When De Foe wrote Alexander Selkirk, able seaman, was alive end had told his story of shipwreck to Sir Richard Steele, editor of the English Gentleman and of the Tattler, who wrote it up well--but not half as well as any one of ten thousand newspaper men of today could do under similar circ.u.mstances.
Now who that has read of Selkirk and Dampierre and Stradling does not remember the two famous ships, the "Cinque Ports" and the "St. George?"
In every actvial book of the times, ship"s names were sprinkled over the page as if they had been shaken out of the pepper box. But you inquire in vain the name of the slaver that wrecked "poor Robinson Crusoe"--a name that would have been printed on his memory beyond forgetting because of the very misfortune itself. Now the book is the autobiography of a man whose only years of active life between eighteen and twenty-six were pa.s.sed as a sailor. It was written apparently after he was seventy-two years old, at the period when every trifling incident and name of youth would survive most brightly; yet he names no ships, no sailor mates, carefully avoids all knowledge of or advantage attaching to any parts of ships. It is out of character as a sailor"s tale, showing that the author either did not understand the value of or was too indolent to acquire the ship knowledge that would give to his work the natural smell of salt water and the bilge. It is a landlubber"s sea yarn.
Is it in character as a revelation of human nature? No man like unto Robinson Crusoe ever did live, does live, or ever will live, unless as a freak deprived of human emotions. The Robinson Crusoe of Despair Island was not a castaway, but the mature politician. Daniel Defoe of Newgate Prison. The castaway would have melted into loving recollections; the imprisoned lampoonist would have busied himself with schemes, ideas, arguments and combinations for getting out, and getting on. This poor Robin on the island weeps over nothing but his own sorrows, and, while pretending to bewail his solitude, turns aside coldly from companionships next only in affection to those of men. He has a dog, two ship"s cats (of whose "eminent history" he promises something that is never related), tame goats and parrots. He gives none of them a name, he does not occupy his yearning for companionship and love by preparing comforts for them or by teaching them tricks of intelligence or amus.e.m.e.nt; and when he does make a stagger at teaching Poll to talk it is for the sole purpose of hearing her repeat "Poor Robin Crusoe!"
The dog is dragged in to work for him, but not to be rewarded. He dies without notice, as do the cats, and not even a billet of wood marks their graves.
Could any being, with a drop of human blood in his veins, do that? He thinks of his father with tears in his eyes--because he did not escape the present solitude by taking the old man"s advice! Does he recall his mother or any of the childish things that lie so long and deep in the heart of every natural man? Does he ever wonder what his old school-fellows, Bob Freckles and Pete Baker, are doing these solitary evenings when he sits under the tropics and hopes--could he not at least hope it?--that they are, thank G.o.d, alive and happy at York? He discourses like a parson of the utterly impossible affection that Friday had for his cannibal sire and tells you how n.o.ble, Christian and beautiful it was--as if, by Jove! a little of that virtue wouldn"t have ornamented his own cold, emotionless, fishy heart!
He had no sentimental side. Think of those dreary, egotistic, awful evenings, when, for more than twenty years this infernal hypocrite kept himself company and tried patiently to deceive G.o.d by flattering Him about religion! It is impossible. Why thought turns as certainly to revery and recollection as gra.s.s turns to seed. He married. What was his wife"s name? We know how much property she had. What were the names of the honest Portuguese Captain and the London woman who kept his money?
The cold selfishness and gloomy egotism of this creature mark him as a monster and not as a man.
So the book is not in character as an autobiography, nor does it contain a single softening emotion to create sympathy. Let us see whether it be scholarly in its ease. The one line that strikes like a bolt of lightning is the height of absurdity. We have all laughed, afterward of course, at that--single--naked--foot--print. It could not have been there without others, unless Friday were a one legged man, or was playing the good old Scots game of "hop-scotch!"
But the foot-print is not a circ.u.mstance to the cannibals. All the stage burlesques of Robinson Crusoe combined could not produce such funny cannibals as he discovered. Crusoe"s cannibals ate no flesh but that of men! He had no great trouble contriving how to induce Friday to eat goat"s flesh! They took all the trouble to come to his island to indulge in picnics, during which they ate up folks, danced and then went home before night. When the big party of 31 arrived, they had with them one other cannibal of Friday"s tribe, a Spaniard, and Friday"s father. It appears they always carefully unbound a victim before despatching him.
They brought Friday pere for lunch, although he was old, decrepit and thin--a condition that always unfits a man among all known cannibals for serving as food. They reject them as we do stringy old roosters for spring chickens in the best society. Then Friday, born a cannibal and converted to Crusoe"s peculiar religion, shows that in three years he has acquired all the emotions of filial affection prevalent at that time among Yorkshire folk who attended dissenting chapels. More wonderful still! old Friday pere, immersed in age and cannibalism, has the corresponding paternal feeling. Crusoe never says exactly where these cannibals came from, but my own belief is that they came from that little Swiss town whence the little wooden animals for toy Noah"s Arks also came.
A German savant--one of the patient sort that spend half a life writing a monograph on the variation of spots on the b.u.t.terfly"s wings--could get a philosophical dissertation on Doubt out of Crusoe"s troubles with pens, ink and paper; also clothes. In the volume I am using, on page 86, third paragraph, he says: "I should lose my reckoning of time for want of books, and pen and ink." So he kept it by notches in wood, he tells in the fourth paragraph. In paragraph 5, same page, he says: "We are to observe that among the many things I brought out of the ship, I got several of less value, etc., which I omitted setting down as in particular pens, ink and paper!" Same paragraph, lower down: "I shall show that while my ink lasted I kept things very exact, but after that was gone I could not make any ink by any means that I could devise."
Page 87, second paragraph: "I wanted many things, notwithstanding all the many things that I had ama.s.sed together, and of these ink was one!"
Page 88, first paragraph: "I drew up my affairs in writing!" Now, by George! did you ever hear of more appearing and disappearing pens, ink and paper?
The adventures of his clothes were as remarkable as his own. On his very first trip to the wreck, after landing, he went "rummaging for clothes, of which I found enough," but took no more than he wanted for present use. On the second trip he "took all the men"s clothes" (and there were fifteen souls on board when she sailed). Yet in his famous debit and credit calculations between good and evil he sets these down, page 88:
EVILGOOD -------------------------------------------------- I have no clothes toBut I am in a hot climate, cover me.where, if I hadclothes (!) I could hardlywear them.
On page 147, bewailing his lack of a sieve, he says: "Linen, I had none but what was mere rags."
Page 158 (one year later): "My clothes, too, began to decay; as to linen, I had had none a good while, except some checkered shirts, which I carefully preserved, because many times I could bear no other clothes on. I had almost three dozen of shirts, several thick watch coats, too hot to wear."
So he tried to make jackets out of the watch coats. Then this ingenious gentleman, who had nothing to wear and was glad of it on account of the heat, which kept him from wearing anything but a shirt, and rendered watch coats unendurable, actually made himself a coat, waistcoat, breeches, cap and umbrella of skins with the hair on and wore them in great comfort! Page 175 he goes hunting, wearing this suit, belted by two heavy skin belts, carrying hatchet, saw, powder, shot, his heavy fowling piece and the goatskin umbrella--total weight of baggage and clothes about ninety pounds. It must have been a cold day!
Yet the first thing he does for the naked Friday thirteen years later is to give him a pair--of--LINEN--trousers! Poor Robin Crusoe--what a colossal liar was wasted on a desert island!
Of course, no boy sees the blemishes in "Robinson Crusoe;" those are left to the Infallible Critic. The book is as ludicrous as "Hamlet" from one aspect and as profound as "Don Quixote" from another. In its pages the wonder tales and wonder facts meet and resolve; realism and idealism are joined--above all, there is a mystery no critic may solve. It is useless to criticize genius or a miracle, except to increase its wonder.
Who remembers anything in "Crusoe" but the touch of the wizard"s hand?
Who a.s.sociates the Duke of Athens, Hermia and Helena, with Bottom and Snug, t.i.tania, Oberon and Puck? Any literary master mechanic might real off ten thousand yards of the Greek folks or of "Pericles," but when you want something that runs thus:
"I know a bank whereon the wild thyme blows!
Where oxlip and the nodding violet grows--."
why, then, my masters, you must put up the price and employ a genius to work the miracle.
Take all miracles without question. Whether work of genius or miracle of accident, "Robinson Crusoe" gives you a generous run for your money.
V. THE OPEN POLAR SEA OF NOVELS
WITH HIGHLY INCENDIARY ADVICE TO BOYS AND SOME MORE ANCIENT HISTORY
After the first novel has been read, somewhere under the seasoned age of fourteen years, the beginner equipped with inherent genius for novel reading is afloat upon an open sea of literature, a master mariner of his own craft, having ports to make, to leave, to take, so splendid of variety and wonder as to make the voyages of Sinbad sing small by comparison. It may be proper and even a duty here to suggest to the young novel reader that the Ten Commandments and all governmental statutes authorize the instant killing, without pity or remorse, of any heavy-headed and intrusive person who presumes to map out for him a symmetrical and well-digested course of novel reading. The murder of such folks is universally excused as self-defense and secretly applauded as a public service. The born novel reader needs no guide, counsellor or friend. He is his own "master." He can with perfect safety and indescribable delight shut his eyes, reach out his hand, pull down any plum of a book and never make a mistake. Novel reading is the only one of the splendid occupations of life calling for no instruction or advice. All that is necessary is to bite the apple with the largest freedom possible to the intellectual and imaginative jaws, and let the taste of it squander itself all the way down from the front teeth until it is lost in the digestive joys of memory. There is no miserable quail limit to novels--you can read thirty novels in thirty days or 365 novels in 365 days for thirty years, and the last one will always have the delicious taste of the pies of childhood.
If any honest-minded boy chances to read these lines, let him charge his mind with full contempt for any misguided elders who have designs of "choosing only the best accepted novels" for his reading. There are no "best" novels except by the grace of the poor ones, and, if you don"t read the poor ones, the "best" will be as tasteless as unsalted rice.
I say to boys that are worth growing up: don"t let anybody give you patronizing advice about novels. If your pastors and masters try oppression, there is the orchard, the creek bank, the attic room, the roof of the woodshed (under the peach tree), and a thousand other places where you may hide and maintain your natural independence. Don"t let elderly and officious persons explain novels to you. They can not honestly do so; so don"t waste time. Every boy of fourteen, with the genius to read "em, is just as good a judge of novels and can understand them quite as well as any gentleman of brains of any old age. Because novels mean entirely different things to every blessed reader.
The main thing at the beginning is to be in the neighborhood of a good "novel orchard" and to nibble and eat, and even "gormandize," as your fancy leads you. Only--as you value your soul and your honor as a gentleman--bear in mind that what you read in every novel that pleases you is sacred truth. There are busy-bodies, pretenders to "culture," and sticklers for the multiplication table and Euclid"s pestiferous theorem, who will tell you that novel reading is merely for entertainment and light accomplishment, and that the histories of fiction are purely imaginary and not to be taken seriously. That is pure falsehood. The truth of all humanity, as well as all its untruth, flows in a n.o.ble stream through the pages of fiction. Do not allow the elders to persuade you that pirate stories, battles, sieges, murders and sudden deaths, the road to transgression and the face of dishonesty are not good for you.
They are 90 per cent. pure nutriment to a healthy boy"s mind, and any other sort of boy ought particularly to read them and so learn the shortest cut to the penitentiary for the good of the world. Whenever you get hold of a novel that preaches and preaches and preaches, and can"t give a poor ticket-of-leave man or the decentest sort of a villain credit for one good trait--Gee, Whizz! how tiresome they are--lose it, you young scamp, at once, if you respect yourself. If you are pushed you can say that Bill Jones took it away from you and threw it in the creek.
The great Victor Hugo and the authors of that n.o.ble drama "The Two Orphans," are my authorities for the statement that some fibs--not all fibs, but some proper fibs--are entered in heaven on both debit and credit sides of the book of fate.
There is one book, the Book of Books, swelling rich and full with the wisdom and beauty and joy and sorrow of humanity--a book that set humility like a diamond in the forehead of virtue; that found mercy and charity outcasts among the minds of men and left them radiant queens in the world"s heart; that stickled not to describe the gorgeous esotery of corroding pa.s.sion and shamed it with the purity of Mary Magdelen; that dragged from the despair of old Job the uttermost poison-drop of doubt and answered it with the n.o.ble problem of organized existence; that teems with murder and mistake and glows with all goodness and honest aspiration--that is the Book of Books. There hasn"t been one written since that has crossed the boundary of its scope. What would that book be after some goody-goody had expurgated it of evil and left it sterilized in b.u.t.ter and sugar? Let no ignorant paternal Czar, ruling over cottage or mansion, presume to keep from the mind and heart of youth the vigorous knowledge and observation of evil and good, crime and virtue together. No chaff, no wheat; no dross, no gold; no human faults and weaknesses, no heavenly hope. And if any gentleman does not like the sentiment, he can find me at my usual place of residence, unless he intends violence--and be hanged, also, to him!
A novel is a novel, and there are no bad ones in the world, except those you do not happen to like. Suppose a boy started with Robinson Crusoe and was scientifically and criminally steered by the hand of misguided "culture" to Scott and d.i.c.kens and Cooper and Hawthorne--all the cla.s.sics, in fact, so that he would escape the vulgar thousands? Answer a straight question, ye old rooters between a thousand miles of muslin lids--would you have been willing to miss "The Gunmaker of Moscow" back yonder in the green days of say forty years ago? What do you think of Prof. William Henry Peck"s "Cryptogram?" Were not Sylva.n.u.s Cobb, Jr., and Emerson Bennett authors of renown--honor to their dust, wherever it lies! Didn"t you read Mrs. Southworth"s "Capitola" or the "Hidden Hand"
long before "Vashti" was dreamed of? Don"t you remember that No. 52 of Beadle"s Dime Library (light yellowish red paper covers) was "Silverheels, the Delaware," and that No. 77 was "Schinderhannes, the Outlaw of the Black Forest?" I yield to no man in affection and reverence for M. Dumas, Mr. Thackeray and others of the higher circles, but what"s the matter with Ned Buntline, honest, breezy, vigorous, swinging old Ned? Put the "Three Guardsmen" where you will, but there is also room for "Buffalo Bill, the Scout." When I first saw Col. Cody, an ornament to the theatre and a painful trial to the drama, and realized that he was Buffalo Bill in the flesh--why, I was glad I had also read "Buffalo Bill"s Last Shot"--(may he never shoot it). The day has pa.s.sed forever, probably, when Buffalo Bill shall shout to his other scouts, "You set fire to the girl while I take care of the house!" or vice versa, and so saying, bear the fainting heroine triumphantly off from the treacherous redskins. But the story has lived.
It was a happy and honored custom in the old days for subscribers to the New York Ledger and the New York Weekly to unite in requests for the serial republication of favorite stories in those great fireside luminaries. They were the old-fashioned, broadside sheets and, of course, there were insuperable difficulties against preserving the numbers. After a year or two, therefore, there would awaken a general hunger among the loyal hosts to "read the story over," and when the demand was sufficiently strong the publishers would repeat it, cuts, divisions, and all, just as at first. How many times the "Gunmaker of Moscow" was repeated in the Ledger, heaven knows. I remember I pet.i.tioned repeatedly for "Buffalo Bill" in the Weekly, and we got it, too, and waded through it again. By wading, I don"t mean pushing laboriously and tediously through, but, by George! half immersion in the joy. It was a week between numbers, and a studious and appreciative boy made no bones of reading the current weekly chapters half a dozen times over while waiting for the next.
It must have been ten years later that I felt a thrill at the coming of Buffalo Bill himself in his first play. I had risen to the dignity of dramatic critic upon a journal of limited civilization and boundless politics, and was privileged to go behind the scenes at the theatre and actually speak to the actors. (I interviewed Mary Anderson during her first season, in the parlor of the local hotel, where honest George Bristow--who kept the cigar stand and could not keep a healthy appet.i.te--always gave a Thanksgiving order for "two-whole-roast turkeys and a piece of breast," and they were served, too, the whole ones going to some near-by hospital, and the piece of breast to George"s honest stomach--good, kind soul that he was. And Miss Anderson chewed gum during the whole period of the interview to the intense amus.e.m.e.nt of my elder and brother dramatic critic, who has since become the honored governor of his adopted state, and toward whom I beg to look with affectionate memory of those days.) Now, when a man has known novels intimately, has been dramatic critic, and has traveled with a circus, it seems to me in all reason he can not fairly have any other earthly joys to desire. At fifteen I was walking on tip-toe about the house on Sundays, and going off to the end of the garden to softly whistle "weekday" tunes, and at twenty I stood off the wings L. U. E., and had twenty "Black Crook" coryphees in silk tights and tarletan squeeze past in line, and nod and say, "Is it going all right in front?"
They--knew--I--was--the--Critic! When you can do that you can laugh at Byron, roosting around upon inaccessible mountain crags and formulating solitude and indigestion into poetry!
I waited for Buffalo Bill"s coming with feelings that can not be described. It was impossible to expect to meet Sir William Wallace in the flesh, or Sir Wilfred of Ivanhoe, or Capt. D"Artagnan, or Umslopogaas, or any one of a thousand great fighting heroes; but here was Buffalo Bill, just as great and glorious and dashing and handsome as any of them, and my right hand tingled to be grasped in that of the Bayard of the Prairies. And that hand"s desire was attained. In his dressing-room between acts I sat nervously on a chair while the splendid Apollo of frontiersmen, in buckskin and beads, sat on his trunk, with his long, shapely legs sprawled gracefully out, his head thrown back so that the mane of brown hair should hang behind. It was glistening with oil and redolent of barber"s perfume. And we talked there as one man to another, each apparently without fear. I was certainly nervous and timid, but he did not notice it, and I am frank to say he did not appear to feel the slightest personal fear of me. Thus, face to face, I saw the man with whom I had trod Ned Buntline"s boundless plains and had seen and encountered a thousand perils and redskins. When the act call came, and I rose to go, a man stopped at the door and said to him:
"What shall it be to-night, Colonel?"
"A big beef-steak and a bottle of Ba.s.s!" answered Buffalo Bill heartily, "and tell "ern to have it hot and ready at 11:15."
The beef-steak and Ba.s.s" ale were the watchwords of true heroism.
The real hero requires substantial filling. He must have a head and a heart--but no less a good, healthy and impatient stomach.
In the daily paper the morning I write this I see the announcement of Buffalo Bill"s "Wild West Show" coming two week"s hence. Good luck to him! He can"t charge prices too steep for me, and there are six seats necessary--the best in the amphitheater. And I wish I could be sure the vigorous spirit of Ned Buntline would be looking down from the blue sky overhead to see his hero charge the hill of San Juan at the head of the Rough Riders.
This digression may be wide of the subject of novel reading, but the real novel reader is at home anywhere. He has thoughts, dreams, reveries, fancies. All the world is his novel and all actions are stories and all the actors are characters. When Lucile Western, the excellent American actress, was at the height of her powers, not long before her last appearances, she had as her leading man a big, slouchy and careless person, who was advertised as "the talented young English actor, William Whally." In the intimacies of private a.s.sociation he was known as Bill Whally, and his descent was straight down from "Mount Sinai"s awful height." He was a Hebrew and no better or more uneven and reckless actor ever played melodramatic "heavies." He had a love for Shakespeare, but could not play him; he had a love of drink and could gratify it. His vigorous talents purchased for him much forbearance.
I"ve seen Mr. Whally play the fastidious and elegant "Sir Archibald Levison" in shiny black doe-skin trousers and old-fashioned cloth gaiters, because his condition rendered the problem of dressing somewhat doubtful, though it could not obscure his acting. He was the only walking embodiment of "Bill Sykes" I ever saw, and I contracted the habit of going to see him kill Miss Western as "Nancy" because he butchered that young woman with a broken chair more satisfactorily than anybody else I ever saw. There was a murderer for you--Bill Sykes! Bad as he was in most things, let us not forget that--he--killed--Nancy--and--killed--her--well and--thoroughly. If that young woman didn"t snivel herself under a just sentence of death, I"m no fit householder to serve on a jury. Every time Miss Western came around it was my custom to read up fresh on "Oliver Twist" and hurry around and enjoy Bill Whally"s happy application of retribution with the aid of the old property chair. There were six other persons whom I succeeded in persuading to applaud the scene with me every time it was acted.
But there"s a separate chapter for villains.