IV
‘OUTSIDE THEIR BOOKS’
The first time I read an excellent book, it is to me just as if I had gained a new friend.—Goldsmith.
I HAVE confessed that I like to feel the heart, the humanity, of an author. How natural, then, if I desire to know something about his home-life, his family, his manner of living, his favourite means of recreation. Surely such curiosity is free from censure. Of what stuff are the fine gentlemen made who tell us that we have no business with the private affairs of our great writers? Does not our curiosity spring from respect, from admiration—from love? Am I to be blamed if I desired to know how the affairs of this world went with the writer who has charmed and instructed me, who has led me into new worlds of thought and feeling? If I have learned to love an author through his books, may I not be permitted to ask whether he was happily situated? We speak glibly enough of the ‘friendship of books,’ and what, pray, does that mean but the friendship of authors? I have still to learn that it is no part of a man’s duty to take an interest in the home-life of his friends.
‘We are not all hero-worshippers,’ says Alexander Smith, ‘but most of us are so to a large extent. A large proportion of mankind feel a quite peculiar interest in famous writers. Concerning such men no bit of information is too trifling; everything helps to make out the mental image we have dimly formed for ourselves. And this kind of interest is heightened by the artistic way in which Time occasionally groups them. We think of the wild geniuses who came up from the Universities to London in the dawn of the English drama. Greene, Nash, Marlowe—our professional men of letters—how they cracked their satirical whips, how pinched they were at times; how, when they possessed money, they flung it from them as if it was poison; with what fierce speed they wrote, how they shook the stage.’
Wherefore I say let the fine gentlemen who boast of their superiority to the so-called trivialities of life go their way, whilst I go mine. Let them stand upon their lofty pedestals, whilst I inquire how my favourite authors lived, how they spent their days, how they divided their time, how many hours were given to work and how many to recreation. I have no fear that such knowledge will lessen my admiration for my heroes. I look up, it is true, with feelings akin to awe at the great men who have influenced me. But I desire at times to have a clearer view, I like to walk round and about them, to peer through the brilliant glow by which they are surrounded, to see the men, to feel their humanity, to learn how they met the ‘common daily round.’
And I confess that it matters little to me how I glean the desired information. But for preference give me the records of a trained observer. For how much better to see with the eyes of one whose vision is clear, keen, and penetrating! How good, for instance, to accompany Alexander Smith on a visit to the ‘Mermaid’ in session, and there behold the great ‘Shakespeare’s bland oval face, the light of a smile spread over it, and Ben Jonson’s truculent image, and Beaumont and Fletcher sitting together in their beautiful friendship!’ And how good to think that we may go in the company of the same gracious guide, to the famous Literary Club, and there find Burke and Johnson and Garrick and Goldsmith. ‘The Doctor has been talking there for a hundred years, and there will talk for many a hundred more.’ And then, so highly are we favoured, we may go (and who would not?) to Charles Lamb’s snug little room in Inner Temple Lane, and there find ‘the hush of a whist-table in one corner, the host stuttering puns as he deals the cards, and sitting about; Hunt, whose every sentence is flavoured with the hawthorn and the primrose, and Hazlitt maddened by Waterloo and St. Helena, and Goodwin with his wild theories, and Kemble with his Roman look. And before the morning comes, and Lamb stutters yet more thickly—for there is a slight flavour of punch in the apartment—what talk there has been of Hogarth’s prints, of Izaak Walton, of the old dramatists, of Sir Thomas Browne’s Urn Burial, with Elia’s quaint humour breaking through every interstice, and flowing in every fissure and cranny of the conversation.’
Ah, yes! it is good to have such glimpses as these, to find the authors who have charmed and instructed us free from the ‘fetters of the pen’—their own good or bad, sweet or petulant, always brilliant selves. And how true it is that such glimpses lend peculiar interest to written words! The book-lovers who like to feel the humanity of an author must surely form a vast and ever-increasing company.
You know how it fares with the superior individual who bears himself as though unmoved by feelings common to the average mortal. He does not inspire friendship, or admiration, or, for that matter, any feeling worth the having. Knowing the frailty of human nature, we suspect him of playing a double part. And so it is, surely, with the author who addresses us in the manner of one who is a stranger to the feelings that mould this mortal clay. We know better. We know full well that ‘the writer is not continually dwelling amongst the roses and lilies of life; he is not continually uttering generous sentiments and saying fine things. On him, as on his brethren, the world presses with prosaic needs. He has to make love, and marry, and run the usual matrimonial risks. The income-tax collector visits him as well as others. Around his head at Christmas drives a snow-storm of bills.’ Outside of his books he is pretty much the same as other men. And so, I say, we have greater sympathy with an author if he takes us into his confidence, allows us to bear a part of his burdens—to feel that he, too, is subject to human trials and difficulties.
It is interesting to note that authors themselves are of the same way of thinking. They, too, like to get at the hearts of men. Speaking of a visit paid to Coleridge at Highgate, Emerson complained that he was in his company for about an hour, but found it impossible to recall the largest part of his discourse, which was often like so many printed paragraphs in his books—perhaps the same—so readily did the great Coleridge fall into certain commonplaces.... ‘The visit was rather a spectacle than a conversation.’
And so, you see, we who desire at times to meet authors outside their books are in good company. And if we are not so fortunate as to play Boswell’s part, if we cannot sit at the feet of our heroes, if we cannot mourn or make merry in their company, we can, at least, approach them through the medium of a printed page. And that, I hold, is as good a way as any other—if not the best. Few are the books so deep in human interest as biographies of men of letters. This, it is said, arises from the pictures of comparative defeat which, in almost every instance, such books contain. ‘We see failure more or less—seldom clear, victorious effort. Like the Old Guard at Waterloo, they are fighting bravely on a lost field. In literary biography there is always an element of tragedy, and the love we bear the dead is mingled with pity.’