The Library of Entertainment: Handbook

by John Chilton Scammell

Gladstone, the 'Grand Old Man' of English politics in the last century, was a scholar and a linguist as well as a statesman. On one occasion he was seated in the House of Commons while his bitter opponent, the clever Disraeli, was delivering a venomous and brilliant attack upon him. During the speech Gladstone was observed to be writing on a scrap of paper, apparently taking notes for his reply. At the conclusion of his enemy's speech Gladstone rose and delivered a most masterly refutation of the attack, answering and breaking down each point of Disraeli's invective with the utmost skill. A member sitting near by noticed that the scrap of paper was lying on Gladstone's seat and picked it up to see what the notes were like; to his surprise they consisted of a careful translation of "Rock of Ages" into smooth Greek verse, which the orator had made half-consciously while waiting for the occasion to reply to his opponent.

Macaulay, too, had wonderful scholastic talent and a fine memory. Even in his youth he showed great ability and read with amazing speed; most remarkable is the fact that he never seemed to forget a line he had read, but could repeat pages of an author many years after he had once perused his work. He read many works again and again, it is true, but for the pleasure of enjoying the fine points of style rather than for the sake of attaining greater familiarity with the book. His essays are regarded as among the most brilliant in the language, and seem to have been written posthaste, at full swing. In reality, however, he was well pleased if he produced five foolscap pages of longhand manuscript a day. It was his custom to spend the morning writing as fast as he could, the afternoon, in revising and pruning the morning's work and thus producing finished copy. He knew only too well that, as Sheridan said, "easy writing makes cursed hard reading," and that labor alone could produce a forceful and pleasant style.

Goethe, the greatest of the German immortals, is mainly remembered as a poet. Yet his fame would be great even if it depended only upon his scientific exploits. It was he who did much toward establishing the modern theory of evolution. Goethe also showed his insight into human progress by prophesying the construction of the Suez and the Panama Canals as long ago as 1827; this illustrates the marvelous imagination of the genius who was, as he himself said, a citizen of the world.

Shakespeare is certainly the supreme master of English literature, yet there was a time when he was regarded as a nuisance and a good-for-nothing. He was a poacher, a thieving vagabond arrested for stealing or killing deer in the park of the neighboring aristocrat, Sir Thomas Lucy. It was not long afterward that the future playwright went to London and gained his first acquaintance with the theater by holding horses for gentlefolk at the entrance of the principal playhouse of the city. Some authors would also call him a pirate and a thief, as Sir Thomas Lucy did, for he took plots and ideas wherever he found them and worked them over into the revised versions that now rank among the finest achievements of mankind. Yet all the while his one desire was to be a well-to-do business man of his native town of Stratford, and as soon as he had made a comfortable fortune he retired and spent his last years in quiet, building a new house and writing one or two last plays in the commonplace seclusion of a country town. There is still one place left in London where his plays were performed under his direction, although the old theaters have long since perished. This is the Temple Hall, in the grounds that belonged to the old Knights Templar of Crusading fame. Here he put on "The Winter's Tale" with great success. If you are ever in London you can visit the hall and on entering you can turn the very door-handle, so tradition says, which the poet himself used.

Molière was the greatest French dramatist. At the height of his career, legend relates, he was such a favorite with the grand monarch, Louis XIV, that this proud king made him come and dine in private with him, so as to convince his servants and courtiers that the genius whom they thought of as a vulgar, impossible boor, a mere actor, was worthy of the greatest consideration. Yet when Molière was dead the king ungratefully refused to see that he was properly buried and the great man was carried to his last resting-place with little ceremony.

At the present day one of France's most prominent writers is Rostand, the author of "Cyrano de Bergerac," a play which brought him into instant popularity through its brilliance, although a few weeks before scarcely anyone had heard his name. On the first night of the production, in 1897, the audience cheered and shouted until it seemed as if the performance would break up in the confusion created by its success, yet thanks to Rostand's coolness the actors and even the spectators were kept calm enough to carry the play through to its masterly conclusion. At the close, when the curtain had fallen on the last act, Rostand was sought for everywhere to make his bow to the enthusiastic audience, but he had quietly driven away to his country home, with his wife, and there he stayed for a week or more before the public had a chance to welcome him.

Byron is almost the only man in English letters to come so suddenly before the people. He woke up one morning to find himself famous, through the publication of "Childe Harold." Byron was another of the unhappy geniuses. He was hot-headed and married an equally irritable wife, so naturally they separated, with anger and yet with sorrow. His little daughter, who he said was the one friend he had in the world, died at an early age. He dreaded being fat and therefore starved himself, a process which did not make him happier. But his death was in itself enough to redeem him in spite of his irresponsible and rather selfish career, for he gave himself up to the cause of the freedom and independence of the Greeks, and died of fever contracted while preparing for the great campaign against the Turks.

Poor Dean Swift, the author of "Gulliver's Travels," the bitterest book ever written about human beings, suffered even more than Byron. He was keenly sensitive, and his political labors were poorly paid because he was none too courteous in his manner to the political leaders for whom he worked so hard. Boot-licking would have brought him the position he desired, but Swift was not a toady, so he was driven to accept the second-rate place offered him, and there vented his anger in the most savage attacks on human nature that can be imagined. All this while he had been fearing that his mind would give way; "I am like that tree," he said to a friend one day when they were out walking, "I shall die at the top first." He was right, for not long afterward his brain gave way.

"The Old Oaken Bucket" still has a touch of beauty for us, if we do not hear it too often. It was written under rather interesting circumstances. Samuel Woodworth, the author, was born and brought up on a little farm in Scituate, not far from Plymouth, Massachusetts. In his youth he went to New York and got a job as a reporter. One day he was in a bar, taking a glass of brandy and declaring that it was the finest drink on earth, when a friend with him said, "You're wrong; think of the delicious water you used to draw from the old well at home." Woodworth jumped up and hurried over to his rooms, where he sat down and dashed off the outline of the song that at once won a widespread vogue.