Part 6

Literature considered as a profession includes what is known as journalism,—not perhaps reportorial work, but the writing of leaders, book reviews, theatrical notices, and other articles which require a light touch, tact, and careful practice, but which do not always have those qualities. A writer lately said: “Literature has become a trade, and finance a profession.” This is hardly true; but some authors have come to look on their profession as a trade, and to value it principally for the money it brings. Anthony Trollope, for instance, whose novels are still popular, set himself to his work as to a task; he wrote so many words for so much money daily. This may account for the woodenness of his literary productions. In the pursuit of art, money should not be the first consideration, although it should not be left entirely out of consideration; for the artist should live by his art, the musician by his music, and the author by his books. Literature, then, should be a vocation as well as an avocation.

Literature, in spite of the many stories about the poverty of writers, has, in our English-speaking countries, been on the whole a fairly well-paid profession. Chaucer was by no means a pauper; Shakspere retired at a comparatively early age to houses and lands earned by his pen in the pleasant town of Stratford. Pope earned nearly fifty thousand dollars by his translations or, rather, paraphrases of Homer. Goldsmith, though always poor through his own generosity and extravagance, earned what in our days would be held to be a handsome competence. Sir Walter Scott made enormous sums which he spent royally on his magnificent castle of Abbotsford. Charles Dickens earned enough to make him rich, and our modern writers, though less in genius, are not less in their power of securing the hire of which they are more than worthy. Mr. Howells has had at least ten thousand dollars a year for permitting his serial stories to be printed in the publications of Harper & Brothers. Mr. Will Carleton, the author of “Farm Ballads,” has no doubt an equal amount from his copyrights. Mrs. Hodgson Burnett, the author of “Little Lord Fauntleroy,” easily commands eight thousand dollars for the copyright of a novel. So you see that the picture often presented to us of the haggard author shivering over his tallow candle in a garret is somewhat exaggerated.

But none of these authors attained success without long care given to art. They all had their early struggles. Mrs. Burnett, for instance, was a very brave and hard-working young girl; she was poor; her only hope in life was her education; she used it to advantage and by constant practice in literary work. The means of her success was the capacity for taking pains. It is the means of all success in life. And any man or woman who expects to adopt literature as a profession must see well, read well, and take infinite pains. Probably Mr. Howells and Mrs. Burnett had many MSS. rejected by the editors. Probably, like many young authors, each day brought back an article which had cost them many weary hours,—for literary work is the most nerve-wearying and brain-wearying of all work—with the legend, “Returned with thanks.” Still they kept on taking infinite pains.

Lord Byron awoke one morning and found himself famous. But that first morning of fame had cost much study, much thought, and, no doubt, periods of despondency in which he almost resolved not to write at all. Poetry does not gush from the poet, like fire out of a Roman candle when you light it. Of all species of literary composition, poetry requires more exquisite care than any other. A sonnet which has not been written and rewritten twenty times may be esteemed as worthless. To-day no modern poem has a right to be printed unless it be technically perfect. It seems a sacrilege to speak of poetry as a profession; it ought to be a vocation only, and the poet ought not only to be made by infinite pains taken with himself, but born. As to the rewards of extreme fineness in the expression of poetry, I have heard that Longfellow received one thousand dollars for his comparatively short poem of “Keramos,” and that Tennyson had a guinea a line. But we shall leave out poetry in talking of filthy lucre, and consider literature as represented by journalism, in which there is very little poetry.

I did not intend to touch on journalism, as the work of making newspapers is sometimes called, but I have been lately asked to give my opinion as to whether journalism is a good preparation for the pursuit of literature. Perhaps the best way to do this would be to give the experiences of a young journalist first.

I imagine a young person who had written at least twenty compositions; some on “Gratitude,” one on “Ambition,” one on “The History of a Pin,” and a grand poem on the Southern Confederacy in five cantos. He had been prepared for the pursuit of literature by being made to write a composition every Friday. These compositions were read aloud in his class. What beautiful sentiments were uttered on those Fridays! How everybody thrilled when young Strephon compared Ireland to “that prairie-grass which smells sweeter the more it is trodden on”! He had never seen such grass; he would not have recognized it if he had seen it; but he had read about it, and when a cruel scientific instructor asked him to give the botanical name, he turned away in disgust. His finest feelings were outraged. This, however, did not prevent the simile of the prairie-grass of unknown genus from cantering through all the compositions of the other members of the class for many succeeding weeks, until the professor got into a habit of asking, when a boy rose to read his essay: “Is there prairie-grass in it?” If the essayist said yes, he was made to sit down and severely reprimanded. Teachers were very cruel in those days.

There was another lovely simile ruthlessly cut down in its middle age—pardon me if I digress and pour out my wrongs to you; I know you can appreciate them. A boy of genius once said that “Charity, like an eternal flame, cheers, but not inebriates.” After that inspired utterance, charity, like an eternal flame, cheered, but not inebriated, the composition of every other writer, until the same cruel hand put it out. In those days we knew a good thing when we saw it, and, if it saved trouble, we appreciated it.

Somewhat later the young person attained a position in the office of an illustrated paper. It was a newspaper which was so fearful that its foreign letters should be incorrect that it always had them written at home. The young gentleman whose desk was next to that of your obedient servant wrote the Paris, Dublin, and New York letters. The correspondent from Rome and Constantinople, who also did the market reports at home, had some trouble with his spelling occasionally, and made a very old gentleman in the corner indignant by asking him whether “pecuniary” was spelled with a “c” or a “q,” and similar questions. This old gentleman wrote the fashion column, and signed himself “Mabel Evangeline.” He sometimes made mistakes about the fashions, but they were very naturally blamed on the printers. To your obedient servant fell the agricultural and the religious columns. All went well, for the prairie-grass was kept out of the agricultural column, though some strange things went in—all went well until he copied out of a paper a receipt for making hens lay. He did not know then that it was a comic paper, and that the friend who wrote it was only in fun. The hens of several subscribers lay down and died. There was trouble in the office, and the agricultural department was taken from him and given to “Mabel Evangeline,” who later came to grief by describing an immense peanut-tree which was said to grow in Massachusetts.

Your obedient servant was asked to write leaders on current subjects. How joyfully he went to work! Here was a chance to introduce the prairie-grass and the “eternal flame.” With a happy face he took his “copy” to the managing editor. Why did that great man frown as he read: “If we compare Dante with Milton, we find that the great Florentine sage was like that prairie-grass which—” “Do you call this a current subject?” he demanded. “It will not do. Where’s the other one?” Your obedient servant, in fear and trembling, gave him the other slips. He began: “The geocentric movement, like that eternal flame which cheers, but—” He paused. “When I asked,” he said, in an awful voice—“when I asked you for current subjects, I wanted an editorial on the fight in the Fourth Ward and a paragraph on the sudden rise in lard. Do you understand?”

Dante and the geocentric movement, the prairie-grass and the eternal flame were crushed. The wise young person learned to adapt himself to the ways of newspaper offices, and all went well again, until he attempted high art. This newspaper was young and not very rich; therefore economy had to be used in the matter of illustrations. The great man, its editor, had a habit of buying second-hand pictures—perhaps it was not to save money, but because he loved the old masters,—and it became the duty of the present writer, who was then a young person, and who is now your obedient servant, to write articles to suit the pictures. For instance, if a scene in Madrid had been bought, the present writer wrote about Madrid. It was easy, for he had an encyclopædia in the office; but if anybody had borrowed the volume containing “M” we always called Madrid by some other name, for “Mabel Evangeline,” who said he had travelled, said foreign cities looked pretty much alike. “Mabel Evangeline,” who sometimes, I am afraid, drank too much beer and mixed up things, was not to be relied on, for he put in a picture of Rome, N. Y., for Rome, Italy, and brought the paper into contempt. Still, I think this would not have made so much difference, if he had not labelled a picture of an actress in a very big hat and a very low-cut gown, “Home from a convent school.” He was discharged after this, and the present writer asked to perform his functions. Nothing unpleasant would have happened, if a picture had not been sent in one day in a hurry. It was a dim picture. It seemed to represent a tall woman and a ghost. The present writer named it “Lady Macbeth and the Ghost of Banquo,” and spun out a graphic description of the artist’s meaning. Next day when the paper came out, the picture was “The Goddess of Liberty crowning Abraham Lincoln.”

It was a mistake; but who does not make mistakes? Who ever saw the Goddess of Liberty, anyhow? If you heard the way that editor talked to the promising young journalist, you would have thought he was personally acquainted with both Lady Macbeth and the Goddess of Liberty, and that they had not succeeded in teaching him good manners. It is sad to think that mere trifles will often cause thoughtless people to lose their tempers.

The writing for newspapers is a good introduction to the profession of literature, if the aspirant can study, can read good books when not at work, can still take pains in spite of haste, and cultivate accuracy of practice. The best way to learn to write is to write. One engaged in supplying newspapers with “copy” must write. If he can keep a strict eye on his style—if he can avoid slang, “smart” colloquialism, he will find that the necessity for conciseness and the little time allowed for hunting for the right word for the right place will help him in attaining ease and aptness of expression.

The first difficulty the unpractised writer has to overcome is a lack of the right words. Words are repeated, and other words that are wanted to express some nice distinction of meaning will not come. Constant reference to a good dictionary or a book of synonyms is the surest remedy for this; and if the writer will refuse to use any word that does not express exactly what he means, he will make steady advance in the power of expression. Words that burn do not come at first. They are sought and found. Tennyson, old as he was, polished his early poems, hoping to make them perfect before he died. Pope’s lines, which seem so easy, so smooth, which seem to say in three or four words what we have been trying to say all our lives in ten or eleven, were turned and re-turned, carved and re-carved, cut and re-cut with all the scrupulousness of a sculptor curving a Grecian nose on his statue:

“A little learning is a dangerous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.”

That is easy reading. It seems as easy as making an egg stand on end, or as putting an apple into a dumpling—when you know how. It is easy because it was so hard; it is easy because Pope took infinite pains to make it so. Had he put less labor into it, he would have failed to make it live. It is true that a thing is worth just as much as we put into it.

Although the desire to write is often kindled by much reading, the power of writing is often paralyzed by the discovery that the reading has been of the wrong kind. Again, the tyro who has read little and that little unsystematically is tempted to lay down his pen in despair. Lord Bacon said that “reading maketh a full man, writing a ready man;” from which we may conclude that he who reads may best utilize his stock of knowledge by learning to write. But he must first read, no matter how keen his observation may be or how original his thoughts are; for a good style does not come by nature. It must be the expression of temperament as well as thought; but it must have acquired clearness and elegance, which are due to the construction of sentences in the good company of great authors. To write, you must read, and be careful what you read; and you must read critically. To read a play of Shakspere’s only for the story is to degrade Shakspere to the level of the railway novel. It is better to have read the trial scene in “The Merchant of Venice” critically, missing no shade in Portia’s character or speech, no expression of Shylock’s, than to have read all Shakspere carelessly. To make a specialty of literature, one must be, above all, thorough. The writings that live have a thousand fine points in them unseen of the casual reader, and, like the carvings mentioned in Miss Donnelly’s fine poem, “Unseen, yet Seen,” known only to God. Take ten lines of any great writer, examine them closely with the aid of all the critical power you have, and then you will see that simplicity in literature is produced by the art which conceals art. That style which is easiest to read is the hardest to write. Genius has been defined as the capacity for taking infinite pains.

There is a passage in “Ben Hur” which seems to me particularly applicable to our subject. You remember, in the chariot-race, where Ben Hur’s cruel experience in the galleys serves him so well. He would not have had the strength of hand or the steadiness of posture, were it not for the work with the oars and the constant necessity of standing on a deck which was even more unsteady than the swaying chariot. “All experience,” says the author, “is useful.” This is especially true for the writer. One can hardly write a page without feeling how little one knows; and if the great aim of knowledge be to attain that consciousness, the writer sooner attains it than other men.

Everything, from the pink tinge in a seashell to the varying tints of an approaching thunder-cloud, from an old farmer’s talk of crops and weather to your lesson in geology and astronomy, will help you. Do not imagine that science and literature are opponents. For myself, I would not permit anybody who did not know at least the rudiments of botany and geology to begin the serious study of literature. If Coleridge felt the need of attending a series of geological lectures late in life, in order to add to his power of making new metaphors and similes, how much greater is our necessity for adding to our knowledge of the phenomena of nature, that we may use our knowledge to the greater glory of God! Literature is the reflection of life, and literature ought to be the crystallization of all knowledge.

You will doubtless find that what you most need in the beginning is to know more about words and about books. But this vacuum can be filled by earnest thought and serious application, system, and thoroughness. It takes you a long time to play a mazurka of Chopin’s well. It takes you a long time even to learn compositions less important. A young woman sits many months before a piano before she learns to drag “Home, Sweet Home!” through the eye of a needle; and then to flatten out again con expressione; and then to chase it up to the last key until it seems to be lost in a still, small protest; and then to bring it to life and send it thundering up and down, as if it were chased by lightning. How easy it all seems, and how delighted we are when our old friend, “Home, Sweet Home!” appears again in its original form! But there was a time when it was not easy—a time when the counting of one and two and three was not easy. So it is with the art of writing. It is not easy in the beginning. It may be easy to make grandiloquent similes about “prairie-grass” and the “eternal light which cheers,” etc.; but that is just like beginning to play snatches of a grand march before one knows the scales.

To begin to write well, one must cut off all the useless leaves that obscure the fruit, which is the thought, and keep the sun from it. Figures should be used sparingly. One metaphor that blazes at the climax of an article after many pages of simplicity is worth half a hundred scattered wherever they happen to fall. It is a white diamond as compared to a handful of garnets.

VI. Letter-writing.

There is no art so important in the conduct of our modern life, after the art of conversation, as the art of letter-writing. A young man who shows a good education and careful training in his letters puts his foot on the first round of the ladder of success. If, in addition to this, he can acquire early in life the power of expressing himself easily and gracefully, he can get what he wants in eight cases out of ten. Very few people indeed can resist a cleverly written letter.

In the old times, when there was no Civil Service and Congressmen made their appointments to West Point at their own sweet will, an applicant’s fate was often decided by his letters. There is a story told of Thaddeus Stevens, a famous statesman of thirty years ago, that he once rejected an applicant for admission to the military school. This applicant met him one day in a corridor of the Capitol and remonstrated violently. “Your favoritism is marked, Mr. Stevens,” he said; “you have blasted my career from mere party prejudice.”

The legislator retorted, “I would not give an appointment to any blasted fool who spells ‘until’ with two ‘ll’s’ and ‘till’ with one.” And the disappointed aspirant went home to look into his dictionary.

Such trifles as this make the sum of life. A man’s letter is to most educated people an index of the man himself. His card is looked on in the same light in polite society. But a man’s letter is more important than his visiting-card, though the character of the latter cannot be altogether neglected.

It is better to be too exquisite in your carefulness about your letters than in the slightest degree careless. The art of letter-writing comes from knowledge and constant practice.

Your letters, now, ought to be careful works of art. Intelligent—remember I say intelligent—care is the basis of all perfection; and perfection in small things means success in great. In our world the specialist, the man who does at least one thing as well as he can, is sure to succeed; and so overcrowded are the avenues to success becoming that a man to succeed must be a specialist and know how to do at least one thing better than his fellow-men.

If you happen to have a rich father, you may say, “It does not make much difference; I shall have an easy time of it all my life. I can spell ‘applicant’ with two ‘c’s’ if I like and it will not make any difference.”