The Delicious Vice by Young E. Allison
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Young E. Allison >> The Delicious Vice
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If any honest-minded boy chances to read these lines, let him charge his
mind with full contempt for any misguided elders who have designs of
"choosing only the best accepted novels" for his reading. There are no
"best" novels except by the grace of the poor ones, and, if you don't
read the poor ones, the "best" will be as tasteless as unsalted rice.
I say to boys that are worth growing up: don't let anybody give you
patronizing advice about novels. If your pastors and masters try
oppression, there is the orchard, the creek bank, the attic room, the
roof of the woodshed (under the peach tree), and a thousand other places
where you may hide and maintain your natural independence. Don't let
elderly and officious persons explain novels to you. They can not
honestly do so; so don't waste time. Every boy of fourteen, with the
genius to read 'em, is just as good a judge of novels and can understand
them quite as well as any gentleman of brains of any old age. Because
novels mean entirely different things to every blessed reader.
* * * * *
The main thing at the beginning is to be in the neighborhood of a good
"novel orchard" and to nibble and eat, and even "gormandize," as your
fancy leads you. Only--as you value your soul and your honor as a
gentleman--bear in mind that what you read in every novel that pleases
you is sacred truth. There are busy-bodies, pretenders to "culture," and
sticklers for the multiplication table and Euclid's pestiferous theorem,
who will tell you that novel reading is merely for entertainment and
light accomplishment, and that the histories of fiction are purely
imaginary and not to be taken seriously. That is pure falsehood. The
truth of all humanity, as well as all its untruth, flows in a noble
stream through the pages of fiction. Do not allow the elders to persuade
you that pirate stories, battles, sieges, murders and sudden deaths, the
road to transgression and the face of dishonesty are not good for you.
They are 90 per cent. pure nutriment to a healthy boy's mind, and any
other sort of boy ought particularly to read them and so learn the
shortest cut to the penitentiary for the good of the world. Whenever you
get hold of a novel that preaches and preaches and preaches, and can't
give a poor ticket-of-leave man or the decentest sort of a villain
credit for one good trait--Gee, Whizz! how tiresome they are--lose it,
you young scamp, at once, if you respect yourself. If you are pushed you
can say that Bill Jones took it away from you and threw it in the creek.
The great Victor Hugo and the authors of that noble drama "The Two
Orphans," are my authorities for the statement that some fibs--not all
fibs, but some proper fibs--are entered in heaven on both debit and
credit sides of the book of fate.
There is one book, the Book of Books, swelling rich and full with the
wisdom and beauty and joy and sorrow of humanity--a book that set
humility like a diamond in the forehead of virtue; that found mercy and
charity outcasts among the minds of men and left them radiant queens in
the world's heart; that stickled not to describe the gorgeous esotery of
corroding passion and shamed it with the purity of Mary Magdelen; that
dragged from the despair of old Job the uttermost poison-drop of doubt
and answered it with the noble problem of organized existence; that
teems with murder and mistake and glows with all goodness and honest
aspiration--that is the Book of Books. There hasn't been one written
since that has crossed the boundary of its scope. What would that
book be after some goody-goody had expurgated it of evil and left it
sterilized in butter and sugar? Let no ignorant paternal Czar, ruling
over cottage or mansion, presume to keep from the mind and heart of
youth the vigorous knowledge and observation of evil and good, crime and
virtue together. No chaff, no wheat; no dross, no gold; no human faults
and weaknesses, no heavenly hope. And if any gentleman does not like
the sentiment, he can find me at my usual place of residence, unless he
intends violence--and be hanged, also, to him!
* * * * *
A novel is a novel, and there are no bad ones in the world, except those
you do not happen to like. Suppose a boy started with Robinson Crusoe
and was scientifically and criminally steered by the hand of misguided
"culture" to Scott and Dickens and Cooper and Hawthorne--all the
classics, in fact, so that he would escape the vulgar thousands? Answer
a straight question, ye old rooters between a thousand miles of muslin
lids--would you have been willing to miss "The Gunmaker of Moscow" back
yonder in the green days of say forty years ago? What do you think of
Prof. William Henry Peck's "Cryptogram?" Were not Sylvanus Cobb, Jr.,
and Emerson Bennett authors of renown--honor to their dust, wherever it
lies! Didn't you read Mrs. Southworth's "Capitola" or the "Hidden Hand"
long before "Vashti" was dreamed of? Don't you remember that No. 52
of Beadle's Dime Library (light yellowish red paper covers) was
"Silverheels, the Delaware," and that No. 77 was "Schinderhannes,
the Outlaw of the Black Forest?" I yield to no man in affection and
reverence for M. Dumas, Mr. Thackeray and others of the higher circles,
but what's the matter with Ned Buntline, honest, breezy, vigorous,
swinging old Ned? Put the "Three Guardsmen" where you will, but there is
also room for "Buffalo Bill, the Scout." When I first saw Col. Cody, an
ornament to the theatre and a painful trial to the drama, and realized
that he was Buffalo Bill in the flesh--why, I was glad I had also read
"Buffalo Bill's Last Shot"--(may he never shoot it). The day has passed
forever, probably, when Buffalo Bill shall shout to his other scouts,
"You set fire to the girl while I take care of the house!" or vice
versa, and so saying, bear the fainting heroine triumphantly off from
the treacherous redskins. But the story has lived.
* * * * *
It was a happy and honored custom in the old days for subscribers to the
New York Ledger and the New York Weekly to unite in requests for the
serial republication of favorite stories in those great fireside
luminaries. They were the old-fashioned, broadside sheets and, of
course, there were insuperable difficulties against preserving the
numbers. After a year or two, therefore, there would awaken a general
hunger among the loyal hosts to "read the story over," and when the
demand was sufficiently strong the publishers would repeat it, cuts,
divisions, and all, just as at first. How many times the "Gunmaker
of Moscow" was repeated in the Ledger, heaven knows. I remember I
petitioned repeatedly for "Buffalo Bill" in the Weekly, and we got
it, too, and waded through it again. By wading, I don't mean pushing
laboriously and tediously through, but, by George! half immersion in the
joy. It was a week between numbers, and a studious and appreciative boy
made no bones of reading the current weekly chapters half a dozen times
over while waiting for the next.
It must have been ten years later that I felt a thrill at the coming of
Buffalo Bill himself in his first play. I had risen to the dignity of
dramatic critic upon a journal of limited civilization and boundless
politics, and was privileged to go behind the scenes at the theatre and
actually speak to the actors. (I interviewed Mary Anderson during her
first season, in the parlor of the local hotel, where honest George
Bristow--who kept the cigar stand and could not keep a healthy
appetite--always gave a Thanksgiving order for "two-whole-roast turkeys
and a piece of breast," and they were served, too, the whole ones going
to some near-by hospital, and the piece of breast to George's honest
stomach--good, kind soul that he was. And Miss Anderson chewed gum
during the whole period of the interview to the intense amusement of
my elder and brother dramatic critic, who has since become the honored
governor of his adopted state, and toward whom I beg to look with
affectionate memory of those days.) Now, when a man has known novels
intimately, has been dramatic critic, and has traveled with a circus, it
seems to me in all reason he can not fairly have any other earthly
joys to desire. At fifteen I was walking on tip-toe about the house
on Sundays, and going off to the end of the garden to softly whistle
"weekday" tunes, and at twenty I stood off the wings L. U. E., and had
twenty "Black Crook" coryphees in silk tights and tarletan squeeze
past in line, and nod and say, "Is it going all right in front?"
They--knew--I--was--the--Critic! When you can do that you can laugh at
Byron, roosting around upon inaccessible mountain crags and formulating
solitude and indigestion into poetry!
I waited for Buffalo Bill's coming with feelings that can not be
described. It was impossible to expect to meet Sir William Wallace
in the flesh, or Sir Wilfred of Ivanhoe, or Capt. D'Artagnan, or
Umslopogaas, or any one of a thousand great fighting heroes; but here
was Buffalo Bill, just as great and glorious and dashing and handsome
as any of them, and my right hand tingled to be grasped in that of the
Bayard of the Prairies. And that hand's desire was attained. In his
dressing-room between acts I sat nervously on a chair while the splendid
Apollo of frontiersmen, in buckskin and beads, sat on his trunk, with
his long, shapely legs sprawled gracefully out, his head thrown back so
that the mane of brown hair should hang behind. It was glistening with
oil and redolent of barber's perfume. And we talked there as one man
to another, each apparently without fear. I was certainly nervous and
timid, but he did not notice it, and I am frank to say he did not appear
to feel the slightest personal fear of me. Thus, face to face, I saw the
man with whom I had trod Ned Buntline's boundless plains and had seen
and encountered a thousand perils and redskins. When the act call came,
and I rose to go, a man stopped at the door and said to him:
"What shall it be to-night, Colonel?"
"A big beef-steak and a bottle of Bass!" answered Buffalo Bill heartily,
"and tell 'ern to have it hot and ready at 11:15."
The beef-steak and Bass' ale were the watchwords of true heroism. The
real hero requires substantial filling. He must have a head and a
heart--but no less a good, healthy and impatient stomach.
In the daily paper the morning I write this I see the announcement of
Buffalo Bill's "Wild West Show" coming two week's hence. Good luck to
him! He can't charge prices too steep for me, and there are six seats
necessary--the best in the amphitheater. And I wish I could be sure the
vigorous spirit of Ned Buntline would be looking down from the blue sky
overhead to see his hero charge the hill of San Juan at the head of the
Rough Riders.
* * * * *
This digression may be wide of the subject of novel reading, but the
real novel reader is at home anywhere. He has thoughts, dreams,
reveries, fancies. All the world is his novel and all actions are
stories and all the actors are characters. When Lucile Western, the
excellent American actress, was at the height of her powers, not long
before her last appearances, she had as her leading man a big, slouchy
and careless person, who was advertised as "the talented young English
actor, William Whally." In the intimacies of private association he was
known as Bill Whally, and his descent was straight down from "Mount
Sinai's awful height." He was a Hebrew and no better or more uneven and
reckless actor ever played melodramatic "heavies." He had a love for
Shakespeare, but could not play him; he had a love of drink and could
gratify it. His vigorous talents purchased for him much forbearance.
I've seen Mr. Whally play the fastidious and elegant "Sir Archibald
Levison" in shiny black doe-skin trousers and old-fashioned cloth
gaiters, because his condition rendered the problem of dressing somewhat
doubtful, though it could not obscure his acting. He was the only
walking embodiment of "Bill Sykes" I ever saw, and I contracted the
habit of going to see him kill Miss Western as "Nancy" because he
butchered that young woman with a broken chair more satisfactorily than
anybody else I ever saw. There was a murderer for you--Bill Sykes! Bad
as he was in most things, let us not forget that--he--killed--Nancy--
and--killed--her--well and--thoroughly. If that young woman didn't
snivel herself under a just sentence of death, I'm no fit householder to
serve on a jury. Every time Miss Western came around it was my custom to
read up fresh on "Oliver Twist" and hurry around and enjoy Bill Whally's
happy application of retribution with the aid of the old property chair.
There were six other persons whom I succeeded in persuading to applaud
the scene with me every time it was acted.
But there's a separate chapter for villains.
* * * * *
Let us return to the old novels. What curious pranks time plays with
tastes and vogues. Forty years ago N. P. Willis was just faded. Yet he
was long a great comet of literary glitter and obscured many men of much
greater ability. Everybody read him; the annuals hung upon his name; the
ladies regarded him as a finer and more dashing Byron than Byron.
The place he filled was much like that of Congreve, before whom
Shakespeare's great nose was out of joint for a long time; Congreve, who
was the margarita aluminata major of English poesy and drama and public
life, and is now found in junk stores and in the back line on book
shelves and whom nobody reads now. Willis had his languid affectations,
his superficial cynicism and added to them ostentatious sentimentality.
Does anybody read William Gilmore Simm's elaborate rhetoric disguised as
novels? He must have written two dozen of them, the Richardson of the
United States. Lovers of delicious wit and intellectual humor still
read Dr. Holmes' essays, but it would probably take a physician's
prescription to make them swallow the novels. In what dark corners of
the library are Bayard Taylor's novels and travels hidden? Will you come
into the garden, Maud, and read Chancellor Walworth's mighty tragedies
and Miss Mulock's Swiss-toy historical novels, or will you beg off, like
the honest girl you are, and take a nap? Your sleepiness, dear Miss
Maud, does you credit. By the way, what the deuce is the name of anyone
of these novels? I can recall "Elsie Vernier," by Dr. Holmes and then
there is a blank.
But what classics they were--then! In the thick of them had appeared a
newspaper story that struggled through and was printed in book form. Old
friends have told me how they waited at the country post-offices to
get a copy, delayed for weeks. It was a scandal to read it in some
localities. It was fiercely attacked as an outrageous exaggeration
produced by temporary excitement and hostile feeling, or praised as a
new gospel. It has been translated into every tongue having a printing
press, and has sold by millions of copies. It was "Uncle Tom's Cabin."
It was not a classic, but what a vigorous immortal mongrel of human
sentiment it was! What a row was kicked up over Miss Braddon's
"Octoroon," and what an impossible yellowback it was! The toughest piece
of fiction I met with as a boy was "Sanford and Merton," and I've been
aching to say so for four pages. If this world were full of Sanfords
and Mertons, then give me Jupiter or some other comfortable planet at a
secure sanitary distance removed.
I can't even remember the writers who were grammatically and
rhetorically perfect forty years ago, and also very dull with it all.
Is there a bookshelf that holds "Leni Leoti, or The Flower of the
Prairies?" There are "Jane Eyre," "Lady Audley's Secret," and "John
Halifax, Gentleman," which will go with many and are all well worth the
reading, too. Are Mrs. Eliza A. Dupuy, Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth,
Mrs. Caroline Lee Hentz and Augusta J. Evans dead? Their novels still
live--look at the book stores. "Linda, or the Young Pilot of the Belle
Creole," "India, the Pearl of Pearl River," "The Planter's Northern
Bride," "St. Elmo"--they were fiction for you! A boy old enough to have
a first sweetheart could swallow them by the mile.
You remember, when we were boys, the circus acrobats always--always,
remember--rubbed young children with snake-oil and walloped them with a
rawhide to educate them in tumbling and contortion? Well, if I could get
the snake-oil for the joints and a curly young wig, I'd like to get back
at five hundred of those books and devour them again--"as of yore!"
VI
RASCALS
BEING A DISCOURSE UPON GOOD, HONEST SCOUNDRELISM AND VILLAINS.
The people that inhabit novels are like other peoples of the earth--if
they are peaceful, they have no history. So that, therefore, in novels,
as in nations, it is the great restless heights of society that are to
be approached with greatest awe and that engage admiration and regard.
Everybody is interested in Nero, but not one person in ten thousand can
tell you anything definite about Constantine or even Marcus Aurelius. If
you should speak off-handedly about Amelia Sedley in the presence of a
thousand average readers you would probably miss 85 per cent. of effect;
if you said Becky Sharp the whole thousand would understand.
There is this to be said of disreputable folk, that they are clever and
picturesque and interesting, at least.
An elderly jeweler in New York City was arrested several years ago
upon the charge of receiving stolen gold and silver plate, watches and
jewelry from well-known thieves. For forty years he had been a respected
merchant, a church officer, a husband, father, and citizen, of
irreproachable reputation, with enduring friendships. He was charitable,
liberal and kindly. For decade after decade he was the experienced, wise
and fatherly "fence" of professional burglars and thieves. Why, it would
be an education in itself to know that man, to shake his honest hand,
fresh from charity or concealment, and smoke a pipe with him and
hear him talk about things frankly. When he gave to the missionary
collection, rest assured he gave sincerely; when he "covered swag,"
into the melting pot for an industrious burglar, he did so only in the
regular course of business.
Strange as it may seem, even criminals have human feelings in common
with all of us. The old Thug who stepped aside into the bushes and
prayed earnestly while his son was throwing his first strangling cloth
around the throat of the English traveler--prayed for that son's
honorable, successful beginning in his life devotion--was a good father.
And when he was told that the son had acted with unusual skill, who
can doubt that his tears of joy were sincere and humble tears of
thankfulness? At least Bowanee knew. Can you not imagine a kind-hearted
Chinese matron saying to her neighbor over the bamboo fence, "Yes,
we sent the baby down to the beach (or the river bank or the forest)
yesterday. We couldn't afford to keep it. I hope the gods have taken its
little soul. At any rate it is sure of salvation hereafter."
* * * * *
Some twenty years ago I took the night train from Pineville to
Barbourville, in the Kentucky mountains, reaching the latter place
about 11 o'clock of a cold, rainy, dark November night. Only one other
passenger alighted. There was an express wagon to take us to the town,
a mile or so distant, and the wagon was already heavy with freight
packages. The road was through a narrow lane, hub-deep with mud, and
what, with stalling and resting, we were more than half an hour getting
to the hotel. My fellow passenger was about my age, and was a
shrewd, well-informed native of the vicinity. He knew the mineral,
timber and agricultural resources, was evidently an enterprising
business man and an intelligent but not voluble talker. He accepted a
cigar, and advised me to see the house in Barbourville where the late
Justice Samuel Miller was born. At the hotel he registered first, and,
as he was going to leave next day and I was to remain several days, he
told the clerk to give me the better of the two rooms vacant. It was a
very pleasant act of thoughtfulness. The name on the register was "A.
Johnson." The next day I asked the clerk about Mr. Johnson. My fellow
passenger was Andy Johnson, whose fame as a feud-fighter and slayer of
men has never been exceeded in the history of mountain feuds. He then
had three or four men to his credit, definitely, and several doubtful
ascriptions. He added a few more, I believe, before he met the
inevitable.
Now, while Mr. Johnson, in all matters where killing seemed to him to be
appropriate, was a most prompt and accurate man in accomplishing it, yet
he was not the murderer that ignorant and isolated folks conceive such
persons to be. The cigar I had given him was a very bad, cheap cigar,
and, if he had merely wanted murder, he had every reason to kill me for
giving it to him, and he had a perfect night for the deed. But he smoked
it to the stub without a complaint or remark and saw that I got the best
room in the hotel. Johnson was a cautious and considerate fellow-man,
whose murders were doubtless private hobbies and exercises growing out
of his environment and heredity.
One of the houses I most delight to enter in a certain town is one where
I am always sure to see a devoted and happy wife and beautiful, playful
children clustering around the armchair in which sits a man who
committed one of the most cold-blooded assassinations you can imagine.
He is an honored, esteemed and model citizen. His acquittal was a
miracle in a million chances. He has justified it. It is beautiful to
see those happy children clinging to the hand that--
Well, dear friends, the dentist is not a cruel man in his social
capacity, and you can get delicious viands instead of nauseous medicines
at the doctor's private table.
That is why beginning novel readers should take no advice. Strike out
alone through the highways and lanes of story, character and experience.
The best novelist is the one who fears not to tell you the truth, which
is more wonderful than fiction. It is always the best hearts that bend
to mistakes. Absolute virtue is as sterile as granite rock; absolute
vice is as poisonous as a stagnant pond. No healthy interest or
speculation can linger about either. Enter into the struggle and know
human nature; don't stay outside and try to appear superior.
For, which of us has not his crimes of thought to account for? Think
not, because Andy Johnson or William Sykes or Dr. Webster actually
killed his man, that you are guiltless, because you haven't. Have you
never wanted to? Answer that, in your conscience and in solitude--not to
me. Speak up to yourself and then say whether the difference between you
and the recorded criminal is not merely the difference between the overt
act and the faltering wish. It is a matter of courage or of custom.
Speaking for one gentleman, who knows himself and is not afraid to
confess, I can say that, while he could not kill a mouse with his own
hand, he has often murdered men in his heart. It may have been in fiery
youth over the wrong name on a dancing card, or, later, when a rival
got the better of him in discussion, or, when the dreary bore came and
wouldn't go, or, when misdirected goodness insisted on thrusting upon
him intended kindness that was wormwood and poison to the soul. Are
we not covetous (not confessedly, of course, but actually)? Is not
covetousness the thwarted desire of theft without courage? How many
of us, now--speaking man to man--can open up our veiled thoughts and
desires and then look the Ten Commandments in the eye without blushing?
* * * * *
The bravest, noblest, gentlest gentleman I have ever known was the Count
de la Fere, whom we at the Hotel de Troisville, in old Paris, called
"Athos." He was not merely sans peur et sans reproche as Bayard, but was
positive in his virtues. He fought for his friends without even asking
the cause of the fray. Yet, what a prig he seemed to be at first, with
his eternal gentle melancholy, his irreproachable courtesy, unvarying
kindness and complete unselfishness. You cannot--quite--warm--to--a--
man--who --is--so--perfectly--right--that--he--embarrasses--everybody--
but--the--angels.
But, when he ordered the gloomy and awful death of the treacherous
Miladi, woman though she was, and thus as a perfect gentleman took on
human frailty also, ah! how attractively noble and strong he became I In
that respect he was the antithetical corollary of William Sykes, who was
a purposeless, useless and uninterestingly regular scoundrel, thief and
brute, until he redeemed himself by becoming the instrument of social
justice and pounding that unendurable lady, Miss Nancy, of his name,
into absence from the world. Perhaps I have remarked before--and even if
I have it is pleasant to repeat it--that Bill Sykes had his faults, as
also have most of us, but it was given to him to earn forgiveness by the
aid of a cheap chair and the providential propinquity of Miss Nancy. I
never think of it without regretting that poor Bill Whally is dead. He
did it--so--much--to--my--taste!
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