Part 6

A pipe and an occasional glass served Wimpenny-Brown as a tribute to the bohemianism of his profession; as hostages to respectability he had a pair of gold-rimmed eyeglasses at the end of a black ribbon, trim whiskers, and a large umbrella; with his staff he was--I believe--majestically paternal, but to his opponents he was a very Jupiter; and for the rest--he had a manner. In his presence, it seemed as if the _Essay on Liberty_ had just been published, as if dusty men of letters were still delightedly wondering where Macaulay’s style came from, as if radical masterpieces were still being issued in fortnightly parts. Many men had his respect, even his homage, but as an editor--and I never knew him as anything else--he would allow no man to dictate to him; he served only the Public and ‘those few great principles.’ ‘An editor,’ he would say, tapping a sheet of paper with his glasses, ‘is the servant of the Public although his duty is to educate it.’ And his innocent vanity would swell out into such monstrous proportions, would bud and blossom into such foolish phrases, that his hearer would wonder if he had suddenly strayed into the rigid world of the third-rate comic novel. But all was sincerely spoken. Wimpenny-Brown meant all that he said, and he strove hard to educate his public. He would not pander to low tastes (he has said so many a time in my hearing); nor was he prepared to tickle rather higher tastes with the bright confectionery of fiction and verse and such things. No, it was by enunciating and applying those great principles, giving solid bread, so to speak, that he meant to educate his readers. ‘You must remember, sir’--he would point the glasses--‘that this is a News-Paper, and not a magazine’--the last with magnificent scorn. At ordinary times, his hand was hardly to be traced in the paper; he remained hidden afar-off, brooding over the great principles. But at a crisis, Wallerdale knew what it meant to have a _Herald_ and a Wimpenny-Brown as its editor. On the eve of an election, at the outbreak or at the conclusion of a war, at all times like these, he could be counted upon; leaders would flow from his pen, and the _Herald_ would look Monarch, Lords, Commons, in the face, would address all Europe, and the two Americas if need be, re-assuring friends and denouncing enemies here, there, and everywhere. Opinion would perhaps differ as to when he was at his best, but I, for one, found most to admire in his leaders on the death--say--of a political opponent: the decent respect for the dead man’s private virtues, tempered by regret at the waste of brilliant qualities in a bad cause, at the ‘late lamented minister’s fatal inability to comprehend those great principles which have ...’ and so forth. One saw the gold-rimmed glasses and the trim whiskers poised over the foolscap; he was no longer a fellow-citizen but the supreme arbiter, measuring out praise and blame while the organ wails and the strange dust is borne away.

Well, he is gone now, long after he quitted the editorial chair and declined from a servant of the public (and its educator) to an old fellow mumbling in a corner of a club-room. And in thinking of what he was, I may have done him little justice; probably the soft delicate lights of character have faded out of my memory and left the crude lines of a caricature. But still the little round figure (for he was little and round) rises from the past; I see the unfathomably profound look, I hear the solemn accents, and again his unconscious absurdity swells monstrously, and again the farce is played out. He seems now as extinct as the mastodon. Even his foolish dull little paper has disappeared; Wallerdale has no _Herald_ now, but listens to the brazen voices from London. Even those few great principles have sadly declined, and we hear little of them now. He would, I suppose, be as helpless as a babe in the office of a great modern newspaper. His solemn gestures, worn rhetorical finery and great principles would not carry him in that tense atmosphere. More sense of organisation, quick decisions, lightning judgments, would be demanded from him--and, I think, in vain. A greater knowledge of what can be done in a newspaper, of what catches the public eye, in short, of the tricks of the trade, would certainly be necessary. Yes, he would have to know more.

And yet, in a way, he would have to know less. Looking back at him, the obscure editor of an obscure sheet, amazingly rigid with self-importance, a little figure of fun, I realise that he was a better man than most of his successors of to-day, those undeniably clever, industrious journalists who put the great newspapers into the hands of the million. He could not have done what they do, day by day, but would he have tried? He, at least, would never have consented to become the mouthpiece of the rich, no better--nay, worse--than their lackeys. His talents were slender enough and monstrously exaggerated in his own mind, but such as they were, they were genuinely at the service of his readers. To him the public was not that million-eyed monster waiting to be cajoled and tricked which it has since become. And though his successors may be infinitely more clever, the worst of them can only run their dubious course to-day because yesterday my old editor and his like ran another and better course; the trickster of to-day is nothing but a huge parasite battening on the good name that some honest men in his trade left behind them. That lying sheet, the What’s-its-Name from London, has, I believe, taken the place of the _Wallerdale Herald_, and when a reader from those parts goes trustfully through its smudgy columns of falsehood, perhaps he does it because he still imagines that someone like Wimpenny-Brown is responsible for its utterance. Alas!--he does not know that the Wimpenny-Browns, those Servants of the Public with their few great principles, are dead and gone, and that something more than innocent folly perished with them.

ON AN OLD BOOK OF NATURAL HISTORY

The observation that ‘Truth is stranger than fiction’ is looked upon, in these days, rather as a platitude than a paradox; yet it does not necessarily follow that we, in our heart of hearts, really accept this smart saying. But everyone who has read in our old literature must admit that it is true of our forefathers; their idea of truth and their so-called facts are a thousand times stranger to us than their fiction. The mediaeval romances are full of the marvellous, but they pale before the grave books of instruction written by quite serious, learned old gentlemen. Some of the latter merely set out to edify the young mind, but the result of their labours often seems to us a very riot of the imagination, and our schoolboys would consider themselves lucky if they could meet with matter one-half so entertaining. The quaint, unconscious humour of these solemn, old authors over-shadows even their historical and antiquarian interest.

Some such thoughts as these were going through my head the other night when I was gleefully devouring, in one of the Early English Text Society’s wonderful reprints, some extracts from a very quaint old book: ‘The noble lyfe and natures of man, Of bestes, serpentys, fowles and fisshes,’ by one Laurens Andrewe. The date of this volume is unknown, but it was probably written and published early in the sixteenth century. The Third Part of the book is particularly occupied with the noble life and natures of fishes, and begins: ‘Here after followeth of the natures of the fisshes of the See, whiche be right profitable to be understande.’ Now I care little for Natural History at any time, and fishes do not make a very lively subject for study, but in the hands of Master Andrewe, Natural History becomes ‘all a wonder,’ and the sea, to him, is certainly filled with creatures that are ‘rich and strange.’

When he is dealing with the commonest fishes, like the herring, our author is fairly sure of his facts, and we get nothing very exciting, but once he leaves the familiar types, there is no end to his phantasies. The Ahuna, when in danger, withdraws his head into his belly, and, as Laurens wisely notes: ‘He dothe ete (eat) a parte of himselfe rather than the other fisshes sholde ete him whole.’ The most interesting fact about the Balena, a creature resembling a whale, is that in rough weather she puts her young ones in her mouth for safety. But, according to our author, the Cetus ‘is the greatest whale fisshe of all,’ and the manner of his capture is most extraordinary. Such is the perfidious and cruel nature of mankind that the most gentle, lovable trait of this great creature becomes his undoing. For, you must know, the Cetus is very fond of music, and, in order to ensnare the unsuspecting leviathan, men assemble a number of ships, and then, with ‘divers instruments of musike, they play with grete armonye.’ The hapless creature, innocent of the nature of man, comes to the surface and draws nearer and nearer, being ‘very gladde of this armonye,’ only to find a terrible death awaiting him.

All of which our author shamelessly chronicles in great detail. For accuracy combined with brevity, what could be better than his description of the Conger, which is fashioned like an eel, but much ‘greter (greater) in quantyte?’ On being questioned as to the piscatory view of bad weather, most of us would say offhand that all fishes would be either indifferent to rain or glad of it, but this only shows the danger of ignorance; it seems that the Coretz ‘hideth him in the deep of the water when it raineth, for if he received any rain, he should waxe blynde, and dye of it.’

In his account of the Dolphin, our author nearly achieves pathos. ‘It hath no voice,’ he says, ‘yet it singeth like a man’; then he adds a cautious, indirect statement, ‘Some say whan they be taken that they wepe.’ Like the unfortunate Cetus, the Dolphin is musical, and ‘will gladly listen to the playing of lutes, harpes and pypes.’ There was once a king, who, after having captured a dolphin, was so moved by its piteous weeping and lamenting, that he let it go again.

Some of the other fishes have only one arresting trait of character: ‘Focas, a sea bull, fighteth ever with his wife till she be dead; then he casteth her out of his place, and seeketh another.’ Mulus is small of body and ‘only a meat for ‘gentils’ (gentle-folk); of this fish there are many kinds, but the best have two beards under the mouth.’ Nereydes are ‘monsters all rough of body, and when any dyeth, then the other weepeth.’ When the Pecten is moved or stirred, ‘he winketh,’ and the Pike is ‘engendered with a westerne wynde.’

But the Sturgeon is our author’s masterpiece. This wretched creature leads what Touchstone would call ‘a spare life’--it is the anchorite of the finny tribes. The pleasures of the deep are not many, and surely good victuals at regular hours, must be counted upon. Yet the poor Sturgeon, according to our friend Laurens, has no mouth, and therefore cannot eat at all. So it lives upon the winds, waxing fat on an east wind, and sickening upon a northerly one.

Notwithstanding the large array of creatures that do at least bear some resemblance to fishes at his command, Master Andrewe does not stop here. Of him, it can be said truly that all is ‘fisshe’ that comes to his net. We meet several old friends who are gravely described at some length. There is Scylla, a monster in the sea between Italy and Sicily, which is a great enemy to man. It is faced and handed like a gentlewoman, but hath a wide mouth and fearful teeth. Like most of the other sea-monsters, it is musical, and heareth singing gladly. Then there is the Mermayde, bringing the same old wondrous story (and tail) with her. She is a deadly beast that bringeth a man gladly to death, and she singeth a sweet song, and therewith deceiveth many a good mariner; for when they hear it they fall on sleep, and then she cometh and draweth them out of the ship, and teareth them asunder.

And then there is a quaint story from Arabye of some serpentis called sirens, and other delectable matter; but alas!--our learned friend must return to the shades. So we will bid him Godspeed!--and, as one naturally falls into Elia’s manner in praising an old author, I will say: ‘Blessings on thee! Master Laurens Andrewe. I believe thou knowest no more of fishes than I do, but what do we care for piscatory lore. Thou hast devised most entertaining matter, and written a worthy book. So may the earth press lightly on thy old bones!’

ON NOT MEETING AUTHORS

If you who read this have one or two favourite authors among the living, take care that you do not meet them; above all, do not seek them out. If you think Mr. Horace Tendency’s _Bones and Bottles_ the greatest novel of the age, if you have concluded that Mr. Gadfly, essayist and critic, has more wit and wisdom than any man now living, write and tell them so if you like, but do not go any further. Be satisfied with exchanging a letter of admiration for a badly executed autograph, or you will court disaster. If you should want more, remember that we have a literary press that makes a business of publishing photographs or paragraphs or both. Do not imagine that you have heard the last of your favourites; I know for a fact that Mr. Tendency has a novel in the press that is even greater than _Bones and Bottles_, and I have heard that Mr. Gadfly has just signed an agreement to combine wit and wisdom in a perfectly astonishing manner.

There are several gentlemen now earning a fair living by feeding public curiosity and battening on the fame of its darlings. They do it by seeking out a celebrity and retailing his unconsidered trifles of talk at a good market price. When they do it maliciously, as some do by making merry with the great man’s moustache or sneering at his wife, they are really doing the literary public a service, for they act as a warning and, indeed, point a moral. They and their works say to the enthusiast: If you would be happy, avoid the company of your favourite authors or you will be speedily disillusioned, and either preserve a cynical silence for the rest of your time or make capital out of your misery by falling into our unsavoury practices. It is possible, of course, to meet a few authors without wishing to do so. A good many of them go out a great deal nowadays, and some move in very decent society, so that there is no knowing when and where one may meet an author or two. At any moment, one or other of us may be faced with what appears to be a pair of overfed, pompous merchants or manufacturers, only to learn, on being introduced, that while one of them, Mr. Dash of Dot & Dash, Leadenhall Street, is the real thing, his companion is no other than Mr. Blank, the mystical poet. But to encounter authors in this way is no great matter; there is no need to reveal the fact that one knows anything about them. If they happen to be men whose work is good, some disappointment may attend the encounter, but it will only be slight, for we can afford to be amused when the meeting is accidental and we have not deliberately asked to be disillusioned. But if we are decoyed by a naive enthusiasm into seeking out our men, it is almost certain that we shall be grievously disappointed, and it is more than likely that our admiration for their work will soon be on the wane. Knowing the men, we may pretend to admire them more than ever; most of us do; but it hardly deceives anybody, and certainly not ourselves, who are left with the unpleasant thought that we have thus cut down our own pleasures.

But why, some innocent may ask, should there be any disillusionment; surely a man must be better than his books? He may be in the sight of a god, but not necessarily in the sight of a fellow mortal. A man--any man, let alone an author--is not so tractable as a book; we are rarely in a position to choose him so that he can minister to a mood; he will not wait upon our convenience like our patient volumes. A book may be a vain thing, but it knows nothing of that swelling vanity which belongs to us alone, and to creators more than most. This apart, we must discriminate between good and bad authors. A writer who has been unsuccessful in his art, one who is not master of his craft, a bad author in fact, may be, and very often is, better than his books. An encounter with such a one will not be sought after, except by the wise few, but it may very well bring surprise and delight in its train. It is far otherwise with the great craftsmen, those fine fellows that you and I admire and sometimes long to meet. A good author is his own worst book. We go to him in the hope of catching again that rounded utterance which moved us in this volume or persuaded us in the other; we go--to put the matter shortly--expecting fine talk, and completely overlook the fact that we have already had the best of the man to wait upon us. Our hopes running so high, small wonder that we discover such a falling-off; the best of our author’s talk is but a slovenly paraphrase of his most successful things, or a rehash of his rejected manuscripts; and the worst is probably far below what we have to endure in the smoke-room or the railway carriage. Moreover, along with this decline in matter and style, we have to put up with unexpected and totally unwelcome mannerisms, irritating tricks of voice and gesture, and we know not what fumbling and mouthing, all of them acquired during the making of books but all kept outside the covers. And nowadays, very few writers cultivate the picturesque in their appearance or try to look the part, so that our favourites never resemble our private images of them, and inevitably they always look worse, being dingier or shorter or fatter. Can this squat, fussy nonentity be our great novelist, we cry, when we see him for the first time. Probably all of us read and admire the exquisite lyrics of W., who seems to live all his days among lovely unsubstantial things, fleeting shadows and strangely significant silences; but whereas you think of him as a tall, rather fragile man with dreamy eyes and a silky beard, I who have actually met him can only call up a very different image, that of a solid, blue-chinned fellow with an arrogant, almost sinister profile, suggesting an unscrupulous lawyer or money-lender rather than a singer of exquisite songs. Count D’Orsay, you will remember, discovered Byron in a faded nankeen jacket and green spectacles--a notable anti-climax!

We could perhaps overlook appearance and manners if only we got what we principally looked for--fine talk. We are disappointed, of course, and it is our own fault. Even if we had never reasoned the matter out, we ought to have had the sense to put away such expectations, or take care that they were never tested by reality. History shows us great writers and great talkers, but we rarely find the two combined in one figure. It is true that there was nobody more celebrated in his day as a talker than Coleridge, but he did his best literary work before he had this reputation, and the more he talked, the less he wrote. His contemporary, Mackintosh, was a great talker, but who reads Mackintosh now! Do not let us deceive ourselves by thinking that memoirs and biographies of literary men will help us; do not let us imagine that reading them is the same thing as actually meeting authors. Memoirs and biographies are books, with all the virtues of books; they can be put aside, skipped, or disbelieved, if necessary; they are art, and very good art too, some of them. Johnson as he appears in Boswell is good enough for me, for there I can enjoy that very unpleasantness which must have made an actual encounter such a risky business. As for those enthusiasts who are always telling us what they would give to spend an evening with this or the other demi-god of letters, most of them do not realise what they are saying. They would barter we know not what for one evening with Shakespeare at the Mermaid, as if they expected to find him mouthing over his liquor alternately in the manner of Hamlet and Falstaff. I, for one, would not be surprised if all Shakespeare’s talk at the Mermaid was not worth a rush; he probably never did more than exchange a few commonplaces and listen smilingly to the others before he emptied his flagon and went home. The epithets that contemporaries bestowed so grudgingly upon him, ‘gentle’ and ‘civil’ and the like, suggest a quiet man and good listener. I warrant that Jonson was the better talker. Even with Lamb, who is usually the next to be singled out, an encounter might not be entirely successful. Among his intimates, he could stammer out some wonderful things, but he was apt to prove an odd, sometimes unpleasant companion for others. The hapless Distributor of Stamps who called on Wordsworth at Haydon’s, whom Lamb baited so unmercifully, would be very unwilling to subscribe to the popular opinion of ‘gentle Elia.’ As for Milton and Wordsworth, I have no doubt that they were insufferable. And if any man argues the charm of Shelley’s society from his verse, let him go into the first fanatical group he can find, single out the young man who has the greatest number of half-digested notions and talks incessantly in a high-pitched voice, and by listening to such a one for a few hours, let him test the truth of his idea that a day with Shelley would be unmixed delight. But enough--reason and experience both tell us to avoid meeting good authors, though they say nothing of bad ones. It only remains for us to decide which are good and which are bad, and we cannot begin too soon.

THE ETERNAL CHEAP JACK

The war has not changed him. But then all the tumults and long wars of centuries have not changed him. Like the pedant, the demagogue, or the place-hunter, the cheap-jack is an ever-enduring figure. Boccaccio’s Frate Cipolla and Chaucer’s Pardoner were his first cousins; from Shakespeare to O. Henry (to adopt the popular termini), he has chaffered and cozened his way through literature. And he is with us yet in the flesh, for I saw him only last week. I was visiting the weekly fair in a pleasant little town, and had joined the crowd of country folks drifting about the stalls in the market square, when, suddenly, a mighty voice burst forth from the centre of a group of persons huddled in a far corner. In the country, where the long days are filled with the sight and sound of the lower creatures, there is no resisting this eruptive clamour of a human voice for an audience, and, along with others, I hurried to join the thickening press of folk in the corner. There, after many years, I found him, as of old.

There was the same indefinable air of something like bravado about his whole figure. His hard face still bore that curious trace of the Jew, mingled with something a great deal worse than the Jew. His clothes, which were new and smart, still seemed to proclaim that they had been made for someone else; and the various trinkets about his person still confessed their inability to inspire confidence. In front was the same old stall, laden with innumerable, mysterious packages, all thickly wrapped in tissue paper; and by the side of the stall stood the inevitable assistant, silent, dejected, unshaven, looking like a rough and shabbier copy of his master, or perhaps a poor relation. Nothing had changed. The great man still flourished the sign of his office, a wooden mallet with a ponderous head, with which he hammered upon the stall from time to time as a sort of dramatic punctuation.