Hints to Pilgrims

by Charles S. Brooks

Sinbad, with a steady wife, would have stayed at home and become an alderman. Romeo might have married a Montague and lived happily ever after. It was but chance that Titania awakened in the Ass's company—chance that Viola was cast on the coast of Illyria and found her lover. Any of these plots could have been altered by jogging the author's elbow. A bit of indigestion wrecks the crimson shallop. Comedy or tragedy is but the falling of the dice. By the flip of a coin comes the poisoned goblet or the princess.

But my young author's experiment with De Maupassant was not successful. He tells me that hunger caught him in the middle of the afternoon, and that he went forth for a cup of malted milk, which is his weakness. His head was as empty as his stomach.

And yet there are many novels written and even published, and most of them seem to have what pass for plots. Bipeds, undeniably, are set up with some likeness to humanity. They talk from page to page without any squeak of bellows. They live in lodgings and make acquaintance across the air-shaft. They wrestle with villains. They fall in love. They starve and then grow famous. And at last, in all good books, journeys end in lovers' meeting. It is as easy as lying. Only a plot is needed.

And may not anyone set up the puppets? Rich man, poor man, beggarman, thief! You have only to say eenie meenie down the list, and trot out a brunette or a blonde. There is broadcloth in the tiring-box, and swords and velvet; and there is, also, patched wool, and shiny elbows. Your lady may sigh her soul to the Grecian tents, or watch for honest Tom on his motor-cycle. On Venetian balcony and village stoop the stars show alike for lovers and everywhere there are friendly shadows in the night.

Like a master of marionettes, we may pull the puppets by their strings. It is such an easy matter—if once a plot is given—to lift a beggar or to overthrow a rascal. A virtuous puppet can be hoisted to a tinsel castle. A twitching of the thumb upsets the wicked King. Rollo is pitched to his knees before a scheming beauty. And would it not be fun to dangle before the Bishop that little Carmen figure with her daring lace and scarlet stockings?—or to swing the bold Camille by the strings into Mr. Pickwick's arms as the curtain falls?

Was it not Hawthorne who died leaving a notebook full of plots? And Walter Scott, when that loyal, harassed hand of his was shriveled into death, must have had by him a hundred hints for projected books. One author—I forget who he was—bequeathed to another author—the name has escaped me—a memorandum of characters and events. At any author's death there must be a precious salvage. Among the surviving papers there sits at least one dusty heroine waiting for a lover. Here are notes for the Duchess's elopement. Here is a sketch how the deacon proved to be a villain. As old ladies put by scraps of silk for a crazy quilt, shall not an author, also, treasure in his desk shreds of character and odds and ends to make a plot?

Now the truth is, I suspect, that the actual plot has little to do with the merits of a great many of the best books. It is only the bucket that fetches up the water from the well. It is the string that holds the shining beads. Who really cares whether Tom Jones married Sophia? And what does it matter whether Falstaff died in bed or in his boots, or whether Uncle Toby married the widow? It is the mirth and casual adventure by the way that hold our interest.

Some of the best authors, indeed, have not given a thought to their plots until it is time to wind up the volume. When Dickens sent the Pickwick Club upon its travels, certainly he was not concerned whether Tracy Tupman found a wife. He had not given a thought to Sam's romance with the pretty housemaid at Mr. Nupkins's. The elder Mrs. Weller's fatal cough was clearly a happy afterthought. Thackeray, at the start, could hardly have foreseen Esmond's marriage. When he wrote the early chapters of "Vanity Fair," he had not traced Becky to her shabby garret of the Elephant at Pumpernickel. Dumas, I have no doubt, wrote from page to page, careless of the end. Doubtless he marked Milady for a bad end, but was unconcerned whether it would be a cough or noose. Victor Hugo did no more than follow a trail across the mountains of his invention, content with the kingdoms of each new turning.

In these older and more deliberate books, if a young lady smiled upon the hero, it was not already schemed whether they would be lovers, with the very manner of his proposal already set. The glittering moon was not yet bespoken for the night. "My dear young lady," this older author thinks, "you have certainly very pretty eyes and I like the way that lock of brown hair rests against your ear, but I am not at all sure that I shall let you marry my hero. Please sit around for a dozen chapters while I observe you. I must see you in tweed as well as silk. Perhaps you have an ugly habit of whining. Or safe in a married state you might wear a mob-cap in to breakfast. I'll send my hero up to London for his fling. There is an actress I must have him meet. I'll let him frolic through the winter. On his return he may choose between you."

"My dear madam," another of these older authors meditates, "how can I judge you on a first acquaintance? Certainly you talk loosely for an honest wife. It is too soon, as yet, to know how far your flirtation leads. I must observe you with Mr. Fopling in the garden after dinner. If, later, I grow dull and my readers nod, your elopement will come handy."