Reflections of a Fringer

THE CONTRIBUTORS’ CLUB.

IT was with something of a shock that I read not long ago in a delightful contribution to the Club that the writer called himself a “ fringer ” upon literature. At a first reading I passed over that humble phrase with perfect complacency, thinking that of course one who claimed merely to be a friend of some young authors might fairly enough consider himself as a mere hanger-on to the skirts of My Lady Literature. But presently I began to grow uneasy. Just what, after all, could he mean, I wondered. Was he not making this very disclaimer in the pages of the Contributors’ Club? Nay, was he not in that case a contributor to the Atlantic? Could it then be that any one who had ever had anything approved by that august tribunal might continue to regard himself, save in a very Uriah-like ecstasy of humility, in the light of a fringer? Each of these inquiries sounded in my ears more loud and insistent than the last, until the closing phrase was pitched at a desperate and rather defiant shout. For I very well knew what they were all leading up to ; they were leading up to me. What about me, then ? I was forced to consider the matter. Am I, then, I wondered reluctantly, who myself have had the satisfaction of speaking from this very rostrum, I, who have fancied because I had tasted the ineffable joys of a “ first acceptance ” in these columns that I was leading the “ literary life, ” am I then but a fringer too? It seemed that I must be, and the assurance was bitter as hemlock.

I had entirely to reconstruct my theory of myself. For ever since that golden day which marked my first acceptance I have walked the earth a new being. The shining halo of “ author ” — invisible to others, perhaps, but a burning consciousness to me — has blazed upon my brow. On the highway, in the street-car, in all the public ways, I have carried about with me the radiant knowledge that I am a writer for the magazines. Never did the famous mayor of that little French village feel more heavily than I the burden of his incognito! Do I observe a traveler in the railway-carriage about to cut his new copy of the Atlantic, my Atlantic, I can hardly restrain myself from saying, “ Pray, my dear sir, let me commend to you that charming little department in the back — the Contributors’ Club I believe they call it — [Oh, exquisite unconsciousness!] where you will find an excellently wise and witty little article which you are sure to enjoy. I can cordially recommend it, I — ahem — wrote it myself. ” Does a stranger jostle me, a waiter use me with rudeness, a porter abstain from brushing my coat in the face of my obvious quarter, I but hug my dignity the closer and think to myself, “ How differently would these canaille treat me if they only knew who I really am.” “ Ladies and gentlemen, ” I inwardly harangue the audience of which I chance to be one, “ little do you think as you listen so eagerly to the gentleman yonder upon the platform, that you have in the very midst of you the author of that brilliant little paper which you so enjoyed in last month’s Atlantic. ” All this, you see, it means to have had an essay accepted by the Contributors’ Club. And such are the godlike joys I must give over now I find I am declined into a fringer.

However, like everything else, being a fringer has its compensations. I have been studying them out since I found I was one, and have discovered three. Compensation Number One is fame; a fame, moreover, not to be belittled by criticism, for, thanks to the admirable contrivance of this department, nobody knows exactly which production isyours. So your friends go about the world saying, “ You know Smith, of course? Well, he writes for the Atlantic. ” Or better still, because still more vast and full of possibilities, simply, “ He writes. ” He writes! People do not say that, bien entendu, without meaning likewise “ he publishes, ” and in this day of prostrate adoration before the printed word who could desire a more dazzling advertisement ?

Compensation Number Two is the unearned increment. After your friends have learned that you have had one effort accepted by the Club, they will naturally look for more, and will credit you with many excellent things (because they are “so like you ”) which you did not write, and could not have written to save your life. There is a slight drawback, you will perceive, to Compensation Number Two. It is a little painful to have to explain that the one you wrote is not yonder brilliant performance they have laid at your door, but this little scrubby one which they did not like. Still, when you can get out of explaining, the unearned increment is by no means to be despised.

Compensation Number Three is the education of the emotions. Being a fringer furnishes at small outlay all the palpitations of a grande passion, and if we share the belief of the Latin races that the unpardonable stupidity is not to have felt, then we shall be grateful for this exercise of the sensibilities. Most writers have been fringers first and authors afterward, but some poor souls have “commenced author” in very sooth, and these are to be commiserated. Two young friends of my own (for, like that other fringer who, whether he likes it or not, is responsible for these present reflections, I too have “ literary friends ”) make it their boast that they have never had a manuscript refused. It should be their despair. One avenue of emotion is as effectually closed to them as to the poor clods who have never “ written. ” What! never to have speculated upon the fate of a manuscript, never to have said to one’s self, “ Now by to-day it will have reached the editor, by next week he may have read it, the week after I may begin to scan the mails.” I suppose the only speculation of this kind which enters their Olympian minds is, “ Well, it must be about time for my check.” Think of having to regard the postman as a mere messengerboy employed to deliver checks, instead of as a modern, gray incarnation of Nemesis!

For my part, when I see him coming I am in as many minds about meeting him as a girl with her lover. I have tried all methods of approach, and believe in the time-honored rule that applies to the way of a maid with a man : Never show him how much you care! To meet him with hungry, outstretched hand at the door is only too apt to inspire him to fill it with that undesired largesse, the homing manuscript. Better not to look out of the window for him, I find, better not to listen for the bell, better surely not to descend breathlessly in the wake of his double ring to see what may now be awaiting you on the table. (Too often it will be a long, narrow, ah! how ominous, fat, white envelope.) Best of all, probably, to contrive to be out of the house entirely at mail times, and try not to think about it on the way home. Even when arrived thither, do not rush to scan the letter-tray, nor ask with a fine assumption of carelessness, “ Did I happen to have any mail ? ” The gods are not deceived, you must go the whole measure. Sit down in a corner with a book, all more personal literature forgetting, until some one suddenly remembers to say, “ Oh, by the way, Henry, there is a letter for you. ” And if you have faithfully observed all these rules, that may be the letter you long to see.

But all these lover-like precautions and diplomacies are unknown to success; how gray, how gray must be the literary life!

“ ’T is better to have loved and lost ” —

’T is better, perhaps, to be a fringer and have a few emotions. So, the ecstasies of first love may be made to last a lifetime ; but success resembles the assured and unillusioned habitudes of marriage. Does the married lover preserve his lady’s letters? Does the successful author guard the billets-doux of publishers ? Yet I dare swear that every fringer that ever was has kept each scrap of writing from his editor, even those humanely anæsthetic notes which seek to mitigate rejection. Oh, Ernest Dowson and his decadent companions, whom Mr. Arthur Symons has celebrated and Mr. Andrew Lang has derided, are welcome to their hashish dreams; this is my “ favorite form of intoxication. ”