A Holiday in Bed and Other Sketches Part 8

I tried to lose my reputation in several other books of the same kind, and always with the same result. Barnacles are nothing to a literary reputation. Then I tried driving four-in-hand. There are now only five or six of us who are four-in-hand novelists, but there are also four-in-hand essayists, four-in-hand critics, etc., and we all work on the same principle. Every one of us is trying to shake himself free of his reputation. We novelists have, perhaps, the best chance, for there are so few writers of fiction who have a reputation to lose that all the magazine editors come to us for a serial tale. Next year I expect to be six-in-hand, for the provincial weeklies want me as well as the magazines. Any mere outsider would say I was safe to get rid of my reputation this year, for I am almost beating the record in the effort.

A novelist of repute, who did not want to lose his reputation, would not think of writing more than one story at a time, and he would take twelve months, at least, to do it. That is not my way. Hitherto, though I have been a member of the literary four-in-hand club, I have always been some way ahead with at least two of my tales before they begin to appear in serial form. You may give up the attempt to lose your reputation, however, if you do not set about it more thoroughly than that; and the four novels which I began in January in two English magazines, one American magazine, and an ill.u.s.trated paper, were all commenced in the second week of December. (I had finished two novels in the last week of November.) My original plan was to take them day about, doing about four chapters of each a month; but to give my reputation a still better chance of absconding, I now write them at any time. Now-a-days I would never think of working out my plot beforehand. My thinking begins when I take up my pen to write, and ends when I lay it down, or even before that. In one of my stories this year I made my hero save the heroine from a burning house. Had I done that in the old days they would have ridiculed me, but now they say I reveal fresh talent in the delightful way in which I re-tell a story that has no doubt been told before. The beaten tracks, it is remarked, are the best to tread when the public has such a charming guide as myself. My second novel opens with a shipwreck, and I am nearly three chapters in getting my princ.i.p.al characters into the boats. In my first books I used to guard carefully against the introduction of material that did not advance the story, yet at that time I was charged with "padding." In this story of the shipwreck there is so much padding that I could blush--if I had not given all that up--to think of it. Instead of confining myself to my own characters, I describe all the pa.s.sengers in the vessel--telling what they were like in appearance, and what was their occupation, and what they were doing there. Then, when the shipwreck comes, I drown them one by one. By one means or another, I contrive to get six chapters out of that shipwreck, which is followed by two chapters of agony in an open boat, which I treat as if it were a novelty in fiction, and that, again, leads up to a chapter on the uncertainty of life. Most flagrant padding of all is the conversation. It always takes my characters at least two pages to say anything. They approach the point in this fashion:

Tom walked excitedly into the room, in which Peter was awaiting him. The two men looked at each other.

"You wanted to see me," Tom said at last.

"Yes," said Peter slowly, "I wanted to see you."

Tom looked at the other uneasily.

"Why did you want to see me?" he asked after a pause.

"I shall tell you," replied Peter, pointing to a chair.

Tom sat down, and seemed about to speak. But he changed his mind. Peter looked at him curiously.

"Perhaps," Peter said at last, "you know my reasons for requesting an interview with you here?"

"I cannot say that I do," answered Tom.

There was another pause, during which the ticking of the clock could be distinctly heard.

"You have no idea?" inquired Peter.

"I have no idea," replied Tom.

"Do you remember," asked the older man, a little nervously, "that when old John Vansittart disappeared so suddenly from the Grange there were some persons who believed that he had been foully murdered?"

Tom pa.s.sed his hand through his hair. "John Vansittart," he muttered to himself.

"The affair," continued Peter, "was never cleared up."

"It was never cleared up," said Tom. "But why," he added, "do you return to this subject?"

"You may well ask," said Peter, "why I return to it."

And so on. There is so much of this kind of thing in my recent novels that if all the lines of it were placed on end I daresay they would reach round the world. Yet I am never charged with padding now. My writing is said to be beautifully lucid. My shipwreck has made several intelligent critics ask if I have ever been a sailor, though I don't mind saying here, that like Douglas Jerrold, I only dote upon the sea from the beach. I have been to Dover, but no further, and you will find my shipwreck told (more briefly) in Marryatt. I dashed it off less than two months ago, but for the life of me I could not say whether my ship was scuttled, or went on fire, or sprang a leak. Henceforth I shall only refer to it as the shipwreck, and my memory will do all that is required of it if it prevents my mistaking the novel that contains the shipwreck.

Even if I did that, however, I know from experience that my reputation would be as safe as the lives of my leading characters. I began my third novel, meaning to make my hero something of a coward, but though I worked him out after that patter for a time, I have changed my plan. He is to be peculiarly heroic henceforth. This will not lose me my reputation. It will be said of my hero that he is drawn with no ordinary skill, and that the author sees the two-sideness of every man's character. As for the fourth story, it is the second one over again, with the shipwreck omitted. One night when I did not have a chapter to write--a rare thing with me--I read over the first part of this fourth tale--another rare thing--and found it so slip-shod as to be ungrammatical. The second chapter is entirely taken up with a disquisition on bald heads, but the humor of it will be said to increase my reputation. Sometimes when I become despondent of ever losing my reputation, I think of taking a whole year to write one novel in, just to see what I really could do. I wonder whether the indulgent public would notice any difference? Perhaps I could not write carefully now if I tried. The small section of the public that guesses which of the four-in-hand writers I am may think for a moment that this story of how I tried in vain to lose my reputation will help me toward the goal.

They are wrong, however. The public will stand anything from us now--or they would get something better.

RULES FOR CARVING.

_Rule I._--_It is not good form to climb onto the table._ There is no doubt a great temptation to this. When you are struggling with a duck, and he wobbles over just as you think you have him, you forget yourself.

The common plan is not to leap upon the table all at once. This is the more usual process: The carver begins to carve sitting. By-and-by he is on his feet, and his brow is contracted. His face approaches the fowl, as if he wanted to inquire within about everything except that the duck is reluctant to yield any of its portions. One of his feet climbs onto his chair, then the other. His knees are now resting against the table, and, in his excitement, he, so to speak, flings himself upon the fowl.

This brings us to

_Rule II._--_Carving should not be made a matter of brute force._ It ought from the outset to be kept in mind that you and the duck are not pitted against each other in mortal combat. Never wrestle with any dish whatever; in other words, keep your head, and if you find yourself becoming excited, stop and count a hundred. This will calm you, when you can begin again.

_Rule III._--_It will not a.s.sist you to call the fowl names._ This rule is most frequently broken by a gentleman carving for his own family circle. If there are other persons present, he generally manages to preserve a comparatively calm exterior, just as the felon on the scaffold does; but in privacy he breaks out in a storm of invective. If of a sarcastic turn of mind, he says that he has seen many a duck in his day, but never a duck like this. It is double-jointed. It is so tough that it might have come over to England with the Conqueror.

_Rule IV._--_Don't boast when it is all over._ You must not call the attention of the company to the fact that you have succeeded. Don't exclaim exultingly, "I knew I would manage it," or "I never yet knew a duck that I couldn't conquer somehow." Don't exclaim in a loud gratified voice how you did it, nor demonstrate your way of doing it by pointing to the _debris_ with the carving knife. Don't even be mock-modest, and tell everybody that carving is the simplest thing in the world. Don't wipe your face repeatedly with your napkin, as if you were in a state of perspiration, nor talk excitedly, as if your success had gone to your head. Don't ask your neighbors what they think of your carving. Your great object is to convince them that you look upon carving as the merest bagatelle, as something that you do every day and rather enjoy.

ON RUNNING AFTER A HAT.

Some don't run. They pretend to smile when they see their hat borne along on the breeze, and glance at the laughing faces around in a way implying, "Yes, it is funny, and I enjoy the joke, although the hat is mine." n.o.body believes you, but if this does you good, you should do it.

You don't attempt to catch your hat as it were on the wing. You walk after it, smiling, as if you liked the joke the more you think of it, and confident that the hat will come to rest presently. You are not the sort of man to make a fuss over a hat. You won't give the hat the satisfaction of thinking that it can annoy you. Strange though it may seem, there are idiots who will join you in pursuit of the hat. One will hook it with a stick, and almost get it, only not quite. Another will manage to hit it hard with an umbrella. A third will get his foot into it or on it. This does not improve the hat, but it shows that there is a good deal of the milk of human kindness flowing in the street as well as water, and is perhaps pleasant to think of afterwards. Several times you almost have the hat in your possession. It lies motionless, just where it has dropped after coming in contact with a hansom. Were you to make a sudden rush at it you could have it, but we have agreed that you are not that sort of man. You walk forward, stoop, and----. One reads how the explorer thinks he has shot a buffalo dead, and advances to put his foot proudly on the carca.s.s, how the buffalo then rises, and how the explorer then rises also. I have never seen an explorer running after his hat (though I should like to), but your experience is similar to his with the buffalo. As your hand approaches the hat, the latter turns over like a giant refreshed, and waddles out of your reach. Once more your hand is within an inch of it, when it makes off again. There are ringing cheers from the audience on the pavement, some of them meant for the hat, and the others as an encouragement to you. Before you get your hat you have begun to realize what deer-stalking is, and how important a factor is the wind.