"Look here. Do you remember the story of that old fellow--a Dutchman, I think--who took a fancy to be buried in the church porch of his native town, that he might hear the feet of the townsfolk, generation after generation, pa.s.sing over his head to divine service?"
"Well?"
"Well. I shall stand on my shelf, bound in good leather, between (say) _Bayle"s Dictionary_ and _Sibrandus Schnafnaburgensis, his Delectable Treatise_; and if some day, when the master of the house has been coaxed by his womenfolk to take a holiday, and they descend upon the books, which he (the humbug) never reads, belabour and bang the dust out of them and flap them with dusters, and all with that vindictiveness which is the good housewife"s right att.i.tude towards literature--"
"Had you not better draw breath?"
"Thank you. I will: for the end of the protasis lies yet some way off.
If, I say, some child of the family, having chosen me out of the heap as a capital fellow for a b.o.o.by-trap, shall open me by hazard and, attracted by the pictures, lug me off to the window-seat, why then G.o.d bless the child!
I shall come to my own. He will not understand much at the time, but he will remember me with affection, and in due course he will give me to his daughter among her wedding presents (much to her annoyance, but the bridegroom will soothe her). This will happen through several generations until I find myself an heirloom. . . ."
"You begin to a.s.sume that by this time you will be valuable.
Also permit me to remark that you have slipped into the present indicative."
"As for the present indicative, I think you began it."
"No."
"Yes. But it doesn"t matter. I begin precisely at the right moment to a.s.sume a value which will be attached to me, not for my own sake, but on account of dear grandpapa"s book-plate and autograph on the fly-leaf. (He was the humbug who never read me--a literary person; he acquired me as a "review copy," and only forbore to dispose of me because at the current railway rates I should not have fetched the cost of carriage.)"
"Why talk of hindrances to publishing such a book, when you know full well it will never be written?"
"I thought you would be driven to some such stupid knock-down argument.
Whether or not the book will ever be finished is a question that lies on the knees of the G.o.ds. I am writing at it every day. And just such a book was written once and even published; as I discovered the other day in an essay by Mr. Austin Dobson. The author, I grant you, was a Dutchman (Mr. Dobson calls him "Vader Cats,") and the book contains everything from a long didactic poem on Marriage (I also have written a long didactic poem on Marriage) to a page on Children"s Games. (My book shall have a chapter on Children"s Games, with their proper tunes.) As for poetry--poetry, says Mr. Dobson, with our Dutch poet is not by any means a trickling rill from Helicon: "it is an inundation _a la mode du pays_, a flood in a flat land, covering everything far and near with its sluggish waters."
As for the ill.u.s.trations, listen to this for the kind of thing I demand:--
"Perhaps the most interesting of these is to be found in the large head-piece to the above-mentioned Children"s Games, the background of which exhibits the great square of Middleburgh, with its old Gothic houses and central clump of trees.
This is, moreover, as delightful a picture as any in the gallery. Down the middle of the foreground, which is filled by a crowd of figures, advances a regiment of little Dutchmen, marching to drum and fife, and led by a fire-eating captain of fifteen. Around this central group are dispersed knots of children playing leap-frog, flying kites, blowing bubbles, whipping tops, walking on stilts, skipping, and the like.
In one corner the children are busy with blind man"s buff; in the other the girls, with their stiff head-dresses and vand.y.k.ed ap.r.o.ns, are occupied with their dolls. Under the pump some seventeenth-century equivalent for chuck-farthing seems to be going on vigorously; and, not to be behind-hand in the fun, two little fellows in the distance are standing upon their heads. The whole composition is full of life and movement, and--so conservative is childhood--might, but for the costume and scene, represent a playground of to-day."
"Such are the pictures which shall emerge, like islands, among my dull pages. And there shall be other pages, to be found for the looking. . . .
I must make another call upon your memory, my friend, and refer it to a story of Hans Andersen"s which fascinated the pair of us in childhood, when we were not really a pair but inseparables, and before you had grown wise; the story of the Student and the Goblin who lodged at the b.u.t.terman"s. The Student, at the expense of his dinner, had rescued a book from the b.u.t.ter-tub and taken it off to his garret, and that night the Goblin, overcome by curiosity, peeped through the keyhole, and lo! the garret was full of light. Forth and up from the book shot a beam of light, which grew into the trunk of a mighty tree, and threw out branches over the bowed head of the student; and every leaf was fresh, and every flower a face, and every fruit a star, and music sang in the branches.
Well, there shall be even such pages in my book."
"Excuse me," said I, "but, knowing your indolence, I begin to tire of the future indicative, which (allow me to repeat) you first employed in this discussion."
"I did not," said the other part of me stoutly. "And if I did, "tis a trick of the trade. You of all people ought to know that I write romances."
I do not at all demur to having the value of my books enhanced by the contributions of others--by dear grandpapa"s autograph on the fly-leaf, for example. But it annoys me to be blamed for other folks"
opinions.
The other day a visitor called and discoursed with me during the greater part of a wet afternoon. He had come for an interview--"dreadful trade,"
as Edgar said of samphire-gathering--and I wondered, as he took his departure, what on earth he would find to write about: for I love to smoke and listen to other men"s opinions, and can boast with Montaigne that during these invasive times my door has stood open to all comers. He was a good fellow, too; having brains and using them: and I made him an admirable listener.
It amused me, some while after, to read the interview and learn that _I_ had done the talking and uttered a number of trenchant sayings upon female novelists. But the amus.e.m.e.nt changed to dismay when the ladies began to retort. For No. 1 started with an airy restatement of what I had never said, and No. 2 (who had missed to read the interview) misinterpreted No.
1."s paraphrase; and by these and other processes within a week my digestive silence had pa.s.sed through a dozen removes, and was incurring the just execration of a whole s.e.x. I began to see that my old college motto--_Quod taciturn velis nemini dixeris_--which had always seemed to me to err, if at all, on the side of excess, fell short of adequacy to these strenuous times.
I have not kept the letters; but a friend of mine, Mr. Algernon Dexter, has summarised a very similar experience and cast it into chapters, which he allows me to print here. He heads them--
HUNTING THE DRAG.
CHAPTER I.
_Scene: The chastely-furnished writing-room of Mr. Algernon Dexter, a well-known male novelist. Bust of Pallas over practicable door L.U.E.
Books adorn the walls, interspersed with portraits of female relatives.
Mr. Dexter discovered with Interviewer. Mr. D., poker in hand, is bending over the fire, above which runs the legend, carved in Roman letters across the mantelpiece, "Ne fodias ignem gladio._"
INTERVIEWER (_pulling out his watch_): "Dear me! Only five minutes to catch my train! And I had several other questions to ask.
I suppose, now, it"s too late to discuss the Higher Education of Women?"
Mr. D. (_smiling_): "Well, I think there"s hardly time. It will take you a good four minutes to get to the station."
INTERVIEWER: "And I must get my typewriter out of the cloakroom.
Good-day, then, Mr. Dexter!" (_They shake hands and part with mutual esteem._)
CHAPTER II.
_Extract from "The Daily Post_."
"MONDAY TALKS WITH OUR NOVELISTS.--No. MCVI. Mr. ALGERNON DEXTER.
""And now, Mr. Dexter," said I, "what is your opinion of the Higher Education of Women?"
"The novelist stroked his bronze beard. "That"s a large order, eh?
Isn"t it rather late in the day to discuss Women"s Education?"
And with a humorous gesture of despair he dropped the poker."
CHAPTER III.
_Tuesday"s Letter_.
Sir,--In your issue of to-day I read with interest an account of an interview with Mr. Dexter, the popular novelist, and I observe that gentleman thinks it "rather late in the day" to discuss the Higher Education of Women. One can only be amused at this flippant dismissal of a subject dear to the hearts of many of us; a movement consecrated by the life-energies--I had almost said the life-blood--of a Gladstone, a Sidgwick, a Fitch, and a Platt-Culpepper. Does Mr. Dexter really imagine that he can look down on such names as these? Or are we to conclude that the recent successes of "educated" women in fiction have got on his nerves? To suggest professional jealousy would be going too far, no doubt.
Yours faithfully.
"HIGH SCHOOL"
CHAPTER IV.