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THE DELICIOUS VICE
Pipe Dreams and Fond Adventures of an Habitual Novel-Reader Among SomeGreat Books and Their People
By Young E. Allison
_Second Edition_
(Revised and containing new material)
CHICAGO THE PRAIRIELAND PUBLISHING CO. 1918 Printed originally in theLouisville Courier-Journal. Reprinted by courtesy.
First edition, Cleveland, Burrows Bros., 1907.
Copyright 1907-1918
I. A RHAPSODY ON THE NOBLE PROFESSION OF NOVEL READING
It must have been at about the good-bye age of forty that Thomas Moore,that choleric and pompous yet genial little Irish gentleman, turned asigh into good marketable "copy" for Grub Street and with shrewd economygot two full pecuniary bites out of one melancholy apple of reflection:
"Kind friends around me fall Like leaves in wintry weather,"
--he sang of his own dead heart in the stilly night.
"Thus kindly I scatter thy leaves on the bed Where thy mates of the garden lie scentless and dead."--he sang to the dying rose. In the red month of October the rose isforty years old, as roses go. How small the world has grown to a man offorty, if he has put his eyes, his ears and his brain to the uses forwhich they are adapted. And as for time--why, it is no longer than akite string. At about the age of forty everything that can happen to aman, death excepted, has happened; happiness has gone to the devil oris a mere habit; the blessing of poverty has been permanently securedor you are exhausted with the cares of wealth; you can see aroundthe corner or you do not care to see around it; in a word--that is,considering mental existence--the bell has rung on you and you are upagainst a steady grind for the remainder of your life. It is then therecomes to the habitual novel reader the inevitable day when, in anguishof heart, looking back over his life, he--wishes he hadn't; then he askshimself the bitter question if there are not things he has done that hewishes he hadn't. Melancholy marks him for its own. He sits in his roomsome winter evening, the lamp swarming shadowy seductions, the grateglowing with siren invitation, the cigar box within easy reach for thatmoment when the pending sacrifice between his teeth shall be burned out;his feet upon the familiar corner of the mantel at that automaticallycalculated altitude which permits the weight of the upper part of thebody to fall exactly upon the second joint from the lower end of thevertebral column as it rests in the comfortable depression created bycontinuous wear in the cushion of that particular chair to which everyhonest man who has acquired the library vice sooner or later getsattached with a love no misfortune can destroy. As he sits thus,having closed the lids of, say, some old favorite of his youth, he willinevitably ask himself if it would not have been better for him if hehadn't. And the question once asked must be answered; and it will be anhonest answer, too. For no scoundrel was ever addicted to the deliciousvice of novel-reading. It is too tame for him. "There is no money init."
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And every habitual novel-reader will answer that question he has askedhimself, after a sigh. A sigh that will echo from the tropic desertedisland of Juan Fernandez to that utmost ice-bound point of Siberia whereby chance or destiny the seven nails in the sole of a certain mysteriousperson's shoe, in the month of October, 1831, formed a cross--thus:
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while on the American promontory opposite, "a young and handsome womanreplied to the man's despairing gesture by silently pointing to heaven."The Wandering Jew may be gone, but the theater of that appallingprologue still exists unchanged. That sigh will penetrate the gloomycell of the Abbe Faria, the frightful dungeons of the Inquisition, thegilded halls of Vanity Fair, the deep forests of Brahmin and fakir, thejousting list, the audience halls and the petits cabinets of kings ofFrance, sound over the trackless and storm-beaten ocean--will echo, inshort, wherever warm blood has jumped in the veins of honest men andwherever vice has sooner or later been stretched groveling in the dustat the feet of triumphant virtue.
And so, sighing to the uttermost ends of the earth, the old novel-readerwill confess that he wishes he hadn't. Had not read all those novelsthat troop through his memory. Because, if he hadn't--and it is theimpossibility of the alternative that chills his soul with the despairof cruel realization--if he hadn't, you see, he could begin at the veryfirst, right then and there, and read the whole blessed business throughfor the first time. For the FIRST TIME, mark you! Is there anywhere inthis great round world a novel reader of true genius who would not dothat with the joy of a child and the thankfulness of a sage?
Such a dream would be the foundation of the story of a really noble Dr.Faustus. How contemptible is the man who, having staked his life freelyupon a career, whines at the close and begs for another chance; justone more--and a different career! It is no more than Mr. Jack Hamlin, afriend from Calaveras County, California, would call "the baby act,"or his compeer, Mr. John Oakhurst, would denominate "a squeal." Howglorious, on the other hand, is the man who has spent his life in hisown way, and, at its eventide, waves his hand to the sinking sun andcries out: "Goodbye; but if I could do so, I should be glad to go overit all again with you--just as it was!" If honesty is rated in heavenas we have been taught to believe, depend upon it the novel-readerwho sighs to eat the apple he has just devoured, will have no troublehereafter.
What a great flutter was created a few years ago when a blindmulti-millionaire of New York offered to pay a million dollars in cashto any scientist, savant or surgeon in the world who would restorehis sight. Of course he would! It was no price at all to offer for theservice--considering the millions remaining. It was no more to him thanit would be to me to offer ten dollars for a peep at Paradise. Poor as Iam I will give any man in the world one hundred dollars in cash who willenable me to remove every trace of memory of M. Alexandre Dumas' "ThreeGuardsmen," so that I may open that glorious book with the virgincapacity of youth to enjoy its full delight. More; I will duplicate thesame offer for any one or all of the following:
"Les Miserables," of M. Hugo.
"Don Quixote," of Senor Cervantes.
"Vanity Fair," of Mr. Thackeray.
"David Copperfield," of Mr. Dickens.
"The Cloister and the Hearth," of Mr. Reade.
And if my good friend, Isaac of York, is lending money at the oldstand and will take pianos, pictures, furniture, dress suits and plainhousehold plate as collateral, upon even moderate valuation, I will gofifty dollars each upon the following:
"The Count of Monte Cristo," of M. Dumas.
"The Wandering Jew," of M. Sue.
"The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon, Esq.," of Mr. Thackeray.
"Treasure Island," of Mr. Robbie Stevenson.
"The Vicar of Wakefield," of Mr. Goldsmith.
"Pere Goriot," of M. de Balzac.
"Ivanhoe," of Baronet Scott.
(Any one previously unnamed of the whole layout of M. Dumas, exceptingonly a paretic volume entitled "The Conspirators.")
Now, the man who can do the trick for one novel can do it for all--andthere's a thousand dollars waiting to be earned, and a blessing also.It's a bald "bluff," of course, because it can't be done as we all know.I might offer a million with safety. If it ever could have been done thenoble intellectual aristocracy of novel-readers would have been reducedto a condition of penury and distress centuries ago.
For, who can put fetters upon even the smallest second of eternity? Whocan repeat a joy or duplicate a sweet sorrow? Who has ever had more thanone first sweetheart, or more than one first kiss under the honeysuckle?Or has ever seen his name in print for
the first time, ever again? Is itany wonder that all these inexplicable longings, these hopeless hopes,were summed up in the heart-cry of Faust--
"Stay, yet awhile, O moment of beauty."
* * * * *
Yet, I maintain, Dr. Faustus was a weak creature. He begged to be givenanother and wholly different chance to linger with beauty. How muchnobler the magnificent courage of the veteran novel-reader, who in theold age of his service, asks only that he may be permitted to do againall that he has done, blindly, humbly, loyally, as before.
Don't I know? Have I not been there? It is no child's play, the life ofa man who--paraphrasing the language of Spartacus, the much neglectedhero of the ages--has met upon the printed page every shape of perilousadventure and dangerous character that the broad empire of fiction couldfurnish, and never yet lowered his arm. Believe me it is no carpet dutyto have served on the British privateers in Guiana, under CommodoreKingsley, alongside of Salvation Yeo; to have been a loyal member ofThuggee and cast the scarf for Bowanee; to have watched the tortures ofBeatrice Cenci (pronounced as written in honest English, and I spit uponthe weaklings of the service who imagine that any freak of woman calledBee-ah-treech-y Chon-chy could have endured the agonies related of thatsainted lady)--to have watched those tortures, I say, without breakingdown; to have fought under the walls of Acre with Richard Coeur de Lion;to have crawled, amid rats and noxious vapors, with Jean Valjean throughthe sewers of Paris; to have dragged weary miles through the snow withUncas, Chief of the Mohicans; to have lived among wild beasts with Morokthe lion tamer; to have charged with the impis of Umslopogaas; to havesailed before the mast with Vanderdecken, spent fourteen gloomy yearsin the next cell to Edmund Dantes, ferreted out the murders in the RueMorgue, advised Monsieur Le Cocq and given years of life's prime intedious professional assistance to that anointed idiot and pestiferousscoundrel, Tittlebat Titmouse! Equally, of course, it has not been allhorror and despair. Life averages up fairly, as any novel-readerwill admit, and there has been much of delight--even luxury andidleness--between the carnage hours of battle. Is it not so? Ask thatboyish-hearted old scamp whom you have seen scuttling away from thecirculating library with M. St. Pierre's memoirs of young Paul and hisbeloved Virginia under his arm; or stepping briskly out of the bookstore hugging to his left side a carefully wrapped biography of LadyDiana Vernon, Mlle. de la Valliere, or Madame Margaret Woffington; orin fact any of a thousand charming ladies whom it is certain he had metbefore. Ladies too, who, born whensoever, are not one day older sincehe last saw them. Nearly a hundred years of Parisian residence have notserved to induce the Princess Haydee of Yanina to forego her picturesqueGreek gowns and coiffures, or to alter the somewhat embarrassing statusof her relations with her striking but gloomy protector, the Count ofMonte Cristo.
The old memories are crowded with pleasures. Those delicious mornings inthe allee of the park, where you were permitted to see Cosette with herold grandfather, M. Fauchelevent; those hours of sweet pain when it wasimpossible to determine whether it was Rebecca or Rowena who seemed togive most light to the day; the flirtations with Blanche Amory, and thenotes placed in the hollow tree; the idyllic devotion of Little Emily,dating from the morning when you saw her dress fluttering on the beam asshe ran along it, lightly, above the flowing tide--(devotion that is yettender, for, God forgive you Steerforth as I do, you could not smirchthat pure heart;) the melancholy, yet sweet sorrow, with which yousaw the loved and lost Little Eva borne to her grave over which themocking-bird now sings his liquid requiem. Has it not been sweetgood fortune to love Maggie Tulliver, Margot of Savoy, Dora Spenlow(undeclared because she was an honest wife--even though of a mostconceited and commonplace jackass, totally undeserving of her); AgnesWicklow (a passion quickly cured when she took Dora's pitiful leavings),and poor ill-fated Marie Antoinette? You can name dozens if you havebeen brought up in good literary society.
* * * * *
These love affairs may be owned freely, as being perfectly honorable,even if hopeless. And, of course, there have been gallantries--mereaffaires du jour--such as every man occasionally engages in. Sometimesthey seemed serious, but only for a moment. There was Beatrix Esmond,for whom I could certainly have challenged His Grace of Hamilton, hadnot Lord Mohun done the work for me. Wandering down the street in Londonone night, in a moment of weak admiration for her unrivalled nerveand aplomb, I was hesitating--whether to call on Mrs. Rawdon Crawley,knowing that her thick-headed husband was in hoc for debt--when thedoor of her house crashed open and that old scoundrel, Lord Steyne, camewildly down the steps, his livid face blood-streaked, his topcoat onhis arm and a dreadful look in his eye. The world knows the rest as Ilearned it half an hour later at the greengrocer's, where the Crawleysowed an inexcusably large bill. Then the Duchess de Langeais--but allthis is really private.
After all, a man never truly loves but once. And somewhere in Scotlandthere is a mound above the gentle, tender and heroic Helen Mar, wherelies buried the first love of my soul. That mound, O lovely and loyalHelen, was watered by the first blinding and unselfish tears thatever sprang from my eyes. You were my first love; others may come andinevitably they go, but you are still here, under the pencil pocket ofmy waistcoat.
Who can write in such a state? It is only fair to take a rest and braceup. [Blank Page]
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