On a Certain Insubordination in Fictitious Characters

— When Frankenstein, by the aid of his enormous scientific knowledge and by an almost superhuman patience, had formed his monster and evoked the life-principle from its marvelously adjusted parts, he found the limit of his powers. Once endowed with motion and volition, the horrid being went forth into the world, heartless, soulless, conscienceless, to terrify, to destroy, to remorselessly torture its human creator, to whom it was bound by no guiding-strings of a common spirit, and whose will was powerless to restrain the creature which his will had brought forth.

The same in kind, though differing in degree, is the experience of every one who, even on a small scale, has “ made up a story out of his own head,” To those who have thus suffered I offer the consolation of my sympathy, having suffered likewise ; but I know of no remedy for the evil except that contained in the very radical advice, “ Write no stories.” Once rub the lamp of your imagination, and a genie will arise, — the slave of the lamp, it is true, but to whom you yourself will at once become subject. The unconscionable way in which a fictitious character of the most nambypamby description will get the better of you (you being of course of vigorous intellect) is something to draw tears from a paving-stone. Every well-instructed Christian knows that the weak things of this world confound the wise, but the world of the imagination is, or ought to be, a different kind of place, — antipodal, Chinese, where everything stands on its head, and is consequently at your mercy.

I speak from positive experience. I once thought I had a fictitious young woman well in hand. I intended her for a funny girl, and under my plastic touch she grew funnier and funnier; she was rapidly approaching that point past which it is thought dangerous to go, for fear of creating a “ corner ” in buttons, when, without permission or a word of warning, she turned around and became serious. I could do nothing with her. She moped and was solemn, and I found myself in the position of a circus man of small capital whose fat woman should suddenly become lean, or whose living skeleton should begin to assimilate his food. This funny girl had been as clay in my hands ; but your clay is a very worm for turning, and in a moment I, the potter, was upon the wheel, in the clammy grasp of my clay.

But this quality of unexpectedness does not belong exclusively to feminine creatures of the imagination (although there be cynics who will claim that the veritable flesh-and-blood woman has the monopoly thereof). I have been likewise sorely tried by a young man whom I carefully — nay, lovingly — fabricated out of the very best materials, and who disappointed my hopes (young men will do that sort of thing sometimes) in a dastardly manner.

I had looked upon this young man as my chef-d’œuvre, my pièce de résistance, and many other fine things which only the French language can express, and I held in reserve for him, to be forthcoming at the right moment, a suitable wife. She was n’t made out of any of his superfluous anatomy or cast-off material. I manufactured her fresh out of the airy nothings of my own brain, and expressly for him ; and who should know what sort of a wife he needed if not I? Well, that young man, who had barely arrived at years of discretion, took matters into his own hand, and one morning, when I was just giving a little extra curl to his hair, to make him presentable before his predestined affinity, he gave me to understand that he had set his affections on another girl (the soubrette of my tale), and that no conceivable number of wild horses could drag said affections away from her.

I gave up at once. What else was there to do ? If that young man had been my son, I would have shut him up in a closet, fed him upon bread and water, and brought him to his senses ; but as it was, no closet could contain or hold him ; he could have gotten out at the key-hole or through the crack under the door. In other words, though I was responsible for his existence, I was utterly powerless to control his actions. He married the soubrette, — ran away with her, I might say, speaking strictly ; at any rate, something ran away with my pen, which, instead of being, according to the popular fallacy, mightier than the sword, is the weakest thing on the face of the earth.

After this painful experience I gave up match-making for a time, and devoted myself to stories of very young children, always being careful not to let them grow up. If ever they showed the least tendency to outgrow my plans for them, I slew them remorselessly, thus adding at once to the pathos of my tales and their market value.

I found the dear little innocents quite “biddable,” on the whole, and feeling that I was at length lord over my own house of the brain ventured upon a story of an old maid, a very old maid; and by way of making sure of her, I made her the sole character of the sketch, even cruelly excluding her cat, lest he should turn out to be a prince in disguise.

Before I got half-way through, I began to have an uncanny sensation as of an unseen presence, a man under the bed, so to speak ; and — would you believe it ?—there was a man— not under the bed. I don’t know to this day whence he came, but he got in, like a thief and a robber, and married the old maid. He represented himself as an ancient flame of hers, who had remained constant in much the same way as Ulysses ; that is, by staying away for years, and then turning up, like the bad penny that he was, disturbing the household arrangements and peaceful declining years of that maiden lady.

Of course there was nothing for it but to go to work and make wedding-cake, which I did with no better grace than success, for I never was a cook. But a horrible thought hung over me all the while I was stoning the raisins and chopping the suet (do they put suet in weddingcake ?), and it has never left me since; namely, that I not only am not safe in the hands of my own creations, but that I dwell surrounded by a vague and fearful limbo peopled by shadowy, irresponsible beings, who may rush in upon me any moment, and spoil everything.

Such a state of things is obviously subversive of any sustained artistic effort, and the theoretically admirable formula, “ Just think out your work, and then work out your thoughts,” is the purest nonsense. The best way is to resign yourself wholly, go into a sort of literary trance, and let your “monsters ” have things all their own way. The result may possibly be as good as if you were permitted to carry out your own fallible ideas — and possibly better.