by Walt Whitman

Poetry (I am clear) is eligible of something far more ripen’d and ample, our lands and pending days, than it has yet produced from any utterance old or new. Modern or new poetry, too, (viewing or challenging it with severe criticism,) is largely a-void—while the very cognizance, or even suspicion of that void, and the need of filling it, proves a certainty of the hidden and waiting supply. Leaving other lands and languages to speak for themselves, we can abruptly but deeply suggest it best from our own—going first to oversea illustrations, and standing on them. Think of Byron, Burns, Shelley, Keats, (even first-raters, “the brothers of the radiant summit,” as William O’Connor calls them,) as having done only their precursory and ‘prentice work, and all their best and real poems being left yet unwrought, untouch’d. Is it difficult to imagine ahead of us and them, evolv’d from them, poesy completer far than any they themselves fulfill’d? One has in his eye and mind some very large, very old, entirely sound and vital tree or vine, like certain hardy, ever-fruitful specimens in California and Canada, or down in Mexico, (and indeed in all lands) beyond the chronological records—illustrations of growth, continuity, power, amplitude and exploitation, almost beyond statement, but proving fact and possibility, outside of argument.

Perhaps, indeed, the rarest and most blessed quality of transcendent noble poetry—as of law, and of the profoundest wisdom and estheticism—is, (I would suggest,) from sane, completed, vital, capable old age.

The final proof of song or personality is a sort of matured, accreted, superb, evoluted, almost divine, impalpable diffuseness and atmosphere or invisible magnetism, dissolving and embracing all—and not any special achievement of passion, pride, metrical form, epigram, plot, thought, or what is call’d beauty. The bud of the rose or the half-blown flower is beautiful, of course, but only the perfected bloom or apple or finish’d wheat-head is beyond the rest. Completed fruitage like this comes (in my opinion) to a grand age, in man or woman, through an essentially sound continuated physiology and psychology (both important) and is the culminating glorious aureole of all and several preceding. Like the tree or vine just mention’d, it stands at last in a beauty, power and productiveness of its own, above all others, and of a sort and style uniting all criticisms, proofs and adherences.

Let us diversify the matter a little by portraying some of the
American poets from our own point of view.
Longfellow, reminiscent, polish’d, elegant, with the air of finest conventional library, picture-gallery or parlor, with ladies and gentlemen in them, and plush and rosewood, and ground-glass lamps, and mahogany and ebony furniture, and a silver inkstand and scented satin paper to write on.

Whittier stands for morality (not in any all-accepting philosophic or Hegelian sense, but) filter’d through a Puritanical or Quaker filter—is incalculably valuable as a genuine utterance, (and the finest,)—with many local and Yankee and genre bits—all hued with anti-slavery coloring—(the genre and anti-slavery contributions all precious—all help.) Whittier’s is rather a grand figure, but pretty lean and ascetic—no Greek-not universal and composite enough (don’t try—don’t wish to be) for ideal Americanism. Ideal Americanism would take the Greek spirit and law, and democratize and scientize and (thence) truly Christianize them for the whole, the globe, all history, all ranks and lands, all facts, all good and bad. (Ah this bad—this nineteen-twentieths of us all! What a stumbling-block it remains for poets and metaphysicians—what a chance (the strange, clear-as-ever inscription on the old dug-up tablet) it offers yet for being translated—what can be its purpose in the God-scheme of this universe, and all?)

Then William Cullen Bryant—meditative, serious, from first to last tending to threnodies—his genius mainly lyrical—when reading his pieces who could expect or ask for more magnificent ones than such as “The Battle-Field,” and “A Forest Hymn”? Bryant, unrolling, prairie-like, notwithstanding his mountains and lakes—moral enough (yet worldly and conventional)—a naturalist, pedestrian, gardener and fruiter—well aware of books, but mixing to the last in cities and society. I am not sure but his name ought to lead the list of American bards. Years ago I thought Emerson pre eminent (and as to the last polish and intellectual cuteness may-be I think so still)—but, for reasons, I have been gradually tending to give the file-leading place for American native poesy to W. C. B.

Of Emerson I have to confirm my already avow’d opinion regarding his highest bardic and personal attitude. Of the galaxy of the past—of Poe, Halleck, Mrs. Sigourney, Allston, Willis, Dana,

John Pierpont, W. G. Simms, Robert Sands, Drake, Hillhouse, Theodore Fay, Margaret Fuller, Epes Sargent, Boker, Paul Hayne, Lanier, and others, I fitly in essaying such a theme as this, and reverence for their memories, may at least give a heart-benison on the list of their names.

Time and New World humanity having the venerable resemblances more than anything else, and being “the same subject continued,” just here in 1890, one gets a curious nourishment and lift (I do) from all those grand old veterans, Bancroft, Kossuth, von Moltke—and such typical specimen-reminiscences as Sophocles and Goethe, genius, health, beauty of person, riches, rank, renown and length of days, all combining and centering in one case.

Above everything, what could humanity and literature do without the mellow, last-justifying, averaging, bringing-up of many, many years—a great old age amplified? Every really first-class production has likely to pass through the crucial tests of a generation, perhaps several generations. Lord Bacon says the first sight of any work really new and first-rate in beauty and originality always arouses something disagreeable and repulsive. Voltaire term’d the Shaksperean works “a huge dunghill”; Hamlet he described (to the Academy, whose members listen’d with approbation) as “the dream of a drunken savage, with a few flashes of beautiful thoughts.” And not the Ferney sage alone; the orthodox judges and law-givers of France, such as La Harpe, J. L. Geoffrey, and Chateaubriand, either join’d in Voltaire’s verdict, or went further. Indeed the classicists and regulars there still hold to it. The lesson is very significant in all departments. People resent anything new as a personal insult. When umbrellas were first used in England, those who carried them were hooted and pelted so furiously that their lives were endanger’d. The same rage encounter’d the attempt in theatricals to perform women’s parts by real women, which was publicly consider’d disgusting and outrageous. Byron thought Pope’s verse incomparably ahead of Homer and Shakspere. One of the prevalent objections, in the days of Columbus was, the learn’d men boldly asserted that if a ship should reach India she would never get back again, because the rotundity of the globe would present a kind of mountain, up which it would be impossible to sail even with the most favorable wind.

“Modern poets,” says a leading Boston journal, “enjoy longevity.
Browning lived to be seventy-seven. Wordsworth, Bryant, Emerson, and
Longfellow were old men. Whittier, Tennyson, and Walt Whitman still
live.”
Started out by that item on Old Poets and Poetry for chyle to inner American sustenance—I have thus gossipp’d about it all, and treated it from my own point of view, taking the privilege of rambling wherever the talk carried me. Browning is lately dead; Bryant, Emerson and Longfellow have not long pass’d away; and yes, Whittier and Tennyson remain, over eighty years old—the latter having sent out not long since a fresh volume, which the English-speaking Old and New Worlds are yet reading. I have already put on record my notions of T. and his effusions: they are very attractive and flowery to me—but flowers, too, are at least as profound as anything; and by common consent T. is settled as the poetic cream-skimmer of our age’s melody, ennui and polish—a verdict in which I agree, and should say that nobody (not even Shakspere) goes deeper in those exquisitely touch’d and half-hidden hints and indirections left like faint perfumes in the crevices of his lines. Of Browning I don’t know enough to say much; he must be studied deeply out, too, and quite certainly repays the trouble—but I am old and indolent, and cannot study (and never did.)

Grand as to-day’s accumulative fund of poetry is, there is certainly something unborn, not yet come forth, different from anything now formulated in any verse, or contributed by the past in any land— something waited for, craved, hitherto non-express’d. What it will be, and how, no one knows. It will probably have to prove itself by itself and its readers. One thing, it must run through entire humanity (this new word and meaning Solidarity has arisen to us moderns) twining all lands like a divine thread, stringing all beads, pebbles or gold, from God and the soul, and like God’s dynamics and sunshine illustrating all and having reference to all. From anything like a cosmical point of view, the entirety of imaginative literature’s themes and results as we get them to-day seems painfully narrow. All that has been put in statement, tremendous as it is, what is it compared with the vast fields and values and varieties left unreap’d? Of our own country, the splendid races North or South, and especially of the Western and Pacific regions, it sometimes seems to me their myriad noblest Homeric and Biblic elements are all untouch’d, left as if ashamed of, and only certain very minor occasional delirium tremens glints studiously sought and put in print, in short tales, “poetry” or books.

I give these speculations, or notions, in all their audacity, for the comfort of thousands—perhaps a majority of ardent minds, women’s and young men’s—who stand in awe and despair before the immensity of suns and stars already in the firmament. Even in the Iliad and Shakspere there is (is there not?) a certain humiliation produced to us by the absorption of them, unless we sound in equality, or above them, the songs due our own democratic era and surroundings, and the full assertion of ourselves. And in vain (such is my opinion) will America seek successfully to tune any superb national song unless the heart-strings of the people start it from their own breasts—to be return’d and echoed there again.

from Werwolves (1912)

by Elliott O’Donnell

THROUGHOUT the Middle Ages, and even in the seventeenth century, trials for lycanthropy were of common occurrence in France. Among the most famous were those of the Grandillon family in the Jura, in 1598; that of the tailor of Châlons; of Roulet, in Angers; of Gilles Garnier, in Dôle, in 1573; and of Jean Garnier, at Bordeaux, in 1603. The last case was, perhaps, the most remarkable of all. Garnier, who was only fourteen years of age, was employed in looking after cattle. He was a handsome lad, with dark, flashing eyes and very white teeth. As soon as it was time for the metamorphosis to take place he used to go into some lonely spot, and then, in the guise of a wolf, return, and run to earth isolated women and children. One of his favourite haunts was a thicket close to a pool of water. Here he used to lie and watch for hours at a time. Once he surprised two girls bathing. One escaped, and fled home naked, but the other he flung on the ground, and having shaken her into submission, devoured a portion of her one day, and the rest of her the next. He confessed to having eaten over fifty children. Nor did he always confine himself to attacking the solitary few and defenceless; for on several occasions, when hard pressed by hunger, he assailed a whole crowd, and was once severely handled by a pack of young girls who successfully drove him off with sharply pointed stakes. Far from wishing to conceal his guilt, Jean Garnier was most eager to tell everything, and to a court thronged with eager, attentive people, he related in the most graphic manner possible his sanguinary experiences. One old woman, he said, whom he found alone in a cottage, showed extraordinary agility in trying to escape. She raced round tables, clambered over chairs, crawled under a bed, and finally hid in a cupboard and held the door so fast that he had to exert all his force to open it. “And then,” he added, “in spite of all my trouble she proved to be as tough as leather——” and he made a grimace that provoked much laughter.

He complained bitterly of one child. “It made such a dreadful noise,” he said, “when I lifted it out of its crib, and when I got ready for my first bite it shrieked so loud it almost deafened me.”

The name Grénier, like that of Garnier, was closely associated with lycanthropy, and in Blois, where there were more instances of lycanthropy than in any other part of France, every one called Grénier or Garnier was set down as a werwolf.

Amongst the Vaudois lycanthropy was also widely prevalent, and many of these werwolves were brought to trial and executed.

The Case of Sergeant Bertrand

The case of Sergeant Bertrand, which is the last authenticated case of this kind, occurred in 1847, when, on the 10th of July, an investigation was held before a military council presided over by Colonel Manselon. For some months the cemeteries in and around Paris had been the scenes of frightful violations, the culprits (or culprit), in some extraordinary manner, eluding every attempt made to ensnare them. At one time the custodians of the cemeteries were suspected, then the local police, and for a brief space suspicion fell even on the relations of the dead. The first burial-place to be so mysteriously visited was the Cemetery of Père Lachaise. Here, at night, those in charge declared they saw a strange form, partly human and partly animal, glide about from tomb to tomb. Try how they would they could not catch it—it always vanished—vanished just like a phantom directly they came up to it; and the dogs when urged to seize it would only bark and howl, and show indications of the most abject terror.

Always when morning broke the ravages of this unsavoury visitant were only too plainly visible—graves had been dug up, coffins burst open, and the contents nibbled, and gnawed, and scattered all over the ground. Expert medical opinion was sought, but with no fresh result. The doctors, too, were agreed that the mutilations of the dead were produced by the bites of what certainly seemed to be human teeth.

The sensation caused by this announcement was without parallel; and one and all, old and young, rich and poor, were wanting to know whatever sort of being it could be that possessed so foul an appetite. The watch was doubled; all to no purpose. A young soldier was arrested, but on declaring he had merely entered the cemetery to meet a friend, and exhibiting no evidences of guilt, was let go.

At length the violation ceased in Père Lachaise and broke out elsewhere. A little girl, greatly beloved by her relatives and friends, died, and a big concourse of people attended the funeral. On the following morning, to the intense indignation of every one, the grave was discovered dug up, the coffin forced open, and the body half eaten. In its wild fury at such an unheard-of atrocity the public called loudly for the culprit. The father of the dead girl was first of all arrested, but his innocence being quickly established, he was set free. Every means was then taken to guard against any recurrence, but in spite of all precautions the same thing happened again shortly afterwards; and happened repeatedly. The fact that the cemetery was surrounded by very high walls, and that iron gates, which were always kept shut, formed the only legitimate entrance, added to the mystery, and made it seem impossible that any creature of solid flesh and blood could be responsible for the outrages.

Having observed that at one place, in particular, the wall, though nearly ten feet high, showed signs of having been frequently scaled, an old army officer set a trap there, consisting of a wire connected with an explosive, which was so arranged that no one could climb over the wall without treading on the wire and causing an explosion.

A strong posse of detectives kept watch, and at midnight a loud report was heard. The detectives were not, however, as quick as their quarry. They saw a man, or what they took to be a man, and fired at him, but he was gone like a flash of lightning, scaling the wall with the agility of a monkey. Finding a trail of blood, however, and pieces of torn uniform accompanying the bloodstains, they concluded that the enemy was wounded, and that the marauder was, moreover, a soldier.

Still, it is doubtful whether his identity would have been proved, had not one of the grave-diggers of the cemetery chanced to overhear some sappers of the 74th Regiment remark that on the preceding night one of their comrades—a sergeant—had been conveyed to the military hospital of Val de Grâce badly wounded. The matter was at once inquired into, and the wounded soldier, Sergeant Bertrand, was found to be the author of the long series of hideous violations. Bertrand freely confessed his guilt, declaring that he was driven to it against his own will by some external force he could not define, and which allowed him no peace. He had, he said, in one night exhumed and bitten as many as fifteen bodies. He employed no implements, but tore up the soil after the manner of a wild beast, paying no heed to the bruising and laceration of his hands so long as he could get at the dead. He could not describe what his sensations were like when he was thus occupied; he only knew that he was not himself but some ravenous, ferocious animal. He added, that after these nocturnal expeditions he invariably fell into a profound sleep, often before he could get home, and that always, during that sleep, he was conscious of undergoing peculiar metamorphosis. When interrogated, he informed the court of inquiry that, as a child, he preferred the company of all kinds of animals to that of his fellow creatures, and that in order to get in close touch with his four-footed friends he used to frequent the most solitary and out-of-the-way places—moors, woods, and deserts. He said that it was immediately after one of these excursions that he first experienced the sensation of undergoing some great change in his sleep, and that the following evening, when passing close to a cemetery where the grave-diggers were covering a body that had just been interred, yielding to a sudden impulse, he crept in and watched them. A sharp shower of rain interrupting their labours, they went away, leaving their task unfinished. “At the sight of the coffin,” Bertrand said, “horrible desires seized me; my head throbbed, my heart palpitated, and had it not been for the timely arrival of friends I should have then and there yielded to my inclinations. From that time forth I was never free—these terrible cravings invariably came on directly after sunset.”

Medical men who examined Bertram unanimously gave it as their opinion that he was sane, and could only account for his extraordinary nocturnal actions by the supposition that he must be the victim of some strange monomania. His companions, with whom he was most popular, all testified to his amiability and lovable disposition. In the end he was sentenced to a year’s imprisonment, and after his release was never again heard of. There can, I think, be little doubt, from what he himself said, that he was in reality a werwolf. His preference for the society of animals and love of isolated regions; his sudden fallings asleep and sensations of undergoing metamorphosis, though that metamorphosis was spiritual and metaphysical only, which is very often the case, all help to substantiate that belief.

Vampirism and Lycanthropy

It has been asserted that Bertrand was a vampire; but there are absolutely no grounds for associating him with vampirism. A vampire is an Elemental that under certain conditions inhabits a dead body, whether human or otherwise; and, thus incarcerated, comes out of a grave at night to suck the blood of a living person. It never touches the dead.

A werwolf has already been defined. It has an existence entirely separate from the vampire. The werwolf feeds on both the living and dead, which it bites and mangles after the nature of all beasts of prey.

Vampirism is infectious; every one who has been sucked by a vampire, on physical dissolution, becomes a vampire, and remains one until his corpse is destroyed in a certain prescribed manner. Lycanthropy is not infectious.

There are many well-authenticated cases of vampirism in France and Germany. In a newspaper published in the reign of Louis XV there appeared an announcement to the effect that Arnold Paul, a native of Madveiga, being crushed to death by a wagon and buried, had since become a vampire, and that he had been previously bitten by one. The authorities being informed of the terror his visits were occasioning, and several people having died with all the symptoms of vampirism, his grave was opened; and although he had been dead forty days his body was like that of a very full-blooded, living man.

Following the mode of exorcism traditionally observed on such occasions, a stake was driven into the corpse, whereupon it uttered a frightful cry—half human and half animal; after which its head was cut off, and trunk and head burned. Four other bodies which had died from the consequences of the bites, and which were found in the same perfectly healthy condition, were served in a similar manner; and it was hoped these vigorous measures would end the mischief. But no such thing; cases of deaths from the same cause—i.e., loss of blood—still continued, and five years afterwards became so rife that the authorities were compelled to take the matter up for the second time. On this occasion the graves of many people, of all ages and both sexes, were opened, and the bodies of all those suspected of plaguing the living by their nocturnal visits were found in the vampire state—full almost to overflowing with blood, and free from every symptom of death. On their being served in the same manner as the corpse of Arnold Paul the epidemic of vampirism ceased, and no more cases of it have since been reported as occurring in that district. A rumour of these proceedings reaching the ears of Louis XV, he at once ordered his Minister at Vienna to report upon them. This was done. The documents forwarded to the King (and which are still in existence) give a detailed account of all the occurrences to which I have referred. They bear the date of June 7, 1732, and are signed and witnessed by three surgeons and several other persons.

The facts, which are indubitable, point to no other satisfactory explanation saving that of vampirism—an explanation that finds ample corroboration in thousands of like cases reported, at one time or another, in every country in Eastern Europe.

Ghoulism and Lycanthropy

Sergeant Bertrand has also been declared a ghoul. Ghoulism bears a somewhat closer resemblance than vampirism to lycanthropy. A ghoul is an Elemental that visits any place where human or animal remains have been interred. It digs them up and bites them, showing a keen liking for brains, which it sucks in the same manner as a vampire sucks blood.

Ghouls either remain in spirit form or steal the bodies of living beings—living beings only—either human or animal. They can only do this when the spirit of the living person, during sleep (either natural or induced hypnotically), is separated from the material body; or, in other words, when the spirit is projected. The ghoul then pounces on the physical body, and, often refusing to restore it to its rightful owner, the latter is compelled to roam about as a phantasm for just so long a time as the ghoul chooses to inhabit the body it has stolen.

 by W. B. Yeats

My first meeting with Oscar Wilde was an astonishment. I never before heard a man talking with perfect sentences, as if he had written them all over night with labour and yet all spontaneous. There was present that night at Henley’s, by right of propinquity or of accident, a man full of the secret spite of dulness, who interrupted from time to time, and always to check or disorder thought; and I noticed with what mastery he was foiled and thrown. I noticed, too, that the impression of artificiality that I think all Wilde’s listeners have recorded came from the perfect rounding of the sentences and from the deliberation that made it possible. That very impression helped him, as the effect of metre, or of the antithetical prose of the seventeenth century, which is itself a true metre, helped its writers, for he could pass without incongruity from some unforeseen, swift stroke of wit to elaborate reverie. I heard him say a few nights later: “Give me The Winter’s Tale, ‘Daffodils that come before the swallow dare’ but not King Lear. What is King Lear but poor life staggering in the fog?” and the slow, carefully modulated cadence sounded natural to my ears. That first night he praised Walter Pater’s Studies in the History of the Renaissance: “It is my golden book; I never travel anywhere without it; but it is the very flower of decadence: the last trumpet should have sounded the moment it was written.” “But,” said the dull man, “would you not have given us time to read it?” “Oh no,” was the retort, “there would have been plenty of time afterwards—in either world.” I think he seemed to us, baffled as we were by youth, or by infirmity, a triumphant figure, and to some of us a figure from another age, an audacious Italian fifteenth century figure. A few weeks before I had heard one of my father’s friends, an official in a publishing firm that had employed both Wilde and Henley as editors, blaming Henley who was “no use except under control” and praising Wilde, “so indolent but such a genius”; and now the firm became the topic of our talk. “How often do you go to the office?” said Henley. “I used to go three times a week,” said Wilde, “for an hour a day but I have since struck off one of the days.” “My God,” said Henley, “I went five times a week for five hours a day and when I wanted to strike off a day they had a special committee meeting.” “Furthermore,” was Wilde’s answer, “I never answered their letters. I have known men come to London full of bright prospects and seen them complete wrecks in a few months through a habit of answering letters.” He too knew how to keep our elders in their place, and his method was plainly the more successful, for Henley had been dismissed. “No he is not an aesthete,” Henley commented later, being somewhat embarrassed by Wilde’s Pre-Raphaelite entanglement; “one soon finds that he is a scholar and a gentleman.” And when I dined with Wilde a few days afterwards he began at once, “I had to strain every nerve to equal that man at all”; and I was too loyal to speak my thought: “You and not he said all the brilliant things.” He like the rest of us had felt the strain of an intensity that seemed to hold life at the point of drama. He had said on that first meeting “The basis of literary friendship is mixing the poisoned bowl”; and for a few weeks Henley and he became close friends till, the astonishment of their meeting over, diversity of character and ambition pushed them apart, and, with half the cavern helping, Henley began mixing the poisoned bowl for Wilde. Yet Henley never wholly lost that first admiration, for after Wilde’s downfall he said to me: “Why did he do it? I told my lads to attack him and yet we might have fought under his banner.”

 by Robert Saunders Dowst

Critical Faculty—Cultivation of Genius—Observation and Information—Open-mindedness—Attitude Toward Life—Prejudice and Provincialism—The Social Question—Reading—Imagination.

Accessible as are the data of the fiction writer, the facts and possibilities of life, their very accessibility places him under strict necessity to sift the useful from the useless in search for the pregnant theme. For if life presents a multiplicity of events to the writer, from which he may select some sort of story with little labor to himself, life also presents the same multiplicity of events to the reader, who can see the obvious as well as the lazy writer, and who will not be pleased with a narration of which he has the beginning, middle, and end by heart. A tale which does not interest fails essentially, and novelty, in the undebased sense of the word, is the root of interest. Therefore the writer of fiction who takes himself and his art seriously must develop the open and penetrating eye and the faculty of just selection. All is not gold that glitters, a fact that too often becomes painfully evident only when some tale discovered with joy and developed with eagerness lies coldly spread upon paper. The beginner who will approach his own conceptions in a spirit of unbiased criticism and estimation before determining to set them down will save himself useless labor, much postage, and many secret tears. Half of the essentially feeble work produced that has not a chance of getting published is the result of the writer’s falling in love with his own idea simply because it is his own idea. The defect is in conception rather than in execution, and a matter of first importance to the writer is to develop the faculty of estimating his unelaborated ideas.

Unquestionably this faculty can be developed. The struggle for its development is half over, in a practical sense, when the writer comes to judge his concepts at all before writing, when he wins free of the habit of writing just to be writing, and of choosing to work on a particular tale because it is the best he can squeeze from his brains at the particular moment, rather than because it is absolutely good and he knows it to be absolutely good.

Unquestionably, too, the critical faculty is powerless to supply worthy conceptions. But that is beside the point. If the conceptions are worthy, the just critical faculty will recognize their merit, and give the writer courage and confidence to send each tale across the almost inevitable sea of rejections until it comes to port, as it surely will, if well done. And if the conceptions are feeble, and the writer cannot better them, it will be better for him and all concerned that he discover the truth.

Whether the essential genius of the teller of tales, the power that first supplies a theme of moment and then a fitting garb for it, is a plant capable of nurture, is not for me to attempt to show, or even to state. Fortunately, the question is academic. The dons may debate the point, but for those who themselves labor in the literary vineyard the thing to remember is that the same habits of observation and practice which some claim will create the literary faculty will at least foster its growth, if it is a gift, as others claim, and not to be artificially cultivated. Steady hours at the desk and moments with the notebook, the cultivation of the seeing eye, the informed mind, and the sympathetic heart, may not be able to create the divine spark. But it may burn within one for all that; and shall one neglect to bring it to full flame on the mere chance that it may not exist because of the possibility that it cannot be created? If the chance of its existence is great enough in the individual’s eyes to justify the labor of writing at all, it is great enough to justify undertaking the correlative activities of observation and self-culture. At the least of it, these can result only in making one a better and more complete man or woman, irrespective of the literary result. The writer who fancies that his labor is but to string words, and that idea or passion come to life in the barren mind or heart, is foredoomed to failure. No equation can be formed between something and nothing, nor can something come from nothing. All life and all art is a quid pro quo; the writer must barter his time and sweat for his raw materials, ideas.

There is little need to state that of writers of equal genius the one with the deepest reservoirs of observation and information to draw upon will produce the more significant work. In relation to expository and argumentive writing the fact is patent; in relation to the writing of fiction it may be less obvious, but, curiously enough, is even more impressive when perceived. The writer of special treatise or argument may “devil” his subject for the occasion; though the writer of fiction may specially investigate the phase of life or society with which he deals, his investigations will aid him only in the external matters of dress, customs, speech, or atmosphere. For the preservation of the essential congruity and justness of the whole as a presentation of life he must depend solely upon his own innate familiarity with life, which cannot be brushed up for the occasion, for it necessarily derives from the totality of the individual’s experience and the use he has made of it.

In this connection it may be noted that above all else the writer of fiction must be catholic in his interests and sympathies. He is the sieve through which the motley stream of life is poured to have selected for presentation its most significant aspects, and any unwisely cherished aversions of his are so many gaps in the netting through which, to his own loss, worthy matter constantly will escape. It is difficult enough at best for even the most open-minded writer to achieve some approach to an adequate presentation of a phase of life, and for the writer whose vision is distorted by prejudice and predilection, however perfect his technique, it is nearly impossible. The writer of fiction is concerned with political, social, or religious dogmas only in so far as they impinge upon and affect the individual life whose course his pen is tracing, and his only proper and fruitful attitude toward such dogmas is that of observer, not of fierce advocate or equally fierce assailant. The heart of the people is sounder than its head, perhaps because larger, and life is a complex of passion rather than a complex of intellectual crusades. The writer of fiction addresses the whole man, his emotional nature as well as his intelligence, and should address him by presenting the whole man, instead of some feeble counterfeit not actuated primarily by passion.

Emotion can be evoked only by the portrayal of passion, and emotion—sympathy, disgust, admiration, any spiritual excitement—is the root of the appeal of fiction. There are other elements of interest, primarily intellectual, as in the detective story or any story of ratiocination, but emotional appeal is the one essential in work of any compass. Emotional appeal is attainable only through a just presentment of life, and toward life the writer of fiction must preserve an attitude of observation and ready acceptance. In the last analysis, that is his business. The world pays its wage to the scientist for the narrow, intensive view; it pays its wage to the teller of tales for the broad, extensive view.

The course of letters is marked by great failures whose essential technical powers were nullified or at least hampered by their narrow outlook on life, and by great successes whose achievements bear the scar of prejudice and provincialism. In our day, the multitudinous standing controversies of the past have been reduced in bitterness by the more general diffusion of information and by the conflicting claims of more numerous interests that demand exercise. Nevertheless we still have the division between rich and poor, capital and labor, conservative and radical. For reasons immaterial here, this division and resulting social conflict will become more complete and bitter; the writer of fiction will face the fact and be forced to deal with it at times; and it is to be remembered that one may be abreast or even ahead of the best thought of the day without being hectic, and that to draw the conservative of fiction as a fool or a villain simply because he is a conservative is bad art. Conceivably a man may be back in the ruck of thought and belief because he is a fool, but he is not a fool merely because he is behind the times. He may have had no chance to learn better, and that is precisely the story.

Besides viewing life with a sympathetic and inclusive eye, the writer of fiction should investigate the smaller world of books. Life is infinitely more rich in substance than the printed word, but the observer is not a disembodied spirit, and cannot scrutinize the whole world, cannot exhaust even his own little neighborhood. He can call to his service the eyes of his contemporaries and of those who have gone before, and, in a few hours reading, can live vicariously a dozen lives. In this very real sense the world of books is practically larger than the actual world; one can hope to exhaust its more significant matter. By reading, the writer of fiction can gain familiarity with the actual tissue of life, the casual relation between motives and acts—so often obscured in real life—can mingle with nobler, baser, more significant people than he will be apt to meet, and can estimate the efforts of others in his own art. Reading of all sorts will yield information, and reading of fiction will reveal the root causes of success and failure in the difficult task to precipitate life in words.

There is little need to emphasize the difficulty of the task, twofold as it is. One must find matter, and one must display it. Not only will reading conduce to mental development and flexibility; it will reveal the function of the single word. Life is seen in chiaroscuro, but words are sharp and definite things. As Stevenson has said, the writer must work in mosaic, with finite and quite rigid words. If he really works, scorning to abuse a noble instrument and to prostitute a noble profession, his difficulties will but increase with his earnestness. Flaubert is a case in point. Only by reading can the writer discover the resources of language, and only by reading can he find encouragement in the spectacle of what patience and devotion have achieved.

One may employ a method of literary presentment diametrically opposite to that of fitting the right word in the right place, the method of taking a broad canvas, disregarding length, and, in a sort, modeling the verbal mass, which will possess plasticity to an extent, though composed of words intractable and rigid in themselves, like the atoms which compose modeler’s clay. But this method is open only to the writer of a novel of epic length; the verbal economy of the short story forbids it; and it will usually be found that the books which manifest it—”Les Miserables,” “David Copperfield,” “Tom Jones,” “Jean Christophe,” “War and Peace,” much of Thackeray’s work, for instance—owe their appeal to the essential vitality and worth of their matter rather than to any detailed perfection of artistry. If the story is worthy, it will not be injured by compact and artistic expression; the function of the artist is to select the significant from life and to present it as pungently and as perfectly as possible; brevity in expression is as essential as economy of line in drawing. I have read and heard it stated that Stevenson and many others eminent for artistry are thin and self-conscious in their work, and personally I would give much to know whether this impression does not derive from the fact that many of the accepted great books of the world, and most of those appearing day by day, are negligible as examples of executive artistry, by their contrast making the occasional work that is concisely and artistically done seem somewhat artificial. The reader is perhaps so accustomed to imperfect work that the perfect has a touch of artificial glitter, and seems unreal. But this is a digression. The fact remains that the writer of fiction who would live by his art cannot afford to go in ignorance of what has been done before him. He should read, widely and with all his faculties on the stretch. A vast amount of experiment lies ready on the printed page. One may not by reading learn how to do perfect work, but one can at least discover what cannot by any possibility be done.

The general proposition is that the writer of fiction must observe life, must estimate it, and must express the phase that his estimation shows to be significant. The open eye, the cultivated and able mind, and the trained hand are all equally essential, and all must work together in harmony. Some have the eye without the hand; some the hand without the eye; in others the faculty of discrimination is wanting; but eye, mind, and hand may all be trained by application. No one who has not done his best has the right to complain of failure, and he who engages in the difficult business of letters, and neglects to use all efforts to equip himself, is a fool and nothing else. The writer may live in prosaic surroundings and be repressed by daily contact with people as dull as ditchwater; yet the world is wide and man a free agent within limits; let him strike his tent and go elsewhere. But let him first make quite sure that the defect is in his environment and not in himself. Otherwise, when ensconced in a snug artistic Bohemia, he may suffer the pain of learning that some quiet, clear-eyed seer has found rich ores in the old home life, and has wrought them to fresh shapes of beauty. And beyond the influence of all accidents of time and place lies the world of imagination, instinct with austere beauty, offering escape, solace, and rich gifts to him who has the golden key. Investigate the life that was Hawthorne’s in Salem, Massachusetts, in the thirties and forties, then read “The Scarlet Letter,” and turn your eyes within if ugliness lies stark about you. No boor and dullard may walk with you in the fields of fancy, alone with the night wind and the quiet stars. Dream with sanity, live with sanity, work with sanity and purpose, and realize that life and thought are your business, and that the stream of life as a whole is clean and fresh and sweet and utterly interesting even if you yourself are caught in some stagnant backwater. Open your eyes and swim for the clear reaches of the stream.

 by Robert Louis Stevenson

Style is the invariable mark of any master; and for the student who does not aspire so high as to be numbered with the giants, it is still the one quality in which he may improve himself at will.  Passion, wisdom, creative force, the power of mystery or colour, are allotted in the hour of birth, and can be neither learned nor simulated.  But the just and dexterous use of what qualities we have, the proportion of one part to another and to the whole, the elision of the useless, the accentuation of the important, and the preservation of a uniform character from end to end – these, which taken together constitute technical perfection, are to some degree within the reach of industry and intellectual courage.  What to put in and what to leave out; whether some particular fact be organically necessary or purely ornamental; whether, if it be purely ornamental, it may not weaken or obscure the general design; and finally, whether, if we decide to use it, we should do so grossly and notably, or in some conventional disguise: are questions of plastic style continually rearising.  And the sphinx that patrols the highways of executive art has no more unanswerable riddle to propound.

In literature (from which I must draw my instances) the great change of the past century has been effected by the admission of detail.  It was inaugurated by the romantic Scott; and at length, by the semi-romantic Balzac and his more or less wholly unromantic followers, bound like a duty on the novelist.  For some time it signified and expressed a more ample contemplation of the conditions of man’s life; but it has recently (at least in France) fallen into a merely technical and decorative stage, which it is, perhaps, still too harsh to call survival.  With a movement of alarm, the wiser or more timid begin to fall a little back from these extremities; they begin to aspire after a more naked, narrative articulation; after the succinct, the dignified, and the poetic; and as a means to this, after a general lightening of this baggage of detail.  After Scott we beheld the starveling story – once, in the hands of Voltaire, as abstract as a parable  – begin to be pampered upon facts.  The introduction of these details developed a particular ability of hand; and that ability, childishly indulged, has led to the works that now amaze us on a railway journey.  A man of the unquestionable force of M. Zola spends himself on technical successes.  To afford a popular flavour and attract the mob, he adds a steady current of what I may be allowed to call the rancid.  That is exciting to the moralist; but what more particularly interests the artist is this tendency of the extreme of detail, when followed as a principle, to degenerate into mere feux-de-joie of literary tricking.  The other day even M. Daudet was to be heard babbling of audible colours and visible sounds.

This odd suicide of one branch of the realists may serve to remind us of the fact which underlies a very dusty conflict of the critics.  All representative art, which can be said to live, is both realistic and ideal; and the realism about which we quarrel is a matter purely of externals.  It is no especial cultus of nature and veracity, but a mere whim of veering fashion, that has made us turn our back upon the larger, more various, and more romantic art of yore.  A photographic exactitude in dialogue is now the exclusive fashion; but even in the ablest hands it tells us no more – I think it even tells us less – than Molière, wielding his artificial medium, has told to us and to all time of Alceste or Orgon, Dorine or Chrysale.  The historical novel is forgotten.  Yet truth to the conditions of man’s nature and the conditions of man’s life, the truth of literary art, is free of the ages.  It may be told us in a carpet comedy, in a novel of adventure, or a fairy tale.  The scene may be pitched in London, on the sea-coast of Bohemia, or away on the mountains of Beulah.  And by an odd and luminous accident, if there is any page of literature calculated to awake the envy of M. Zola, it must be that Troilus and Cressida which Shakespeare, in a spasm of unmanly anger with the world, grafted on the heroic story of the siege of Troy.

This question of realism, let it then be clearly understood, regards not in the least degree the fundamental truth, but only the technical method, of a work of art.  Be as ideal or as abstract as you please, you will be none the less veracious; but if you be weak, you run the risk of being tedious and inexpressive; and if you be very strong and honest, you may chance upon a masterpiece.

A work of art is first cloudily conceived in the mind; during the period of gestation it stands more clearly forward from these swaddling mists, puts on expressive lineaments, and becomes at length that most faultless, but also, alas! that incommunicable product of the human mind, a perfected design.  On the approach to execution all is changed.  The artist must now step down, don his working clothes, and become the artisan.  He now resolutely commits his airy conception, his delicate Ariel, to the touch of matter; he must decide, almost in a breath, the scale, the style, the spirit, and the particularity of execution of his whole design.

The engendering idea of some works is stylistic; a technical preoccupation stands them instead of some robuster principle of life.  And with these the execution is but play; for the stylistic problem is resolved beforehand, and all large originality of treatment wilfully foregone.  Such are the verses, intricately designed, which we have learnt to admire, with a certain smiling admiration, at the hands of Mr. Lang and Mr. Dobson; such, too, are those canvases where dexterity or even breadth of plastic style takes the place of pictorial nobility of design.  So, it may be remarked, it was easier to begin to write Esmond than Vanity Fair, since, in the first, the style was dictated by the nature of the plan; and Thackeray, a man probably of some indolence of mind, enjoyed and got good profit of this economy of effort.  But the case is exceptional.  Usually in all works of art that have been conceived from within outwards, and generously nourished from the author’s mind, the moment in which he begins to execute is one of extreme perplexity and strain.  Artists of indifferent energy and an imperfect devotion to their own ideal make this ungrateful effort once for all; and, having formed a style, adhere to it through life.  But those of a higher order cannot rest content with a process which, as they continue to employ it, must infallibly degenerate towards the academic and the cut-and-dried.  Every fresh work in which they embark is the signal for a fresh engagement of the whole forces of their mind; and the changing views which accompany the growth of their experience are marked by still more sweeping alterations in the manner of their art.  So that criticism loves to dwell upon and distinguish the varying periods of a Raphael, a Shakespeare, or a Beethoven.

It is, then, first of all, at this initial and decisive moment when execution is begun, and thenceforth only in a less degree, that the ideal and the real do indeed, like good and evil angels, contend for the direction of the work.  Marble, paint, and language, the pen, the needle, and the brush, all have their grossnesses, their ineffable impotences, their hours, if I may so express myself, of insubordination.  It is the work and it is a great part of the delight of any artist to contend with these unruly tools, and now by brute energy, now by witty expedient, to drive and coax them to effect his will.  Given these means, so laughably inadequate, and given the interest, the intensity, and the multiplicity of the actual sensation whose effect he is to render with their aid, the artist has one main and necessary resource which he must, in every case and upon any theory, employ.  He must, that is, suppress much and omit more.  He must omit what is tedious or irrelevant, and suppress what is tedious and necessary.  But such facts as, in regard to the main design, subserve a variety of purposes, he will perforce and eagerly retain.  And it is the mark of the very highest order of creative art to be woven exclusively of such.  There, any fact that is registered is contrived a double or a treble debt to pay, and is at once an ornament in its place, and a pillar in the main design.  Nothing would find room in such a picture that did not serve, at once, to complete the composition, to accentuate the scheme of colour, to distinguish the planes of distance, and to strike the note of the selected sentiment; nothing would be allowed in such a story that did not, at the same time, expedite the progress of the fable, build up the characters, and strike home the moral or the philosophical design.  But this is unattainable.  As a rule, so far from building the fabric of our works exclusively with these, we are thrown into a rapture if we think we can muster a dozen or a score of them, to be the plums of our confection.  And hence, in order that the canvas may be filled or the story proceed from point to point, other details must be admitted.  They must be admitted, alas! upon a doubtful title; many without marriage robes.  Thus any work of art, as it proceeds towards completion, too often – I had almost written always – loses in force and poignancy of main design.  Our little air is swamped and dwarfed among hardly relevant orchestration; our little passionate story drowns in a deep sea of descriptive eloquence or slipshod talk.

But again, we are rather more tempted to admit those particulars which we know we can describe; and hence those most of all which, having been described very often, have grown to be conventionally treated in the practice of our art.  These we choose, as the mason chooses the acanthus to adorn his capital, because they come naturally to the accustomed hand.  The old stock incidents and accessories, tricks of workmanship and schemes of composition (all being admirably good, or they would long have been forgotten) haunt and tempt our fancy, offer us ready-made but not perfectly appropriate solutions for any problem that arises, and wean us from the study of nature and the uncompromising practice of art.  To struggle, to face nature, to find fresh solutions, and give expression to facts which have not yet been adequately or not yet elegantly expressed, is to run a little upon the danger of extreme self-love.  Difficulty sets a high price upon achievement; and the artist may easily fall into the error of the French naturalists, and consider any fact as welcome to admission if it be the ground of brilliant handiwork; or, again, into the error of the modern landscape-painter, who is apt to think that difficulty overcome and science well displayed can take the place of what is, after all, the one excuse and breath of art – charm.  A little further, and he will regard charm in the light of an unworthy sacrifice to prettiness, and the omission of a tedious passage as an infidelity to art.

We have now the matter of this difference before us.  The idealist, his eye singly fixed upon the greater outlines, loves rather to fill up the interval with detail of the conventional order, briefly touched, soberly suppressed in tone, courting neglect.  But the realist, with a fine intemperance, will not suffer the presence of anything so dead as a convention; he shall have all fiery, all hot-pressed from nature, all charactered and notable, seizing the eye.  The style that befits either of these extremes, once chosen, brings with it its necessary disabilities and dangers.  The immediate danger of the realist is to sacrifice the beauty and significance of the whole to local dexterity, or, in the insane pursuit of completion, to immolate his readers under facts; but he comes in the last resort, and as his energy declines, to discard all design, abjure all choice, and, with scientific thoroughness, steadily to communicate matter which is not worth learning.  The danger of the idealist is, of course, to become merely null and lose all grip of fact, particularity, or passion.

We talk of bad and good.  Everything, indeed, is good which is conceived with honesty and executed with communicative ardour.  But though on neither side is dogmatism fitting, and though in every case the artist must decide for himself, and decide afresh and yet afresh for each succeeding work and new creation; yet one thing may be generally said, that we of the last quarter of the nineteenth century, breathing as we do the intellectual atmosphere of our age, are more apt to err upon the side of realism than to sin in quest of the ideal.  Upon that theory it may be well to watch and correct our own decisions, always holding back the hand from the least appearance of irrelevant dexterity, and resolutely fixed to begin no work that is not philosophical, passionate, dignified, happily mirthful, or, at the last and least, romantic in design.

This list is for fun, and it  is meant to be to tongue-in-cheek. We hope to honor the women on this list, and by writing it we hope to draw more attention to their works. Imagine for a moment that these women lived today, in our culture. With names in “entertainment” like these, it would not be long before they made Star magazine’s best and worst dress list. Can you imagine Emily Dickinson’s exploits on the cover of The Enquirer. Yes we know that most of these poets were not known for their looks. That was most-likely due to the fact that their poetry and writing overshadowed their appeal. They have lived on because of their amazing verses and impact on writing. We know it is a little krass, but in today’s culture these ladies would no doubt make the sexiest list of “OK” magazine (absent of television and film actresses). It is a sensational list, we know, but we hope you will “check out” each of these writers. We really hope you read their writings because their works did shape the writing of all who came after them. Take a look at the Top 10 Hottest Poets of the 19th century.

1. Anne Bronte

Too often overshadowed by her sister’s works, Anne comes from a family of lookers. She also was a wonderful writer in her own right. She is the Audrey Hepburn of the 18th century writing world and number one on our list. Get more information on Anne here.

2. Emily Bronte

Emily is also a looker, and she was too over shadowed by the works of her sister. Emily did write Whithering Heights among others, so she was no slouch when it came to being an amazing author. A looker too. Find more info on her here.

3. Emily Dickinson

We doubt that Emily would ever have expected that over 100 years after her death she would be making our hottest poets list, but we think she is the tops. She has great style, and of course her poetry is the amazing. If you don’t know her work you’ve been living under a rock. If you can’t see her appeal, you are blinded by 21st century goggles.  Read about Emily here.

 4. Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Robert Browning fell in love with her the first time he read her poetry. He worked for years to get her to believe that he really loved her. She was 6 years older than him, but he did win her over after some trying. We can understand why he worked so hard at it. Read more here.  

5. Charlotte Bronte

The author of Jane Eyre and other masterpieces, she did overshadow other poets and novelist with her writing. She also makes our top 10 hottest list. Read more.

6. Jane Austin

Jane Austin might just be the most famous female writer of the 19th century. Next to Emily Dickinson, Jane is probably the best known and most loved, and as you can see from the picture, she was also pretty. Read more.

7. Margaret Fuller

  She was not a poet or a novelist, but she was the one of the first major female journalist. She also played a major role in shaping literature of the time by being a book reviewer. Either way we think she was one of the top. Read about her.

8. Caroline Kirkland

Kirkland was well know and a great editor of her time. She was also a looker. Read more about her here.

 9. George Elliot

By name you wouldn’t know that Ms. Elliot would make our list, but in truth she was a prolific and a high impact writer. Her real name was Mary Evans, but she felt people would not take her seriously if they thought she was a woman. She may have been correct at the time. We take her serious as a women and a writer. Read more about her.

10.  Harriet Beecher Stowe

Here writings energized the anti-slavery movement. Uncle Tom’s Cabin sparked must controversy, and might even have helped to start the Civil War. Read more.

Maybe the real beauty on this list, the real thing that we might call hottest on this list, is the internal beauty of each of these women. To us, the hottest thing about these women, is that their beauty is NOT skin deep.

by Mark Twain

          ADDRESS AT THE PILGRIMS’ CLUB LUNCHEON, GIVEN IN HONOR OF Mr.
          CLEMENS AT THE SAVOY HOTEL, LONDON, JUNE 25, 1907.

          Mr. Birrell, M.P., Chief-Secretary for Ireland, in introducing
          Mr. Clemens said: “We all love Mark Twain, and we are here to
          tell him so.  One more point—all the world knows it, and that
          is why it is dangerous to omit it—our guest is a distinguished
          citizen of the Great Republic beyond the seas.  In America his
          ‘Huckleberry Finn’ and his ‘Tom Sawyer’ are what ‘Robinson
          Crusoe’ and ‘Tom Brown’s School Days’ have been to us.  They
          are racy of the soil.  They are books to which it is impossible
          to place any period of termination.  I will not speak of the
          classics—reminiscences of much evil in our early lives.  We do
          not meet here to-day as critics with our appreciations and
          depreciations, our twopenny little prefaces or our forewords.
          I am not going to say what the world a thousand years hence
          will think of Mark Twain.  Posterity will take care of itself,
          will read what it wants to read, will forget what it chooses to
          forget, and will pay no attention whatsoever to our critical
          mumblings and jumblings.  Let us therefore be content to say to
          our friend and guest that we are here speaking for ourselves
          and for our children, to say what he has been to us.  I
          remember in Liverpool, in 1867, first buying the copy, which I
          still preserve, of the celebrated ‘Jumping Frog.’  It had a few
          words of preface which reminded me then that our guest in those
          days was called ‘the wild humorist of the Pacific slope,’ and a
          few lines later down, ‘the moralist of the Main.’  That was
          some forty years ago.  Here he is, still the humorist, still
          the moralist.  His humor enlivens and enlightens his morality,
          and his morality is all the better for his humor.  That is one
          of the reasons why we love him.  I am not here to mention any
          book of his—that is a subject of dispute in my family circle,
          which is the best and which is the next best—but I must put in
          a word, lest I should not be true to myself—a terrible thing
          —for his Joan of Arc, a book of chivalry, of nobility, and of
          manly sincerity for which I take this opportunity of thanking
          him.  But you can all drink this toast, each one of you with
          his own intention.  You can get into it what meaning you like.
          Mark Twain is a man whom English and Americans do well to
          honor.  He is the true consolidator of nations.  His delightful
          humor is of the kind which dissipates and destroys national
          prejudices.  His truth and his honor, his love of truth, and
          his love of honor, overflow all boundaries.  He has made the
          world better by his presence.  We rejoice to see him here.
          Long may he live to reap the plentiful harvest of hearty,
          honest human affection!”

Pilgrims, I desire first to thank those undergraduates of Oxford. When a man has grown so old as I am, when he has reached the verge of seventy-two years, there is nothing that carries him back to the dreamland of his life, to his boyhood, like recognition of those young hearts up yonder. And so I thank them out of my heart. I desire to thank the Pilgrims of New York also for their kind notice and message which they have cabled over here. Mr. Birrell says he does not know how he got here. But he will be able to get away all right—he has not drunk anything since he came here. I am glad to know about those friends of his, Otway and Chatterton—fresh, new names to me. I am glad of the disposition he has shown to rescue them from the evils of poverty, and if they are still in London, I hope to have a talk with them. For a while I thought he was going to tell us the effect which my book had upon his growing manhood. I thought he was going to tell us how much that effect amounted to, and whether it really made him what he now is, but with the discretion born of Parliamentary experience he dodged that, and we do not know now whether he read the book or not. He did that very neatly. I could not do it any better myself.

My books have had effects, and very good ones, too, here and there, and some others not so good. There is no doubt about that. But I remember one monumental instance of it years and years ago. Professor Norton, of Harvard, was over here, and when he came back to Boston I went out with Howells to call on him. Norton was allied in some way by marriage with Darwin.

Mr. Norton was very gentle in what he had to say, and almost delicate, and he said: “Mr. Clemens, I have been spending some time with Mr. Darwin in England, and I should like to tell you something connected with that visit. You were the object of it, and I myself would have been very proud of it, but you may not be proud of it. At any rate, I am going to tell you what it was, and to leave to you to regard it as you please. Mr. Darwin took me up to his bedroom and pointed out certain things there-pitcher-plants, and so on, that he was measuring and watching from day to day—and he said: ‘The chambermaid is permitted to do what she pleases in this room, but she must never touch those plants and never touch those books on that table by that candle. With those books I read myself to sleep every night.’ Those were your own books.” I said: “There is no question to my mind as to whether I should regard that as a compliment or not. I do regard it as a very great compliment and a very high honor that that great mind, laboring for the whole human race, should rest itself on my books. I am proud that he should read himself to sleep with them.”

Now, I could not keep that to myself—I was so proud of it. As soon as I got home to Hartford I called up my oldest friend—and dearest enemy on occasion—the Rev. Joseph Twichell, my pastor, and I told him about that, and, of course, he was full of interest and venom. Those people who get no compliments like that feel like that. He went off. He did not issue any applause of any kind, and I did not hear of that subject for some time. But when Mr. Darwin passed away from this life, and some time after Darwin’s Life and Letters came out, the Rev. Mr. Twichell procured an early copy of that work and found something in it which he considered applied to me. He came over to my house—it was snowing, raining, sleeting, but that did not make any difference to Twichell. He produced the book, and turned over and over, until he came to a certain place, when he said: “Here, look at this letter from Mr. Darwin to Sir Joseph Hooker.” What Mr. Darwin said—I give you the idea and not the very words—was this: I do not know whether I ought to have devoted my whole life to these drudgeries in natural history and the other sciences or not, for while I may have gained in one way I have lost in another. Once I had a fine perception and appreciation of high literature, but in me that quality is atrophied. “That was the reason,” said Mr. Twichell, “he was reading your books.”

Mr. Birrell has touched lightly—very lightly, but in not an uncomplimentary way—on my position in this world as a moralist. I am glad to have that recognition, too, because I have suffered since I have been in this town; in the first place, right away, when I came here, from a newsman going around with a great red, highly displayed placard in the place of an apron. He was selling newspapers, and there were two sentences on that placard which would have been all right if they had been punctuated; but they ran those two sentences together without a comma or anything, and that would naturally create a wrong impression, because it said, “Mark Twain arrives Ascot Cup stolen.” No doubt many a person was misled by those sentences joined together in that unkind way. I have no doubt my character has suffered from it. I suppose I ought to defend my character, but how can I defend it? I can say here and now—and anybody can see by my face that I am sincere, that I speak the truth—that I have never seen that Cup. I have not got the Cup—I did not have a chance to get it. I have always had a good character in that way. I have hardly ever stolen anything, and if I did steal anything I had discretion enough to know about the value of it first. I do not steal things that are likely to get myself into trouble. I do not think any of us do that. I know we all take things—that is to be expected—but really, I have never taken anything, certainly in England, that amounts to any great thing. I do confess that when I was here seven years ago I stole a hat, but that did not amount to anything. It was not a good hat, and was only a clergyman’s hat, anyway.

I was at a luncheon party, and Archdeacon Wilberforce was there also. I dare say he is Archdeacon now—he was a canon then—and he was serving in the Westminster battery, if that is the proper term—I do not know, as you mix military and ecclesiastical things together so much. He left the luncheon table before I did. He began this. I did steal his hat, but he began by taking mine. I make that interjection because I would not accuse Archdeacon Wilberforce of stealing my hat—I should not think of it. I confine that phrase to myself. He merely took my hat. And with good judgment, too—it was a better hat than his. He came out before the luncheon was over, and sorted the hats in the hall, and selected one which suited. It happened to be mine. He went off with it. When I came out by-and-by there was no hat there which would go on my head except his, which was left behind. My head was not the customary size just at that time. I had been receiving a good many very nice and complimentary attentions, and my head was a couple of sizes larger than usual, and his hat just suited me. The bumps and corners were all right intellectually. There were results pleasing to me—possibly so to him. He found out whose hat it was, and wrote me saying it was pleasant that all the way home, whenever he met anybody his gravities, his solemnities, his deep thoughts, his eloquent remarks were all snatched up by the people he met, and mistaken for brilliant humorisms.

I had another experience. It was not unpleasing. I was received with a deference which was entirely foreign to my experience by everybody whom I met, so that before I got home I had a much higher opinion of myself than I have ever had before or since. And there is in that very connection an incident which I remember at that old date which is rather melancholy to me, because it shows how a person can deteriorate in a mere seven years. It is seven years ago. I have not that hat now. I was going down Pall-Mall, or some other of your big streets, and I recognized that that hat needed ironing. I went into a big shop and passed in my hat, and asked that it might be ironed. They were courteous, very courteous, even courtly. They brought that hat back to me presently very sleek and nice, and I asked how much there was to pay. They replied that they did not charge the clergy anything. I have cherished the delight of that moment from that day to this. It was the first thing I did the other day to go and hunt up that shop and hand in my hat to have it ironed. I said when it came back, “How much to pay?” They said, “Ninepence.” In seven years I have acquired all that worldliness, and I am sorry to be back where I was seven years ago.

But now I am chaffing and chaffing and chaffing here, and I hope you will forgive me for that; but when a man stands on the verge of seventy-two you know perfectly well that he never reached that place without knowing what this life is heart-breaking bereavement. And so our reverence is for our dead. We do not forget them; but our duty is toward the living; and if we can be cheerful, cheerful in spirit, cheerful in speech and in hope, that is a benefit to those who are around us.

My own history includes an incident which will always connect me with England in a pathetic way, for when I arrived here seven years ago with my wife and my daughter—we had gone around the globe lecturing to raise money to clear off a debt—my wife and one of my daughters started across the ocean to bring to England our eldest daughter. She was twenty four years of age and in the bloom of young womanhood, and we were unsuspecting. When my wife and daughter—and my wife has passed from this life since—when they had reached mid Atlantic, a cablegram—one of those heartbreaking cablegrams which we all in our days have to experience—was put into my hand. It stated that that daughter of ours had gone to her long sleep. And so, as I say, I cannot always be cheerful, and I cannot always be chaffing; I must sometimes lay the cap and bells aside, and recognize that I am of the human race like the rest, and must have my cares and griefs. And therefore I noticed what Mr. Birrell said—I was so glad to hear him say it—something that was in the nature of these verses here at the top of this:

              “He lit our life with shafts of sun
               And vanquished pain.
               Thus two great nations stand as one
               In honoring Twain.”

I am very glad to have those verses. I am very glad and very grateful for what Mr. Birrell said in that connection. I have received since I have been here, in this one week, hundreds of letters from all conditions of people in England—men, women, and children—and there is in them compliment, praise, and, above all and better than all, there is in them a note of affection. Praise is well, compliment is well, but affection—that is the last and final and most precious reward that any man can win, whether by character or achievement, and I am very grateful to have that reward. All these letters make me feel that here in England—as in America—when I stand under the English flag, I am not a stranger. I am not an alien, but at home.

an excerpt from Byways of Ghost-Land 1911
 by Elliott O’Donnell

Very different from this were-wolf, though also belonging to the great family of elementals, are the fox-women of Japan and China, about which much has been written, but about which, apparently, very little is known.

In China the fox was (and in remote parts still is) believed to attain the age of eight hundred or a thousand years. At fifty it can assume the form of a woman, and at one hundred that of a young and lovely girl, called Kao-Sai, or “Our Lady.” On reaching the thousand years’ limit, it goes to Paradise without physical dissolution. I have questioned many Chinese concerning these fox-women, but have never been able to get any very definite information. One Chinaman, however, assured me that his brother had actually seen the transmigration from fox to woman take place. The man’s name I have forgotten, but I will call him Ching Kang. Well, Ching Kang was one day threading his way through a lovely valley of the Tapa-ling mountains, when he came upon a silver (i.e. white) fox crouching on the bank of a stream in such a peculiar attitude that Ching Kang’s attention was at once arrested. Thinking that the animal was ill, and delighted at the prospect of lending it aid, for silver foxes are regarded as of good omen in China, Ching Kang approached it, and was about to examine it carefully, when to his astonishment he found he could not move—he was hypnotised. But although his limbs were paralysed, his faculties were wonderfully active, and his heart almost ceased beating when he saw the fox slowly begin to get bigger and bigger, until at last its head was on a level with his own. There was then a loud crash, its skin burst asunder, and there stepped out of it the form of a girl of such entrancing beauty that Ching Kang thought he must be in Heaven. She was fairer than most Chinese women; her eyes were blue instead of brown, and her shapely hands and feet were of milky whiteness. She was gaily dressed in blue silk, with earrings and bracelets of blue stone, and carried in one of her hands a blue fan. With a wave of her slender palms she released Ching Kang from his spell, and, bidding him follow her, plunged into a thick clump of bushes. Madly infatuated, Ching Kang needed no second bidding, but, keeping close to her heels, stolidly pushed his way through barricades of brambles that, whilst yielding to her touch, closed on him and beat him on the face and body so unmercifully that in a very short time he was barely recognisable, being literally bathed in blood. However, despite his wounds increasing and multiplying with every step he took, and naturally causing him the most excruciating agony, Ching Kang never, for one instant, thought of turning back; he always kept within touching distance of the blue form in front of him. But at last human nature could stand it no longer; his strength gave way, and as with a mad shriek of despair he implored her to stop, his senses left him and he fell in a heap to the ground. When he recovered he was lying alone, quite alone in the middle of the road, exactly opposite the spot where he had first seen the fox, and by his side was a fan, a blue fan. Picking it up sadly, he placed it near his heart (where it remained to the very day of his death), and with one last lingering look at the bank of the stream, he continued his solitary journey.

This was Ching Kang’s story. His brother did not think he ever met the fox-woman again. He believed Ching Kang was still searching for her when he died.

 by Leo Tolstoy

I have said that my friendship with Dimitri opened up for me a new view of my life and of its aim and relations. The essence of that view lay in the conviction that the destiny of man is to strive for moral improvement, and that such improvement is at once easy, possible, and lasting. Hitherto, however, I had found pleasure only in the new ideas which I discovered to arise from that conviction, and in the forming of brilliant plans for a moral, active future, while all the time my life had been continuing along its old petty, muddled, pleasure-seeking course, and the same virtuous thoughts which I and my adored friend Dimitri (“my own marvellous Mitia,” as I used to call him to myself in a whisper) had been wont to exchange with one another still pleased my intellect, but left my sensibility untouched. Nevertheless there came a moment when those thoughts swept into my head with a sudden freshness and force of moral revelation which left me aghast at the amount of time which I had been wasting, and made me feel as though I must at once—that very second—apply those thoughts to life, with the firm intention of never again changing them.

It is from that moment that I date the beginning of my youth.

I was then nearly sixteen. Tutors still attended to give me lessons, St. Jerome still acted as general supervisor of my education, and, willy-nilly, I was being prepared for the University. In addition to my studies, my occupations included certain vague dreamings and ponderings, a number of gymnastic exercises to make myself the finest athlete in the world, a good deal of aimless, thoughtless wandering through the rooms of the house (but more especially along the maidservants’ corridor), and much looking at myself in the mirror. From the latter, however, I always turned away with a vague feeling of depression, almost of repulsion. Not only did I feel sure that my exterior was ugly, but I could derive no comfort from any of the usual consolations under such circumstances. I could not say, for instance, that I had at least an expressive, clever, or refined face, for there was nothing whatever expressive about it. Its features were of the most humdrum, dull, and unbecoming type, with small grey eyes which seemed to me, whenever I regarded them in the mirror, to be stupid rather than clever. Of manly bearing I possessed even less, since, although I was not exactly small of stature, and had, moreover, plenty of strength for my years, every feature in my face was of the meek, sleepy-looking, indefinite type. Even refinement was lacking in it, since, on the contrary, it precisely resembled that of a simple-looking moujik, while I also had the same big hands and feet as he. At the time, all this seemed to me very shameful.

 by William B. Yeats

A description in the Iliad or the Odyssey, unlike one in the Æneid or in most modern writers, is the swift and natural observation of a man as he is shaped by life. It is a refinement of the primary hungers and has the least possible of what is merely scholarly or exceptional. It is, above all, never too observant, too professional, and when the book is closed we have had our energies enriched, for we have been in the mid-current. We have never seen anything Odysseus could not have seen while his thought was of the Cyclops, or Achilles when Briseis moved him to desire. In the art of the greatest periods there is something careless and sudden in all habitual moods though not in their expression, because these moods [Pg 21]are a conflagration of all the energies of active life. In primitive times the blind man became a poet as he becomes a fiddler in our villages, because he had to be driven out of activities all his nature cried for, before he could be contented with the praise of life. And often it is Villon or Verlaine with impediments plain to all, who sings of life with the ancient simplicity. Poets of coming days when once more it will be possible to write as in the great epochs will recognise that their sacrifice shall be to refuse what blindness and evil name, or imprisonment at the outsetting, denied to men who missed thereby the sting of a deliberate refusal. The poets of the ages of silver need no refusal of life, the dome of many-coloured glass is already shattered while they live. They look at life deliberately and as if from beyond life, and the greatest of them need suffer nothing but the sadness that the saints have known. This is their aim, and their temptation is not a passionate activity, but the approval of their fellows, which comes to them in full abundance only when they delight in the general thoughts that hold together a cultivated middle-class, where irresponsibilities of position and poverty are lacking; the things that are more excellent among educated men who have political preoccupations, Augustus Cæsar’s affability, all that impersonal fecundity which muddies the intellectual passions. Ben Jonson says in the [Pg 22]Poetaster, that even the best of men without Promethean fire is but a hollow statue, and a studious man will commonly forget after some forty winters that of a certainty Promethean fire will burn somebody’s fingers. It may happen that poets will be made more often by their sins than by their virtues, for general praise is unlucky, as the villages know, and not merely as I imagine—for I am superstitious about these things—because the praise of all but an equal enslaves and adds a pound to the ball at the ankle with every compliment.

All energy that comes from the whole man is as irregular as the lightning, for the communicable and forecastable and discoverable is a part only, a hungry chicken under the breast of the pelican, and the test of poetry is not in reason but in a delight not different from the delight that comes to a man at the first coming of love into the heart. I knew an old man who had spent his whole life cutting hazel and privet from the paths, and in some seventy years he had observed little but had many imaginations. He had never seen like a naturalist, never seen things as they are, for his habitual mood had been that of a man stirred in his affairs; and Shakespeare, Tintoretto, though the times were running out when Tintoretto painted, nearly all the great men of the renaissance, looked at the world with eyes like his. Their minds were never quiescent, never as it were in a mood for [Pg 23]scientific observations, always an exaltation, never—to use known words—founded upon an elimination of the personal factor; and their attention and the attention of those they worked for dwelt constantly with what is present to the mind in exaltation. I am too modern fully to enjoy Tintoretto’s Creation of the Milky Way, I cannot fix my thoughts upon that glowing and palpitating flesh intently enough to forget, as I can the make-believe of a fairy tale, that heavy drapery hanging from a cloud, though I find my pleasure in King Lear heightened by the make-believe that comes upon it all when the fool says: ‘This prophecy Merlin shall make, for I live before his time:’—and I always find it quite natural, so little does logic in the mere circumstance matter in the finest art, that Richard’s & Richmond’s tents should be side by side. I saw with delight the ‘Knight of the Burning Pestle’ when Mr. Carr revived it, and found it none the worse because the apprentice acted a whole play upon the spur of the moment and without committing a line to heart. When Ben Bronson’s ‘Epicœne’ rammed a century of laughter into the two hours’ traffic, I found with amazement that almost every journalist had put logic on the seat, where our lady imagination should pronounce that unjust and favouring sentence her woman’s heart is ever[Pg 24] plotting, & had felt bound to cherish none but reasonable sympathies and to resent the baiting of that grotesque old man. I have been looking over a book of engravings made in the eighteenth century from those wall-pictures of Herculaneum and Pompeii that were, it seems, the work of journeymen copying from finer paintings, for the composition is always too good for the execution. I find in great numbers an indifference to obvious logic, to all that the eye sees at common moments. Perseus shows Andromeda the death she lived by in a pool, and though the lovers are carefully drawn the reflection is upside down that we may see it the better. There is hardly an old master who has not made known to us in some like way how little he cares for what every fool can see and every knave can praise. The men who imagined the arts were not less superstitious in religion, understanding the spiritual relations, but not the mechanical, and finding nothing that need strain the throat in those gnats the floods of Noah and Deucalion, and in Joshua’s moon at Ascalon.