In another case of Swelled Head which has come under my observation, the victim is a woman—rather an unusual thing, for a woman’s vanity is not, as a rule, as deep-seated as a man’s. This woman, whom I will call Margaret Mealy, and whose real name is well known to thousands of magazine readers, dwells in a pleasant inland town and has for a neighbor an old-time friend and fellow-writer named Henry Kornkrop. Both are graduates of the old Ledger school—many a Friday morning have they sat side by side on the poets’ bench in the outer office, watching the awful shadow of Robert Bonner moving to and fro behind the glass partition—and both have been successful, though in widely different ways.
Mrs. Mealy has made the tastes of mediocre people her life-study, and, as she has never for a single moment lost sight of the great literary principles which she acquired during the period of her apprenticeship, she has continued to keep herself in touch with editorial likes and dislikes, with the result that she is now a regular contributor to the leading magazines, and the author of various short stories and serials of such incredible stupidity that I often wonder what hypnotic or persuasive powers made it possible for her to dispose of them.
Her neighbor, Henry Kornkrop, is a literary worker of another stamp. He goes to work every morning at nine o’clock, and from that hour until noon the click of his type-writer does not cease for a single instant. Two hours more in the afternoon complete his day’s stint; and as his contract with his publishers calls for neither punctuation, paragraphs, nor capitals, he is able to turn out a stupendous quantity of fiction from one Christmas day to another. He writes over the name of “Lady Gwendoline Dunrivers,” and deals exclusively with aristocratic life and character. Many a young shop-girl going down-town in an early elevated train with the latest “Lady Gwendoline” in her hand has been carried past Grand Street and awakened with a start from her dream of Lord Cecil, with his tawny mustache and clear-blue eyes, to find herself at the Battery terminus of the road. There is strong meat in Henry Kornkrop’s work, and his publishers gladly buy every ream that he turns out. In one sense he leads an ideal literary life, with no editors to refuse his work or alter it to suit the tastes of their readers, no vulgar publicity, no adverse criticisms to wound his feelings, and, best of all, no pecuniary care; for the “Lady Gwendoline” romances bring him in not less than $10,000 a year, which is probably twice as much as Mrs. Mealy makes.
Of course neither of these writers turns out any decent work the year through, if we are to judge them by a respectable literary standard; but it is not easy to determine which of the two is the more culpable—Margaret Mealy, who puts gas-fitters to sleep, or Henry Kornkrop, who keeps dish-washers awake. I fancy, however, that there are few of my readers who will disagree with me in my opinion that, of the two, honest Henry Kornkrop is by far the more successful and prosperous. And yet Mrs. Mealy made up her mind a few years ago that she really could not afford to be on such familiar terms with the Kornkrops—not that Mrs. K. was not the very best of women, and Henry the most industrious of men—but simply because her position before the world as a literary woman made it necessary for her to be a little particular about her associates.
In other words, the silly flattery of young women in search of autographs, and of mendacious reviewers who have manuscript to dispose of, has been sufficient to upset the mental equilibrium of this most excellent woman and leave her a victim of the Swelled Head, pitied by all who know her, and by none more than by her old associate of the poets’ bench, Henry Kornkrop, the modest and gifted author of the “Lady Gwendoline” romances.
One more instance of Swelled Head and I am done. The case to which I refer is that of Mr. E. F. Benson, the author of Dodo, who has, I am credibly informed, been so overwhelmed with attentions from women of rank and fashion that his evenings are now fully occupied with social functions and he is unable to attend night-school. This is to be regretted, for Mr. Benson is by no means devoid of cleverness, and I am sure that in an institution of learning of the kind that I have named he would soon master such mysteries of syntax as the subjunctive mood, and at the same time vastly improve his style by constant study of such masterpieces of simple, direct English as, “Ho! the ox does go,” and “Lo! I do go up.”
CHAPTER VIII.
LITERATURE—PAWED AND UNPAWED; AND THE CROWN-PRINCE THEREOF.
“See here!” cried a friend of mine the other day, “you’re always crying down the magazines, but I’ll bet you couldn’t write a magazine story to save your neck!”