes. An "Autograph Fund" should be founded in every profession admitting of notoriety. Among actors the fund could be devoted to that excellent charity the Dramatic and Musical Benevolent Fund; among writers, to the support of decayed critics and neglected novelists. Why not? In days when men cannot bear to see even Niagara wasting its energies in misdirected roars, why should so prolific a source of profit as autographomania be neglected? The authors' strike must be initiated at once: the Autograph Fund demands an instant Treasurer. I don't mind contributing ten signatures to start it, if twelve other writers, of equal eminence and illegibility, will guarantee a like amount.

  What profits it to woo the thankless Muse, or to appeal to the autograph-huntress? In a foolish moment of unpardonable sentimentality, I suggested that she should pay for her treasure by a charity contribution; at the very least let her refrain, I prayed, from American stamps. But she does not read me, alas! though my writings are the sole solace of her days and nights; there is no way of attracting her attention. Still, still her stamps flow in. I cry Oyez, Oyez, but she is bent over "Trilby," and I am but the shadow of a name-of a name that is interesting enough tacked on to my favourite motto or a brief autobiography, and may serve to round off her autographic alphabet. Will not Mr. Du Maurier cry aloud to her on behalf of his brother-authors, he whose housetop is the sun, whose voice reaches from the summits of the Rockies to the pampas of La Plata, and echoes from the ice-floes of Labrador to the cliffs of Cape Horn? Will he not tell her that even as "the crimes of Clapham" are "chaste in Martaban," so the stamps of the States are the waste-paper of the London mails. Mr. Kipling, whom I have just quoted, is more fortunate. Breathing the air of Brattleboro', Vermont, he is supplied with native stamps to carry on his correspondence withal. For Mr. Kipling-so he has confided to me in an amusing narrative of his autograph experiences, designed for the warning of fellow-craftsmen to whom my project may have sounded seductive-had actually anticipated my plan: he had sent out two hundred circulars to the admiring crew who ranked him before Shakespeare, proposing that they should send him a donation for a charity in return for his signature. Then the flood-gates-not of heaven-were opened. For weeks abuse rained in upon him, and "thief" seems to have been the mildest rebuke he received. To be asked for an autograph was an honour (even with the stamps omitted). He bowed his head beneath the deluge, praying perhaps-

  Of the two hundred grant but two

  To take a charitable view.

  But no, as one man and one woman they cast him out of grace.

  And yet he seems to persevere-for'tisindeed an excellent way of circumventing the wily. In the Chicago Record I read that he wrote to an autograph-beggar that he would send his autograph on receiving proof that the autograph-hunter had deposited two and a half dollars in a certain New York fresh air fund. This is an ingenious variation of the original scheme, for it puts aside the possibility of personal peculation; but I doubt whether it answers. Each celebrity must solve for himself this harassing problem: there be those who simply stick to the stamps...great free spirits, these, the Napoleons of the pen, Jenseits von Gut mid Bose, whose names it is not for me to bewray. Others, like myself, stricken with the paralysis of a Puritan conscience, waver and vex themselves. One ought not to encourage this craze for the external accidents of greatness-the appeal may be fraudulent-and yet what right have you to the stamps?-and after all'tisflattering to be adored from Terra del Fuego; it argues taste-and taste should not go unrecognized in a Philistine world. Eureka! I have found the solution. Don't stick to the stamps, but send them to the funds of a charity.

  These views of mine on autographs have greatly distressed the unfair sex. The ladies-God bless them-resent a severely logical view of anything, and to disturb their small sentimentalities is to be cold-blooded and cynical. Once, when I wasj imprudent enough to wonder if the "young person" with the well-known cheek, to which blushes were brought, existed any longer in this age of neurotic novels written by ladies for gentlemen, I received a delicious communication from an Australian damsel informing me that she had been in love with me up till the fatal day on which she read my cynical conception of her sex,-which reminds me of another well-meaning young lady who wrote me the other day from America that her epistle was prompted "neither by love nor admiration." If I hint that popular lady novelists do not invariably produce masterpieces of style and syntax, I am accused of inflicting the "tarantulous bites of envious detractors." I am driven-most reluctantly-to a suspicion that has long been faintly glimmering in my bosom, a suspicion that ladies have no sense of humour. It is gravely pointed out to me by incensed writers of incense-laden letters that the demand for a writer's autograph is a mark of veneration; that his letter is reverentially handed about on special occasions quite without a thought of its possible commercial value and that often-though here the argument itself becomes cunningly commercial-it becomes the focus of a local hero-worship that expresses itself outwardly in increased purchases of the author's books. Now, of course every author is only too aware that requests for his autographs are manifestations of reverence, and is only too apt to disregard the supposition of crude curiosity. He knows that it is only natural that people, forewarned by the scarcity of autographs of Shakespeare, should be anxious to safeguard posterity against a similar calamity. But that any author should have humour enough to see the absurdity of the autograph mania, this is what his fair clientele has not humour enough to understand. Anthony Hope-who, by the way, told me he had received a letter from an unknown lady, the object of which was to abuse me for my heresy on this heart-burning question-says that if to write his name on slips of paper adds to the sum of the world's pleasure, he is ready to do it. This is a noble attitude; but the good people do not always do the most good. Ought one to pamper this interest in mere externals? Here are the man's books, pictures, symphonies: if these have profited you, be content-you have had enough. He has shown you his soul,-why should he show you his hand? One knows into what this sort of thing degenerates-into the exploitation of celebrities by smart American journalists, to whom genius and notoriety are equally alike mere possibilities of sensational copy with screaming head-lines. A. Z. has written the opera of the century: the public is dying to know the cut of his trousers and the proportion of milk in his cafe au lait. X. Y. has murdered his uncle and vivisected his grandmother: how interesting to ascertain his favourite novel, and whether he approves of the bicycle for ladies! For one person who knows anything of the artistic output of the day there are ten who know all about the producers and how much money they are making. Even when our interest in artistic work is intellectual, we are more likely to read criticisms of it than to place ourselves vis-a-vis with the work. Not the truest criticism, not the subtlest misinterpretation, can give us anything like the sensation or the stimulus that results from direct contact with the work itself. As well enjoy the "Moonlight Sonata" through a technical analysis of its form. But this is a venial vice compared with taking your Sonata through the medium of a paragraph about Beethoven's shoe-buckles.

  The autograph craze is, I maintain, only another aspect of this modern mania for irrelevant gossip; ju
st as the tit-bits breed of papers is but the outer manifestation of an inner disgrace. We no longer tackle great works and ordered trains of thought: everything must be snappy and spicy; and we open our books and papers, awaiting, like the criminal in "The Mikado," "the sensation of a short sharp shock." To possess a man's autograph may as easily become a substitute for studying his work as an incentive to purchasing it. The critique displaces the book itself: the autograph may displace even the critique. All this without reference to the trouble and expense entailed by an aggregation of the trivial taskwork of signing one's name, addressing envelopes, sticking on stamps, and occasionally paying for them, and not infrequently defraying the extra postage on insufficiently stamped admiration. Henry James, in his latest story in "The Yellow Book," says deliciously: "Lambert's novels appeared to have brought him no money: they had only brought him, so far as I could make out, tributes that took up his time." The earnings of the most popular authors are, I fear me, sadly exaggerated, and their own anticipations seldom realised. As the other American novelist-Mr. Howells-humourously puts it: "I never get a cheque from my publisher without feeling distinctly poorer." The average author is indeed very much in the position of a cabman surveying a shilling. And the even less substantial "tributes," be it noted, are not limited to aspirations after autographs. That would be little to grumble at. But everybody knows that the demands made upon a celebrity-and especially upon an author-are "peculiar and extensive." He is expected to be not only an author-and even, according to the more high-minded among the unsuccessful critics, to be that without fee or reward-but also to officiate gratuitously as publisher's reader to the universe at large-unprinted; as author's agent, hawking unknown MSS. about among his friends the publishers, and placing unknown young men on the staff of the leading journals; as dramatic agent, introducing plays and players to his friends the managers-who will not produce his own works; and, in fine, to act as general adviser to aspirants of every species. Nay, was not Hall Caine recently asked by a lady admirer in poor health, about to visit the Isle of Man, to find lodgings for her? Heavens! who knows what scandal might have arisen had the author of "The Manxman" inconsiderately turned himself into a house-agent! The famous tale of the Nova Scotian sheep in "The School for Scandal" might have been eclipsed by the sequel. Now, the poor lady meant well enough: she may even have thought to show how deep her faith in the novelist's domestic genius and financial impeccability! It simply did not occur to her that she was not the only call upon Mr. Game's time; and she may have felt as resentful at his reluctance as the beggar who stigmatises Rothschild as niggard because he cannot wheedle a share in his bounty. It may be that I am incapable of envisaging this whole matter fairly, because-to make a clean breast of it-I am one of those Philistine persons who shock Americans by never having been to Stratford-on-Avon. It is true that I have read Shakespeare-and even his commentators, which gives me the pull over Shakespeare himself; it is true that I agree with the persons who haven't read him that he is the greatest poet the world has ever seen or is likely to see; it is true that Shakespeare is part of my life and thought; but somehow my interest in him does not extend to his second-best bed, and I do not greatly yearn to see the room in which Bacon was not born. I do not even care whether Shakespeare was written by Shakespeare or "by another man of the same name." Do you remember that poem of Amy Levy's, telling of how she sat listening to people chattering about a dead, poet they had known, his looks and ways, and thinking to herself-

  I, who had never seen your face,

  Perhaps I knew you best.

  It is this flaw in an otherwise well regulated mind, this "blind spot" in my spiritual eye, that perhaps makes me attach undue unimportance to the attraction of autographs. There is an eminent actress who invariably refuses to send her autograph; but the eminent actor who is her husband invariably sends a letter of apology to the disappointed correspondent. Since I am in the mood for confessions, let me candidly admit that my own attitude has a somewhat similar duality. Though I curse in these pages, I bless like Balaam when it comes to the point. Never have I omitted to return a sufficiently stamped, envelope with the coveted sign-manual-never twice alike. Never have I failed to put my name in a birthday book under a specific date-never twice alike. And though I hate to answer applications for autographs, I should be still more annoyed not to receive them. And as for sneering at the ladies, they have, I vow, no more constant admirer. I could, indeed, desire that when they are next angry with me they would read me before they criticise me; that they would base their denunciations on my text, and my whole text, rather than on some paper's mistaken comment upon another paper's inaccurate extract. But nothing that they can say of me, however harsh, shall, I protest, abate a jot of my respect for them or myself.

  XXVII. ON FINISHING A BOOK.

  Between three and four of the morning the last words of the book were written, and, putting down my pen-without falling asleep, as I should have done had my task been to read the book, instead of to write it-I began to muse on the emotions I ought to have felt, and on the emotions other and greater authors had felt. There was a time, "in the days that were earlier," when the writing of a book was a rare and solemn task, to be approached-like the writing of "Paradise Lost"-after years of devout and arduous preparation, under the "great Taskmaster's eye." Now it is all a rush and a fever and a fret, and the mad breathlessness of the New York newspaper office has spread from journalism to literature, and novelists cheerfully contract to write books in the next century, quite unregardful of whether there will be any books in them by then. That was a very leisurely prescription in the Old Testament: "When a man taketh a new wife he shall not go out in the host, neither shall he be charged with any business; he shall be free at home one year, and shall cheer his wife which he hath taken." Delightful honeymoon of those pastoral days! Now the honeymoon has dwindled to a week, or in the case of actors and actresses to a matinee (for they appear at night as usual), and few of us possess sufficient oxen and sheep and manservants and maidservants to strike work for a year. If only our authors would produce but one book a year, instead of yielding two or three harvests to make hay withal while the sun shines! Nor do they do these things much better in France. From the patient parturition of a Flaubert-the father of the Realists-we have come down to the mechanical annual crop of his degenerate descendant, Zola. Perhaps the age of great works-like the age of great folios-is over, so that none will ever have again those fine sensations that made Gibbon chronicle how he finished his monumental history between the hours of eleven and twelve at night in the summer-house at Lausanne, or that dictated the stately sentiment of Hallam's wind-up of his "Introduction to the Literature of Europe": "I hereby terminate a work which has furnished, the occupation of not very few years.... I cannot affect to doubt that I have contributed something to the general literature of my country, something to the honourable estimation of my own name and to the inheritance of those, if it is for me still to cherish that hope, to whom I have to bequeath it."

  Thackeray must have felt something of this fine glow when he finished "Vanity Fair," despite his genial simulation of "Come, children, let us shut up the box and the puppets, for our play is played out." Dickens, who had not humour enough for such self-mockery, took his endings very seriously indeed, and even in the middle of his books had all the emotions of parting when some favourite character had to quit the stage, some poor Dombey or Little Nell. You remember what he wrote in the preface to "David Copperfield" of "how sorrow-fully the pen is laid down at the close of a two-years' imaginative task, or how an author feels as if he were dismissing some portion of himself into the shadowy world, when a crowd of the creatures of his brain are going from him for ever." And contrast his superfluously solemn asseveration, "No one can ever believe this narrative in the reading more than I believed it in the writing," with the whimsical melancholy of the "Vanity Fair" preface, the references to the Becky doll and the Amelia puppet. One feels that Thackeray was the greater Master, in th
at he took himself less seriously, and had the finer sense of proportion. But that he lived with his characters quite as much as his great contemporary may be seen from that charming Roundabout Paper "De Finibus," where he describes the loneliness of his study after all those people had gone who had been boarding and lodging with him for twenty months. They had plagued him and bored him at all sorts of uncomfortable hours, and yet now he would be almost glad if one of them would walk in and chat with him as of yore-"an odd, pleasant, humourous, melancholy feeling." In how much more solemn a mood Dickens finishes "Our Mutual Friend," congratulating himself on having been saved-with Mr. and Mrs. Boffin and the Lammles, with Bella Wilfer and Rogue Riderhood-from a destructive railway accident, so that he cannot help thinking of the time when the words with which he closes the book will be written against his life-"The End." Thackeray needed no railway accident to remind him of "The End," and two lines before the close of "Vanity Fair" we find him writing-in the prime of his life, "Ah, vanitas vanitatum! Which of us is happy in this world"? Which of us has his desire, or, having it, is satisfied?" That thought occurred to Gibbon, too, for he had not taken many turns under the silver moon in that coveted walk of acacias, enjoying the spectacle of the lake and the mountains, and the recovery of his freedom and the establishment of his fame, before a sober melancholy was spread over his mind by the idea that he "had taken an everlasting leave of an old and agreeable companion, and that whatsoever might be the future fate of his history, the life of the historian must be short and precarious." When George Eliot put the last stroke to "Romola," the book which "ploughed into her more than any of her books," which she "began as a young woman and finished as an old woman," she exclaimed in her diary-" Ebenezer!" O unpredictable ejaculation! Ebenezer!'tistrue the erudite Miss Evans had Hebrew an knew that it meant "a stone of help." And in the evening she went to her "La Gazza Ladra." Let us hope that some false persuasion of the immortality of "Romola" counteracted that bodily malaise and suffering of which she complained to Sara Hennell. Such pleasant persuasion buoyed up Fielding, as he wrote the beginning of the end of "Tom Jones,"-that almost endless epic,-for with a last fling at the critics he cries: "All these works, however, I am well convinced, will be dead long before this page shall offer itself to thy perusal; for however short the period may be of my own performances, they will most probably outlive their own infirm author, and the weakly productions of his abusive cotemporaries."