Part 2. Seeking A Publisher - March 1st. -- March 30th.

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_ PART II. SEEKING A PUBLISHER March 1st. -- March 30th.

To-day I had a day off, and I went to see the editor. I have been waiting, day by day, for a letter; it has been a month since I left it with him, and I found that he had not read it yet!

"Mr. Stirling," he said, "it is not my fault, it has simply been impossible. Now I will tell you what to do. I am going out of the city Sunday week, and I shall have a little leisure then. I do not see how I can get to it before that, so you take it and see if you can find some one else to read it meanwhile. If you will bring it to me Saturday, a week from to-day, I will promise you faithfully to read it on Sunday."

So I took the manuscript. I tried four publishing houses, but I could not find one that would read it in a week. I had to take the manuscript home.

* * * * *

March 3d.

To-morrow ends my second week at the restaurant. It took me five days to find that place, but I am going to give it up to-morrow. I could not bear it, if it were to save my life. I can not bear the noise and the grease and the dirt, and the endless, endless vulgarity; but above all I can not bear the music.

I can bear almost any degradation, I have found; but not when I have to listen to music!

Besides, I can afford to give it up. I have made a fortune. I shall have over thirty dollars when I leave!

* * * * *

I have always been paid, I find, in proportion to the indignities I bore--in proportion to the amount I humiliated myself before the rich and the vulgar. These vile, bejeweled, befeathered women, these loathsome, swinish men--_these_ are the people who have money to spend. They go through the world scattering their largess with royal hand; and you can get down and gather it up out of the mud beneath their feet.

* * * * *

I come home at night worn out and weak, sometimes almost in a stupor; but I am never too ill to brood over that hideous state of affairs. I gaze at it and I wring my hands, and I cry: Oh my Father in heaven, will it always be like this?

Think of it--this money that these people squander--do you know what it is? It is the toil of society! That is what it is,--it is _my_ toil--it is the toil of the millions that swarm in the tenements where I live--it is the toil of the laborers, the beasts of burden of society, in the cities and in the country.

Think about it, I cry, think about it!--Can I not find any word, is there nothing I can do or say now or at any time, to make men see it? Why, you take it for granted--_I_ have taken it for granted all my days--that money should belong to the brutal rich to squander in whatever inanity may please them! But it never dawns upon you that this money is _the toil of the human race_! Money is the representation of all that human toil creates--of all _value_; it is houses that laborers build, it is grain that farmers raise, it is books that poets write! And see what becomes of it--see! _see_! Or are you blind or mad, that you _will_ not see? Have you no more faith in man, no more care about the soul?

* * * * *

You think that I have been made sick by my work in that one haunt of vice. But it is not only that, it is not only that fever district where all the diseases of a city gather. I have been all _over_ the city, and it is everywhere the same. Go to the opera-house any night and you may see blasphemous vanity enough to feed the starving of this city for a year. Walk up Fifth Avenue and see them driving; or go to Newport and see them there. Why, I read in the papers once of a woman who gave a ball--and the little fact has stuck in my mind ever since that she wore a dress trimmed with lace that cost a thousand dollars a meter! I do not speak of the infinite vulgarity of the thing--it is the monstrous _crime_ of it that cries to me. These people--why, they have society by the _throat_!

* * * * *

I bury my face in my pillow and sob; but then I look up and pray for faith. I say we are only at the beginning of civilization, we can see but the first gleams of a social conscience; but it will come--it must come! Am I to believe that mankind will always submit to toil and pant to make lace at a thousand dollars a meter to cover the pride-swollen carcase of a society dame?

* * * * *

How is it to be managed? I do not know. I am not a political economist--I am a seeker after righteousness. But as a poet, and as a clear-eyed soul, I stand upon the heights and I cry out for it, I demand it. I demand that society shall come to its own, I demand that there shall be intelligence in the world! I demand that the toil of the millions shall not be for the pride of the few! I demand that it shall not be to buy diamonds and dresses and banquets, horses and carriages, palaces and yachts! I demand that it shall be for the making of knowledge and power, of beauty and light and love!

* * * * *

Oh, thou black jungle of a world!--What know you of knowledge and power, of beauty and light and love? What do you dream of these things? The end of man as you know it is to fight and struggle like a maniac, and grab for his own all that he can lay his claws upon. And what is your social ideal--but to lavish, each man upon himself, all that he can lavish before he dies? And whom do you honor save him who succeeds in that? And whom do you scorn save him who fails?

* * * * *

Oh thou black jungle of a world!--I cry it once again--

Where savage beasts through forest midnight roam,
Seeking in sorrow for each other's joy!

I sit alone and think of these things, until my breath comes hard with rage. I say: "It is these that I serve--it is these who own the fruits of my toil--it is these for whom I am starved and crushed--it is these by whom my God-given power is trampled into annihilation!"

* * * * *

March 4th.

I gave the place up this morning. I have thirty-one dollars. I think such a sum of money never made me less happy.

I have nothing to do but drag myself back to my room and wait there until the eighth, to take back my manuscript. It will be five weeks that he has kept me--I suppose that is not his fault.

And then I say: "Fool, to torment yourself with such hopes! Don't you _know_ that he will say what all the rest have said? He is a clever man, and he knows everything; but what use is he going to have for your poetry?"

* * * * *

I wandered about almost all of to-day, or sat stupid in my room. I have lost all my habits of effort--I have forgotten all that I ever knew, all my hopes, all my plans. I said: "I will study!" But then I added: "Why should I? Shall I not only make myself miserable, get myself full of emotion, and to no purpose but the carrying of dishes?"

* * * * *

It is terrible to me to have to acknowledge any change in my way of living--I never did that before. Compromises! Concessions! Surrenders!--words such as those set me mad. But what am I to do? What _can_ I do? I writhe and twist, but there is no escape. I struggle upward, but I am only beaten back and back? How should I not stop striving?

* * * * *

Circumstances made no difference to a man. So I used to prate!

No difference! Why, I was a giant in my soul, swift and terrible as the lion. I leaped upon my task, I seized upon everything that came my way. I passed whole classes of men at a bound, I saw, I felt--I bore the world in my soul. I would dare everything, learn everything, live everything--take it all into myself. And every day I was stronger, every day I was more!--

And now see me! You have penned me here, you have starved me, stunted me, crushed me--I sit shivering and staring at my own piteousness! Why, I can not even be angry any more--I am too shrunken, too impotent for that! And was it my fault? Have I not fought till I was ill?

--But never did I put forth a hope that it was not withered in the bud! My every enthusiasm you stamped into the ground; every advance that I made--why you smote me in the face! And all my ardor, my confidence, my trust--has it ever met with anything but jeers?

* * * * *

--Yes, and now you turn away--this revolts you! This is bare, painful egotism--this is whining--this is querulous misery. It offends you like the sight of raw flesh!

--It is my raw soul. My poor little naked, pitiful, beaten soul!--groveling, and begging, too!

* * * * *

--But whose fault is it--merciful Heaven, whose fault is it? It is my nature to live in myself--to live from myself. And this that is unbearable egotism, why, it would have been exulting power! Joy in a vision! Mastery of a life and an art!

But here you shut me up! You crush me down! I try to escape--I cry out: "I am _not_ an egotist--I am a worshiper! I want nothing in the world so much as to forget myself--my rights, my claims, my powers, my talents! I want to think of God! Only give me a chance--only give me a chance to do that, and I care not what you do with me! Here I stand with my poor little work, begging, pleading for some one to heed it! Thinking of it only, living for it only, insisting upon it day and night! But do you think that I do that of choice? My God, no--you are mad--I only want to go on! Give me but the chance to go on--and do you think that I would care whether any man admired my work?"

--Why, I would not even know it--I would be out in the mountains alone!

* * * * *

"But for what had you your pride in the morning, and in the evening your submission?"

Can you guess how that jeer rings in my ears, how it goads me?

* * * * *

March 5th.

Sinking down! Sinking down! To see yourself one of the losing creatures, to know that there is no help for you in this world--that no one will heed you, no one will stretch out a hand! To see yourself with every weakness, to see yourself as everything that you hate--to be mad with rage against yourself, and still to be able to do nothing!

* * * * *

--Understand what I mean--poor fools, do not think it is for myself that I fear. If I wanted to fight a way for myself--I could do it yet--never fear. But ah, you will save the mother and not her child! What I weep for, what I die for, is my ART!

My vision, my life, my joy, my fire! These are the things that are dying! And when the soul is dead do you think that I shall care about the body? Do you think that I will stay in this world a shell, a mockery, a corpse? Stay either to putrefy with pleasure or to be embalmed in dulness? Nay, you do not know me!

* * * * *

--I said to myself to-night, "If I perish in this world it will be because I was too far ahead of my environment--that and that only. It will be because I was pure, single-hearted, consecrated, and because of such you neither know nor care." Do I fear to say that? I am done with shame--I think that I am dying--let me speak the truth.

* * * * *

--And I have really said the word then--the word that can not be recalled--that my hope is dead, that I give up--that I can not live my life? Nay--I do not have to say the word, the word says itself.

* * * * *

March 6th.

To-day I shook myself together. I could not stand such wretchedness. I said, I will get a novel, and I will put myself into it--grimly--I will read in spite of everything.

* * * * *

And such a book as I lighted on by chance!--Once I had whole yawning vistas of books toward which I stretched out my arms; but somehow I had forgotten them all to-day. I could do no better than pick up a book by chance.--

I picked up Tess of the D'Urbervilles, and I found myself in the midst of the same misery that haunts me here. I read it, but it did not help me.

* * * * *

--It is strange what poverty has ground into my soul. I find myself reading such a book with but one feeling, one idea crying out in me. I discover that my whole being is reduced to the great elemental, primitive instinct of self-preservation. Love is dead in me, generosity, humanity, imagination is dead,--everything but one wild-beast passion; and I find myself panting as I read: "Get some money! Get some money! Hold on to it!"

* * * * *

--After a while I think suddenly: "And I am a poet!" That brings a moan from me and I sit shuddering.

* * * * *

March 7th.

Tess of the D'Urbervilles is one of the most unconvincing books I ever read. I neither believed in it nor cared about it in the slightest.

I am shown a "pure woman," and by and by I learn, to my perplexity, that she has been seduced; after which she continues the "pure woman" again, and I am asked to agonize over her troubles! But all the time I keep saying, "This is not a woman that you are showing me at all--a woman with a soul; it is a puppet figure that you suppose 'seduced' for the sake of the story."

It is our absurd English ideas of "propriety" that make possible such things. If the author had had to show the seduction of "Tess" the weakness of the thing would have been plain in an instant. That he did not show it was his lack of conscience. There is no propriety in art but truth.

* * * * *

March 8th.

I took the manuscript to the editor again to-day. He told me to come in on Monday.

Deep in my soul I can have no more disappointments about it. I take it about from habit. I sat and looked it over last night, but one can not read emotional things in cold blood. I said, Is this true? Is it natural? Is there any _use_ in it?

I was tempted to cut out one or two things; but I decided to let it stay as it was.

* * * * *

March 10th.

I have been sitting to-night in my room, half-dazed, or pacing about the streets talking to myself in a frenzy. I can hardly believe that it is true, I can hardly realize it! I laugh with excitement, and then I cry.

* * * * *

I went to-day to get back my manuscript. And the editor said: "Mr. Stirling, it is a most extraordinary piece of work. It is a most interesting thing, I like it very much."

I stared at him gasping. Then I waited to hear him say--"But I regret"--But he didn't!

"I can't tell you anything definite about it," he said. "I want to submit it to the firm. I wouldn't undertake to accept any such unusual thing for the magazine without consulting them, and especially seeing if they will bring it out afterward--"

"You are thinking of using it in the magazine!" I cried.

"As I tell you, I can't say positively. I can only tell you what I think of it. I will have them read it at once--"

"I will take it to them to-day!" I put in.

"No," he said, "you need not, for I am going there this afternoon, and I will take it, and ask them to read it immediately."

I can't remember what else he said. I was deaf, crazy! I rushed home, talking to myself incoherently. I remember sitting here in a chair and saying aloud, "Oh, it can't be! It is impossible! That it should be good enough to publish in a magazine like that! It is some mistake--it will all come to nothing. It's absurd!"

* * * * *

So I sat, and I thought what such a thing would mean to me--it would make my reputation in a day--I should be free--_free_! But I thought of it and it did not make me happy; I only sat staring at myself, shuddering. The endless mournfulness that is in my heart surged up in me like a tide, and suddenly I began to cry like a child.

"It has come to me too late," I exclaimed, "too late! I can't believe it--it doesn't mean anything to me. I don't care anything about it--I mean the poem! _I don't believe in it myself_!"

God, do you know I said that, and _meant_ it? I said more--I sat and whispered it to myself: "Let them take it, yes, let them! I don't care--it will set me free--I shall have some money! But they're fools to do it, they're fools!"

* * * * *

March 11th.

I tremble with excitement all the day, dreaming about that thing. I go about half-mad. "Oh, just think of it," I whisper, "just think of it!"

I linger about it hungrily! He spoke as if he really meant to make them take it.

* * * * *

March 13th.

I went to see him to-day to ask. No, they had not let him know yet, but they had the manuscript. He would write me.

I made up my mind that I would not bother him again. I will wait, hard as it is.

* * * * *

I sat asking myself to-day, "Do you really mean that you believe that poem is going to stir the world--this huge, heedless world you see about you? Have you truly that blind, unreasoning faith that you try to persuade yourself you have?"

* * * * *

Ah, I don't know what I believe now. Only, once I had my young courage,--I feared not the world, I could do anything. Now I am but one among a million.

* * * * *

March 16th.

I force myself to read these things that half-interest me; but I think I spend a quarter of my time wandering about whispering that they are going to publish it. I cry out, "Oh, they must!" I go into the library and stare at the magazine and think of it there. I walk past the publishers', and think of it there! I have been inquiring all about publishing, about terms and all that sort of thing. It makes my brain reel--why, they might pay me five hundred dollars for it! Think of it--five hundred dollars!--I could go crazy with such a thought as that.

And then I think what the reviews will say of it, and I cry, "Oh, no, it can't be true!"

Again I find myself saying, "Only let them take it! I don't care about the rest, whether it succeeds or not--let them take it!"

* * * * *

March 18th.

I walked past the editor's office to-day. It took just every bit of will that I had, not to go in. I said: "He might know even now, and I wouldn't hear till to-morrow!"

But I didn't do it. I said I would wait a week, anyhow.

* * * * *

March 20th.

I don't know what in the world to make of it.

The week ended to-day, and nothing yet; and I hit upon another scheme, I went to the publishers. I said: "I will ask them, and he needn't know anything about it and it won't bother him." So I went in and they referred me to the manuscript clerk. She said she had never heard of The Captive.

"But it's here somewhere," I said, "the editor brought it here."

"There is no manuscript ever comes here," she answered, "that is not entered on my books."

"But," I said, "some member of the firm must have it."

"If any member of the firm got it," she said, smiling, "the first thing he would do would be to bring it to me to enter in the books."

I insisted. I wanted to see somebody in the firm, but she answered me there was no use. Finally she suggested that they might know something about it up in the offices of the magazine. I went there, but no, no one had ever heard of it there.

I came home dazed. I don't know what in the world to make of it. He certainly said that the firm was reading it. I wrote to-night to ask him about it.

* * * * *

March 23d.

I have waited day by day in the utmost perplexity to hear from him about that. I should have heard from him yesterday. I don't know what in the world to make of it. Can he have gone in to them privately? Or can he have forgotten it--he is so busy!

I dread the latter circumstance--but I dread as much to anger him in the other case.

* * * * *

March 27th.

I waited four days more. I went up to see him. Just as I feared. I have annoyed him. I could see it. I know he must be tired of seeing my face.

"Mr. Stirling," he said, "I have told you that the poem is being read by the firm, and that I will let you know the moment I hear from them."

"I only came," I said, "because the clerk told me--"

"There are some things clerks don't know," he put in.

I tremble at the thought of making him angry. I will not go near him again.

* * * * *

March 30th.

I am doing my best to keep my mind on some reading, so as not to make the agony unbearable. But it is very hard--the mails disturb you. I can only read in the middle of the day, and at night. In the morning I expect the first mail, trembling; but after that I know a city letter can't come till afternoon, so I can read. Then again at night I know it can't come.

* * * * *

--I am reading The Ring and the Book. I have always found that it doesn't do to take vulgar opinions. I had supposed I should find The Ring and the Book hard reading.

It _is_ skippable--the consequence of having a foolish scheme to fill out. But the story of Pompilia and Giuseppi is one of the finest things I know of anywhere. _

Read next: Part 2. Seeking A Publisher: April 3d. -- April 28th.

Read previous: Part 2. Seeking A Publisher: February 1st. -- February 27th.

Table of content of Journal of Arthur Stirling: "The Valley of the Shadow"


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