Rambles in Womanland

CHAPTER XVI

HOW TO BE ENTERTAINING

To know how to entertain people is a talent; but there is one better, and which makes you still more popular with your friends and acquaintances – it is that talent which consists in drawing them out and allowing them to entertain you.

I know very clever people, not exactly conceited or assertive, but who have the objectionable knack of gently sitting upon you. Their opinions are given with an ex cathedra air that seems to exclude any appeal against them.

Sometimes they tell anecdotes very well, and they give you strings of them, each one bridged over to the other by a 'That reminds me.' They laugh at their anecdotes heartily, and invite you to do so with such a suggestion as 'That's a good one, isn't it?'

You do laugh, and you hope for your reward, that you will be able to tell a little anecdote yourself. Sometimes they will cut you short and go on with another; sometimes they will give you a chance, show little signs of impatience while you give it, and never laugh when you have finished.

Worse than that, they will occasionally say: 'Oh yes,' on the tune of 'I have heard that one before,' or, maybe, 'Why, I am the inventor of it myself.' I have known such clever people and good anecdote tellers to prove terrific bores.

Whether you are discussing a question or merely spending a little time telling stories over a cup of coffee and a couple of cigarettes, you like to be allowed to prove alive, and the really entertaining people are those who know how to make you enjoy yourself as well as their company.

You are grateful to those friends who give you a chance of shining yourself, and there are some who know not only how to draw you out, but who know how to do it to the extent of making you brilliant.

Those who make you feel like an idiot are no better than those who take you for one. Although they do not do it on purpose, the result is exactly the same as if they did. You find that kind of man in every walk of life.

There is the savant who pours forth science by the gallon and talks you deaf, dumb, and lame. There is the other kind also. I once spent an hour talking on philology with the greatest professor of the College of France in Paris.

I know a little philology, but my knowledge of that science compared to his is about in the proportion of the length of my little finger to that of his whole body, and he is over six feet. He put me so much at my ease; he so many times asked me 'if I didn't think that it was so,' that for the time being I really felt I was something of a philologist myself. It was only after I had left him that I realized that I had learned a great deal from the famous master.

The nice people of the world are those who make you feel satisfied with yourself. All the talkers, advice-givers, assertive critics put together are not worth for your good a considerate friend who gives you a little praise, or a good, loving woman who, two or three times a day, gives you a teaspoonful of admiration.

After all, the greatest reward for our humblest efforts is appreciation, the greatest incentive is encouragement. What makes us powerless to achieve anything are the sneers of all the wet-blankets and kill-joys of this world.

You do not make a child get on at school by calling him a little idiot and telling him he will never do anything in his life; you do not impart bravery into the heart of a timid soldier by treating him as if he were a coward.

If a horse is afraid of anything lying on the road, don't whip him, don't use the spurs; pat him gently on the neck and lead him near the object to make him acquainted with it. Like that you will cure him of his shyness.

Help men with encouragement, praise, and admiration.

CHAPTER XVII

WHAT IS GENIUS?

Genius is a form of madness. Early in the Christian era, St. Augustine declared that there was no genius without a touch of insanity. The human being who is born without a grain of folly will never be a great poet, a great novelist, a great painter or sculptor, a great musician, or a great anything.

Unless you are erratic, irritable, full of fads, you need not aspire to attain sublime heights. Homer, Shakespeare, Raphael, Shelley, Wagner were lunatics. That is why, to my mind, nothing is more absurd, preposterous, than to go and poke one's nose into the private life of geniuses. Let us admire the work that their genius has left to us, without inquiring whether they regularly came home to tea, and were attentive fathers and faithful husbands. Do we not love Burns and Shelley?

Certainly, if I had lived in their times and had a marriageable daughter, I would have been careful to see that she did not fall in love with either of them; but what has that to do with their poetry and the enjoyment of it?

To this very day, in the autumn of my life, I enjoy the fables of dear old La Fontaine, and can't help smiling when I am reminded that he was married, but that he was separated from his wife. She lived in Lyons and he in Paris. One day they persuaded him to go to Lyons and 'make it up' with her.

He started. In those days the journey took five days and five nights. On the eleventh day after his departure he was back in Paris. 'Well,' they said to him, 'is it all right?'

'I could not see her,' replied he, 'when I called at her house. They told me that she had gone to Mass.' So he came back.

I once criticised the acting of a well-known actress before good folks, who said to me: 'Ah, but she is a woman who leads an irreproachable life!' What do I care about that? I am very glad to hear it, for the sake of her husband and children; but I would rather go and hear Miss So-and-so, who stirs my soul to its very depth by her genius, although I am told, by jealous people, no doubt, that she is not quite as good as she should be.

I hear that Sarah Bernhardt travels with either a lion, a bear, or a snake. Very well, that is her business. She goes to a hotel with her menagerie, and does not ask you to invite her to stay with you. Is that a reason for not going to see her play Phedre, Tosca, Fedora, or any other of her marvellous creations?

Wagner could not compose his operas unless he had on a red plush robe and a helmet. What do I care if this enabled him to write 'Lohengrin,' 'Tannhäuser,' and the Trilogy?

One day Alexandre Dumas, a lunatic of the purest water, called on Wagner. The latter kept him waiting half an hour. Then he appeared dressed as Wotan. 'Excuse me, Master,' he said to Dumas, 'I am composing a scene between the god and Brunnehilde.'

'Don't mention it, please,' replied Dumas, who, before leaving, invited him to come and see him in Paris. A few months later Wagner called on Dumas. The latter kept him waiting a little, and then appeared with nothing on but a Roman helmet and a shield.

'Excuse me, Maestro,' he said, 'I am writing a Roman novel.' The two great geniuses or lunatics were quits.

I knew a great poet who could no more write good poetry than he could fly unless he had blue paper. Victor Hugo would have been a failure if he had not been able always to be provided with very thick pens.

Balzac could write only on condition he was dressed as a monk, had the shutters of the room closed, and the lamps lighted. Alfred de Musset would compose his immortal poetry only when under the influence of drink. All lunatics, every one.

CHAPTER XVIII

NEW AND PIQUANT CRITICISM

The Paris Matin has started a new kind of dramatic criticism. The day after a play has been produced it publishes a criticism of it by the author himself, or by the manager of the theatre. This is as piquant as it is novel, and if the French had the sense of humour as keenly developed as the Americans, the result would be highly diverting.

Just imagine a play by Mark Twain reviewed and criticised the following morning in a paper by Mr. Samuel L. Clemens!

Gentlemen of the American press, take the hint, if you like.

This new kind of criticism is only a few days old, but the readers of the Matin have taken to it kindly already. Two well-known men have inaugurated it. They are Pierre Wolff, the dramatist, and Antoine, the actor and proprietor-manager of the Antoine Theatre. Both give a very flattering account of their plays: how beautifully they were acted, how well they were received, and, after giving a short synopsis of them, wind up with heartfelt thanks to the actors and actresses who appeared in them. Everybody is satisfied, author, actors, managers, editor, who has attracted the notice of the public, and the readers, who are amused at the new idea, and do not care a jot what critics say of the plays which they review.

Why should not books be reviewed in the same way? Why should they not be reviewed and criticised by the author or the publisher? I should prefer – by the author.

I have never read a notice of any of my books, however favourable, which I did not think I could have done better myself, if I had had to write it.

Just imagine, if only for fun, a new novel (pronounced 'novell,' please) by Hall Caine reviewed by Mr. Hall Caine; or one by Marie Corelli criticised by that talented lady herself! I say, just think of it!

We might have the good-fortune to read something in the following style: 'A new novel by myself is one of those literary events which keep the world breathless, in awful silence, for a long time before it comes to pass. The first edition of 100,000 copies was exhausted a week before the book appeared, but a second edition of the same number will be ready in a day or two. The story is wonderful, colossal, like everything that comes from the pen of that author, whose genius is as Shakespearian as his brow, which even reminds one of that of – but perhaps it would be profane to name.'

Or something interesting like this: 'His Majesty the King and most members of the Royal Family ordered copies of this book long before it was ready for publication, and no doubt to-day, and for many days following, there will be no other topic of conversation than my book at Windsor Castle. I should like to call the attention of the reading public – and who is it that does not read me? – to the fact that this is the longest book I have yet published. The public will also, I am sure, forgive me for calling it my best. A mother's last baby is always, in her eyes, her best.'

At all events, I salute the new criticism. It should greatly add to the gaiety of nations.

CHAPTER XIX

ORIGINALITY IN LITERATURE

There is very little originality in this world. Even among the greatest thoughts expressed by famous philosophers, there are very few that had not been heard before in some form or other. It is the pithy way in which they are expressed by such men as La Rochefoucauld, La Bruyère, and Balzac that made the reputation of these great writers. The characteristics of man and woman have always existed, just as has their anatomy, and the dissector of the human heart cannot invent anything new any more than the dissector of the human body. We all know these characteristics, but what we like is to see a philosopher present them to us in a new shape.

Pascal says that the greatest compliment that can be paid to a book, even to a thought, is the exclamation, 'I could have written that!' and 'I could have said that!' In fact, the author whom we admire most is the one who writes a book that we 'could' have written ourselves. And we say 'bravo' when a philosopher gives us a thought of our own, only better expressed than we could have done it, or when he confirms an opinion that we already held ourselves.

No; there is nothing original, not even the stories that we hear and tell in our clubs. They have been told before. I forget who said that there were only thirty-five anecdotes in the world, seventeen of which were unfit for ladies' ears.

Even the characters of fiction are not original. The novelist is, as a rule, none but a portrait painter, possessed of more or less originality and talent. Charles Dickens said that there was not a single personage of his novels whom he had not drawn from life. Thackeray and Balzac, two observers of mankind of marvellous ability, said the same. Racine borrowed of Sophocles and Euripides, Molière of Plautus and Terence. Alexandre Dumas chose his heroes from history, and regifted them with life with his unequalled imagination. George Eliot's personality remained a mystery for a long time, but everybody knew that the author of 'Scenes of Clerical Life' was a native of Nuneaton, or had lived long enough in that town to introduce local characters who were recognised at once. The Dame aux Camélias, the Camille of the American stage, by Dumas, junr., was inspired, if not suggested, by Manon Lescaut. And is not the Adam Bede of George Eliot a variation of Goethe's Faust? Is not Tess of Thomas Hardy another? And that marvellous hero Tartarin of Alphonse Daudet: do you not recognise in him Don Quixote? More than that, he is a double embodiment, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza in one: the Don Quixote who dreams of adventures with lions in the desert, of ascensions on Mont Blanc, of guns, swords, and alpinstocks, and the Sancho Panza who thinks of wool socks, flannel vests, and a medicine-chest for the marvellous journeys that are going to be undertaken – a tremendous creation, this double personage, but not altogether original.

Every character has been described in fiction, every characteristic of mankind has been told; but we like to see those characters described again with new surroundings; we love to hear the philosophy of life told over again in new, pleasant, pithy, witty sentences.

This lack of originality in literature is so obvious, it is so well acknowledged a fact that authors, novelists, or philosophers have used mankind for their work, and availed themselves of all that mankind has written or said before, that the law does not allow the literary man to own the work of his brain for ever and ever, as he owns land or any other valuable possession. After allowing him to derive a benefit for forty or fifty years, his literary productions become common property – that is to say, return to mankind to whom he owed so much of them.

CHAPTER XX

PLAGIARISM

La Bruyère said: 'Women often love liberty only to abuse it.' Two hundred years later Balzac wrote: 'There are women who crave for liberty in order to make bad use of it.' The thoughts are not great, they are not even true, but that is not the question. Could such a genius as Balzac be accused of plagiarism because he expressed a thought practically in the very words of La Bruyère? I would as soon charge Balzac with plagiarism as I would accuse a Vanderbilt or a Carnegie of trying to cheat a street-car conductor out of a penny fare. The heroines of Tess and Adam Bede practically go through the same ordeals as Gretchen. Would you seriously accuse Thomas Hardy and George Eliot of plagiarism, and say that they owed their plots to Goethe's 'Faust'?

There are people engaged in literary pursuits, or, rather, in the literary trade, and, as a rule, not very successful at that, who spend their leisure time in trying to catch successful men in the act of committing plagiarism. The moment they can discover in their works a sentence that they can compare to a sentence written by some other author, they put the two sentences side by side and send them to the papers. There are papers always ready to publish that sort of thing. Of course, respectable papers throw those communications into the waste-paper baskets. Then, when the papers have published the would-be plagiarism, the perpetrator marks it in blue pencil at the four corners and sends it to the author – anonymously, of course. For that matter, whenever there appears anything nasty about a successful man in the papers – an adverse criticism or a scurrilous paragraph – he never runs the slightest risk of not seeing it; there are scores of failures, of crabbed, jealous, penurious nobodies who mail it to him. It does him no harm; but it does them good.

As far as I can recollect I have, during my twenty-one years of literary life, committed plagiarism four times: twice quite unintentionally, once through the inadvertence of a compositor, and once absolutely out of mere wickedness, just to draw out the plagiarism hunter. And I will tell you how it happened. Once, many years ago, I was reading a book on the French, written by an American. A phrase struck me as expressing a sentiment so true, so well observed, that I memorized it, and, unfortunately, when, several years later, I wrote a series of articles on France for a London paper, I incorporated the phrase. I was not long in being discovered. The author of the book, which had never sold, wrote to all the papers that I had 'stolen his book,' and thought the correspondence would start a sale for his book. Of course I was guilty, and I apologized, explaining how it had happened. For years the phrase had been in my mind – had, as it were, become part and parcel of myself. May this be a warning to authors who may take too great a fancy to a thought of theirs well expressed by some other author. It is a very dangerous practice. Another time I incorporated in a newspaper article a quotation from Emerson, but the compositor omitted the inverted commas, and Emerson's sentence read as if it was mine. Of course, no one would accuse me of choosing Emerson to plagiarize in America, but this article brought me half a dozen anonymous letters. In one of them there was this choice bit: 'The second half of the article is by Emerson; the first half I don't know, but probably not by the author.' Twenty centuries of Christianity have caused Christians to love one another. But when I really had a good time was when, deliberately, as I said before, out of sheer wickedness, I introduced into my text nine lines of Shakespeare.

I have kept the newspapers that commented on it and the anonymous letters that were mailed to me. One of them had humour in it. 'My dear sir,' said the writer, 'when you speak of an incident as being a personal reminiscence, it is a mistake to borrow it of an author so widely known for the last three centuries as the late William Shakespeare.'

A celebrated literary friend of mine once amused himself in incorporating twenty lines of Dickens as his own in the midst of an essay he published in his own paper.

When he feels dull, he takes from his shelves a scrapbook which contains the letters and newspaper cuttings referring to the subject.

When a literary man has a reputation of long standing, never for a moment accuse him of plagiarism. He may express a thought already expressed by someone else; he may work out a plot which is not original; but success that lasts rests on some personal merit. I have never heard successful men charge any of their brethren of the pen with plagiarism. Successful men are charitable to their craft, as beautiful women are to their sex.

CHAPTER XXI

AUTOBIOGRAPHIES AND REMINISCENCES

The best writers of memoirs have been the French, and it is through those memoirs that we know so well and so intimately the reigns of Louis XIV., Louis XV., and Napoleon I., as well as the history of the Revolution, the Restoration, and the Second Empire.

Courtiers, diplomatists, statesmen, and women of the Court, by their memoirs and letters, have made us acquainted not only with the public life of Sovereigns, but with all the details of their private life, with all the Court gossip.

The French, however, care little or nothing for memoirs that do not make clear to them some chapter of history.

The English, on the contrary, have practically no memoirs of that sort. The only interesting ones that I know are those of Greville. On the other hand, almost every man of note, literary man, journalist, artist, actor, publishes his autobiography or his reminiscences.

While the French only care for the work that a man before the public has produced, the English like to know how he lived, how he worked, whom he met, whom he knew, and his appreciation of the character of his more or less famous friends and acquaintances.

Why, even the music-hall star publishes his reminiscences in England. The fact is that, if a man keeps his diary regularly, and knows how to tell an anecdote well, he can always write a readable book of reminiscences.

Among the best books of this sort that I know I would mention those of the late Edmund Yates and George Augustus Sala; but the best of all is the one which I do hope will make its appearance one day (although I am not aware that it is being prepared), and will be signed by the wittiest raconteur and causeur of England, Mr. Henry Labouchere.