Stories by American Authors Volume VIII Part 8

"Don't you ever go to the cla.s.s reunions?" I asked.

"Cla.s.s reunions? Well, hardly."

"I should think you would; you are so near New Haven."

"How charmingly provincial you are--you Southern chaps! Don't you know that, to a man who lives in New York, nothing is near? Besides, as to my cla.s.smates at old Yale and all that, I would go round a corner to avoid meeting most of them."

I expressed myself as duly shocked by this sentiment, and presently I inquired:

"Well, Clay, how are you getting on, anyway?"

"That's a d---- general question. How do you want me to answer it?"

"Oh, not at all, if you don't like."

"Well, don't get miffed. Suppose I answer, 'Pretty well, I thank you, sir.' How will that do?"

"Are you writing anything now?"

"I'm always scribbling something or other. At present, I've got the position of dramatic critic on the 'Daily Boreas,' which is not a very bad bore, and keeps the pot boiling. And I do more or less work of a hack kind for the magazines and cyclopedias, etc."

"I thought you were on the 'Weekly Prig.' Berkeley or somebody told me so."

"So I was at one time, but I got out of it. The work was drying me up too fast. The concern is run by a lot of cusses who have failed in various branches of literature themselves, and undertake, in consequence, to make it unpleasant for every one else who tries to write anything. I got so that I could sling as cynical a quill as the rest of them. But the trick is an easy one and hardly worth learning.

It's a great fraud, this business of reviewing. Here's a man of learning, for instance, who has spent years of research on a particular work. He has collected a large library, perhaps, on his subject; knows more about it than any one else living. Then along comes some insolent little whipper-snapper,--like me,--whose sole knowledge of the matter in hand is drawn from the very book that he pretends to criticise, and patronizes the learned author in a book notice. No, I got out of it; I hadn't the cheek."

"I bought your book,"[A] said I, "as soon as it came out."

[Footnote A: Dialogues and Romances. By E. Clay. New York: Pater & Sons, 1874.]

"That's more than the public did."

"Yes, and I read it, too."

"No! Did you, now? That's true friendship. Well, how did you like it?

Did you get your money's worth?"

I hesitated a moment and then answered:

"It was clever, of course. Anything that you write would be sure to be that. But it didn't appear to get down to hard-pan or to take a firm grip on life--did it?"

"Ah, that's what the critics said,--only they've got a set of phrases for expressing it. They said it was amateurish, that it was in a falsetto key, etc."

"Well, how does it strike you, yourself? You know that it didn't come out of the deep places of your nature, don't you? You feel that you've got better behind?"

"Oh, I don't know. A man does what he can. I rather think it's the best I can do at present."

"Why don't you go at some more serious work; some _magnum opus_ that would bring your whole strength into play?"

"A _magnum opus_, my dear fellow!" replied Clay, with a shade of irritation in his voice. "You talk as if a _magnum opus_ could be done for the wishing. Why don't _you_ do a _magnum opus_, then?"

"Why don't _I_? Oh, I'm not a literary fellow--never professed to be.

What a question!"

"Well, no more am I, perhaps. I don't think any better of the stuff that I scribble than you do. It's all an experiment with me. I'm trying my brushes--trying my brushes. Perhaps I may be able to do something stronger some day, and perhaps not. But at all events I sha'n't force my mood. I shall wait for my inspiration. One thing I've noticed, that as a man grows older he loses his spontaneity and gets more critical with himself. I could do more, no doubt, if I would only let myself go. But I'm like this meerschaum here,--a hard piece and slow in coloring."

"Well, meanwhile you might do something in the line of scholarship, a history or a volume of critical essays--'Hours with the Poets,' or something of that kind, that would bring in the results of your reading. Have you seen Brainard's book? It seemed to me work that was worth doing. But you could do something of the same kind, only much better, without taking your hands out of your pockets."

Brainard was a painstaking cla.s.smate of ours, who had been for some years Professor of Mental and Moral Philosophy, English Literature, and European History, in a Western university, and had recently published a volume ent.i.tled "Theism and Pantheism in the Literature of the English Renaissance," which was well spoken of, and was already in its third edition.

"Yes, I've seen the stuff," said Clay. "My unhappy country swarms with that sort of thing: books about books, and books about other books about books--like the big fleas and little fleas. It's not literature; it's a parasitic growth that infests literature. I always say to myself, with the melancholy Jaques, whenever I have to look over a book by Brainard or any such fellow, 'I think of as many matters as he; but I give Heaven thanks and make no boast of them.' No, I don't care to add anything to that particular rubbish heap. You know Emerson said that the worst poem is better than the best criticism of it. The trouble with me is that what I want to do I can't do--at present; what I can do I don't think it worth while to do--worth my while, at least. Some one else may do it and get the credit and welcome."

"But you do a good deal of work that you don't care about, as it is,"

I objected.

"Of course. A man must live, and so I do the nearest thing and the one that pays quickest. I got eighty dollars, now, for that last screed in 'The Reservoir.'"

"But," I persisted, "I thought that money-making had no part in your scheme. You could make more money in a dozen other businesses."

"So I could," he answered; "but they all involve some form of slavery.

Now, I am my own master. After all, every profession has its drudgery, and literary drudgery is not the worst."

"Well," I conceded, "independent of what you accomplish, I suppose your way of life furnishes as many daily satisfactions as any. I sometimes envy you and Berkeley your freedom from business cares and your opportunities for study. What becomes of most men's college training, for example? By Jove! I picked up a Greek book the other day, and I couldn't read three words running. Now, I take it, you manage to keep up your cla.s.sics, among other things."

"Oh, my way of life has its compensations," he answered. "But Sydney Smith--wasn't it?--said that life was a middling affair, anyway. As for the cla.s.sics, etc., I find that reading and study lose much of their stimulus unless they get an issue in action,--unless one can apply them directly toward his own work. I often think that, if I were fifteen or even ten years younger, I would go into some branch of natural science. A scientific man always seems to me peculiarly happy in the healthy character of his work. He can keep himself apart from it. It is objective, impersonal, makes no demand on his emotions. Now a writing man has to put himself into his work. He has to keep looking out all the time for impressions, material; to keep trying to enlarge and deepen his own experience, and he gets self-conscious and loses his freshness in the process."

"I am surprised to find you in New York," said I, by way of changing the subject. "I thought you had laid out to live in the country. Do you remember that pretty little word-picture of a winter afternoon that you drew us--something in the style of an _Il Penseroso_ landscape? I expected to find you domesticated in a Berkshire farm-house."

"Yes, I remember. I tried it. But I find it necessary, for my work, to be in New York. The newspapers--confound 'em!--won't move into the woods. But, after all, place is indifferent. See here; this isn't bad."

He drew aside the window curtain, and I looked out over a wilderness of roofs to the North River and the Palisades tinged with a purple light. The ferry boats and tugs plying over the water in every direction, the noise of the steam whistles, and the clouds of white vapor floating on the clear air, made an inspiriting scene.

"I'm up among the architects here," continued Clay; "nothing but the janitor's family between me and the roof."

We talked awhile longer, and on taking leave, I said:

"I shall be on the lookout for something big from you one of these days. You know what we always expected of you. So don't lose your grip, old man."

"Who knows?" he replied. "It doesn't rest with me, but with the _daimon_."

I was unable to visit Doddridge, the remaining member of our group. He lived in the thriving town of Wahee, Minnesota, and I had heard of him, in a general way, as highly prosperous. He was a prominent lawyer and successful politician, and had lately been appointed United States district judge, after representing his section in the State Senate for a term or two. I wrote to him, congratulating him on his success and asking for details. I mentioned also my visits to Berkeley, Armstrong, and Clay. I got a prompt reply from Doddridge, from which I extract such portions as are material to this narrative:

"The first few months after I left college I traveled pretty extensively through the West, making contracts with the farmers as agent for a nursery and seed-farm in my part of the country, but really with the object of spying out the land and choosing a place to settle in. Finally I lit on Wahee, and made up my mind that it was a town with a future.

It was bound to be a railroad center. It had a first-rate agricultural country around it, and a rich timber region a little further back; and it already had an enterprising little pop. growing rapidly. To-day Wahee is as smart a city of its inches as there is in the Northwest. I squatted right down here, got a little raise from the old man, and put it all into building lots. I made a good thing of it, and paid it all back in six years with eight per cent. interest.

Meanwhile, I went into Judge Pratt's law office and made my salt by fitting his boy for college--till I learned enough law to earn a salary. The judge was an old Waheer--belonged to the time-honored aristocracy of the place, having been here at least fifteen years before I came. He got into railroads after awhile (is president now of the Wahee and Heliopolis Bee-line), and left his law practice to me. I married his daughter Alice in 1875. She is a Western girl, but she was educated at Va.s.sar. We have two boys. If you ever come out our way, Polisson, you must put up with us for as long as you can stay. I would like to show you the country about here and have you ride after my team. I've got a pair that can do it inside three minutes. Do you remember Liddell of our cla.s.s? He is an architect, you know. I got him to come to Wahee, and he has all he can do putting up business blocks. We have got some here equal to anything in Chicago....

"Yes, I am United States judge for this district. There is not much money in it, but it will help me professionally by and by. I shall not keep it long. Do I go into politics much, you ask. I used to, but I've got through for the present. The folks about here wanted to run me for Congress last term, but I hadn't any use for it. As to what you are kind enough to say about my 'success,' etc., whatever success I have had is owing to nothing but a capacity for hard work, which is the only talent that I lay claim to.

They want a man out here who will do the work that comes to hand, and keep on doing it till something better turns up....