Literary Lapses Read online

  The lowering of the bottle interrupts Policeman Hogan.The long letter to Aunt Dorothea has cooled the ardourof Mr. Scalper. The generous blush has passed from hismind and he has been trying in vain to restore it. Toafford Hogan a similar opportunity, he decides not tohaul the bottle up immediately, but to leave it in hiscustody while he delineates a character. The writing ofthis correspondent would seem to the inexperienced eyeto be that of a timid little maiden in her teens. Mr.Scalper is not to be deceived by appearances. He shakeshis head mournfully at the letter and writes:

  "Little Emily. You have known great happiness, but ithas passed. Despondency has driven you to seek forgetfulnessin drink. Your writing shows the worst phase of the liquorhabit. I apprehend that you will shortly have deliriumtremens. Poor little Emily! Do not try to break off; itis too late."

  Mr. Scalper is visibly affected by his correspondent'sunhappy condition. His eye becomes moist, and he decidesto haul up the bottle while there is still time to savePoliceman Hogan from acquiring a taste for liquor. He issurprised and alarmed to find the attempt to haul it upineffectual. The minion of the law has fallen into aleaden slumber, and the bottle remains tight in his grasp.The baffled delineator lets fall the string and returnsto finish his task. Only a few lines are now required tofill the column, but Mr. Scalper finds on examining thecorrespondence that he has exhausted the subjects. This,however, is quite a common occurrence and occasions nodilemma in the mind of the talented gentleman. It is hiscustom in such cases to fill up the space with an imaginarycharacter or two, the analysis of which is a task mostcongenial to his mind. He bows his head in thought fora few moments, and then writes as follows:

  "Policeman H. Your hand shows great firmness; when onceset upon a thing you are not easily moved. But you havea mean, grasping disposition and a tendency to want morethan your share. You have formed an attachment which youhope will be continued throughout life, but your selfishnessthreatens to sever the bond."

  Having written which, Mr. Scalper arranges his manuscriptfor the printer next day, dons his hat and coat, andwends his way home in the morning twilight, feeling thathis pay is earned.

  The Passing of the Poet

  Studies in what may be termed collective psychology areessentially in keeping with the spirit of the presentcentury. The examination of the mental tendencies, theintellectual habits which we display not as individuals,but as members of a race, community, or crowd, is offeringa fruitful field of speculation as yet but little exploited.One may, therefore, not without profit, pass in reviewthe relation of the poetic instinct to the intellectualdevelopment of the present era.

  Not the least noticeable feature in the psychologicalevolution of our time is the rapid disappearance ofpoetry. The art of writing poetry, or perhaps more fairly,the habit of writing poetry, is passing from us. The poetis destined to become extinct.

  To a reader of trained intellect the initial difficultyat once suggests itself as to what is meant by poetry.But it is needless to quibble at a definition of theterm. It may be designated, simply and fairly, as theart of expressing a simple truth in a concealed form ofwords, any number of which, at intervals greater or less,may or may not rhyme.

  The poet, it must be said, is as old as civilization.The Greeks had him with them, stamping out his iambicswith the sole of his foot. The Romans, too, knewhim--endlessly juggling his syllables together, long andshort, short and long, to make hexameters. This can nowbe done by electricity, but the Romans did not know it.

  But it is not my present purpose to speak of the poetsof an earlier and ruder time. For the subject before usit is enough to set our age in comparison with the erathat preceded it. We have but to contrast ourselves withour early Victorian grandfathers to realize the profoundrevolution that has taken place in public feeling. It isonly with an effort that the practical common sense ofthe twentieth century can realize the excessivesentimentality of the earlier generation.

  In those days poetry stood in high and universal esteem.Parents read poetry to their children. Children recitedpoetry to their parents. And he was a dullard, indeed,who did not at least profess, in his hours of idleness,to pour spontaneous rhythm from his flowing quill.

  Should one gather statistics of the enormous productionof poetry some sixty or seventy years ago, they wouldscarcely appear credible. Journals and magazines teemedwith it. Editors openly countenanced it. Even the dailypress affected it. Love sighed in home-made stanzas.Patriotism rhapsodized on the hustings, or cited rollinghexameters to an enraptured legislature. Even melancholydeath courted his everlasting sleep in elegant elegiacs.

  In that era, indeed, I know not how, polite society washaunted by the obstinate fiction that it was the duty ofa man of parts to express himself from time to time inverse. Any special occasion of expansion or exuberance,of depression, torsion, or introspection, was sufficientto call it forth. So we have poems of dejection, ofreflection, of deglutition, of indigestion.

  Any particular psychological disturbance was enough toprovoke an excess of poetry. The character and manner ofthe verse might vary with the predisposing cause. Agentleman who had dined too freely might disexpand himselfin a short fit of lyric doggerel in which "bowl" and"soul" were freely rhymed. The morning's indigestioninspired a long-drawn elegiac, with "bier" and "tear,""mortal" and "portal" linked in sonorous sadness. Theman of politics, from time to time, grateful to anappreciative country, sang back to it, "Ho, Albion, risingfrom the brine!" in verse whose intention at least wasmeritorious.

  And yet it was but a fiction, a purely fictitiousobligation, self-imposed by a sentimental society. Inplain truth, poetry came no more easily or naturally tothe early Victorian than to you or me. The lover twangedhis obdurate harp in vain for hours for the rhymes thatwould not come, and the man of politics hammered at hisheavy hexameter long indeed before his Albion was finally"hoed" into shape; while the beer-besotted convivialistcudgelled his poor wits cold sober in rhyming the lightlittle bottle-ditty that should have sprung like Aphroditefrom the froth of the champagne.

  I have before me a pathetic witness of this fact. It isthe note-book once used for the random jottings of agentleman of the period. In it I read: "Fair Lydia, ifmy earthly harp." This is crossed out, and below itappears, "Fair Lydia, COULD my earthly harp." This againis erased, and under it appears, "Fair Lydia, SHOULD myearthly harp." This again is struck out with a despairingstroke, and amended to read: "Fair Lydia, DID my earthlyharp." So that finally, when the lines appeared in theGentleman's Magazine (1845) in their ultimate shape--"FairEdith, when with fluent pen," etc., etc.--one can realizefrom what a desperate congelation the fluent pen had beenso perseveringly rescued.

  There can be little doubt of the deleterious effectoccasioned both to public and private morals by thisdeliberate exaltation of mental susceptibility on thepart of the early Victorian. In many cases we can detectthe evidences of incipient paresis. The undue access ofemotion frequently assumed a pathological character. Thesight of a daisy, of a withered leaf or an upturned sod,seemed to disturb the poet's mental equipoise. Springunnerved him. The lambs distressed him. The flowers madehim cry. The daffodils made him laugh. Day dazzled him.Night frightened him.

  This exalted mood, combined with the man's culpableignorance of the plainest principles of physical science,made him see something out of the ordinary in the flightof a waterfowl or the song of a skylark. He complainedthat he could HEAR it, but not SEE it--a phenomenon toofamiliar to the scientific observer to occasion anycomment.

  In such a state of mind the most inconsequential inferenceswere drawn. One said that the brightness of the dawn--a facteasily explained by the diurnal motion of the globe--showedhim that his soul was immortal. He asserted further that hehad, at an earlier period of his life, trailed bright cloudsbehind him. This was absurd.

  With the disturbance thus set up in the nervous systemwere coupled, in many instances, mental aberrations,particularly in regard to pecuniary matters. "Give menot silk, nor rich attire," pleaded one poet of the periodto the
British public, "nor gold nor jewels rare." Herewas an evident hallucination that the writer was to becomethe recipient of an enormous secret subscription. Indeed,the earnest desire NOT to be given gold was a recurrentcharacteristic of the poetic temperament. The repugnanceto accept even a handful of gold was generally accompaniedby a desire for a draught of pure water or a night's rest.

  It is pleasing to turn from this excessive sentimentalityof thought and speech to the practical and concise dictionof our time. We have learned to express ourselves withequal force, but greater simplicity. To illustrate thisI have gathered from the poets of the earlier generationand from the prose writers of to-day parallel passagesthat may be fairly set in contrast. Here, for example,is a passage from the poet Grey, still familiar toscholars:

  "Can storied urn or animated bust Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath? Can honour's voice invoke the silent dust Or flattery soothe the dull cold ear of death?"

  Precisely similar in thought, though different in form,is the more modern presentation found in Huxley'sPhysiology:

  "Whether after the moment of death the ventricles of theheart can be again set in movement by the artificialstimulus of oxygen, is a question to which we must imposea decided negative."

  How much simpler, and yet how far superior to Grey'selaborate phraseology! Huxley has here seized the centralpoint of the poet's thought, and expressed it with thedignity and precision of exact science.

  I cannot refrain, even at the risk of needless iteration,from quoting a further example. It is taken from the poetBurns. The original dialect being written in invertedhiccoughs, is rather difficult to reproduce. It describesthe scene attendant upon the return of a cottage labourerto his home on Saturday night:

  "The cheerfu' supper done, wi' serious face They round the ingle form in a circle wide; The sire turns o'er, wi' patriarchal grace, The big ha' Bible, ance his father's pride: His bonnet rev'rently is laid aside, His lyart haffets wearing thin an' bare: Those strains that once did sweet in Zion glide, He wales a portion wi' judeecious care."

  Now I find almost the same scene described in more aptphraseology in the police news of the Dumfries Chronicle(October 3, 1909), thus: "It appears that the prisonerhad returned to his domicile at the usual hour, and,after partaking of a hearty meal, had seated himself onhis oaken settle, for the ostensible purpose of readingthe Bible. It was while so occupied that his arrest waseffected." With the trifling exception that Burns omitsall mention of the arrest, for which, however, the wholetenor of the poem gives ample warrant, the two accountsare almost identical.

  In all that I have thus said I do not wish to bemisunderstood. Believing, as I firmly do, that the poetis destined to become extinct, I am not one of those whowould accelerate his extinction. The time has not yetcome for remedial legislation, or the application of thecriminal law. Even in obstinate cases where pronounceddelusions in reference to plants, animals, and naturalphenomena are seen to exist, it is better that we shoulddo nothing that might occasion a mistaken remorse. Theinevitable natural evolution which is thus shaping themould of human thought may safely be left to its owncourse.

  Self-made Men

  They were both what we commonly call successful businessmen--men with well-fed faces, heavy signet rings onfingers like sausages, and broad, comfortable waistcoats,a yard and a half round the equator. They were seatedopposite each other at a table of a first-class restaurant,and had fallen into conversation while waiting to givetheir order to the waiter. Their talk had drifted backto their early days and how each had made his start inlife when he first struck New York.

  "I tell you what, Jones," one of them was saying, "Ishall never forget my first few years in this town. ByGeorge, it was pretty uphill work! Do you know, sir, whenI first struck this place, I hadn't more than fifteencents to my name, hadn't a rag except what I stood upin, and all the place I had to sleep in--you won'tbelieve it, but it's a gospel fact just the same--was anempty tar barrel. No, sir," he went on, leaning back andclosing up his eyes into an expression of infiniteexperience, "no, sir, a fellow accustomed to luxury likeyou has simply no idea what sleeping out in a tar barreland all that kind of thing is like."

  "My dear Robinson," the other man rejoined briskly, "ifyou imagine I've had no experience of hardship of thatsort, you never made a bigger mistake in your life. Why,when I first walked into this town I hadn't a cent, sir,not a cent, and as for lodging, all the place I had formonths and months was an old piano box up a lane, behinda factory. Talk about hardship, I guess I had it prettyrough! You take a fellow that's used to a good warm tarbarrel and put him into a piano box for a night or two,and you'll see mighty soon--"

  "My dear fellow," Robinson broke in with some irritation,"you merely show that you don't know what a tar barrel'slike. Why, on winter nights, when you'd be shut in therein your piano box just as snug as you please, I used tolie awake shivering, with the draught fairly running inat the bunghole at the back."

  "Draught!" sneered the other man, with a provoking laugh,"draught! Don't talk to me about draughts. This box Ispeak of had a whole darned plank off it, right on thenorth side too. I used to sit there studying in theevenings, and the snow would blow in a foot deep. Andyet, sir," he continued more quietly, "though I knowyou'll not believe it, I don't mind admitting that someof the happiest days of my life were spent in that sameold box. Ah, those were good old times! Bright, innocentdays, I can tell you. I'd wake up there in the morningsand fairly shout with high spirits. Of course, you maynot be able to stand that kind of life--"

  "Not stand it!" cried Robinson fiercely; "me not standit! By gad! I'm made for it. I just wish I had a tasteof the old life again for a while. And as for innocence!Well, I'll bet you you weren't one-tenth as innocent asI was; no, nor one-fifth, nor one-third! What a grandold life it was! You'll swear this is a darned lie andrefuse to believe it--but I can remember evenings whenI'd have two or three fellows in, and we'd sit round andplay pedro by a candle half the night."

  "Two or three!" laughed Jones; "why, my dear fellow, I'veknown half a dozen of us to sit down to supper in mypiano box, and have a game of pedro afterwards; yes, andcharades and forfeits, and every other darned thing.Mighty good suppers they were too! By Jove, Robinson,you fellows round this town who have ruined your digestionswith high living, have no notion of the zest with whicha man can sit down to a few potato peelings, or a bit ofbroken pie crust, or--"

  "Talk about hard food," interrupted the other, "I guessI know all about that. Many's the time I've breakfastedoff a little cold porridge that somebody was going tothrow away from a back-door, or that I've gone round toa livery stable and begged a little bran mash that theyintended for the pigs. I'll venture to say I've eatenmore hog's food--"

  "Hog's food!" shouted Robinson, striking his fist savagelyon the table, "I tell you hog's food suits me better than--"

  He stopped speaking with a sudden grunt of surprise asthe waiter appeared with the question:

  "What may I bring you for dinner, gentlemen?"

  "Dinner!" said Jones, after a moment of silence, "dinner!Oh, anything, nothing--I never care what I eat--give mea little cold porridge, if you've got it, or a chunk ofsalt pork--anything you like, it's all the same to me."

  The waiter turned with an impassive face to Robinson.

  "You can bring me some of that cold porridge too," hesaid, with a defiant look at Jones; "yesterday's, if youhave it, and a few potato peelings and a glass of skimmilk."

  There was a pause. Jones sat back in his chair and lookedhard across at Robinson. For some moments the two mengazed into each other's eyes with a stern, defiantintensity. Then Robinson turned slowly round in his seatand beckoned to the waiter, who was moving off with themuttered order on his lips.

  "Here, waiter," he said with a savage scowl, "I guessI'll change that order a little. Instead of that coldporridge I'll take--um, yes--a little hot partridge. Andyou might as well bring me an oyster or two on the halfshell, and a mouthful of soup (mock-turtle,
consomme,anything), and perhaps you might fetch along a dab offish, and a little peck of Stilton, and a grape, or awalnut."

  The waiter turned to Jones.

  "I guess I'll take the same," he said simply, and added;"and you might bring a quart of champagne at the sametime."

  And nowadays, when Jones and Robinson meet, the memoryof the tar barrel and the piano box is buried as far outof sight as a home for the blind under a landslide.

  A Model Dialogue

  In which is shown how the drawing-room juggler may bepermanently cured of his card trick.

  The drawing-room juggler, having slyly got hold of thepack of cards at the end of the game of whist, says:

  "Ever see any card tricks? Here's rather a good one; picka card."

  "Thank you, I don't want a card."

  "No, but just pick one, any one you like, and I'll tellwhich one you pick."

  "You'll tell who?"

  "No, no; I mean, I'll know which it is don't you see? Goon now, pick a card."

  "Any one I like?"

  "Yes."

  "Any colour at all?"

  "Yes, yes."

  "Any suit?"

  "Oh, yes; do go on."

  "Well, let me see, I'll--pick--the--ace of spades."

  "Great Caesar! I mean you are to pull a card out of thepack."

  "Oh, to pull it out of the pack! Now I understand. Handme the pack. All right--I've got it."

  "Have you picked one?"

  "Yes, it's the three of hearts. Did you know it?"

  "Hang it! Don't tell me like that. You spoil the thing.Here, try again. Pick a card."