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Title: Ideal Interviews
Author: Stephen Leacock [
More Titles by Leacock]
I. WITH A EUROPEAN PRINCE
With any European Prince, travelling in America
On receiving our card the Prince, to our great surprise and pleasure, sent down a most cordial message that he would be delighted to see us at once. This thrilled us.
"Take us," we said to the elevator boy, "to the apartments of the Prince." We were pleased to see him stagger and lean against his wheel to get his breath back.
In a few moments we found ourselves crossing the threshold of the Prince's apartments. The Prince, who is a charming young man of from twenty-six to twenty-seven, came across the floor to meet us with an extended hand and a simple gesture of welcome. We have seldom seen anyone come across the floor more simply.
The Prince, who is travelling incognito as the Count of Flim Flam, was wearing, when we saw him, the plain morning dress of a gentleman of leisure. We learned that a little earlier he had appeared at breakfast in the costume of a Unitarian clergyman, under the incognito of the Bishop of Bongee; while later on he appeared at lunch, as a delicate compliment to our city, in the costume of a Columbia professor of Yiddish.
The Prince greeted us with the greatest cordiality, seated himself, without the slightest affectation, and motioned to us, with indescribable bonhomie, his permission to remain standing.
"Well," said the Prince, "what is it?"
We need hardly say that the Prince, who is a consummate master of ten languages, speaks English quite as fluently as he does Chinese. Indeed, for a moment, we could scarcely tell which he was talking.
"What are your impressions of the United States?" we asked as we took out our notebook.
"I am afraid," answered the Prince, with the delightful smile which is characteristic of him, and which we noticed again and again during the interview, "that I must scarcely tell you that."
We realized immediately that we were in the presence not only of a soldier but of one of the most consummate diplomats of the present day.
"May we ask then," we resumed, correcting our obvious blunder, "what are your impressions, Prince, of the Atlantic Ocean?"
"Ah," said the Prince, with that peculiar thoughtfulness which is so noticeable in him and which we observed not once but several times, "the Atlantic!"
Volumes could not have expressed his thought better.
"Did you," we asked, "see any ice during your passage across?"
"Ah," said the Prince, "ice! Let me think."
We did so.
"Ice," repeated the Prince thoughtfully.
We realized that we were in the presence not only of a soldier, a linguist and a diplomat, but of a trained scientist accustomed to exact research.
"Ice!" repeated the Prince. "Did I see any ice? No."
Nothing could have been more decisive, more final than the clear, simple brevity of the Prince's "No." He had seen no ice. He knew he had seen no ice. He said he had seen no ice. Nothing could have been more straightforward, more direct. We felt assured from that moment that the Prince had not seen any ice.
The exquisite good taste with which the Prince had answered our question served to put us entirely at our ease, and we presently found ourselves chatting with His Highness with the greatest freedom and without the slightest gene or mauvaise honte, or, in fact, malvoisie of any kind.
We realized, indeed, that we were in the presence not only of a trained soldier, a linguist and a diplomat, but also of a conversationalist of the highest order.
His Highness, who has an exquisite sense of humour--indeed, it broke out again and again during our talk with him--expressed himself as both amused and perplexed over our American money.
"It is very difficult," he said, "with us it is so simple; six and a half groner are equal to one and a third gross-groner or the quarter part of our Rigsdaler. Here it is so complicated."
We ventured to show the Prince a fifty-cent piece and to explain its value by putting two quarters beside it.
"I see," said the Prince, whose mathematical ability is quite exceptional, "two twenty-five-cent pieces are equal to one fifty-cent piece. I must try to remember that. Meantime," he added, with a gesture of royal condescension, putting the money in his pocket, "I will keep your coins as instructors"--we murmured our thanks--"and now explain to me, please, your five-dollar gold piece and your ten-dollar eagle."
We felt it proper, however, to shift the subject, and asked the Prince a few questions in regard to his views on American politics. We soon found that His Highness, although this is his first visit to this continent, is a keen student of our institutions and our political life. Indeed, His Altitude showed by his answers to our questions that he is as well informed about our politics as we are ourselves. On being asked what he viewed as the uppermost tendency in our political life of to-day, the Prince replied thoughtfully that he didn't know. To our inquiry as to whether in his opinion democracy was moving forward or backward, the Prince, after a moment of reflection, answered that he had no idea. On our asking which of the generals of our Civil War was regarded in Europe as the greatest strategist, His Highness answered without hesitation, "George Washington."
Before closing our interview the Prince, who, like his illustrious father, is an enthusiastic sportsman, completely turned the tables on us by inquiring eagerly about the prospects for large game in America.
We told him something--as much as we could recollect--of woodchuck hunting in our own section of the country. The Prince was interested at once. His eye lighted up, and the peculiar air of fatigue, or languor, which we had thought to remark on his face during our interview, passed entirely off his features. He asked us a number of questions, quickly and without pausing, with the air, in fact, of a man accustomed to command and not to listen. How was the woodchuck hunted? From horseback or from an elephant? Or from an armoured car, or turret? How many beaters did one use to beat up the woodchuck? What bearers was it necessary to carry with one? How great a danger must one face of having one's beaters killed? What percentage of risk must one be prepared to incur of accidentally shooting one's own beaters? What did a bearer cost? and so on.
All these questions we answered as best we could, the Prince apparently seizing the gist, or essential part of our answer, before we had said it.
In concluding the discussion we ventured to ask His Highness for his autograph. The Prince, who has perhaps a more exquisite sense of humour than any other sovereign of Europe, declared with a laugh that he had no pen. Still roaring over this inimitable drollery, we begged the Prince to honour us by using our own fountain-pen.
"Is there any ink in it?" asked the Prince--which threw us into a renewed paroxysm of laughter.
The Prince took the pen and very kindly autographed for us seven photographs of himself. He offered us more, but we felt that seven was about all we could use. We were still suffocated with laughter over the Prince's wit; His Highness was still signing photographs when an equerry appeared and whispered in the Prince's ear. His Highness, with the consummate tact to be learned only at a court, turned quietly without a word and left the room.
We never, in all our experience, remember seeing a prince--or a mere man for the matter of that--leave a room with greater suavity, discretion, or aplomb. It was a revelation of breeding, of race, of long slavery to caste. And yet, with it all, it seemed to have a touch of finality about it--a hint that the entire proceeding was deliberate, planned, not to be altered by circumstance. He did not come back.
We understand that he appeared later in the morning at a civic reception in the costume of an Alpine Jaeger, and attended the matinee in the dress of a lieutenant of police.
Meantime he has our pen. If he turns up in any costume that we can spot at sight, we shall ask him for it.
II. WITH OUR GREATEST ACTOR
That is to say, with Any One of our Sixteen Greatest Actors
It was within the privacy of his own library that we obtained--need we say with infinite difficulty--our interview with the Great Actor. He was sitting in a deep arm-chair, so buried in his own thoughts that he was oblivious of our approach. On his knee before him lay a cabinet photograph of himself. His eyes seemed to be peering into it, as if seeking to fathom its unfathomable mystery. We had time to note that a beautiful carbon photogravure of himself stood on a table at his elbow, while a magnificent half-tone pastel of himself was suspended on a string from the ceiling. It was only when we had seated ourself in a chair and taken out our notebook that the Great Actor looked up.
"An interview?" he said, and we noted with pain the weariness in his tone. "Another interview!"
We bowed.
"Publicity!" he murmured rather to himself than to us. "Publicity! Why must one always be forced into publicity?"
It was not our intention, we explained apologetically, to publish or to print a single word--
"Eh, what?" exclaimed the Great Actor. "Not print it? Not publish it? Then what in--"
Not, we explained, without his consent.
"Ah," he murmured wearily, "my consent. Yes, yes, I must give it. The world demands it. Print, publish anything you like. I am indifferent to praise, careless of fame. Posterity will judge me. But," he added more briskly, "let me see a proof of it in time to make any changes I might care to."
We bowed our assent.
"And now," we began, "may we be permitted to ask a few questions about your art? And first, in which branch of the drama do you consider that your genius chiefly lies, in tragedy or in comedy?"
"In both," said the Great Actor.
"You excel then," we continued, "in neither the one nor the other?"
"Not at all," he answered, "I excel in each of them."
"Excuse us," we said, "we haven't made our meaning quite clear. What we meant to say is, stated very simply, that you do not consider yourself better in either of them than in the other?"
"Not at all," said the Actor, as he put out his arm with that splendid gesture that we have known and admired for years, at the same time throwing back his leonine head so that his leonine hair fell back from his leonine forehead. "Not at all. I do better in both of them. My genius demands both tragedy and comedy at the same time."
"Ah," we said, as a light broke in upon us, "then that, we presume, is the reason why you are about to appear in Shakespeare?"
The Great Actor frowned.
"I would rather put it," he said, "that Shakespeare is about to appear in me."
"Of course, of course," we murmured, ashamed of our own stupidity.
"I appear," went on the Great Actor, "in Hamlet. I expect to present, I may say, an entirely new Hamlet."
"A new Hamlet!" we exclaimed, fascinated. "A new Hamlet! Is such a thing possible?"
"Entirely," said the Great Actor, throwing his leonine head forward again. "I have devoted years of study to the part. The whole conception of the part of Hamlet has been wrong."
We sat stunned.
"All actors hitherto," continued the Great Actor, "or rather, I should say, all so-called actors--I mean all those who tried to act before me--have been entirely mistaken in their presentation. They have presented Hamlet as dressed in black velvet."
"Yes, yes," we interjected, "in black velvet, yes!"
"Very good. The thing is absurd," continued the Great Actor, as he reached down two or three heavy volumes from the shelf beside him. "Have you ever studied the Elizabethan era?"
"The which?" we asked modestly.
"The Elizabethan era?"
We were silent.
"Or the pre-Shakespearean tragedy?"
We hung our head.
"If you had, you would know that a Hamlet in black velvet is perfectly ridiculous. In Shakespeare's day--as I could prove in a moment if you had the intelligence to understand it--there was no such thing as black velvet. It didn't exist."
"And how then," we asked, intrigued, puzzled and yet delighted, "do you present Hamlet?"
"In brown velvet," said the Great Actor.
"Great Heavens," we exclaimed, "this is a revolution."
"It is. But that is only one part of my conception. The main thing will be my presentation of what I may call the psychology of Hamlet."
"The psychology!" we said.
"Yes," resumed the Great Actor, "the psychology. To make Hamlet understood, I want to show him as a man bowed down by a great burden. He is overwhelmed with Weltschmerz. He carries in him the whole weight of the Zeitgeist; in fact, everlasting negation lies on him--"
"You mean," we said, trying to speak as cheerfully as we could, "that things are a little bit too much for him."
"His will," went on the Great Actor, disregarding our interruption, "is paralysed. He seeks to move in one direction and is hurled in another. One moment he sinks into the abyss. The next, he rises above the clouds. His feet seek the ground, but find only the air--"
"Wonderful," we said, "but will you not need a good deal of machinery?"
"Machinery!" exclaimed the Great Actor, with a leonine laugh. "The machinery of thought, the mechanism of power, of magnetism--"
"Ah," we said, "electricity."
"Not at all," said the Great Actor. "You fail to understand. It is all done by my rendering. Take, for example, the famous soliloquy on death. You know it?"
"'To be or not to be,'" we began.
"Stop," said the Great Actor. "Now observe. It is a soliloquy. Precisely. That is the key to it. It is something that Hamlet says to himself. Not a word of it, in my interpretation, is actually spoken. All is done in absolute, unbroken silence."
"How on earth," we began, "can you do that?"
"Entirely and solely with my face."
Good heavens! Was it possible? We looked again, this time very closely, at the Great Actor's face. We realized with a thrill that it might be done.
"I come before the audience so," he went on, "and soliloquize--thus--follow my face, please--"
As the Great Actor spoke, he threw himself into a characteristic pose with folded arms, while gust after gust of emotion, of expression, of alternate hope, doubt and despair, swept--we might say chased themselves across his features.
"Wonderful!" we gasped.
"Shakespeare's lines," said the Great Actor, as his face subsided to its habitual calm, "are not necessary; not, at least, with my acting. The lines, indeed, are mere stage directions, nothing more. I leave them out. This happens again and again in the play. Take, for instance, the familiar scene where Hamlet holds the skull in his hand: Shakespeare here suggests the words 'Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him well--'"
"Yes, yes!" we interrupted, in spite of ourself, "'a fellow of infinite jest--'"
"Your intonation is awful," said the Actor. "But listen. In my interpretation I use no words at all. I merely carry the skull quietly in my hand, very slowly, across the stage. There I lean against a pillar at the side, with the skull in the palm of my hand, and look at it in silence."
"Wonderful!" we said.
"I then cross over to the right of the stage, very impressively, and seat myself on a plain wooden bench, and remain for some time, looking at the skull."
"Marvellous!"
"I then pass to the back of the stage and lie down on my stomach, still holding the skull before my eyes. After holding this posture for some time, I crawl slowly forward, portraying by the movement of my legs and stomach the whole sad history of Yorick. Finally I turn my back on the audience, still holding the skull, and convey through the spasmodic movements of my back Hamlet's passionate grief at the loss of his friend."
"Why!" we exclaimed, beside ourself with excitement, "this is not merely a revolution, it is a revelation."
"Call it both," said the Great Actor.
"The meaning of it is," we went on, "that you practically don't need Shakespeare at all."
"Exactly, I do not. I could do better without him. Shakespeare cramps me. What I really mean to convey is not Shakespeare, but something greater, larger--how shall I express it--bigger." The Great Actor paused and we waited, our pencil poised in the air. Then he murmured, as his eyes lifted in an expression of something like rapture. "In fact--ME."
He remained thus, motionless, without moving. We slipped gently to our hands and knees and crawled quietly to the door, and so down the stairs, our notebook in our teeth.
III WITH OUR GREATEST SCIENTIST
As seen in any of our College Laboratories
It was among the retorts and test-tubes of his physical laboratory that we were privileged to interview the Great Scientist. His back was towards us when we entered. With characteristic modesty he kept it so for some time after our entry. Even when he turned round and saw us his face did not react off us as we should have expected.
He seemed to look at us, if such a thing were possible, without seeing us, or, at least, without wishing to see us.
We handed him our card.
He took it, read it, dropped it in a bowlful of sulphuric acid and then, with a quiet gesture of satisfaction, turned again to his work.
We sat for some time behind him. "This, then," we thought to ourselves (we always think to ourselves when we are left alone), "is the man, or rather is the back of the man, who has done more" (here we consulted the notes given us by our editor), "to revolutionize our conception of atomic dynamics than the back of any other man."
Presently the Great Scientist turned towards us with a sigh that seemed to our ears to have a note of weariness in it. Something, we felt, must be making him tired.
"What can I do for you?" he said.
"Professor," we answered, "we have called upon you in response to an overwhelming demand on the part of the public--"
The Great Scientist nodded.
"To learn something of your new researches and discoveries in" (here we consulted a minute card which we carried in our pocket) "in radio-active-emanations which are already becoming" (we consulted our card again) "a household word--"
The Professor raised his hand as if to check us.
"I would rather say," he murmured, "helio-radio-active--"
"So would we," we admitted, "much rather--"
"After all," said the Great Scientist, "helium shares in the most intimate degree the properties of radium. So, too, for the matter of that," he added in afterthought, "do thorium, and borium!"
"Even borium!" we exclaimed, delighted, and writing rapidly in our notebook. Already we saw ourselves writing up as our headline Borium Shares Properties of Thorium.
"Just what is it," said the Great Scientist, "that you want to know?"
"Professor," we answered, "what our journal wants is a plain and simple explanation, so clear that even our readers can understand it, of the new scientific discoveries in radium. We understand that you possess, more than any other man, the gift of clear and lucid thought--"
The Professor nodded.
"And that you are able to express yourself with greater simplicity than any two men now lecturing."
The Professor nodded again.
"Now, then," we said, spreading our notes on our knee, "go at it. Tell us, and, through us, tell a quarter of a million anxious readers just what all these new discoveries are about."
"The whole thing," said the Professor, warming up to his work as he perceived from the motions of our face and ears our intelligent interest, "is simplicity itself. I can give it to you in a word--"
"That's it," we said. "Give it to us that way."
"It amounts, if one may boil it down into a phrase--"
"Boil it, boil it," we interrupted.
"Amounts, if one takes the mere gist of it--"
"Take it," we said, "take it."
"Amounts to the resolution of the ultimate atom."
"Ha!" we exclaimed.
"I must ask you first to clear your mind," the Professor continued, "of all conception of ponderable magnitude."
We nodded. We had already cleared our mind of this.
"In fact," added the Professor, with what we thought a quiet note of warning in his voice, "I need hardly tell you that what we are dealing with must be regarded as altogether ultramicroscopic."
We hastened to assure the Professor that, in accordance with the high standards of honour represented by our journal, we should of course regard anything that he might say as ultramicroscopic and treat it accordingly.
"You say, then," we continued, "that the essence of the problem is the resolution of the atom. Do you think you can give us any idea of what the atom is?"
The Professor looked at us searchingly.
We looked back at him, openly and frankly. The moment was critical for our interview. Could he do it? Were we the kind of person that he could give it to? Could we get it if he did?
"I think I can," he said. "Let us begin with the assumption that the atom is an infinitesimal magnitude. Very good. Let us grant, then, that though it is imponderable and indivisible it must have a spacial content? You grant me this?"
"We do," we said, "we do more than this, we give it to you."
"Very well. If spacial, it must have dimension: if dimension--form. Let us assume ex hypothesi the form to be that of a spheroid and see where it leads us."
The Professor was now intensely interested. He walked to and fro in his laboratory. His features worked with excitement. We worked ours, too, as sympathetically as we could.
"There is no other possible method in inductive science," he added, "than to embrace some hypothesis, the most attractive that one can find, and remain with it--"
We nodded. Even in our own humble life after our day's work we had found this true.
"Now," said the Professor, planting himself squarely in front of us, "assuming a spherical form, and a spacial content, assuming the dynamic forces that are familiar to us and assuming--the thing is bold, I admit--"
We looked as bold as we could.
"Assuming that the ions, or nuclei of the atom--I know no better word--"
"Neither do we," we said.
"That the nuclei move under the energy of such forces, what have we got?"
"Ha!" we said.
"What have we got? Why, the simplest matter conceivable. The forces inside our atom--itself, mind you, the function of a circle--mark that--"
We did.
"Becomes merely a function of pi!"
The Great Scientist paused with a laugh of triumph.
"A function of pi!" we repeated in delight.
"Precisely. Our conception of ultimate matter is reduced to that of an oblate spheroid described by the revolution of an ellipse on its own minor axis!"
"Good heavens!" we said. "Merely that."
"Nothing else. And in that case any further calculation becomes a mere matter of the extraction of a root."
"How simple," we murmured.
"Is it not," said the Professor. "In fact, I am accustomed, in talking to my class, to give them a very clear idea, by simply taking as our root F--F being any finite constant--"
He looked at us sharply. We nodded.
"And raising F to the log of infinity. I find they apprehend it very readily."
"Do they?" we murmured. Ourselves we felt as if the Log of Infinity carried us to ground higher than what we commonly care to tread on.
"Of course," said the Professor, "the Log of Infinity is an Unknown."
"Of course," we said very gravely. We felt ourselves here in the presence of something that demanded our reverence.
"But still," continued the Professor almost jauntily, "we can handle the Unknown just as easily as anything else."
This puzzled us. We kept silent. We thought it wiser to move on to more general ground. In any case, our notes were now nearly complete.
"These discoveries, then," we said, "are absolutely revolutionary."
"They are," said the Professor.
"You have now, as we understand, got the atom--how shall we put it?--got it where you want it."
"Not exactly," said the Professor with a sad smile.
"What do you mean?" we asked.
"Unfortunately our analysis, perfect though it is, stops short. We have no synthesis."
The Professor spoke as in deep sorrow.
"No synthesis," we moaned. We felt it was a cruel blow. But in any case our notes were now elaborate enough. We felt that our readers could do without a synthesis. We rose to go.
"Synthetic dynamics," said the Professor, taking us by the coat, "is only beginning--"
"In that case--" we murmured, disengaging his hand.
"But, wait, wait," he pleaded "wait for another fifty years--"
"We will," we said very earnestly. "But meantime as our paper goes to press this afternoon we must go now. In fifty years we will come back."
"Oh, I see, I see," said the Professor, "you are writing all this for a newspaper. I see."
"Yes," we said, "we mentioned that at the beginning."
"Ah," said the Professor, "did you? Very possibly. Yes."
"We propose," we said, "to feature the article for next Saturday."
"Will it be long?" he asked.
"About two columns," we answered.
"And how much," said the Professor in a hesitating way, "do I have to pay you to put it in?"
"How much which?" we asked.
"How much do I have to pay?"
"Why, Professor--" we began quickly. Then we checked ourselves. After all was it right to undeceive him, this quiet, absorbed man of science with his ideals, his atoms and his emanations. No, a hundred times no. Let him pay a hundred times.
"It will cost you," we said very firmly, "ten dollars."
The Professor began groping among his apparatus. We knew that he was looking for his purse.
"We should like also very much," we said, "to insert your picture along with the article--"
"Would that cost much?" he asked.
"No, that is only five dollars."
The Professor had meantime found his purse.
"Would it be all right," he began, "that is, would you mind if I pay you the money now? I am apt to forget."
"Quite all right," we answered. We said good-bye very gently and passed out. We felt somehow as if we had touched a higher life. "Such," we murmured, as we looked about the ancient campus, "are the men of science: are there, perhaps, any others of them round this morning that we might interview?"
IV. WITH OUR TYPICAL NOVELISTS
Edwin and Ethelinda Afterthought--Husband and Wife--In their Delightful Home Life.
It was at their beautiful country place on the Woonagansett that we had the pleasure of interviewing the Afterthoughts. At their own cordial invitation, we had walked over from the nearest railway station, a distance of some fourteen miles. Indeed, as soon as they heard of our intention they invited us to walk. "We are so sorry not to bring you in the motor," they wrote, "but the roads are so frightfully dusty that we might get dust on our chauffeur." This little touch of thoughtfulness is the keynote of their character.
The house itself is a delightful old mansion giving on a wide garden, which gives in turn on a broad terrace giving on the river.
The Eminent Novelist met us at the gate. We had expected to find the author of Angela Rivers and The Garden of Desire a pale aesthetic type (we have a way of expecting the wrong thing in our interviews). We could not resist a shock of surprise (indeed we seldom do) at finding him a burly out-of-door man weighting, as he himself told us, a hundred stone in his stockinged feet (we think he said stone).
He shook hands cordially.
"Come and see my pigs," he said.
"We wanted to ask you," we began, as we went down the walk, "something about your books."
"Let's look at the pigs first," he said. "Are you anything of a pig man?"
We are always anxious in our interviews to be all things to all men. But we were compelled to admit that we were not much of a pig man.
"Ah," said the Great Novelist, "perhaps you are more of a dog man?"
"Not altogether a dog man," we answered.
"Anything of a bee man?" he asked.
"Something," we said (we were once stung by a bee).
"Ah," he said, "you shall have a go at the beehives, then, right away?"
We assured him that we were willing to postpone a go at the beehives till later.
"Come along, then, to the styes," said the Great Novelist, and he added, "Perhaps you're not much of a breeder."
We blushed. We thought of the five little faces around the table for which we provide food by writing our interviews.
"No," we said, "we were not much of a breeder."
"Now then," said the Great Novelist as we reached our goal, "how do you like this stye?"
"Very much indeed," we said.
"I've put in a new tile draining--my own plan. You notice how sweet it keeps the stye."
We had not noticed this.
"I am afraid," said the Novelist, "that the pigs are all asleep inside."
We begged him on no account to waken them. He offered to open the little door at the side and let us crawl in. We insisted that we could not think of intruding.
"What we would like," we said, "is to hear something of your methods of work in novel writing." We said this with very peculiar conviction. Quite apart from the immediate purposes of our interview, we have always been most anxious to know by what process novels are written. If we could get to know this, we would write one ourselves.
"Come and see my bulls first," said the Novelist. "I've got a couple of young bulls here in the paddock that will interest you."
We felt sure that they would.
He led us to a little green fence. Inside it were two ferocious looking animals, eating grain. They rolled their eyes upwards at us as they ate.
"How do those strike you?" he asked.
We assured him that they struck us as our beau ideal of bulls.
"Like to walk in beside them?" said the Novelist, opening a little gate.
We drew back. Was it fair to disturb these bulls?
The Great Novelist noticed our hesitation.
"Don't be afraid," he said. "They're not likely to harm you. I send my hired man right in beside them every morning, without the slightest hesitation."
We looked at the Eminent Novelist with admiration. We realized that like so many of our writers, actors, and even our thinkers, of to-day, he was an open-air man in every sense of the word.
But we shook our heads.
Bulls, we explained, were not a department of research for which we were equipped. What we wanted, we said, was to learn something of his methods of work.
"My methods of work?" he answered, as we turned up the path again. "Well, really, I hardly know that I have any."
"What is your plan or method," we asked, getting out our notebook and pencil, "of laying the beginning of a new novel?"
"My usual plan," said the Novelist, "is to come out here and sit in the stye till I get my characters."
"Does it take long?" we questioned.
"Not very. I generally find that a quiet half-hour spent among the hogs will give me at least my leading character."
"And what do you do next?"
"Oh, after that I generally light a pipe and go and sit among the beehives looking for an incident."
"Do you get it?" we asked.
"Invariably. After that I make a few notes, then go off for a ten mile tramp with my esquimaux dogs, and get back in time to have a go through the cattle sheds and take a romp with the young bulls."
We sighed. We couldn't help it. Novel writing seemed further away than ever.
"Have you also a goat on the premises?" we asked.
"Oh, certainly. A ripping old fellow--come along and see him."
We shook our heads. No doubt our disappointment showed in our face. It often does. We felt that it was altogether right and wholesome that our great novels of to-day should be written in this fashion with the help of goats, dogs, hogs and young bulls. But we felt, too, that it was not for us.
We permitted ourselves one further question.
"At what time," we said, "do you rise in the morning?"
"Oh anywhere between four and five," said the Novelist.
"Ah, and do you generally take a cold dip as soon as you are up--even in winter?"
"I do."
"You prefer, no doubt," we said, with a dejection that we could not conceal, "to have water with a good coat of ice over it?"
"Oh, certainly!"
We said no more. We have long understood the reasons for our own failure in life, but it was painful to receive a renewed corroboration of it. This ice question has stood in our way for forty-seven years.
The Great Novelist seemed to note our dejection.
"Come to the house," he said, "my wife will give you a cup of tea."
In a few moments we had forgotten all our troubles in the presence of one of the most charming chatelaines it has been our lot to meet.
We sat on a low stool immediately beside Ethelinda Afterthought, who presided in her own gracious fashion over the tea-urn.
"So you want to know something of my methods of work?" she said, as she poured hot tea over our leg.
"We do," we answered, taking out our little book and recovering something of our enthusiasm. We do not mind hot tea being poured over us if people treat us as a human being.
"Can you indicate," we continued, "what method you follow in beginning one of your novels?"
"I always begin," said Ethelinda Afterthought, "with a study."
"A study?" we queried.
"Yes. I mean a study of actual facts. Take, for example, my Leaves from the Life of a Steam Laundrywoman--more tea?"
"No, no," we said.
"Well, to make that book I first worked two years in a laundry."
"Two years!" we exclaimed. "And why?"
"To get the atmosphere."
"The steam?" we questioned.
"Oh, no," said Mrs. Afterthought, "I did that separately. I took a course in steam at a technical school."
"Is it possible?" we said, our heart beginning to sing again. "Was all that necessary?"
"I don't see how one could do it otherwise. The story opens, as no doubt you remember--tea?--in the boiler room of the laundry."
"Yes," we said, moving our leg--"no, thank you."
"So you see the only possible point d'appui was to begin with a description of the inside of the boiler."
We nodded.
"A masterly thing," we said.
"My wife," interrupted the Great Novelist, who was sitting with the head of a huge Danish hound in his lap, sharing his buttered toast with the dog while he adjusted a set of trout flies, "is a great worker."
"Do you always work on that method?" we asked.
"Always," she answered. "For Frederica of the Factory I spent six months in a knitting mill. For Marguerite of the Mud Flats I made special studies for months and months."
"Of what sort?" we asked.
"In mud. Learning to model it. You see for a story of that sort the first thing needed is a thorough knowledge of mud--all kinds of it."
"And what are you doing next?" we inquired.
"My next book," said the Lady Novelist, "is to be a study--tea?--of the pickle industry--perfectly new ground."
"A fascinating field," we murmured.
"And quite new. Several of our writers have done the slaughter-house, and in England a good deal has been done in jam. But so far no one has done pickles. I should like, if I could," added Ethelinda Afterthought, with the graceful modesty that is characteristic of her, "to make it the first of a series of pickle novels, showing, don't you know, the whole pickle district, and perhaps following a family of pickle workers for four or five generations."
"Four or five!" we said enthusiastically. "Make it ten! And have you any plan for work beyond that?"
"Oh, yes indeed," laughed the Lady Novelist. "I am always planning ahead. What I want to do after that is a study of the inside of a penitentiary."
"Of the inside?" we said, with a shudder.
"Yes. To do it, of course, I shall go to jail for two or three years!"
"But how can you get in?" we asked, thrilled at the quiet determination of the frail woman before us.
"I shall demand it as a right," she answered quietly. "I shall go to the authorities, at the head of a band of enthusiastic women, and demand that I shall be sent to jail. Surely after the work I have done, that much is coming to me."
"It certainly is," we said warmly.
We rose to go.
Both the novelists shook hands with us with great cordiality. Mr. Afterthought walked as far as the front door with us and showed us a short cut past the beehives that could take us directly through the bull pasture to the main road.
We walked away in the gathering darkness of evening very quietly. We made up our mind as we went that novel writing is not for us. We must reach the penitentiary in some other way.
But we thought it well to set down our interview as a guide to others.
[The end]
Stephen Leacock's short story: Ideal Interviews
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