Not Mute, but Inglorious

JANUARY 3. It is the beginning of January, and the world seems made of mud and vapor.

I am writing before a roaring fire, which mocks my misery by scorching my face while cold breezes are playing around my ears. How little the Northern people know what cold means! They don’t live in pasteboard houses, with the wind whistling in at every crack. Wood fires are very picturesque, and so on ; but the domestic hearthstone becomes a satire when one finds one’s self liable to freeze to death upon it.

But I must not be ungrateful. Business connected with the new railroad deposited me in Samola, and Mr. Bett has taken pity on my homelessness. A kindly old fellow : has a red face, fringed all around with white hair, and walks with the stiff-legged gait of a man who has lived most of his life in the saddle. He informed me, as we splashed through the mud and water, on our way to Hampden Court, that his daughter Elinor is a genius.

I confessed to myself, when I saw her, that she was worth looking at : decidedly tall and slender, without suggesting an anatomical study; head and face small, surrounded by a lustre of frizzy golden hair; neat little features, which seem to promise nothing in the way of character; complexion strangely varying from pink to a pallor almost gray ; color of eyes a clear, pale violet, subdued by thick black lashes. They have an upward look which is little short of heavenly. When, however, she fixes them upon one, it is with a bright glance, almost fierce, which seems to cry out, “ What are you ? ”

January 4. Feel quite at home in Hampden Court, as my too ambitious friend has named his plantation. The house is the customary collection of rooms strung out in a line, with long galleries back and front. Prevailing style of architecture rather flat and depressed ; the building looks as if some one had sat on it.

No very great signs of wealth, past or present, to be seen in the parish. The dwelling-houses are mostly moderate frame erections, often lacking paint. Am told that this section was settled by the poorer classes of Kentucky and Tennessee. In the neighboring parish, which was settled by Virginians, they tell me one may find handsome mansions, pictures, statuary, solid family plate.

I have made the acquaintance of all the dogs, — a dozen or so, — and also of Wood Hemphill, Elinor Bett’s cousin and lover. The two are a common conjunction; the bucolic youth being too sheepish and unenterprising to fall in love with any girl he has not known from his cradle.

January 5. Miss Bett has acquainted me with all her ambitions, and most of her thoughts and feelings. A sort of neighborhood prodigy. Has no intimate friends among the girls, and the young men stand a little aloof, awed by her superiority. Perceive that she rather enjoys this, taking it as a homage. She graduated from the village seminary, and delivered the valedictory, much praised by the Samola Comet in its weekly issue. This is an enterprising sheet. I found in its columns a poem containing the following lines : —

She likes to sit in the green and white Methodist church, with her neat little profile in relief against the dull wall.

Thinks, I fancy, that the congregation are whispering, “What a superior girl Elinor Bett is ! ”

There is a certain vagueness about her superiority. It has made few outward signs, beyond the valedictory and occasional poems and mystic “ communications ” in the local paper, signed “Étoile.” She is just nineteen, — just emerging from the state of feeling in which the consciousness of her own prevailing genius sufficed. Now, she is going to make the world gasp. The complaint is dolefully common, particularly among women. Any one of them who can string words together thinks that she can be an authoress. The other arts are more exacting. Literature is too often the straw clutched at by drowning souls, — the only straw in sight.

January 10. Raining, — the rain freezing as it falls, — with a wind that pierces to the bone. The cows are huddled by the bars of the cow-pen, lowing hideously, and the sheep are walking about in coats of mail, so to speak, with long icicles hanging to their fleeces.

Asked Mr. Bett why he does not have a shelter for them. “ Oh,” said he, “’t ain’t wuth while. We don’t have a spell like this more ’n once a winter.”

He tramps in out of the mud and rain, and flings down his overcoat in the corner of the sitting-room, for Dodge, the pointer, to sleep on. Wood Hemphill drops in presently with a fresh relay of dogs. The smell of a wet dog before a fire is something never to be forgotten.

Miss Bett does not appear to be disturbed by the canine atmosphere. Any little domestic incoherences pass over her head. She is otherwise occupied. Napoleon, she tells me, is her favorite hero, and Ouida her favorite romancer. She has studied diligently the noble army of English authors who occupy themselves in burlesquing nature. They possess a miraculous generosity of adjective. There is a kind of clumsy spite displayed in the delineation of certain characters, clearly not favorites of the author. One is reminded of the sprawling caricatures which school-girls draw of each other on the blackboard.

Of American fiction she knows almost nothing, excepting what she has found in a few stray volumes of Cooper, and does not wish to be better informed. She seems to be what the unlearned of these parts call “mighty self-opiniated.”

January 13. Damp ; almost sultry. Feel as if I must tear off my winter clothing. Remarkable climate.

Why should I confess to her that I have fallen on the same road which she is trying to traverse? How persistently my fancy clings to the little book that no one read but the reviewers ! — and they no doubt, have long forgotten it. I am a man of business, of routine ; I live for use, now . . . but the father of one child, and that one in heaven, must always look wistfully at the boys and girls he meets.

No, I won’t tell her. Who could confess himself a failure to a worshiper of success ?

I see that she values me because she believes I can inform her on certain subjects. This is a most imperious spirit to have found its being in a little frame house in the backwoods. No man feels ill disposed, of himself, toward a pretty girl. Yet she is not a gracious neophyte. She has all the folly and waywardness of girls brought up by men. They can never stand in the needful critical attitude which woman assumes naturally toward woman. It is plain that Elinor Bett needs the tonic of wholesome neglect, of occasional snubbing. Her egotism is almost fierce. If one differs from her, she grows rebellious. She wishes to make a clean sweep of all one ’s beliefs and predilections, and set up her own in their stead; not so much from interest in one’s mental growth as because her opinions are best.

January 14. This strange girl! She arrests and fatigues the mind, at once. She leaves flying shreds of half-completed things behind her; flings open doors that should be closed; speaks in unfinished sentences ; makes immense drains upon one’s interest and attention regarding irrelevant matters; scatters articles for others to pick up ; indeed, like the sheep, she leaves her fleeces on every thorn. But she has an excuse. Her father and cousin, and every one with whom she comes in contact, bow before this indistinct superiority of hers.

Her cousin, with his rather opaque blue eyes and wiry light hair, is a goodlooking, manly young fellow when he has his slouched hat on and his pantaloons tucked in his boots. But he comports himself in his best clothes as if be had stolen them. He is so ill at ease in them that one has to make his acquaintance all over again of a Sunday.

January 15. Damp,— a dampness that oozes in at every pore, and makes the atmosphere like a sponge.

Elinor has shown me her great work. We were sitting together in the parlor. It is a repulsive apartment, furnished in the haircloth of our forefathers. Portraits of Mr. Bett’s ancestors, done by wandering artists, deface the wall. The high mantel-piece, painted black, with casual splotches of yellow, is surmounted by a gilt-framed mirror set lengthwise and two cheap vases with flaring, empty mouths. Elinor has made no effort to beautify it,—not even a snowbasket. It stands in unadorned dignity, like a hopelessly plain woman who refuses to italicize her ugliness with finery.

Elinor informed me that she intends publishing her novel, the title of which is Feu-Follet.

“ Don’t you think,” I suggested, cautiously, “it would be better to try something shorter, just at first? Send it around to the magazines, and even if they refuse it you will gain experience.”

She made an impatient movement, and her facile brows quivered a denial. “ But I don’t want to do that,” said she.

“ And of course, if you don’t want to do a thing, it is never done.”

“ Of course not,” she replied, simply.

If rapt belief in one’s self could insure success, it would be hers. This may be true as regards society ; never where art is concerned. It is often said that the world takes us at our own valuation ; but this complaisant world, alas! cannot include editors and publishers, or how many happy authors there would be!

She proposed that I should look over her novel. I have been doing so, with intervals of rest, all the evening. It is punctuated with dashes, and written in that pleasing running hand in which all the loop letters look alike, and all the rest like nothing in particular. By careful perusal and the laws of analogy, I have succeeded in making out one word in ten.

January 18. I have suggested, delicately, that a first novel by an unknown author is always a risk. Even if the book should be above the average in substance, a time would come when she would be ashamed of her crude work. These and other customary platitudes. I have tried to point out to her her error in choosing faulty models; have assured her that Anglomania has not extended to literary style. “ Indicate, suggest.” I reiterate. “ A book should have a perspective. Never state a fact in all its native coarseness. It pays the reader a compliment to leave something to his imagination. Check this tendency to say broadly what you mean.”

She turns a deaf ear; she will hear of no delays. Has already selected the name of a publisher from one of her reprinted English novels. She has written him a rather imperious letter on paper which bears the device of a silver tortoise climbing up a gold ladder,— perhaps symbolical of the slow ascent to fame.

January 29. A most poetic day; one of three others as delightful. The air is balm ; the sunlight a caress. A mocking-bird has appeared, and is singing on the banks of the pond, where the gnarled quince-tree has put out a bloom or two. I see the sky shining blue between the naked boughs.

After a season of waiting, the publisher has replied. At present he would not feel justified in running any risk; however, if Miss Bett wishes to undertake half the expenses — five hundred dollars, etc. ; signing himself, with trenchant sarcasm, “ Your obliged and obedient servant.”

This reply is not what Elinor had expected. She had wished to make her own fortune, not that of her publisher. But between the publisher as he is and the publisher as we would have him there is a great gulf fixed.

February 2. Mr. Bett has come to the rescue. What his Nelly wants she must have. He has sold a tract of land on the river, and Feu-Follet will soon be in press. He reverences genius. Indeed, I believe that he fancies he has become, by absorption, a sort of literary character himself. He tells me that in his youth he used to read a great deal of poetry, but then he got out of the way of it. Perhaps there may be still some confused echoes of Byron and Bulwer and N. P. Willis knocking about in his brain.

“ Just at first, you know,” he says, “you have to pay ’em ; but when they find out that you have first-class genius, then they pay you. The papers are always expectin’ the great American novel. Why, the other day, I was readin’ where one man said he was lookin’ for it prayerfully. Prayerfully, you know ! Of co’se an editor must be mighty hard up for a thing when he prays for it.

Samola’s small, to be shore ; but then genius conies out o’ queer places. There was Burns, he was a ploughboy; and Byron, he had a club-foot ” —

“ Well, pa,” says the expectant authoress irritably, “ as I’m not a ploughboy, and have n’t a club-foot ” —

“ Of co’se not, — of co’se not, honey,” he hastens to reply soothingly.

March 17. I don’t suppose any mortal ever experienced greater happiness than Elinor when she untied the package containing half a dozen copies of her novel. I watched her : the color in her cheeks pulsated wildly, and her pale violet eyes looked deep and bright. Here were her finest thoughts, her happiest efforts of wit and pathos, clothed in print.

She sat beside the window as she read, her fair hair ruffled up against the light, like a halo hastily put on.

Mr. Bett alternately laughs and weeps over the book. One is reminded of the sensational posters heralding the domestic drama: “Shouts of laughter. Floods of tears.” I don’t know whether the cousin is capable of the mental exertion of reading it; but he carries a copy about with him, and looks triumphant.

The reaction has set in. She has waxed captious already, and points out several misprints. For instance, “robes,” instead of “ roses,” are described as wreathing Fen-Follet’s head. There are also allusions to her “dim brown hand” and “panting underlip.”

Poor Nelly !

She has ordered her publisher to send the reviews of her book. It has, I regret to say, all the bad points of its school, which may be termed a kind of literary ballet. The effect is at once shocking and absurd, —as if we should hear the voice of a little child echoing the curses and revilings of a drunkard. I perceive, moreover, a certain wild, vivid power of describing things she has never seen, which may startle and compel attention. There is, of course, a chance that the book may make a hit.

Mine did n’t. Perhaps it was too good.

March 23. The publisher is a man of his word: he has sent the reviews. There was silence for a while, as Elinor read them. Suddenly, she turned upon me, as the person nearest at hand.

“ Listen, — listen to them ! ” she cried ; and she read me the following extracts : —

“ Italics are freely employed for purposes of emphasis, which suggests that the book — did not its substance forbid the thought — was intended to be read aloud to children. Girls between sixteen and eighteen may enjoy this story, excepting the Latin, French, and German quotations.”

“ Noted for strong expressions and exciting positions.”

“ There is a tendency to discuss — always provincially, Tennyson, Plato, and other irrelated persons, the besetting sin of Southern novelists. The book is pert and flippant rather than clever, and overstrained rather than strong.”

“ A curious production. Vague, indefinite longings and soarings into the aerial regions of sentiment are mingled with conversations which are not only utterly mundane, but stupid and inane, and which make the unfortunate critic wonder which is most lacking in the dramatis personœ — brains or heart.”

“ Studded with exclamatory gems from foreign languages.”

“ Feu-Follet deserves a sort of distinction. It is probably the worst novel ever published, if not the worst ewer written. Flippant, bald, jejune, ridiculous, plotless, it blunders around its brief circle of balderdash like a blind puppy stung by a bee. The author of such a book deserves to be pitied; but the unfortunate reviewer, after having read it, has no tears for any one but himself.”

Certainly this “ unfortunate reviewer ” must subsist on vinegar and lemon juice. Whatever else the book lacks, it seems to possess the power of lashing critics into a fury.

Another alludes to it insultingly as “this thick little book,” and adds, “A wild and artless sprightliness combines with sweetly sentimental episodes, and a tragic death or two make the work a fine mélange.”

“Why, honey, they ’re praisin’ it,” urged Mr. Bett, who had approached us. She gave him a look of impatient anguish.

When he had fully grasped the idea of Nelly’s discomfiture, he began to stamp up and down the gallery, exclaiming, “ It’s a conspiracy ! ”

She stood silent, with her arms dropped by her side. A sickly pallor had passed across her face. Her lips moved, and I caught the murmured words, “ I had nothing else. And now it’s all — all gone. No hope.”

I would have said “ Courage ” if I could.

Presently, her father came to her, and grasped her fine little hand in his harsh palms.

“ Don’t you take on, Nelly,” he said. “ To fail the first time does n’t mean anything. Just you wait. Who knows but the great American novel ’ll come out o’ this little frame house yet?”

For the first time in her life, perhaps, her eyes sought her father’s face for comfort and reassurance.

“ I’m shore of it,” he asserted, stoutly.

She clenched her fists, and looked upward. “ I ‘ll show them ! ” she cried ; and her whole form seemed to dilate. “ I ’ll show them ! ”

Perhaps she will. Who knows ? Or perhaps she will become a unit in the great unwritten History of the Souls Lost in Villages.

April 29. Feu-Follet has fallen flat. The reviewers, who might have done Elinor a good turn by denouncing it as unfit to be brought into the family circle, have found it merely tiresome. So much vulgar, silly trash is written and published and read with avidity that I had some faint hope of its success. Still, the vulgar, silly trash which succeeds is generally reprinted. She is greatly changed. I see her sitting silent for hours; but it is not the uplifted silence of old. Life is a certainty, now; no longer a hope. Wood Hemphill goes about with his hat pulled down over his eyes, almost as if his Irish setter were dead.

I shall be glad to leave the place. She begins to weigh upon me like a sorrow.

May 11. I looked my last upon Elinor and Samola this morning.

When I bade her good-by, she put her hands behind her, childishly, and said, “ No! we ’re not friends. You have never understood me. But no one — no one does, not even poor Wood.”

“ Ah,” said I, “ he only loves you. Good-by.”

Julie K. Wetherill.