A Gentleman

by Maurice Francis Egan

Lord Byron awoke one morning and found himself famous. But that first morning of fame had cost much study, much thought, and, no doubt, periods of despondency in which he almost resolved not to write at all. Poetry does not gush from the poet, like fire out of a Roman candle when you light it. Of all species of literary composition, poetry requires more exquisite care than any other. A sonnet which has not been written and rewritten twenty times may be esteemed as worthless. To-day no modern poem has a right to be printed unless it be technically perfect. It seems a sacrilege to speak of poetry as a profession; it ought to be a vocation only, and the poet ought not only to be made by infinite pains taken with himself, but born. As to the rewards of extreme fineness in the expression of poetry, I have heard that Longfellow received one thousand dollars for his comparatively short poem of “Keramos,” and that Tennyson had a guinea a line. But we shall leave out poetry in talking of filthy lucre, and consider literature as represented by journalism, in which there is very little poetry.

I did not intend to touch on journalism, as the work of making newspapers is sometimes called, but I have been lately asked to give my opinion as to whether journalism is a good preparation for the pursuit of literature. Perhaps the best way to do this would be to give the experiences of a young journalist first.

I imagine a young person who had written at least twenty compositions; some on “Gratitude,” one on “Ambition,” one on “The History of a Pin,” and a grand poem on the Southern Confederacy in five cantos. He had been prepared for the pursuit of literature by being made to write a composition every Friday. These compositions were read aloud in his class. What beautiful sentiments were uttered on those Fridays! How everybody thrilled when young Strephon compared Ireland to “that prairie-grass which smells sweeter the more it is trodden on”! He had never seen such grass; he would not have recognized it if he had seen it; but he had read about it, and when a cruel scientific instructor asked him to give the botanical name, he turned away in disgust. His finest feelings were outraged. This, however, did not prevent the simile of the prairie-grass of unknown genus from cantering through all the compositions of the other members of the class for many succeeding weeks, until the professor got into a habit of asking, when a boy rose to read his essay: “Is there prairie-grass in it?” If the essayist said yes, he was made to sit down and severely reprimanded. Teachers were very cruel in those days.

There was another lovely simile ruthlessly cut down in its middle age—pardon me if I digress and pour out my wrongs to you; I know you can appreciate them. A boy of genius once said that “Charity, like an eternal flame, cheers, but not inebriates.” After that inspired utterance, charity, like an eternal flame, cheered, but not inebriated, the composition of every other writer, until the same cruel hand put it out. In those days we knew a good thing when we saw it, and, if it saved trouble, we appreciated it.

Somewhat later the young person attained a position in the office of an illustrated paper. It was a newspaper which was so fearful that its foreign letters should be incorrect that it always had them written at home. The young gentleman whose desk was next to that of your obedient servant wrote the Paris, Dublin, and New York letters. The correspondent from Rome and Constantinople, who also did the market reports at home, had some trouble with his spelling occasionally, and made a very old gentleman in the corner indignant by asking him whether “pecuniary” was spelled with a “c” or a “q,” and similar questions. This old gentleman wrote the fashion column, and signed himself “Mabel Evangeline.” He sometimes made mistakes about the fashions, but they were very naturally blamed on the printers. To your obedient servant fell the agricultural and the religious columns. All went well, for the prairie-grass was kept out of the agricultural column, though some strange things went in—all went well until he copied out of a paper a receipt for making hens lay. He did not know then that it was a comic paper, and that the friend who wrote it was only in fun. The hens of several subscribers lay down and died. There was trouble in the office, and the agricultural department was taken from him and given to “Mabel Evangeline,” who later came to grief by describing an immense peanut-tree which was said to grow in Massachusetts.

Your obedient servant was asked to write leaders on current subjects. How joyfully he went to work! Here was a chance to introduce the prairie-grass and the “eternal flame.” With a happy face he took his “copy” to the managing editor. Why did that great man frown as he read: “If we compare Dante with Milton, we find that the great Florentine sage was like that prairie-grass which—” “Do you call this a current subject?” he demanded. “It will not do. Where’s the other one?” Your obedient servant, in fear and trembling, gave him the other slips. He began: “The geocentric movement, like that eternal flame which cheers, but—” He paused. “When I asked,” he said, in an awful voice—“when I asked you for current subjects, I wanted an editorial on the fight in the Fourth Ward and a paragraph on the sudden rise in lard. Do you understand?”

Dante and the geocentric movement, the prairie-grass and the eternal flame were crushed. The wise young person learned to adapt himself to the ways of newspaper offices, and all went well again, until he attempted high art. This newspaper was young and not very rich; therefore economy had to be used in the matter of illustrations. The great man, its editor, had a habit of buying second-hand pictures—perhaps it was not to save money, but because he loved the old masters,—and it became the duty of the present writer, who was then a young person, and who is now your obedient servant, to write articles to suit the pictures. For instance, if a scene in Madrid had been bought, the present writer wrote about Madrid. It was easy, for he had an encyclopædia in the office; but if anybody had borrowed the volume containing “M” we always called Madrid by some other name, for “Mabel Evangeline,” who said he had travelled, said foreign cities looked pretty much alike. “Mabel Evangeline,” who sometimes, I am afraid, drank too much beer and mixed up things, was not to be relied on, for he put in a picture of Rome, N. Y., for Rome, Italy, and brought the paper into contempt. Still, I think this would not have made so much difference, if he had not labelled a picture of an actress in a very big hat and a very low-cut gown, “Home from a convent school.” He was discharged after this, and the present writer asked to perform his functions. Nothing unpleasant would have happened, if a picture had not been sent in one day in a hurry. It was a dim picture. It seemed to represent a tall woman and a ghost. The present writer named it “Lady Macbeth and the Ghost of Banquo,” and spun out a graphic description of the artist’s meaning. Next day when the paper came out, the picture was “The Goddess of Liberty crowning Abraham Lincoln.”

It was a mistake; but who does not make mistakes? Who ever saw the Goddess of Liberty, anyhow? If you heard the way that editor talked to the promising young journalist, you would have thought he was personally acquainted with both Lady Macbeth and the Goddess of Liberty, and that they had not succeeded in teaching him good manners. It is sad to think that mere trifles will often cause thoughtless people to lose their tempers.

The writing for newspapers is a good introduction to the profession of literature, if the aspirant can study, can read good books when not at work, can still take pains in spite of haste, and cultivate accuracy of practice. The best way to learn to write is to write. One engaged in supplying newspapers with “copy” must write. If he can keep a strict eye on his style—if he can avoid slang, “smart” colloquialism, he will find that the necessity for conciseness and the little time allowed for hunting for the right word for the right place will help him in attaining ease and aptness of expression.

The first difficulty the unpractised writer has to overcome is a lack of the right words. Words are repeated, and other words that are wanted to express some nice distinction of meaning will not come. Constant reference to a good dictionary or a book of synonyms is the surest remedy for this; and if the writer will refuse to use any word that does not express exactly what he means, he will make steady advance in the power of expression. Words that burn do not come at first. They are sought and found. Tennyson, old as he was, polished his early poems, hoping to make them perfect before he died. Pope’s lines, which seem so easy, so smooth, which seem to say in three or four words what we have been trying to say all our lives in ten or eleven, were turned and re-turned, carved and re-carved, cut and re-cut with all the scrupulousness of a sculptor curving a Grecian nose on his statue: