The Inventions of the Idiot

by John Kendrick Bangs

  IX

  A Clearing-house for Poets

  "How is your Muse these days, Mr. Idiot?" asked the Bibliomaniac oneSunday morning while the mush was being served.

  "Flourishing," said the Idiot. "Just flourishing--and no more."

  "I should think you'd be pleased if she is flourishing," said theDoctor.

  "I'd rather she'd stop flourishing and do a little writing," said theIdiot. "She's a queer Muse, that one of mine. She has all the airs andgraces of an ordinary type-writer with an unconquerable aversion towork."

  "You look upon your Muse as you would upon your type-writer, eh?" saidMr. Pedagog.

  "Yes," said the Idiot. "That's all my Muse is, and she isn't even acapable type-writer. The general run of type-writers make sense of whatyou write, but my Muse won't. You may not believe it, but out of teninspirations I had last week not one of them is fit for publicationanywhere but in a magazine or a puzzle column. I don't know what is thematter with her, but when I sit down to dictate a comic sonnet she turnsit into a serious jingle, and _vice versa_. We can't seem to get ourmoods to fit. When I want to be serious she's flippant, and when Ibecome flippant she's serious."

  "She must be very serious most of the time," said the Doctor.

  "She is," said the Idiot, innocently. "But that's only because I'mflippant most of the time. I'm going to give her warning. If she doesn'tbrace up and take more interest in her work I'm going to get anotherMuse, that's all. I can't afford to have my income cut down fifty percent. just because she happens to be fickle."

  "Maybe she is flirting with somebody else," suggested the Poet. "My Musedoes that occasionally."

  "I doubt it," said the Idiot. "I haven't observed any other poetencroaching upon my particular province. Even you, good as you are,can't do it. But in any event I'm going to have a change. The day hasgone by when a one-muse poet achieves greatness. I'm going to employ ahalf-dozen and try to corner the poetry market. Queer that in all theseyears that men have been writing poetry no one has thought of that.People get up grain corners, corners in railway stock, monopolies in gasand oil and everything else, about, but as yet no poet has cornered themarket in his business."

  "That's easily accounted for," said the Bibliomaniac. "The poetcontrols only his own work, and if he has any sense he doesn't want tomonopolize that."

  "That isn't my scheme at all," said the Idiot. "You have a monopoly ofyour own work always if you choose to avail yourself of it, and, as yousay, a man would be crazy to do so. What I'd like to see established isa sort of Poetic Clearing-house Association. Supposing, for instance,that I opened an office in Wall Street--a Bank for Poets, in which allwriters of verse could deposit their rhymes as they write them, and drawagainst them just as they do in ordinary banks with their money. Itwould be fine. Take a man like Swinburne, for instance, or our friendhere. Our poet could take a sonnet he had written, endorse it, and putit in the bank. He'd be credited with one sonnet, and wouldn't have tobother his head about it afterwards. He could draw against it. If theClearing-house company could dispose of it to a magazine his draftwould be honored in cash to its full value, less discount charges, whichwould include postage and commissions to the company."

  "And suppose the company failed to dispose of it?" suggested the Poet.

  "They'd do just as ordinary banks do with checks--stamp it 'Not Good,'"said the Idiot. "That, however, wouldn't happen very often if theconcern had an intelligent receiving-teller to detect counterfeits. Ifthe receiving-teller were a man fit for the position and a poet broughtin a quatrain with five lines in it, he could detect it at once and handit back. So with comic poems. I might go there with a poem I thought wascomic, and proceed to deposit it with the usual deposit slip. The tellerwould look at it a second, scrutinize the humor carefully, and then ifit was not what I thought it, would stamp it 'Not Comic' or'Counterfeit.' It is perfectly simple."

  "Very simple," said Mr. Pedagog. "Though I should have used a synonym ofsimple to describe it. It's idiotic."

  "That's what people said of Columbus's idea that he could discoverAmerica," said the Idiot. "Everything that doesn't have dollarsslathered all over it in plain view is idiotic."

  "The word slathered is new to me," said the School-master; "but I fancyI know what you mean."

  "The word slathered may be new to you," said the Idiot, "but it is agood word. I have used it with great effect several times. Whenever anyone asks me that foolish question that is asked so often, 'What is thegood word?' I always reply 'Slathered,' and the what's-the-good-wordfiend goes off hurt in his mind. He doesn't know what I mean any morethan I do, but it shuts him up completely, which is just so muchgained."

  "I must confess," said the Poet, "that I cannot myself see where thereis any money for your Rhyme Clearing-house. Ordinarily I quite approveof your schemes, but in this instance I go over to the enemy."

  "I don't say that it is a gold-mine," said the Idiot. "I doubt if I hadevery cent that is paid for poetry in a year by everybody to everybodythat my income would reach one hundredth part of what I'd receive as asuccessful manufacturer of soap; but there would be more money in poetrythan there is if by some pooling of our issues we could corner themarket. Suppose every writer of a quatrain in America should send hiswhole product to us. We could say to the magazines, 'Gentlemen,quatrains are not quatraining as hard as they were. If you need afour-line bit of gloom and rhyme to finish off your thirty-second page,our price is twenty-five dollars instead of seventy-five cents, as ofyore.' So with all other kinds of verse. We'd simply name our figure,force the editors to accept it, and unload. We might get caught on thelast thirty or forty thousand, but our profits on the others wouldenable us to more than meet the losses."

  "And would you pay the author the twenty-five dollars?" asked Mr.Whitechoker.

  "Not if we were sane," replied the Idiot. "We'd pay the author twodollars and fifty cents, which is one dollar and seventy-five cents morethan he gets now. _He_ couldn't complain."

  "And those that you couldn't sell?" asked the Bibliomaniac.

  "We'd simply mark 'Not Good' and return to the author. That's whathappens to him now, so no objection could be raised to that. But there'sstill another side to this matter," said the Idiot. "Publishers wouldbe quite as anxious to help it along as the poets. Dealing through us,they would be spared the necessity of interviewing poets, which I aminformed is always painful because of the necessity which publisherslabor under to give the poet to understand that they are in the businessfor profit, not for pleasure or mere love of sinking money in amagazine. So the publishers would keep a standing account of hard cashin our bank. Say a magazine used one hundred dollars' worth of verse ina month. The publisher at the beginning of the year would deposit twelvehundred dollars with us, and throughout the year would draw out sonnets,ballads, or pastels-in-metre just as he needed them. The checks wouldread something like this: 'The Poets' Clearing-house Association of theCity of New York will pay to John Bluepencil, Editor, or Order, TenSonnets. (Signed) Blank Brothers & Co.' Or perhaps we'd receive anotice from a Southern publisher to this effect: 'Have drawn on you atsight for eight quatrains and a triolet.' Now, when you consider howmany publishers there are who would always keep a cash balance in thetreasury, you begin to get some notion as to how we could meet ourrunning expenses and pay our quarterly dividends to our stockholdersanyhow; and as for future dividends, I believe our loan department wouldnet us a sufficient amount to make the stock gilt-edged."

  "You would have a loan department, eh?" said Mr. Pedagog.

  "That would be popular," said the Poet; "but there again I dispute theprofit. You could find plenty of poets who would borrow your funds, butI doubt the security of the loans."

  "All of your objections are based on misconceptions," said the Idiot."The loan department would not lend money. It would lend poems for aconsideration to those who are short and who need them to fulfil theirobligations."

  "Who on earth would want to borrow a poem, I'd like to know?" said theBibliomani
ac.

  "Lovers, chiefly," said the Idiot. "Never having been a poet yourself,sir, you have no notion how far the mere faculty of being able to dashoff a sonnet to a lady's eyebrow helps a man along in ultimatelybecoming the possessor of that eyebrow, together with the rest of thelady. _I_ have seen women won, sir, by a rondeau. In fact, I have myselfcompletely routed countless unpoetic rivals by exploding in their ranksburning quatrains to the fair objects of our affections. With woman theman who can write a hymn of thanksgiving that he is permitted to gazeinto her cerulean orbs has a great advantage over the wight who has totell her she has dandy blue eyes in commonplace prose. Thecommonplace-prose wight knows it, too, and he'd pay ten per cent. of hissalary during courtship if he could devise a plan by means of which hecould pass himself off as a poet. To meet this demand, our loandepartment would be established. An unimaginative lover could come inand describe the woman he adored; the loan clerk would fish out a sonnetto fit the girl, and the lover could borrow it for ten days, just asbrokers borrow stock. Armed with this he could go up to Harlem, orwherever else the maiden lived, and carry consternation into the heartsof his rivals by spouting the sonnet as nonchalantly as though he hadjust thought of it. So it would go on. For the following call he couldborrow a ballad singing the glories of her raven locks, likening them tothe beautiful night, or, if the locks were red instead of black, to theaurora borealis."

  "You'd have trouble finding a rhyme to borealis," said the Poet.

  "Tutt!" said the Idiot. "What's the matter with 'Glory, Alice,' 'Listento my story, Alice,' 'I'm going to war so gory, Alice,' 'I fear you area Tory, Alice' (this for a Revolutionary poem), or 'Come rowing in mydory, Alice'? There's no end to 'em."

  "If you'll write a rhyming dictionary I'll buy a copy," was the Poet'ssole comment.

  "That will come later," said the Idiot. "Once get our clearing-houseestablished, we can branch out into a general Poetry Trust and SupplyCompany that will make millions. We'll make so much money, by Jove!" headded, slapping the table enthusiastically, "that we can afford to gointo the publishing business ourselves and bring out volumes of versefor anybody and everybody. We can deal in Fame! A man that couldn'twrite his own name so that anybody could read it could come to us andsay: 'Gentlemen, I've got everything but brains. I want to be an authorand 'mongst the authors stand. I am told it is delightful to see one'sbook in print. I haven't a book, but I've got a dollar or two, and ifyou'll put out a first-class book of poems under my name I'll pay allexpenses and give you a royalty of twenty per cent. on every copy I giveaway!' No money in it? Bah! You gentlemen don't know. If you say fortunewould not wait upon this venture _I_ say you are the kind of men whowould sell government bonds for their value as mere engravings if youhad the chance."

  "You certainly do draw a roseate picture," said Mr. Whitechoker.

  "I do indeed," said the Idiot, "and the paint is laid on thick."

  "Well, I hope it goes," said the Poet. "I'll make a deposit the firstday of three hundred and sixty-seven ballads, four hundred andtwenty-three couplets, eighty-nine rondeaus, and one epic about tenyards in length, all of which I have in my desk at this moment."

  "Very well," said the Idiot, rising, "With that encouragement from you Ifeel warranted in ordering the 'Not Good' stamp at least."