Crowds Part 22

"And Mr. Morgan?" I said.

"Oh! He is chucking down old china on it, old pictures, and things."

"And Mr. Rockefeller?"

"Mussing with colleges, some," he said, "just now. But he doesn't, as a matter of fact, see anything--not of his own--that can really be done with them, except to make them more systematized and businesslike, make them over into sort of Standard Oil Spiritual Refineries, fill them with millions more of little Rockefellers--and they won't let him do that. Of course, as you might see, what they want to do practically is to take the Rockefeller money and leave the Rockefeller out. n.o.body will really let him do anything. Everything goes this way when we seriously try to do things. The fact is, it is a pretty small, helpless business, owning a world," sighed Mr. Carnegie.

"This is why we are selling out, if anybody happens along. Anybody, that is, who really sees what this piece of property is for and how to develop it, can have it," said Mr. Carnegie, "and have it cheap."

Mr. Carnegie spoke these last words very slowly and wearily, and with his most wistful look; and then, recalling himself suddenly, and handing me a gla.s.s to look at New York with and see what I thought of it, he asked to be excused for a moment, and saying, "I have fourteen libraries to give away before a quarter past twelve," he hurried out of the room.

CHAPTER II

MR. CARNEGIE TRIES TO MAKE PEOPLE READ

I found, as I was studying the general view of New York as seen from the top through Mr. Carnegie's gla.s.s, that there appeared to be a great many dots--long rows of dots for the most part--possibly very high buildings, but there was one building, wide and white and low, and more spread-out and important-looking than any of the others, which especially attracted my attention. It looked as if it might be a kind of monument or mausoleum to somebody. On looking again I found that it was filled with books, and was the Carnegie Public Library. There were forty more Libraries for New York Mr. Carnegie was having put up, I was told, and he had dotted them--thousands of them almost everywhere one could look, apparently, on his own particular part of the planet.

A few days later, when I began to do things at a closer range, I took a little trip to New York, and visited the Library; and I asked the man who seemed to have it in charge, who there was who was writing books for Mr. Carnegie's Libraries just now, or if there was any really adequate arrangement Mr. Carnegie had made for having a few great books written for all these fine buildings--all these really n.o.ble book-racks, he had had put up. The man seemed rather taken aback, and hesitated. Finally, I asked him point blank to give me the name of the supposed greatest living author who had written anything for all these miles of Carnegie Libraries, and he mentioned doubtfully a certain Mr. Rudyard Kipling. I at once asked for his books, of course, and sat down without delay to find out if he was the greatest living author the planet had, what it was he had to say for it and about it, and more particularly, of course, what he had to to say it was for.

I found among his books some beautiful and quite refined interpretations of tigers and serpents, a really n.o.ble interpretation or conception of what the beasts were for all the glorious gentlemanly beasts--and of what machines were for--all the young, fresh, mighty, worshipful engines--and what soldiers were for. But when I looked at what he thought men were for, at what the planet was for, there was practically almost nothing. The nearest I came to it was a remark, apparently in a magazine interview which I cannot quote correctly now, but which amounted to something like this: "We will never have a great world until we have some one great artist or poet in it, who sees it as a whole, focuses it, composes it, makes a picture of it, and gives the men who are in it a vision to live for."

Since then I have been trying to see what Messrs. Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Morgan could do to produce and arrange what seemed to me the one most important, imperative, and immediate convenience their planet could have, namely, as Mr. Kipling intimated, some man on it, some great creative genius, who would gather it all up in his imagination--the beasts, and the people, and the sciences, and the machines--in short, the planet as a whole, and say what it was for. It is from this point of view that I have been drawn into writing the following pages on the next important improvements--what one might call the spiritual Unreal-Estate Improvements, for Messrs. Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Morgan's property which will have to be installed. I have been going over the property more or less carefully in my own way since, studying it and noting what had been done by the owners, and what possibly might be done toward arranging authors, inventors, seers, artists, or engineers or other efficient persons who would be able to inquire, to think out for a world, to express for it, some faint idea of what it was for.

CHAPTER III

MR. n.o.bEL TRIES TO MAKE PEOPLE WRITE

Not unnaturally, of course, I turned to see what had already been done by the more powerful men the planet had produced, in the way of arranging for the necessary seers and geniuses to run the world with, and I soon found that by far the most intelligent and far-seeing attempt that had been made yet in this direction had been made by an inspired, or semi-inspired, millionaire in Sweden, named Alfred n.o.bel, an idealist, who had made a large but unhappy fortune out of an explosive to stop war with. His general idea had been that dynamite would make war so terrible that it would shock people into not fighting any more, and that gradually people, not having to spend their time in thinking of ways of killing one another, would have more time than they had ever had before to think of other and more important things. It was the disappointment of his life that his invention, instead of being used creatively, used to free men from fighting and make men think of things, had been used largely as an arrangement for making people so afraid of war that they could not think of anything else. Whichever way he turned he saw the world in a kind of panic, all the old and gentle-minded nations with their fair fields, their factories and art galleries, all hard at work piling up explosives around themselves until they could hardly see over them. As this was the precise contrary of what he had intended, and he had not managed to do what he had meant to do with making his money, he thought he would try to see if he could not yet do what he had meant to do in spending it. He sat down to write his Will, and in this Will, writing as an inventor and a man of genius, he tried to express, in the terms of money, his five great desires for the world.

He wished to spend forty thousand dollars a year, every year forever, after he was dead, on each of these five great desires. There were five great Inventors that he wanted, and he wanted the whole world searched through for them, for each of them, once more every year, to see if they could be found. Mr. n.o.bel expressed his desire for these five Inventors as people often manage to express things in wills, in such a way that not everybody had been sure what he meant. There seems to have been comparatively little trouble, from year to year, in awarding the prizes to some adequate inventor in the domain of Peace, of Physics, of Chemistry, and of Medicine; but the n.o.bel Prize Trustees, in trying to pick out an award each year to some man who could be regarded as a true inventor in Literature, have met with considerable difficulty in deciding just what sort of a man Alfred n.o.bel had in mind, and had set aside his forty thousand dollars for when he directed that it should go--to quote from the Will--"To the person who shall have produced in the field of Literature the most distinguished work of an idealistic tendency."

Allen Upward, for instance, an Englishman unknown in Stockholm, invented and published a book four years ago, called the "New Word," which was so idealistic and distinguished a book, and so full of new ideas and of new combinations of old ideas, that there was scarcely a publisher in England who did not instinctively recognize it, who did not see that it would not pay at once, and that therefore it was too strange and original and too important a book for him to publish, and after a long delay the book was finally printed in Geneva.

A copy was sent to the n.o.bel Prize Trustees.

One would have thought, looking at it theoretically, that here was precisely the sort of situation that Alfred n.o.bel, who had been the struggling inventor of a great invention that would not pay at once himself, would have been looking for. A book so inventive, so far ahead, that publishers praised it and would not invest in it, one would have imagined to be the one book of all others for which Alfred n.o.bel stood ready and waiting to put down his forty thousand dollars.

But Mr. n.o.bel's forty thousand dollars did not go to a comparatively obscure and uncapitalized inventor who had written a book to build a world with, or at least a great preliminary design, or sketch, toward a world. The n.o.bel Prize Trustees, instead of giving the forty thousand dollars to Allen Upward, looked carefully about through all the nations until their eyes fell on a certain Mr. Rudyard Kipling. And when they saw Mr. Rudyard Kipling, piled high with fame and five dollars a word, they came over quietly to where he was and put softly down on him forty thousand dollars more.

I do not know, but it is not inconceivable, that Kipling himself would rather have had Allen Upward have it.

I am not quarrelling with the Trustees, and am merely trying to think things out and understand. But it certainly is a question that cannot but keep recurring to one's mind--the unfortunate, and perhaps rather unlooked-for, way in which Mr. n.o.bel's Will works. And I have been wondering what there is that might be done, the world being the kind of world it is, which would enable the n.o.bel Prize Trustees to so administer the Will that its practical weight on the side of Idealism, and especially upon the crisis of idealism in young authors, would be where Mr. n.o.bel meant to have it.

One must hasten to admit that Mr. Upward's book is open to question; that, in fact, it is the main trait of Mr. Upward's book that it raises a thousand questions; and that it would be a particularly hard book for most men to give a prize to, quietly go home, and sleep that night. I must hasten to admit also that, judging from their own point of view, the n.o.bel Prize Trustees have so far done quite well. They have attained a kind of triumph of doing safe things--things that they could not be criticised for; and they could well reply to this present criticism that there was no other course that they could take. Unless they had a large fund for b.u.t.ting through all nations for obscure geniuses, and for turning up stones everywhere to look for embryo authors--unless they had a fund for going about among the great newspapers, the big magazines, and peeping under them through all the world for geniuses--and unless they had still another large fund for guaranteeing their decision when they had found one, a fund for convincing the world that they were right, and that they were not wasting their forty thousand dollars--the Trustees have taken a fairly plausible position. Their position being that, in default of perfectly fresh, brand-new, great men, and in view of the fact, in a world like this that geniuses in it are almost invariably, and, as a matter of course, lost or mislaid until they are dead, much the best and safest thing that Trustees of Idealism could do was to watch the drift of public opinion in the different nations, to adopt the course of noting carefully what the world thought were really its great men, and then (at a discreet and dignified distance, of course) tagging the public, and wherever they saw a crowd, a rather nice crowd, round a man, standing up softly at the last moment and handing him over his forty thousand dollars. This has been the history of the n.o.bel Trustees of Idealism, thus far.

But in a way, we are all the trustees of idealism, and the problem of the n.o.bel Prize Trustees is more or less the problem of all of us. We are interested as well as they in trying to find out how to recognize and reward men of genius. What would we do ourselves if we were n.o.bel Prize Trustees? Precisely what was it that Alfred n.o.bel intended to achieve for Literature when he made this bequest of forty thousand dollars a year in his Will, for a work of Literature of an idealistic tendency?

To take a concrete case, I can only record that it has seemed to me that if Alfred n.o.bel himself could have been on hand that particular year, and could have read Mr. Upward's book, he would have given the prize of forty thousand dollars to Allen Upward. He would not have given the prize to Mr. Kipling--he would have given it twenty years before; but in this particular year of which I am writing, when he saw these two men together, I believe he would have given the prize to Allen Upward, and he would have hurried.

I would like to put forward at this point two inquiries. First, why did the Trustees not award the prize to Allen Upward? And second, what would have happened if they had?

First, the Trustees could not be sure that Mr. Upward in his work of genius was telling the truth.

Second, they could not be sure that the world would approve of his having forty thousand dollars for telling the truth. Perhaps the world would have rather had him paid forty thousand dollars for not telling it.

Third, Mr. Kipling was safe. No creative work had to be done on Kipling; all they had to do was to send him the cheque. Great crowds had swept in from all over the world, and nominated Mr. Kipling; the Committee merely had to confirm the nomination.

Fourth, Mr. Upward, like all idealists, like all men who have the power of throwing this world into the melting-pot and bringing it out new again partly unrecognizable (which, of course, is the regular historical, almost conventional, thing for an idealist to do with a world), bewildered the n.o.bel Prize Committee. They could not be sure but that Mr. Upward's next book would be thought in the wrong, and make their having given him forty thousand dollars to write it ridiculous.

What would have happened if the Trustees had given the prize to Mr.

Upward?

First, practically no one would have known who he was, and twenty-five nations would have been reading his book in a week, to see why the prize was given to him. The book would have been given the most widespread, highly stimulated, forty-thousand-dollar-power attention that any book in any age has had.

Only now and then would a man go over and take down his old Kiplings from the shelf and read them, because he had heard that Mr. Kipling had forty thousand dollars more than he had had before.

Secondly, Mr. Upward's new book would have the stimulus of his knowing while he was writing it that every word would be read by everybody. All the draught on the fire of his genius of the whole listening world would result in a work that even Mr. Upward himself perhaps would hardly believe he had written. As events turned out, and Mr. Upward did not get the prize there might be many reasons to believe that his next book might be out of focus, might be a mere petulant, scolding book, his exultation spent or dwindled, because his last tremendous wager--that the world wanted the truth--was lost.

Scolding in a book means, as a rule, either juvenility or it means relapse into conscious degeneration of the soul--the focussing and fusing power in a man. I have sometimes wondered if even Christ, if He had not died in His thirty-third year, made His great dare for the world on the cross early, would not have stopped believing so magnificently in other people at about forty or forty-five or so, and would not have spent the rest of His days in railing at them, and in being very bitter and helpless and eloquent about Rome and Jerusalem. I have caught myself once or twice being glad Abraham Lincoln died suddenly just when he did, his great faith and love all warm in him, and his great oath for the world--that it was good--still fresh upon his lips!

Writing a book like Allen Upward's for a planet with a vision of a thousand years singing splendidly through it, and then just reading it all alone afterward when he has written it, and going over the score all alone by himself, would seem to be a good deal of a strain. To be contradicted out loud and gloriously by a world might be inspiring, but to be contradicted by a solid phalanx of silent nations, trooping up behind one another, unanimous, impervious, is enough to make any radiant, long-acc.u.mulated genius pause in full career, question himself, question his vision as a chimera, as some faintly lighted Northern Lights upon the world, that would never mean anything, that was an illusion, that would just flicker in the great dark once more and go out.

I do not say that this is true, or that it would be true of Allen Upward.

But I have read his book. I should think it might be true.

What Alfred n.o.bel had in mind, his whole idea in his Will, it seems to some of us, was to put in his forty thousand dollars at the working end of some man's mind, at the end of the man's mind where the forty thousand dollars would itself be creative, where the forty thousand dollars would get into the man, and work out through the man and through his genius into the world. It does not seem to me that he wanted to put his forty thousand dollars at the idle, old remembering end of a man's mind; that he meant it should be used as a mere reward for idealism. I doubt if it even so much as occurred to Alfred n.o.bel, who was an idealist himself, that idealism, after a man had managed to have some in this world, would be rewarded, or could possibly be paid for, by any one. He knew, if ever a man knew, that idealism was its own reward, and that it was priceless, and that any attempt to reward it with money, to pay a man for it after he had had it, and after it was all over, would make forty thousand dollars look shabby, or at least pathetic and ridiculous. What he wanted to do was to build his forty thousand dollars over into a Man. He wanted to feel that this money that he had made out of dynamite, out of destruction, would be wrought, through this man, into exultation, into life. He had proposed that this forty thousand dollars should become poetry in this man's book, that it should become light and heat, a power-house of thought, of great events. What Alfred n.o.bel had in mind, I think, with his little forty thousand dollars, was that it should be given a chance to become an intimate part of some man's genius; that it should become perhaps at last a Great Book--that great foundry of men's souls, where the moulds of History are patterned out, and where the hopes of nations and the prayers of women and children and of great men are, and where the ideals of men--those huge drive-wheels of the world--are cast in a strange light and silence.

I wondered if they could have thought of this when they voted on Allen Upward's book that day three years ago--those twenty grave, quiet gentlemen in frockcoats in Stockholm!

I have picked out Mr. Upward's book because it is the most difficult, the most hazardous, and the least fortunate one I know, to make my point with; and because a great many people will get the reaction of disagreeing with me, and feeling about it probably, the way the n.o.bel Prizes Trustees did. I have wanted to take a book which has the traits in it for which men of genius are persecuted or crucified or ignored--our more modern timid or anonymous form of the cross. If Mr.

Upward had been given the Prize by the n.o.bel Prize Trustees, it will have to be admitted a howl would have gone up round the world that would not have quieted down yet; and it is this howl that Mr. n.o.bel intended his Prize for, and that he thought a man would need about forty thousand dollars to meet.

I might have taken any one of several other books, and they would have ill.u.s.trated my point snugly and more conveniently; but just that right touch of craziness that n.o.bel had in mind, and that goes with great experiment of spirit--the chill, Nietzsche-like wildness, that bravado before G.o.d and man and before Time, that swinging one's self out on Eternity, which make Upward a typical man of genius, would have been lacking. K---- (whose criticisms of books are the most creative ones I know) said of Upward's book that he felt very happy and strangely emanc.i.p.ated when he read it, but that it was an uncanny experience, as if he had been made of thin air, had become a kind of aerated being, a psychic effect that genius often has; and K---- admitted to me confidentially that he felt that possibly he and Upward were being a little crazy and happy together by themselves, breaking out into infinite s.p.a.ce so, and he took the book over to W----, and left it on his desk slinkingly and half-ashamed and without saying anything about it. He said he was enormously relieved next time he saw W----, felt as if he had just been pulled out of Bedlam to find that there was at least one other man in the world apparently in his right mind, who valued the book as he did.

This is the precise feeling, it seems to me, that the n.o.bel Prize was intended to champion and to stand by and temporarily defend in a new author--the feeling he gives us of being in the presence of unseen forces, of incalculableness. It was this way Allen Upward has of taking his reader apart or up into a high place (like the Devil), and dizzying him, taking away his breath with Truth, that n.o.bel had in mind. He wanted to spend eight thousand pounds a year on providing for the world one more book which would give the ordinary man the personal feeling of being with a genius, cold, lonely, cosmic genius, the sense of a chill wind of All s.p.a.ce Outside blowing through--a book which is a sort of G.o.d's Wilderness, in which ordinary men with their ordinary plain senses round them move about dazed a little and as trees walking--a great, gaunt, naked book.