The Journal of Arthur Stirling : ("The Valley of the Shadow") Part 24

O G.o.d, the stings of this bitter, haunting, horrible poverty! The ghastly weight that has hung about my neck since ever I can remember! Oh, shall I ever be free from it? Shall I ever know what it is to have what I ought to have, to think of my work without the intrusion of these degrading pettinesses?

They are so infinite, so endless, so hideous! The thing gets to be a habit of my thoughts; my whole nature is steeped and soaked in it--in filthy sordidness! I plot and I plan all the day--I can not buy a newspaper without hesitating and debating--I am like a ragpicker going about the streets!

Sometimes the thing goads me so that I think I must go mad--when I think of the time that I lose, of the power, of the courage! I walk miles when I am exhausted, to save a car-fare! I wear ragged collars and chafe my neck! I stand waiting in foul-smelling grocery shops with crowds of nasty people!

I cook what I eat in a half-dirty frying-pan because I can not afford to pay the servant to wash it! So it is that I drag myself about--chafing and goaded--crouching and cringing like a whipped cur!

My G.o.d, when will I be free? My G.o.d! My G.o.d!

--The boarding-houses that I have been in! The choice collection of memories that I have stored away in my mind, memories of boarding-houses!

The landladies' faces--the a.s.sorted stenches--the dark hallways--the gabbling, quarreling, filthy, beer-carrying tenants! Oh, I wring my hands and something clutches me in my heart! Let me go! Let me go!

Six times in the course of my life, when I have been starved sick on my own feeding, I have become a "table-boarder"; and out of those six experiences I could make myself another Zola. The infinite variety of animality in those six vile stables--the champing jaws and the s...o...b..ring mouths and the rank odor of food! The men who shoveled with their knives or plastered things on their forks as hod-carriers do mortar! The women who sucked in their soup, and the children who smeared their faces and licked their lips and slopped upon the table-cloth! The fat Dutchman who grunted when he ate, and then leaned back and panted! The yellow woman with the false teeth who gathered everything about her on the table! The flashy gentleman with the diamond scarf-pin and the dirty cuffs, who made a tower out of his dirty dishes and then sucked his teeth! O G.o.d!

And the loathsome food!--For seven years I have had my nose stamped into this mud, and all in vain; I can still starve, but I can not eat what is not clean.

--Some day I shall put into a book all the rage and all the hate and all the infamy of these things, and it will be a book that will make your flesh sizzle. And you will wonder why I did it!

It will be better than Troilus and Cressida, better than the end of Gulliver's Travels--better than Swellfoot the Tyrant!

I wonder why n.o.body else ever reads or mentions Swellfoot the Tyrant? I call it the most whole-hearted, thorough-going, soul-satisfying piece of writing in any language that I know.

--When you think of my work you must think of these things! I do not mention them often, but they are never out of my mind. If you should read anything beautiful of mine, you must bear in mind that it is about half a chance that there was a dirty child screaming out in the hall while I wrote it.

September 20th.

It took me a couple of days to realize that I have still not to go down-town. But I have a fine facility in making myself new habits! Just now I am on a four months' studying campaign. It is monotonous--to read about.

I get up at six, and when I have had my breakfast and fixed a lunch, I go over into the Park. There are only birds and squirrels and a few tramps about then, and it is glorious. Sometimes I am so happy that I do not want to read; later come the squalling children and the hot sun; but I flit about from place to place. I wonder what they think of me!--

Wer bist du, und was fehlt dir!

I read all day, right straight along, and all night, now that it is not too hot. I have always done my reading by periods--I read our nineteenth-century poets that way, sixteen hours a day; I read Shakespeare in three weeks that way, and finished the month with Milton. So when I got German, I read Goethe and Schiller, and Moliere and Hugo again.

Now I am reading history; it gives me the nightmare, but one has to read it.

Every night when I put down my book, I flee in thought to my own land as to a city of refuge. A history where everything counts! A history that is not a mad, blind chaos of blood and horror! A history that has other meaning than the drunken l.u.s.t and the demon pride of a Napoleon or a Louis le Grand!

--Some day the ages will discern two movements in history: the first, the Christian dispensation, and the second the American.

There is a great deal in knowing how to read, especially with such books as history. I try to read as I write; to lash my author, to make him fill my mind. If he gets sluggish I am soon through with him--I read whole paragraphs in a sentence, and whole volumes in an hour.

September 25th.

The third week of the publisher's month has gone by. G.o.d, how cruel is waiting! I wonder if their readers knew how hungry I am if they would not hurry a little!

I say to myself--"There has been enough of this nonsense! Oh, surely there will not be any more, surely these men must take it!"

September 28th.

I still read the literary journals and tingle with excitement thinking of the time when The Captive is discussed in them. Can I believe that this book will not stir the world? If I did not believe it, I could not believe anything!

I feel a new interest now in the authors that people talk about. I want to know who they are and what they do. And all the time I find myself thinking: "Have I more than this man?--More than that man?" That always throws me into despair, because I am a great admirer; and because I am always hypnotized by the last thing that I read.

But I find very little that is great in modern books. Books are better made now than they ever were before--I mean in the way of literary craftsmans.h.i.+p. As far as form goes, there is no author living who would put together such a hodge-podge as Wilhelm Meister, or La Nouvelle Helose. But they all imitate each other; they are all mild and tame; there is no real power, no genius among them. They have even forgotten it exists.

I came across this, for instance, the other day in a book of Mr. Howells's:

"In fact, the whole belief in genius seems to me rather a mischievous superst.i.tion, and if not mischievous, always, still always, a superst.i.tion.

From the account of those who talk about it, genius appears to be the attribute of a very potent and admirable prodigy which G.o.d has created out of the common for the astonishment and confusion of the rest of us poor human beings. Do they mean anything more or less than the mastery which comes to any man in accordance with his powers and diligence in any direction? If not, why not have an end to the superst.i.tion which has caused our race to go on for so long writing and reading of the difference between talent and genius?"

Is not that simply blasphemous?

--Have I genius? Ah, save the word!

How can I know? It is none of my affair--I do my work.

Genius is next to the last and most sacred word we know, next to G.o.d; and next to the most abused word. Every man will possess it, in degree proportionate to his vanity. I think if they knew the work and the terror that goes with even a grasp at it, they would not make so free with it.

September 30th.

I wait--I wait for The Captive. I do all these other things--I read, I think, I study--but all the while I am merely pa.s.sing the time. I am waiting for The Captive to win me the way. All my life hangs on that, I can do nothing else but pray for that--pray for it and yearn for it!

--Yes--and do you know it?--I am sinking down every day! Down, down! The Captive is my high-water mark; where I was when I wrote that I shall never come again in my life--until I am given my freedom and new courage, and can set to work to toil as I did then!

Tell me not about future books, foolish publishers! I have told you I put all that I had and all that I was into that book! And by that book I stand or I fall.

October 3d.