Rambles in Womanland Part 31

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 Bruyere, 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 d.i.c.kens 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, Moliere 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 Camelias_, 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 Bruyere 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 Bruyere? 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 n.o.bodies 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 d.i.c.kens 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 sc.r.a.pbook 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 s.e.x.

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.

Try to get Mr. Labouchere in one corner of the smoke-room in the House of Commons, give him a cup of coffee and some good cigarettes, and just turn him on; there is no better treat, no more intellectual feast of mirth and humour and wit in store for you. His style is the very one suited for a crisp, gossipy, brilliant book of reminiscences.

Among possible writers of interesting and piquant memoirs or reminiscences I ought to mention Lady Dorothy Nevil and Lady Jeune. Both ladies have known in intimacy every celebrity you wish to name--Kings, Queens, statesmen, generals, prelates, judges, politicians, literary men, artists, lawyers, actors; there is not a man or woman of fame who has not supplied an impression or an incident to them.

And they are the very women to write memoirs, both possessed of keen judgment and insight in human nature, and of great literary ability, both delightful conversationalists, always capable of drawing you out and enabling you to do your best, and thus supplying them with materials for notes and observations.

I am not announcing any book, for neither of these two ladies ever mentioned to me that she was preparing a book of memoirs, but I wish they would, and I have simply named them as being both capable of writing books of unsurpa.s.sed interest.

In order to write a good and trustworthy book of reminiscences, you must, above all, be an observer and a listener, besides a good story-teller. You must be modest enough to know how to efface yourself, remain hidden behind the scenes, and put all your personages on the stage without hardly appearing yourself.

You must be satisfied with sharing the honours of the book with all your _dramatis personae_, and not cause the printing of the volume to be stopped for want of a sufficient supply of 'I's' and 'me's.'

I knew a famous actor whose reminiscences were published some years ago by a literary man. Once I congratulated that actor on the success of the book.

'Yes,' he said, 'the book has done me good, because X., you know, mentions my name once or twice in that book.'

And many books of reminiscences that I know are full of the sayings and doings of the author, with an occasional mention of people of whom we should like to hear a great deal.

I have met these men in private, and sometimes found them clever, and invariably fatiguing bores, and their books are not more entertaining than their conversation. Many of them reminded me of the first visit that Diderot paid to Voltaire, on which occasion he talked the great French wit deaf and dumb.

'What do you think of Diderot?' asked a friend of Voltaire a few days after that visit.

'Well,' replied Voltaire, 'Diderot is a clever fellow, but he has no talent for dialogue.'

CHAPTER XXII

THOUGHTS ON HATS