Part 2

Still, let a man set himself deliberately to see straight, to look at things without either rose-colored or smoke-dimmed glasses, and even then it is not certain that there is freedom from distortion. Just as the children studying music, of which I wrote a few pages back, were all unconsciously heavily handicapped, so are we also handicapped through no fault of our own. For one thing there has been grounded into us a certain prejudice called patriotism. It is really a reflex egoism. Because of it we are predisposed to look upon our own nation as standing alone on star-crowned heights and to regard all other nations and peoples as being in the gulf of ignorance, poverty and despair. So we get a one-sided impression. Blinded by national self-love, we see all good in our own people and little but evil in others, except those others be our allies, when we grant them some modicum of decent behavior and common sense just so long as, and no longer than, they identify their interests with ours. Nationally, we go in for the cygnification of geese on a gigantic scale. As may easily be seen, carried to excess, that kind of thing often results in hate. Not carried to such lengths, it means the ridiculing, as well as the misunderstanding of others, and in addition the fooling of ourselves. Consider the so-called “comic sheets” and the cheap vaudeville stage where the Frenchmen, Germans, Jews, Irishmen, Mexicans and all South Americans are used as laughing stocks. The reverse of the situation is seen in common, cheap literature where the American stands as the type of all that is admirable. Or, if you keep an attentive ear, you will not fail to note that the notion permeates in such strange way that it becomes very generally held, and even accepted to so wide an extent, that teachers teach their charges that there exist very strongly-marked national characteristics, as that the Dutch are very clean, the Mexicans very treacherous, Jews very much given to cheat, Germans to villainy and rape, Italians to idleness, Afro-Americans to light-heartedness, the French to immorality, the Irish to wit, the Scandinavians to pessimism, the Swiss to thrift and so on.

All of which is idle and pernicious clap trap, as a moment’s quiet reflection will show. For each and every man in his experience has known among his own countrymen those who were clean and those who were dirty, those who were honest and those who were dishonest, those who were gloomy and those who were cheerful, those who were idle and those who were energetic. Moreover, every man knows that his own mood changes as the wind and he who is merry a-Monday may be very sad on Saturday, while he who is in the pink of honesty at 9 a. m. may easily be a thief at 9:30. Yet, for all the testimony of the daily papers and in spite of the records of the criminal courts, ninety-nine men out of a hundred are very thoroughly imbued with the idea that their country and its people have a practical monopoly of all the virtues. So, as might be expected, the notion gets into literature, modified it is true, but nevertheless it gets there.

To show it in its most crude form, I give an instance. It happened since I commenced this essay. A man called upon me and his eyes were bright and shining with excitement, for he had what he imagined to be a good plot for a story, and had cut across lots to tell it to me. It ran something like this and I quote his words as nearly as possible.

“Here is a good plot for a short story or a moving picture. There’s a young woman on the train, a Canadian, and she is a stranger to this here country. On the car she begins to talk with a well dressed drummer. She is innocent and all that kind of thing. But sitting across the aisle is a soldier. Well, at the depot this here drummer gets the girl to go with him to a hotel and just as they are getting into a taxi, up comes the soldier, and ‘Biff,’ he lands the drummer one that lays him flat. So the girl’s safe. After a year or so the soldier comes from the war and finds the girl who is the daughter of a rich man. He’s poor of course, the soldier. Well they marry and live happy.... Of course, you can show the American ideals in this tale and also use it to bring about good relation between the English speaking people.”

I will not insult the intelligence of the reader by pointing out the utter idiocy of the plot. Still, though the man who told me the story was intelligent, a lawyer in the government service, and a reader of the _Saturday Evening Post_, the _American Magazine_, several daily papers, and voted the straight party ticket every election, he failed to see the utter banality of the tale he suggested. But, it is a fair sample of the stuff with a “patriotic” base that many hundreds send to editors, and, more or less modified, watered, or spiced, you will at times see something of the kind in moving-picture theaters.

So see this then; there are no characteristic national virtues and vices. Make your hero a negro, a Chinaman, an Eskimo or a Patagonian. It does not matter which. Man is man the world over, and it is, despite the old saying to the contrary, a safe rule to measure other’s corn with your own bushel. What you must do is to conceive a character, then show him, not acting in any cut or dried fashion, but in a certain fashion. I say a certain fashion, but might have said an uncertain fashion, because your character will be more or less like yourself, a being with faults, virtues, vices, meannesses, ideals and hopes, and in him the potential angel will be mixed with a good deal of the ape, the tiger and the pig. Then, with your creation endowed with all the virtues and vices inextricably mixed, you have a character compounded of subtle and profound elements. Thus one sees that an action in a given case is indeed problematical. A man, witnessing overtures that may lead to the seduction of a girl, a stranger to him, whether the man was in uniform or not, would hardly be likely to make an assault upon the supposed seducer. To make him do that sort of thing is but to cater to the basest taste which glories in brute force. What a character would do would depend on many things--on his mood at the moment, whether he was drunk or sober, his immediate environment, his early training, what he had had for breakfast, what manner of rascal his grandfather was, how much money he had in his purse at the time. Or it might depend on a mixture of many of these. Or again, the fictional personage might ponder and hesitate, finally taking no action at all, which, as a sensible man and being familiar with the old warning, “mind your own business,” would very probably be his course. But the character might well be supposed to be wavering in a storm of emotion, perhaps to be swayed by subordinate characters, and, in the end, some action might be shown which would, as it were, grow out of the collision of the characters. For, bear in mind, the subordinate characters must not be made mere silhouettes--they also must have their prejudices and motives and ambitions, and the very form of their minds, too, must be made as evident to the reader as if they were in his presence.

Character drawing, as you see then, is a highly complicated business. Many, even among apparently sensible men, do not suspect this. For instance, not so long ago, I heard of a poet who declared that he could write a dozen good short stories between Tuesday and Saturday. His notion of fictional characters of course was of the allegorical order, a ticketed dummy in the form of the Sunday school book or of the transpontine melodrama, a row of Mr. Goodman’s, Mr. Evil-Livers, Mr. Close-pennies and so on. It never for a moment occurred to him that the test of good workmanship lay in the ability of the author to make a distinct impression on the reader, to make him remember the fictional personage as vividly as he remembered characters met in real life.

At this point, should you be earnest in your quest, really ambitious to go further, I recommend to your reading as masterpieces of character drawing, Conrad’s _Lord Jim_, Thackeray’s _Becky Sharp_, Cunninghame Graham’s _Minor Prophet_ in his “Brought Forward,” H. G. Dwight’s _Like Michael_ in his “Emperor of Elam,” _Uncle Toby_ in Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, and the portrait of _Mrs. Poyser_ in George Eliot’s Adam Bede. Or, failing these, if you are a very busy man, buy in the present series, Nos. 41 and 72, and study the character of _Old Scrooge_ in Charles Dickens’ Christmas Carol, and of _The Scab_ in the Color of Life.

V.

DANGEROUS ENTHUSIASM.

But there is another dangerous shoal, another literary Goodwin Sands strewn with the wreckage of ambitious but unskilled voyagers. For of all people urged to write, those generous souls eager to lend a hand in the making of a paradise on earth are hardest pressed. The very fact that a young author hates tyranny and injustice in a thorough and unhesitating way, results in a kind of distortion. For him the evil pit of controversiality and partisanship yawns darkly. In his excess of zeal he paints with pigments too glaringly bright and too muddily brown. He makes his characters too black or too white, all evil or all good, according to their position in society. He is afflicted with an egoism of class, a fault every whit as gross as the reflex egoism called patriotism. His judgment is warped by class prejudice. Because he burns with zeal, because he is carried away with enthusiasm, there is distortion. His heroes are those poor in this world’s goods, his villains the wealthy, the powerful, the aristocratic. That wealth as well as poverty may entail hardship and unhappiness, the author with sociological bent often refuses to see, or seeing, wilfully denies. That worry and weariness and disappointment is not removed when one has mounted a little out of the pit, is a fact that escapes him. That injustices suffered by wage earners would be no less were the administration of affairs discharged by men taken from their own ranks, is entirely lost sight of. So there comes about a gross exaggeration and a painting of types. You may see something of this in George Bernard Shaw’s “Unsocial Socialist.” Walt Whitman sinned in like manner in his earlier days of writing. The fictional literature of advanced movements is full of class consciousness.

That kind of thing, of course, is fundamentally due to a kind of disguised self-interest once removed. It is really the inordinate love of self, or of class, as such. Consequently, it is bad art. And being that, it accomplishes nothing, because the reader sees through the ulterior motive. Furthermore, to do that kind of thing is to set down the thing as it is not. For, as you know, there are both rascals as well as gentlemen among wage-earners, just as there are rascals as well as gentlemen among capitalists. There are scoundrelly poor people just as there are scoundrelly rich people. Honesty and dishonesty, truthfulness and lying, fair dealing and foul dealing are matters entirely apart from rank and position. Indeed, a story or a novel based on such insecure foundation, must, of necessity, ring false from first to last. There will be no health in it. The characters will be shown with glib phrases rolling off their tongues, talking as no man ever talks who expects to be taken seriously. The dialogue will be false and strained, and rich man and poor will talk like fourth-rate evangelists, camp-meeting hot-gospellers or insane tub thumpers. As a terrible example, turn to the socialistic speech made in a drawing room by _Cashel Byron_, the pugilist, in George Bernard Shaw’s novel. The older, more experienced Shaw makes no such mistake. Contrast _Cashel Byron_ for instance with his _Major Barbara_.

On the other hand, to see what a master craftsman can do, you must take “The Dream of John Ball” by William Morris, No. 37 of this series. If you have read it, you will not have forgotten the good, earnest priest, a most uncompromising truth-teller who had so profound a belief in realities and held an equally profound hatred of sham, cruelty and injustice. Looking back, you will recall in the little story a peculiar vein of pleasantry and delicate fancy with occasional touches of tenderness and of pathos that is extremely attractive. I call your particular attention to that story because it was written by a man actuated by a passionate sympathy for humanity. For Morris was a radical to be sure, but his radicalism was tempered by a profound and logical sense of justice, by devotion to truth and reality and by intellectual ability and clarity. Perhaps in the whole field of English literature there is no better instance of pure intellect combined with enthusiasm for justice. And yet with all this, the aim of the story was to lead people to an understanding of the cause he had at heart, which was socialism. Yet withal, any one utterly opposed to that cause may read the book with keen pleasure, and not only that, but will inevitably be led to sympathize with the aims of _John Ball_.

Why is this? How does it come that one man burning with zeal for a cause will repel those he seeks to win to his side, while Morris won opposing minds to a sympathy with a doctrine they had denounced? If for a moment you try to imagine a Baptist, we will say, writing a book in such fashion that Catholics will not only read it with enjoyment but by its means will become interested in the Baptist creed, the magnitude of the task Morris accomplished will be manifest. The fact of the matter is that Morris did his work so well, felt the joys and the griefs of his characters so keenly, in a word was so sincere, that the reader lost his prejudices in the ideal life portrayed and was impelled to identify himself with the creatures of Morris’ fancy in such wise that what hurt them, also hurt him. Both writer and reader overlooked the social philosophy by reason of immense delight in the characters themselves. So also it was with those who read Dickens’ “Nicholas Nickelby” and “Little Dorrit” and both books had so far-reaching an influence that the first resulted in the reformation of the private school system and the second in the abolition of imprisonment for debt.

In this connection I think that you will gain much advantage and get some good ideas if you will read “The Man of Property,” by John Galsworthy, “The Growth of the Soil,” by Knut Hamsun, and by Cunninghame Graham, “Success,” “Brought Forward,” “Faith” and “Progress.” I find in this series as valuable, “He Renounced the Faith,” by Jack London and “The Miraculous Revenge” by George Bernard Shaw.

VI.

MURDER AND VIOLENCE.

A word should be said as to murder, bloodshed, suicide and other cheap effects. When you come to think of it, there is an appalling amount of bloodshed in our literature. I can go to my daughter’s book-shelf and take down novel after novel, turn the pages swiftly with a glance here and there, to hit upon the murder which I know instinctively is there with unerring accuracy. Or I can pass to the book-shelf in which the boys keep their favorites, and find brute force galore. Men are knocked down, punched, run through, thrown down stairways, kicked and cuffed. On every other page there is manifest a mighty recklessness.

Now of that kind of thing I am suspicious. Looking back in my own life, which has been far from a quiet one, many years of which were spent in uncivilized places, I find that I have seen but few deeds of violence, as between man and man. I do not refer to riots, wars and organized bloodshed. I remember seeing one man killed outright, one duel with knives, one saloon rumpus and perhaps four men knocked down. My experience has been exceptional. Talking with friends, I find many who tell me that apart from school-boy days, they have never as much as seen a man knocked down or a blow struck. That, I believe, is the common experience. Many may easily go through life without witnessing a single act of violence. Certainly, the vast majority of men never dream of striking another. The world is prosaic. There are more _Doctor Primroses_ in it than there are _Squire Westerns_. Men are more given to have a fancy for oratorical tirades and philosophical discussions like _Mr. Shandy_, than for fighting and battering one another about like _Everett True_. It would seem that since the advent of the four-reel thriller in the picture shows, murder in literature has somewhat gone out of fashion. There has, indeed, been a gradual letting down in the matter of violence since the days of Shakespeare and his forerunners. Time was when men and women had to be glutted with horrors and cruelties. Nothing less than blood or death would satisfy them. They had to be dazzled with the full brightness of evil lusts. Only tales in which lewdness, cruelty, love of gold, shamelessness or vice were portrayed met with favor. No character was unmixed with sensuality in the days of Massinger and Ford. The fact is that the early writers, in constructing a man, did not dig down deep into the foundations.

Today it is different. There is a genuine attempt to become acquainted with man in his fullness. Especially is this seen in the work of the makers of present-day literature such as Conrad, Grahame, Galsworthy, Hergesheimer, Lawrence. The days are past when, if it became necessary to portray a man of courage, there was a digging into the depths of diabolical and unchained nature. Unrestrained will is no longer the keynote. The newer and higher idea hinges solely on character. The Berserker has been retired.

Of course, the main idea intended, was to display evidence of courage. But, any intelligent man may see, with a moment’s thought, that the mere fact that a man fights, is no evidence at all of courage. He may fight because he is a coward, and fight to the death, too. For instance, suppose a man is challenged to fight a duel. The writer who has not dug into human nature will see bravery in the fellow who immediately accepts the challenge. To be sure there is a certain brute courage in the act of fighting. But of two men thus fighting a duel, one may be much braver than another. A man of imagination, who foresees pain and death, is obviously braver than another who has no imagination at all, just as a boy who fears the dark, but yet bottles up his fear and goes into the dark, is braver than a boy without that fear. As is easily seen, the second boy is not brave at all. And in the case of the supposed duel, a man who fears public opinion very much indeed, will fight rather than be counted a coward, and therefore is actually a coward. So, as you see, which is what I wish to point out, there is no _outward_ mark by which we can affirm that a particular action is courageous or the reverse. But if you sit down and write a story in which a character is so well portrayed that the reader will see quite plainly that a man fighting to the death is doing it because of his cowardice, you will have made a story that will find a publisher in no time. Handle the theme well, and I promise you that you shall have no rejection slip. One of the stories that O’Brien listed as among the best in 1920 was based on this theme, though it pictured a suicide who coldly and deliberately swam to his death, not that he feared life, but because his conscience hurt him, he having once failed to kill a fellow who was a military brute.

Perhaps you have read Stockton’s “Lady or the Tiger,” a tale in which the reader is left wondering, is given something to think of. The effect upon the reader is something like the effect left after seeing Ibsen’s “Doll’s House.” So it would be in a tale such as above outlined. The reader would ponder deeply, if indeed he would not be torn between two emotions. Did the fighter fight because he did not fear death, or did he fight because he feared public opinion more than death? At first blush, you may say, “It is obvious that he was a coward.” But, consider a moment. Is the average man given to subtle distinctions? For instance, during the war, when some went to jail for their opinions, were not many torn with conflicting ideas? Were pacifists brave? Were they cowards? Were they actuated by fear of death or were they courageous enough to defy public opinion and the charge of cowardice, to give up their own liberty and happiness for conscience sake?

Take another theme, or rather angle of the same theme. Suppose a character similar to the average man: somewhat timid, careful to keep within the bounds of the law, tied to his business hand and foot, his expenses keeping neck and neck with his income, anxious to avoid publicity of an unpleasant nature. Yet he is a thoughtful man and a law-abiding one, and, therefore, opposed to all forms of mob law. Moreover, like the most of us, he shrinks from physical pain, and cannot kill a chicken without a beating of the heart. We will also suppose that he is violently opposed to war. To him comes one day another, suspected by a lawless mob doing deeds of violence in the name of “patriotism.” Call it the Ku Klux Klan, the American Legion, a Law and Order League or what you will. Although trembling, in an agony of terror, fearing for his own life, yet the character we have in mind shelters the fugitive.

Here you have the opposition between physical and moral courage. The searching mob seeing him pale and fearful would know him for an arrant coward, and he himself would certainly admit himself to be that. Yet, knowing his motive, we see that he was essentially brave, since his fear was subordinated by a conscious effort to the end in view.

I believe enough has been said to show why, if you would write a short story involving the exemplification of courage, it is not at all necessary to fall back upon brute force.

It is somewhat in this connection that I would lightly sketch a talk I had with a young writer who had submitted a story in which he outlined a “brave” feminine character--a woman who had faced a little mob. I had held that the mere fact of facing a mob, when a woman did it, was no great sign of courage. But the conversation had not a single beginning. We had talked of other things, and he had objected to a scene in the novel “Dust” in which _Martin_ had seemed to hold a light regard for woman’s comfort in the chapter in which _Rose_ accused him of caring more for the welfare of a fine-blooded cow than for his own wife. _Martin_, you may remember, had held that altogether too much fuss was made by women, and sometimes men, about child-bearing--that it was a natural function just as is teeth growing. My young friend held that the whole scene was derogatory to American ideals of “womanhood.” Then we looped back to his short story.

It seems to me that there is a great deal of what the English call “tosh” about “womanhood.” When _Martin_ compared the cow with the women to the detriment of the latter, as far as fuss in the matter of young-bearing, he was obviously right. On first reading the passage there came to my mind Whitman’s poem in which he tells of his admiration for the cattle in the field because they were so “calm and self-possessed.” Like _Martin_, and Whitman, I hold that both men and women have much to learn from animals.