We give away the magic belt which makes us invisible, without knowing in the least all that we give away with it: all that delightful independence and repose which are the portion of the humbles de la terre, who, all the same, do not value it, do not appreciate it; do not, indeed, ever cease from dissatisfaction at it In their ignorance they think how glorious it must be to stand in the white blaze of the electric light of celebrity; how enviable and delightful it surely is to move forever in a buzz of wondering voices and a dust of rolling chariots, never to stir unchronicled and never to act uncommented. Hardly can one persuade them of the treasure which they possess in their own obscurity? If we tell them of it, they think we laugh at them or lie.
Privacy is the necessity of good and great art, as it is the corollary of dignity and decorum of life. But it is bought with a price; it is bought by incurring the dislike and vindictiveness of all who are checked in their petty malice and prying curiosity and are sent away from closed doors.
The ideal literary life is that of Michelet; the ideal artistic life is that of Corot. Imagine the one leaving the song of the birds and the sound of the seas to squabble at a Copyright Congress, or the other leaving his green trees and his shining waters to pour out the secrets with which nature had intrusted him in the ear of a newspaper reporter! If a correspondent of the press had hidden behind an elder-bush on a grassy path at Shottery, methinks Shakespeare would have chucked him into the nearest ditch; and if a stenographer had inquired of Dante what meats had tasted so bitter to him at Can Grande’s table, beyond a doubt the meddler would have learned the coldness and the length of a Florentine rapier. But then no one of these men was occupied with his own personality, none of them had the restless uneasiness, the morbid fear, which besets the modern hero, lest, if his contemporaries do not prate of him, generations to come will know naught of him.
In modern life also, the fox, with his pen and ink hidden under his fur, creeps in, wearing the harmless skin of a familiar house-dog, and the unhappy hare or pullet, who has received, caressed, and fed him without suspicion, sees too late an account of the good nature and of his habitation travestied and sent flying on a news sheet to the four quarters of the globe. Against treachery of this kind there is no protection possible. All that can be done is to be very slow in giving or allowing introductions; very wary in making new acquaintances, and wholly indifferent to the odium incurred by being called exclusive.
Interrogation is always ill-bred; and an intrusion that takes the form of a prolonged interrogation is an intrusion so intolerable that any rudeness whatever is justifiable in its repression.[repression.]
The man of genius gives his work, his creation, his alter ego, to the world, whether it be in political policy, in literary composition, in music, sculpture, painting, or statuary. This the world has full right to judge, to examine, to applaud, or to condemn; but beyond this, into the pale of his private life it has no possible title to entry. It is said in the common jargon of criticism that without knowing the habits, temperament, physique and position of the artist, it is impossible to correctly judge his creation. It is, on the contrary, a hindrance to the unbiassed judgment of any works to be already prejudiced per or contra by knowledge of the accidents and attributes of those who have produced them. It is a morbid appetite, as well as a vulgar taste, that makes the public invade the privacy of those who lead, instruct, or adorn their century, and these last have themselves to thank, in a great measure, for the pests which they have let loose.
Every day any one who bears a name in any way celebrated receives requests or questions from persons who are unknown to him, demanding his views on everything from Buddhism to blacking, and inquiring into every detail of his existence, from his personal affections to his favourite dish at dinner. If he deign to answer them, he is as silly as the senders.
Sometimes you will hear that a town has been named after you in America, or Australia, or Africa; it is usually a few planks laid down in a barren plain, and you are expected to be grateful that your patronymic will be shouted on a siding as the railway train rushes by it. Sometimes an enthusiastic and unknown letter writer will implore you to tell him or her ‘everything’ about yourself, from your birth onwards; and if, as you will certainly do if you are in your senses, you consign the impudent appeal to the waste-paper basket, your undesired correspondent will probably fill up the lacuna from his or her own imagination. Were all this the offspring of genuine admiration, it might be in a measure excused, though it would always be ill-bred, noxious and odious. But it is either an impertinent curiosity or a desire to make money.
The moment that your name is well known, the demands made upon you will be as numerous as they will be imperative. Though you may never have given any permission or any data for a biography, the fact will not prevent hundreds of biographies appearing about you: that they are fictitious and unauthorised matters nothing either to those who publish or to those who read. Descriptions, often wholly inaccurate, of your habits, your tastes, your appearance, your manner of life, will be put in circulation, no matter how offensive or how injurious to you they may be. Your opinions will be demanded by strangers whose only object is to obtain for themselves some information which they can turn to profit. From the frequency or rarity of your dreams to the length of your menu at dinner, nothing will escape the insatiable appetite of an unwholesome and injurious inquisitiveness. Obscure nonentities from Missouri or Nevada will imagine that they honour you by writing that they have baptised their brats in your name, and requesting some present or acknowledgment in return for their unwelcome effrontery in taking you as an eponymus.
It is probable, nay, I think, certain, that in no epoch of the world’s history was prominence in any art or any career ever rendered so extremely uncomfortable as in ours, never so heavily handicapped with the observation and penalty-weight of inquisitive misrepresentation. All the inventions of the age tend to increase a thousandfold all that minute examination of and impudent interference with others which were alive in the race in the days of Miltiades and Socrates, but which has now, in its so-called scientific toys, the means of gratifying this mischievous propensity in an infinitely greater and more dangerous degree.