The Knickerbocker Gallery/Literary Martyrdom
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Charl. F. Briggs
A Literary Martyrdom.
By C. F. Briggs.
A LITTLE EPISODE IN THE LIFE OF A GENTLEMAN WHO WAS AMBITIOUS OF DISTINCTION; COMPILED FROM PAPERS WHICH WERE DISCOVERED IN HIS DESK, AFTER HE HAD LEFT HOME ON A TOUR THROUGH EUROPE.
The subject of this brief memoir, which must be restricted to twelve pages of the present volume, was the son of wealthy but honest parents; at least they had never been convicted of larceny, nor of any other crime. We mention the fact of their honesty for the reason that there is a prevalent opinion among a certain class, that in this country, where wealth is so rarely inherited, it can not be honestly obtained; honesty and fair dealing not being supposed to be favorable to large gains. Though the father was engaged in the most respectable business of importing German dolls and other useful articles, and was one of the safest men down-town, he had enlarged views for his son, and determined to give him what he had always felt the need of himself—a thorough education; that he might have a capital to start with, which no adverse circumstances could deprive him of. Bonds and stocks might prove worthless, banks might fail, and merchandise depreciate in value; but no changes in the market could affect Latin and Greek; and with a good stock of these commodities, the father had no fears for his son. His reasons for attaching so much importance to these valuable languages, could not have been the wealth and importance which they have usually conferred upon those who possessed them in the greatest quantities; but, whatever the rea- sons were, they were all-sufficient in his opinion. After leaving college with the degree of A.B., and as much knowledge as young men usually take from the halls of learning where they graduate, the subject of our memoir very sensibly took a wife, to aid him in combatting and overcoming whatever obstacles he might encounter in his way through the world. Having no leaning toward any particular profession, and feeling quite indifferent whether he earned his living by preaching the Gospel, practising medicine, or promoting litigation, provided he could distinguish himself, he hesitated a long time before he could prevail upon himself what to do, and perhaps he would never have come to any decision upon this important point, had not his father intimated to him, at last, that he should shut off the supplies, unless his son showed a disposition to do something for himself. Marvin, for that happened to be his Christian name, suggested to his father that a year or two spent in Europe might enable him to determine what profession would be best adapted to the bent of his genius. But the father did not see the force of the suggestion, whereupon the son was suddenly illuminated by a brilliant thought, which put an end to discussion and satisfied all parties. He would start a magazine, and distinguish himself as Jeffrey, Brougham, Campbell, Sydney Smith, Kit North, and other illustrious men had done before him, in the same way, and make lots of money beside. Any of the learned professions would require years of patient drudgery to gain respectability even, but here was a plan, now, by which reputation and wealth could be attained at a bound.
"Where there is a will there is a way," is an excellent maxim when there is money to back it up, which happened to be the case in this instance. Paper-makers, printers, binders, and all the operatives whose aid is necessary to further a literary enterprise, are the most amiable, obedient, and manageable of slaves, and always hail, with encouraging cheerfulness, every new attempt to establish a literary undertaking, when they are sure of their pay. Authors, too, forget their caprices, suddenly grow industrious and obliging, genius brightens up, and a thousand friends come forward with manuscripts and advice, under similar circumstances, and with a similar contingency. So the subject of this brief history found, and chuckled with inward delight over the opening glories of his career, as he made his preparations for issuing his first number. There were drawbacks to the business, to be sure—a back side to the canvas, which, it was consoling to him to remember, none would see but himself. He would become so prominent an object of popular esteem and curiosity, that he foresaw many annoyances and inconveniences, from being so continually invited to dine with this and that great man, to be compelled to attend the déjeuners of renowned prima donnas, to join literary coteries, being bothered for his autograph, and to accept conciliatory and grateful offerings, from authors, artists, and actors; all these things, to a gentleman of his quiet and unostentatious habits, would prove annoying; but he heroically straightened his back for the burden which was to descend upon his shoulders, and resolved to take the bitter with the sweet of his new employment without grumbling. His consolation and reward would be the consciousness of having elevated the tone of popular sentiment, of enlarging the bounds of human enjoyment, and of assisting in the development of American genius, and rewarding native talent. Very likely other men may have entertained some such feelings in embarking in similar enterprises, and they will readily comprehend the emotions of Mr. Smilax, at this momentous period of his career.
Our twelve pages will not allow us the pleasure of giving the world an account of the reception of the first number of the magazine, nor permit us to chronicle the gradual change which took place in the feelings of its proprietor and editor, as he day by day discovered he had so wonderfully over-estimated the delights and profits of his enterprise, and so ridiculously under-estimated its troubles and annoyances. How could he have so deluded himself! Manuscripts poured in upon him by the cart-load, and he was required to read every thing he received, and give a critical opinion upon it the next day. If he accepted an article, he did not thereby make a grateful friend; but if he refused one, he created an implacable enemy. Illustrious authors did not manifest any of that feverish anxiety for his company to dinner that he had anticipated, unless he acted the part of Amphitryon himself; and as for his autograph, the only applications he received for it were from certain gentlemen who were anxious to have it on the backs of notes, which they wished to part with.
One day, as he sat in the little apartment, which was most absurdly called his "sanctum," for it was as open to the inroads of impertinent people as an intelligence office, looking over a heap of manuscripts with aching head and weary eyes, and thinking to himself that the business of enlarging the boundaries of human enjoyment was not half so agreeable an occupation as that of importing German dolls would be, when he was diverted from his desponding thoughts by the sudden apparition of a lady, accompanied by a small boy, who carried a large roll under his arm.
"You are the editor, I presume?" said the lady; and, having been assured of the correctness of her supposition, she seated herself in the only chair which was vacant in the sanctum all the other seats being filled with bundles of manuscripts, which were waiting to be returned to their authors, or consigned to the balaam-box. The lady then lifted her veil, and taking the roll from the boy, pleasantly informed the dismayed editor, for whom such visitors had long since lost all novelty, that she wished to occupy a few minutes of his time in reading a manuscript novel, which she desired his opinion of.
The editor declined the favor she intended him, as courteously as his temper would permit him to do; but she insisted that he would be charmed with the work, and she would permit him to publish it in his magazine. He pointed to the heaps of manuscripts lying all about him, on the shelves, on the tables, in baskets, on the floor, and in the chairs, beside two or three green boxes, which were filled full of accepted articles, waiting their turns to be published, and told her they had all prior claims, which must first be attended to.
But ladies who have a point to carry are deaf to all arguments which do not tend to further their purposes, and the strange authoress only smiled more pleasantly than before, and tossing her ringlets from her pale cheeks, said, in her persuasive voice, "Allow me to read you one chapter? I am sure it will interest you."
"Madam," replied the beleaguered editor, "I have no doubt of it; but what's the use? I could not use the story if it pleased me never so much. And then I should only feel the greater regret in being compelled to reject it."
"Ah! now," said the lady, "there is the most delightful character in it, and a ghost, and a most mysterious personage. It would make your magazine sell wonderfully. It is just the kind of story which every body says your magazine needs. Let me read you but one chapter?"
A pitcher of water and a tumbler were standing upon the table, and the editor, taking up the pitcher, filled the tumbler fall.
"There, Madam," said he, "you see that when a vessel is full it will hold no more; see, another drop and it overflows. I am full, my room is full, desks, drawers, baskets, boxes, magazine, and all are full. I can receive no more."
"Just one more will make no great difference, I am sure," said the authoress, paying no other heed to the forcible illustration of the editor, than to smile most benignly and patiently while he demonstrated the simple fact. "Come, let me read my introductory chapter, and I am sure you will want to read the rest yourself"
"Madam, I have been compelled to deny thousands of such requests," said he, biting his lips.
"But a lady!" said she. "You might refuse to hear a gentleman, but you would not refuse a lady?"
The editor paused a moment, and he was ruined. He was naturally tender-hearted, and he thought of his wife and his mother; what if either of them should ever be compelled to solicit a favor from an editor! and how would he feel to hear they had been refused?
"Madam," said he, with a softened tone, "it is quite impossible for me to hear you read your novel now; but leave it with me, and I will read it through at my earliest leisure."
"I may depend upon you?" she said half-doubtingly, as she deposited the roll on his table.
"I pledge you my word as a gentleman," he said.
"I will call again soon," said the lady, who courtsied and smiled, and then retired, followed by her page.
But she had scarcely left the sanctum when the wretched man, as he took up the roll of manuscript, and tossed it upon a shelf, where lay heaps of similar bundles, repented of what he had done.
"What a fool I was!" he exclaimed, as he glanced around him, "to make that rash promise! There is O'Mulligan, who will challenge me if I do not read his essay on the Round Towers; there is the Reverend Doctor Slospoken, who will denounce me to his congregation, if I neglect his essay on Human Responsibilities; Professor Verdigriss will speak sneeringly of me to his class, If I am not prepared with an opinion of his article about the Retrocession of Solar Paradoxes; and Mrs. Winkle's Blighted Buds must be reviewed for my next number. How am I to do all these things, and read that woman's tremendous manuscript! I was a madman to make such a promise! The deuce take her! But I will not be so caught again."
He gave strict orders that no woman, under any circumstances whatever, should ever again be permitted to enter his sanctum; and after spending a few more hours at his dreary employment, he went home to his wife, solacing himself with the recollection of his domestic happiness, and repeating to himself a quatrain from some verses which he had addressed to his Maria Jane before their marriage:
The weary worker seeks respose,
And in thy food affections blest
He finds a cure for all his woes."
A cure for all his woes!" he repented to himself, as he put his night-key in the door, and bounding up-stairs into the boudoir of his Maria, was suddenly arrested by discovering her in tears.
Maria Jane in tears! The heart of Smilax was smitten by the sight, and his anxiety to learn the cause of her first sorrow may readily be imagined by husbands who have had a similar experience—and what hushand has not?
But he then learned that when a wife is most afflicted, there is nothing the matter with her. Mrs. Smilax continued to weep, and at every appeal of her husband, to enlighten him as to the cause of her grief, she would only reply, "Nothing!"
But Smilax knew perfectly well that "nothing," in this case, meant something dire and calamitous to his domestic peace. After a while, the torrent of his wife's grief subsided into a sullen and reproachful melancholy, more hard to endure than the most terrifying outbursts of grief and passion.
Maria Jane was not one of the Queen Catharine style of wives; she calmly subsided into the injured innocence state, and personated most effectively the character of a resigned saint, persevering in her sad declaration that nothing had happened—nothing! She had no complaints to make. It would all be over soon; and what was her happiness, if he were only happy!
Smilax went to his office the next day, a thoroughly wretched man; but his duties were too engrossing to permit him to dwell on his domestic troubles. He had tried in vain to imagine the cause of his wife's griefs, but he could not call to mind any circumstance which could, in any manner, have awakened her jealousy, or given her reason to shed a tear. What added to his distress was his inability to consult with any of his friends in regard to the matter, or ask advice as to the proper mode of procedure in such cases. The spirit of discontent had entered his paradise, and he was unhappy, and that was all he knew about it.
The mail had brought him heaps of letters and manuscripts, all of them requiring immediate attention; the printer had sent him bundles of proofs, which must be read and returned at once; and O'Mulligan had threatened him with a scorching, in a rival magazine, for not deciding on his manuscript sooner; and two clergymen, a lady, a Polish lecturer, and half-a-dozen suspicious-looking men of a very miscellaneous character, were waiting in his ante-room, some to learn his decision in regard to communications already sent, and some to offer him essays and poems. It was a melting hot day; all the rest of the world had gone to the country or the sea-side; but he was forced to remain to make up his next number. The perspiration rolled from his clouded brow, as he seated himself at his overburdened desk, and thought of his duties. With a kind of grim desperation, he took up the roll of manuscript which the lady had left him the day before, and smiled scornfully, as he read the title, "A Pledge of Affection. By Pattie Passionflower."
"Another vegetable name in literature!" he said to himself; "Poppyflower would be better. I thought, when I received a poem from Carry Cauliflower, that that particular form of literary disease had come to an end; but here is another." He ran his eye rapidly over a few leaves of the manuscript—for he had learned the art of judging of the character of a literary performance without reading it all through—and remorselessly writing a mystical word upon it, tied up the bundle and threw it into the balaam-box, with a large heap of other rejected offerings to be returned to their owners.
This was, at first, a most painful thing for him to do; for he had himself once been a contributor to a magazine, and he well knew the irritating anxiety which a young author feels for the fate of his manuscript; and he used to write soothing letters to the poor adventurers whose bantlings he was compelled to reject; but he had long since become hardened to his duty, and rather felt himself the aggrieved and injured party, when a manuscript was offered to him, which, after being at the cost of reading, he was compelled to reject. "It is not my fault," would Smilax say to himself; "if they can't write better; why should I be unhappy about it?"
Ah! little did the public think or care, that, to obtain the one tolerably good essay, which they would find fault with for not being more brilliant, he had been obliged to read through four or five hundred much worse ones. "What does the world care about the troubles or sufferings of any of its servants, who wear their lives out in trying to give pleasure or instruction to others? Not a straw! Yet we will be martyrs for the chance smile of approbation which the world now and then bestows upon us—slaves of its whims," said Smilax to himself, as he wended his way home that night, wearied with his day's work, and half-dreading to meet Maria Jane. The truth was that she had neglected to give him the customary parting kiss, which she had never forgotten to do before. "Forgotten!" exclaimed Smilax bitterly in his thoughts; "she did not forget it—she did it on purpose; she had her handkerchief to her eyes, and she would not allow me to kiss her. I have broken my wife's heart; but how I did it I have not the ghost of an idea. I hope she has got over it by this time, though."
But the faint hope was soon withered; for, as he opened the door, he heard a stifled sobbing, which he knew at once proceeded from Maria Jane; and worse and more ominous than all, the severe visage of his mother-in-law frowned freezingly upon him, as he entered the room where the wife of his young affections lay sobbing hysterically upon the sofa. Maria Jane had sent for her mother, and Smilax knew that she would not say that "nothing was the matter," for that is not the way in which mothers-in-law vent their reproaches. It was a comfort to the distressed husband and editor to feel sure that he would now know the worst, let it be what it might. And he was perfectly correct in his assumptions; for, as he mildly asked what was the matter, the word "Monster!" fell upon his ear with a clearness and distinctness of utterance that made him hop.
"Do n't, mother!" sobbed out Maria Jane; "I can die, but I will never reproach him."
What Smilax would have said, or might have said, if he had not been rendered speechless by the strangeness of these proceedings, we must leave the public to imagine.
"I don't wonder at your silence," said his mother-in-law. "You have killed this suffering angel, and made me childless."
Maria Jane, we may observe, was an only daughter, from which the tender manner of her bringing up may be inferred.
"If I have killed her," said Smilax, meekly, "I am———"
"I can't bear hypocrisy," said his mother in-law; "I should think much better of you if you confessed your villainy openly. Read that letter, and save yourself the trouble of further dissimulation."
As the word "letter" was named, the suffering angel on the sofa broke out in a fresh agony of hysterical sobs.
Smilax took the letter, and with a puzzled expression examined the direction, which was to his wife; the hand had a very familiar look to him; but, accustomed as he was to examining so many specimens of handwriting daily, he had but a confused idea of its individual character. He opened the letter with a trembling hand, and had read but a few lines when, to the horror of his mother-in-law, he broke out in a fit of the most obstreperous mirth. Unable to restrain his laughter, he threw himself upon the floor and fairly roared, holding on to his sides with both hands, and kicking his heels as though he were in convulsions.
Maria Jane started up wildly, and her mother tried to look very indignant, but felt that she must look very foolish. She knew she had made a mistake; and to be compelled to confess it to her son-in-law, in whose eyes she had ever striven to appear immaculate, and not liable to any mistakes whatever, was enough to make her feel and look very foolish.
It was a good while before Smilax could command himself long enough to speak, but the moment he did, his wife leaped from the sofa, threw her arms around his neck, and, if there had been a piano in the room, she would have gone off with "Ah! non giunge!" in a manner that any prima donna might have envied.
To save the trouble of an explanation, we will give our readers a copy of the letter which caused this domestic emeute, and leave it to their own imaginations to do the rest.
[copy]
"Dear Madam:
"Though a stranger to you, I am not to your husband; and I do not flatter myself that he would confide to you the kind of transactions which such as I have with him; and I would not now intrude upon you, were it not for the peculiar circumstances in which I am placed. I am a mother; I believe that you are not, and you may not understand my feelings. But my offspring must be provided for. I am not mercenary, yet I can not afford to part with the 'Pledge of Affection' which I left with him yesterday, without pay. This I wish you to say to him. After a long and most satisfactory interview which I had with him, when I returned to say this much, and 'nothing more,' I was denied all access to him, and have ventured to request you to act as my mediator with him. If my presence is disagreeable to him, he has my address, and may drop me a line informing me of his decision. The 'Pledge' may be sent back if he declines to pay.
"Most truly yours,
"Pattie Passionflower.
"To Mrs. Smilax."
This little affair proved the straw which broke the camel's back. Smilax concluded the next morning that his martyrdom in the cause of literature had been endured long enough. The delusive idea of distinguishing himself by acting as a monthly nurse to other people's literary bantlings, and of elevating popular taste by any such means, was entirely dissipated. He sold out to some body as deluded as he had been; and soon after, the following advertisement in the morning papers told the catastrophe of his literary career, and the total eclipse of all his ambitious aspirations for distinction:
"Partnership Notice.—Mr. M. Smilax, Jr., having been admitted a partner of our house, the business of importing German dolls will be conducted under the name of M. Smilax, Son & Co.
"Smilax & Co."
"After all," said Smilax to me, one day, as I met him coming out of his broker's, where he had been looking over the stock list, with the view of making a safe investment of his spare capital, "what a precious delusion this love of distinction is! What more should sensible men like ourselves aspire to, than to be distinguished in their own families as good husbands and fathers, and to have the satisfaction of knowing they owe no man a dollar, which they can not pay on demand? That's the only distinction worth striving for."
I am afraid there was a shade of sarcasm in the smile which passed over my features in reply to these grovelling sentiments of my friend; for he immediately added with a slight blush:
"It is true that importing German dolls is not the noblest occupation in which a reasoning creature can engage; but children must be amused with dolls, as well as men with magazines, and why not choose the business which affords the best returus?"
I could only smile again, for arguments of this nature have but one side to them; and Smilax, feeling his triumph, changed the subject by inviting me to a family dinner, with Maria Jane and the children.