Part 11
I was born and reared in the little Missouri town where I now reside. I am personally acquainted with practically every man, woman and child in the place, which, while not exactly a village, is hardly large enough to be called a city outside of the columns of our local newspapers. The present county attorney is a young man of thirty whom I trotted on my knee and for whom I made kites many years ago. The county judge and I fell out many years ago because he insisted that we had been playing marbles for “keeps”, while I maintained that we had been playing merely for fun. We are now the best of friends, however, and there is no judge in the state who passes heavier sentences on convicted gamblers than he. The pastor of the church which I attend is a lad who in former years was a member of the Sunday-school class I taught and which used to embarrass me with all sorts of questions concerning the wives of Cain and Abel and the origin of the inhabitants of the Land of Nod. And so it is; I know them all and they all know me.
“Jimmy” Vance is our family physician; he is the family physician for at least a third of our population. He has been helping the people of our town to be born and to die for more than thirty years--but he is still “Jimmy”. Jimmy and I were born in the same year. It was once a joke with us to call ourselves “twins” on this account. But Jimmy and I are “twins” no longer. Jimmy is still a smooth-faced boy at fifty-five, while I am a gray-bearded oldster. You may gather something of my life when I tell you that though my Christian names are Jeremiah Samuel (I do not give my surname for reasons you will understand), I have never, since my twenty-first year, been addressed either as “Jerry” or “Sam”. My wife calls me “Jeremiah”, as do my other relatives, while my business associates and friends never grow more familiar than “Jeremiah S.”
When I determined to enter upon the study and practise of the law, my maternal uncle, who was himself a practising attorney, became a sort of supplementary preceptor to me by virtue of his avuncular relationship. He assisted me in my studies and when the time came for me to be admitted to the bar, he gave me a deal of what he no doubt considered sound advice as to my future conduct. “Jeremiah,” said he, “there is no profession on earth which is a more serious business than the law. Men do not go to law for fun. Nobody brings a lawsuit for mere amusement. When clients come to you they will come because they have serious business on hand and they want a sober competent man to attend to it for them. It is no joke to them and they don’t want you to joke about it. Now, my advice to you--which you may take or leave as you see fit--is always to keep a straight face. No matter how funny a case may seem to you, don’t laugh. Your dignity will be more than half your capital; see that you don’t forget your dignity.”
Such was the advice of my maternal uncle. And such was the character I assumed upon entering the practise of the law. From the day I drew my first real brief I became the very essence of dignity. I even wooed and won my wife in the character of a dignified young man of serious mind and purpose. She has never in all these years suspected my innate frivolity. Should I yield to my natural impulse and indulge in the nonsense and fun which has ever been so dear to my heart, I am convinced that she would at once lose all respect for me, if, indeed, she did not think me suddenly insane. I am grave. Under all conditions and circumstances I am as grave as an undertaker. I do smile now and then, but it is generally the indulgent superior smile which I labored so hard to acquire when young and which I can not now shake off. I have been dignified so long that my dignity has become a part of me--not really a part of my inward personality--but a part of my outward appearance; I should feel naked and ashamed without it; it would seem like going about half-dressed. I am so grave that nobody ever tells me a funny story excepting the kind that one tells a minister. They are afraid to be natural when in my presence. As Midas turned everything he touched to gold, so I turn all my friends to bores. No sooner do I come into my house than the whole family stops talking and waits to hear what I have to say. Nobody dares to interrupt me; nobody presumes to contradict me, unless it be old Brownly, who is our oldest inhabitant and so considers himself somewhere near my own age. Every one is grave when with me. That is, every one but Jimmy. Jimmy has always seen through my pose and Jimmy takes a malicious pleasure in pretending he is young when with me.
From the day I entered upon the practise of the law, I modeled my conduct upon that of my maternal uncle who was, as my boy Tom says, “as cheerful as a crutch.” I abandoned the bright colored scarfs which have always delighted my eye, and I donned the sober black bow tie which I wear to this day. Striped and checked clothing gave way to the non-committal pepper-and-salt suit of indefinite hue which has been my unvarying garb from that day to this. And I grew that Vandyke beard, to which, I am convinced, I owed my early reputation for learning and even now owe a good part of the respect which I command. My beard is as fixed an institution as our local literary club. Fashion has at least relieved me of the necessity of wearing a top hat, or “plug” as we call it here; but fashion will never relieve me of my beard, for beards may come and beards may go, but mine grows on forever. Should I shave that beard it would electrify the community. My wife would regard me with suspicion, my children with pity, my friends with mirth and my clients with horror. I verily believe that old Brown the banker, who is my best client, would be less shocked should I tell him that I had forgotten how to frame a complaint or draw a mortgage, than if he should walk into my office and find me clean-shaven.
And as it is with dress, so it is with other things. Jimmy Vance, although a doctor, never affected that dignity which has come to be my strongest personal characteristic. Jimmy never imitated anybody’s dignity. And as a consequence Jimmy is as free as the wind. If he wants to smoke, he does it. If he wants to drink, he takes a drink. If he wants to go roller-skating, he goes. And nobody ever thinks of objecting to anything he does. Jimmy has never led any one to expect any particular sort of conduct from him. He is full of surprises and nobody likes him the less for it. I can drink at my club--occasionally--or at a banquet, or at home; but I can not go into a bar like Jimmy and shake dice with a traveling man. I can smoke, but I could not chew tobacco. I can read, but I can not read light novels--that is, not unless I hide away to do it. If I were to go into our public library and ask for _The Siege of the Seven Suitors_ I honestly think that old Miss Peters, our librarian, would faint dead away. Now it isn’t that I want to _do_ these things which irks me, so much as the fact that I want to be able to do them if I feel like it. I thank God I have escaped the gravest danger which lies in the acquisition of too good habits--I have never become what so many men of super-excellent reputations do become--a hypocrite. I have been a poser, a pretender, a rebel--ah, I have fairly seethed with rebellion against the tyranny of this fictitious self at times!--but I have never broken my habits on the sly. I have lived up to the straw man I so foolishly put in my place; I have gone around and around in my lock-step of respectability when I felt that I might gladly have died for a single year of absolute personal freedom; I have made my bed and like Damiens I have lain chained to it with iron chains for years; and never before now have I cried aloud!
And Jimmy! What a life is Jimmy’s! Jimmy is as prosperous as I; as respected as I; far happier than I; and ah, how much more is Jimmy loved than I!
When the girls go away to boarding-school, Jimmy kisses them good-by; when they come home again, Jimmy kisses them hello. Jimmy never misses an opportunity to kiss them, coming or going. But who cares? Nobody. “It’s only old Jimmy,” the girls say. “It’s only old Jimmy,” echo their sweethearts. “It’s only Jimmy’s way!” giggle their mothers--for Jimmy kisses them, too; Jimmy is no fool. But suppose I should try it? Who would say, “It’s only old Jeremiah?”
Since there is small danger that your magazine will ever be read by any one who will recognize me in this letter, I don’t mind confessing that I did try it once; it is the only sin of the sort that I have on my conscience after twenty-five years of dignity, domestic and foreign. It was last year that it happened. The girl had been visiting one of my daughter’s chums for the Christmas vacation and she was one of the guests at the Christmas party we had at our house. I came into the front hall and found her standing all alone, directly under the mistletoe. I looked at her standing there so sweet and pretty and so unconscious of the mistletoe, and I wondered how it would feel to kiss some one on the lips. I have been kissed on the forehead for years. Even my children kiss me on the forehead. They learned to do that early, when they explained that my beard was “cratchy”. I looked at the girl again. I was tempted and I fell. That is, I tried to fall, but she wouldn’t let me.
“Why not?” I asked her. “You let my boy Tom do it.”
“Oh, but _he’s_ only a boy!” she said.
“Well,” I insisted, “you let Jimmy do it!”
“Oh, but he’s an _old_ man!” she exclaimed.
“Yes!” said I, “and so am I an old man!”
“Oh, but,” she protested, “you’re not _that kind_ of an old man!”
That’s it! That’s always been it, and that always will be it--I’m not _that kind_ of an old man!
J. S.
THE FRUIT OF FAME
_To the Editor of The Idler._
DEAR SIR: I have told many strange and distressing stories in my time; tales of struggle, of suffering, of sorrow and of bitter disappointment; for I, Sir, am an author, and the telling of tales has long been my vocation. But of all the tales which I have spun from the thread of my inner consciousness, there is none, I believe, more strange or more filled with disillusionment than the true story which I am about to tell you now.
I began writing at an early age. Indeed, I was writing short stories while yet in the high school and selling them before I had done with college. The history of my younger years does not differ greatly from that of most young authors; it is the history of an existence which would have been inexpressibly sordid had it not been glorified by youthful hope and ambition. I married young and was forced to write constantly in order to make both ends meet. The years went slipping by almost unnoticed until suddenly one day I awoke to find myself upon the verge of middle age and realized that for years I had been postponing the writing of my first real book, meanwhile falling unconsciously into the habit of giving all of my attention to the market value of what I wrote and growing more and more indifferent to the question of its literary merit. I had, in fact, become a confirmed hack-writer.
The discovery shocked me into action. I determined then and there that I would write a novel worthy of my powers if I had to give to that task the time which should be employed in rest and sleep. I had never taken many holidays; now I took none at all. Every odd moment was employed on the great task which should lift me out of the rut and transform me from a mere fiction machine into a creative artist. I shall not bore you with the details of that work; how I toiled far into the night and arose before daybreak to finish a chapter or retouch a paragraph; how I struggled with my style which had become corrupted and florid from the writing of sensational stories of adventure; how I tossed in my bed when I should have been sleeping, made wakeful by the excitement under which I labored. Suffice it to say, through infinite pains and toil I finally wrote the last line of _The Pin-headed Girl_, and sent it off to Messrs. Buckram and Sons with a high heart. It was accepted.
The publishers, according to their usual custom, offered me a royalty of ten per cent.; for you must know, Sir, that it is only the established and successful author who can make his own terms. We poor devils who are appearing in cloth for the first time must be content with what is offered, for no publisher considers a meritorious manuscript a recommendation in any way equal to a well-known name. The book of a famous author, like a notorious brand of soap, is supposed to sell itself, whereas, in the case of an unknown scribbler, a demand for the work must be created by advertising. Now it is an axiom with publishers that a modern novel, unless it happen to be a story of extraordinary vitality, is dead in six months. With the birth of the autumn list, the spring list dies, which is to say, when the books which appear in the autumn are thrown upon the market, the demand for those which appeared in the spring is immediately checked and often dies out altogether. In six months novels are _old_; good only for bargain sales, second-hand stores and circulating libraries. It is therefore necessary that a book achieve a good sale in the first six months if it is to enjoy such a sale at all.
Realizing this and taking into consideration the fact that _The Pin-headed Girl_ was the work of a literary nobody, my publishers set industriously to work to create a reputation for me. I will say for them that they spared no expense in making my name familiar to the public. It was flaunted on every side, so that no man could ride in the subway, pick up a magazine or open a theater program without being made acquainted with the fact that Hackett A. Long was the author of _The Pin-headed Girl_. No man could read a literary supplement or a monthly review without learning that I took coffee with my breakfast; had a fondness for Russian boar-hounds (never having owned one); preferred reading opera scores to hearing the singers; did most of my work between the hours of three and five in the afternoon; disliked Bohemian restaurants; bought my cigarettes by the hundred; wore a wing collar; and many other things, some of which were true and some not. If you glanced at any of the illustrated papers at that time, you must have seen me riding in my six-cylinder roadster (loaned for the occasion by the obliging publisher), sitting upon the stoop of my cottage by the sea, or seated, pen in hand, at my desk in the very act of producing literature. I assure you, Sir, your correspondent was no inconsiderable figure in the public eye at that time.
This activity upon the part of my publishers was not without results. The first person to show the effect of my sudden leap into notoriety was my wife. She assured me that as a well-known author I must pay some heed to appearances. I must no longer lodge in a third-class apartment-house without hall-boys or elevators. When my fellow celebrities sought me out to offer me congratulations upon my masterpiece, they must find me in a suitable environment. We must have an apartment fitting for an author already notable and soon to take a well-deserved place among the foremost writers of the day; an apartment which should be expensive without being pretentious, furnished in such a fashion that any one could discern at a glance the touch of the man of taste and refinement, the natural aristocrat, the man of temperament; in a word, the artist. Having settled the question of the apartment, she next turned her attention to my wardrobe, which was, I confess, sadly in need of attention. I must no longer go about in ready-made clothing. I must patronize a fashionable tailor, I must dress for dinner, I must buy me a soft hat with a bow at the back. I must cease my writing of lurid short stories and hair-raising serials; to do pot-boilers for cheap monthlies and weeklies was beneath the dignity of an author of recognized standing. You may well believe that this unaccustomed notoriety was not without its effect upon me, but I was not so carried away by it as was my optimistic mate. I hung back a little; I protested.
“It is all very well, my dear,” said I, “to talk so glibly of giving up my short stories and my serials, but we must consider that they have been, and still are, my chief if not my only source of revenue. They are nothing to be proud of, I admit. They are cheap, shoddy, stupid and entirely unworthy of the pen that wrote _The Pin-headed Girl_. But, my dear, they _pay_.”
“That,” said my wife, “is a consideration which had some weight before the publication of your novel, but an author so well known as you now are can certainly have no need to depend upon such puerile compositions for his income.”
I thereupon called her attention to the fact that my contract with the publishers called for a semi-annual accounting and settlement, and that under this agreement, no matter how much money might be due me, I could not hope to collect any of it until six months after the date of publication. To which she replied, truthfully enough, that it would be easy for me to obtain anything we might want on credit. The upshot of it was, Sir, that I yielded to her persuasion and began to live in a manner which was little short of princely as compared with our previous hand-to-mouth existence. I stopped writing pot-boilers and set to work upon my second novel which I named, very aptly as I then thought, _Out of the Woods_. Where my first novel had been three years in the making, my second was finished in five months, for I now had plenty of time at my disposal, and I sent it off confidently enough to Buckram and Sons, and with it, a letter in which I made it clear that I would expect a larger share of the profits upon my second story than I had been content to accept in the case of _The Pin-headed Girl_. For, as I pointed out to them, whereas the author of _The Pin-headed Girl_ had been an unknown scribbler, the author of _Out of the Woods_ was a well-known novelist who possessed the _name_ which had been wanting in the first instance.
You can, perhaps, fancy my surprise and consternation when I received a letter from Buckram and Sons enclosing their statement of the sales of _The Pin-headed Girl_ and a check for seventy-two dollars and fifty cents in full payment of all royalties to date. _In spite of the money expended in advertising, the sale of the book had not exceeded five hundred copies._ The letter further stated that Messrs. Buckram and Sons regretted to inform me that they were returning the manuscript of _Out of the Woods_, as they could not consider publishing another of my books upon the heels of such a failure as _The Pin-headed Girl_.
This sudden collapse of my castles in Spain left me completely demoralized, but it had no such effect upon my wife. She was astonished at the failure of the book, but she held firmly to her position that whatever the fate of the book might be, the fact remained that I was now a celebrated man. I could not be blamed, she argued, because the book had proved a failure. It was my part of the business to write the book, it was the publisher’s part to sell it. I had performed my part, but Buckram and Sons had most lamentably failed to perform theirs. If they could not sell a book which had been so well advertised as _The Pin-headed Girl_, that simply went to show that they had a very poor selling organization, and the very fact that they had spent so much money in advertising a book which afterward proved a failure, was in itself a proof that they were no business men. In short, the only thing for me to do was to find a new publisher for _Out of the Woods_; preferably some energetic young man who would not only make a success of the second book, but who would realize something from the advertising expended upon the first.
This unanswerable argument encouraged me a little and I submitted the second book to Franklin Format who, although a young man and a new man to the business, already had several “best sellers” to his credit. A few days later he sent for me and when I was seated in his office, he told me that he had read my manuscript with interest and had found it most entertaining, but before making me any offer, he would like to know if the book had been submitted to my regular publishers. His was a young house, he said, and he could not afford to antagonize so influential a firm as Buckram and Sons by stealing away one of its authors. I replied that the book had been offered to them but that they had refused to publish it. He raised his eyebrows at this and asked the reason for their refusal. In my innocence I answered truthfully that Buckram and Sons did not want my second book because they had been unable to sell my first. On hearing this he remarked sympathetically that it had been a very bad season for novels and that several on his own list had fallen quite flat. Indeed, his own losses had been so great that he had been looking about for some author with a “selling name” to help him out of his difficulties. Under the circumstances, however, it would be rank folly, not only upon his part, but upon mine, to issue another novel bearing my name at a time when the memory of my first ill-starred book was still fresh in the minds of the booksellers; for while the public might know nothing of the failure, the booksellers would most certainly recall it upon seeing my name on a wrapper, and without orders from the booksellers one might as well burn a book in manuscript as to let it die more expensively in covers. The best thing for me to do would be to wait a year or two until the memory of _The Pin-headed Girl_ had completely faded from their minds. In two years’ time it would certainly be as completely forgotten as if it had never been written, and I then might venture, with some hope of success, upon another novel.
And there, Sir, the matter rests. In some mysterious way the word has been passed around among the publishers that _The Pin-headed Girl_ was a disastrous investment and not one of them will touch _Out of the Woods_. My wife threatens to leave me if I abandon novel-writing and go back to my pot-boilers; she says she could not bear the disgrace of acknowledged failure and that I must maintain my present position as a celebrated author at all hazards. I have applied to several editors of my acquaintance for editorial positions and they have all replied that they had nothing to offer me which would be worth my consideration or worthy of my talents. My first novel has left me with a reputation, a two-years lease of an expensive apartment, a load of debts, an angry wife, a scrap-book filled with favorable reviews, an unsalable manuscript and a prospect of bankruptcy.
This, Sir, is the true story of a writer who achieved his ambition of becoming a well-known novelist. If any reader of your journal, now engaged in hack-writing and enjoying comfortable obscurity, cherishes an ambition like mine, let him be warned by my example, lest through the blighting touch of the publicity agent he be forced, as I am, to choose between beginning life anew under an assumed name or slowly starving to death in the midst of luxury.
I am, sir, HACKETT A. LONG.
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Transcriber’s note:
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they were not changed.
Simple typographical errors were corrected; unpaired quotation marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left unpaired.
Page 1: Transcriber removed redundant book title.