I turned to the first page and began reading, and from then on until dusk I sat in this charming alcove reading. A new and inviting door to life had been suddenly thrown open to me. Here was one who saw, thought, felt. Through him I saw a prospect so wide that it left me breathless—all Paris, all France, all life through French eyes. Here was one who had a tremendous and sensitive grasp of life, philosophic, tolerant, patient, amused. At once I was personally identified with his Raphael, his Rastignac, his Bixiou, his Bianchon. With Raphael I entered the gaming-house in the Palais Royal, looked despairingly down into the waters of the Seine from the Pont Royal, turned from it to the shop of the dealer in antiques, was ignored by the perfect young lady before the shop of the print-seller, attended the Taillefer banquet, suffered horrors over the shrinking skin. The lady without a heart was all too real. It was for me a literary revolution. Not only for the brilliant and incisive manner with which Balzac grasped life and invented themes whereby to present it, but for the fact that the types he handled with most enthusiasm and skill—the brooding, seeking, ambitious beginner in life’s social, political, artistic and commercial affairs (Rastignac, Raphael, de Rubempre, Bianchon)—were, I thought, so much like myself. Indeed, later taking up and consuming almost at a sitting The Great Man from the Provinces, Père Goriot, Cousin Pons, Cousin Bette, it was so easy to identify myself with the young and seeking aspirants. The brilliant and intimate pictures of Parisian life, the exact flavor of its politics, arts, sciences, religions, social goings to and fro impressed me so as to accomplish for me what his imaginary magic skin had done for his Raphael: transfer me bodily and without defect or lack to the center as well as the circumference of the world which he was describing. I knew his characters as well as he did, so magical was his skill. His grand and somewhat pompous philosophical deductions, his easy and offhand disposition of all manner of critical, social, political, historical, religious problems, the manner in which he assumed as by right of genius intimate and irrefutable knowledge of all subjects, fascinated and captured me as the true method of the seer and the genius. Oh, to possess an insight such as this! To know and be a part of such a cosmos as Paris, to be able to go there, to work, to study, suffer, rise, and even end in defeat if need be, so fascinatingly alive were all the journeys of his puppets! What was Pittsburgh, what St. Louis, what Chicago?—and yet, in spite of myself, while I adored his Paris, still I was obtaining a new and more dramatic light on the world in which I found myself. Pittsburgh was not Paris, America was not France, but in truth they were something, and Pittsburgh at least had aspects which somehow suggested Paris. These charming rivers, these many little bridges, the sharp contrasts presented by the east end and the mill regions, the huge industries here and their importance to the world at large, impressed me more vividly than before. I was in a workaday, begrimed, and yet vivid Paris. Taillefer, Nucingen, Valentin were no different from some of the immense money magnets here, in their case, luxury, power, at least the possibilities which they possessed.
Coming out of the library this day, and day after day thereafter, the while I rendered as little reportorial service as was consistent with even a show of effort, I marveled at the physical similarity of the two cities as I conceived it, at the chance for pictures here as well as there. American pictures here, as opposed to French pictures there. And all the while I was riding with Lucien to Paris, with his mistress, courting Madame Nucingen with Rastignac, brooding over the horror of the automatically contracting skin with Raphael, poring over his miseries with Goriot, practicing the horrible art of prostitution with Madame Marneffe. For a period of four or five months I ate, slept, dreamed, lived him and his characters and his views and his city. I cannot imagine a greater joy and inspiration than I had in Balzac these Spring and Summer days in Pittsburgh. Idyllic days, dreamy days, poetic days, wonderful days, the while I ostensibly did “police and city hall” in Allegheny.
CHAPTER LXIII
It would be unfair to myself not to indicate that I rendered an adequate return for the stipend paid me. As a matter of fact, owing to the peculiar character of the local news conditions, as well as my own creative if poorly equipped literary instincts at the time, I was able to render just such service as my employers craved, and that with scarcely a wrench to my mental ease. For what they craved, more than news of a dramatic or disturbing character, was some sort of idle feature stuff which they could use in place of news and still interest their readers. The Spring time, Balzac, the very picturesque city itself, my own idling and yet reflective disposition, caused me finally to attempt a series of mood or word-pictures about the most trivial matters—a summer storm, a spring day, a visit to a hospital, the death of an old switchman’s dog, the arrival of the first mosquito—which gave me my first taste of what it means to be a creative writer.
The city editor asked me one day if I could not invent some kind of feature, and I sat down and thought of one theme and another. Finally I thought of the fly as a possible subject for an idle skit. Being young and ambitious, and having just crawled out of a breeding-pit somewhere, he alighted on the nearest fence or windowsill, brushed his head and wings reflectively and meditated on the chances of a livelihood or a career. What would be open to a young and ambitious fly in a world all too crowded with flies? There were barns, of course, and kitchens and horses and cows and pigs, but these fields were overrun, and this was a sensitive and cleanly and meditative fly. Flying about here and there to inspect the world, he encountered within a modest and respectable home a shiny pate which seemed to offer a rather polished field of effort and so on.
This idle thing which took me not more than three-quarters of an hour to write and which I was almost afraid to submit, produced a remarkable change in the attitude of the office, as well as in my life and career. We had at this time as assistant city editor a small, retiring, sentimental soul, Jim Israels, who was one of the most gracious and approachable and lovable men I have ever known. He it was to whom I turned over my skit. He took it with an air of kindly consideration and helpfulness.
“Trying to help us out, are you?” he said with a smile, and then added when I predicated its worthlessness: “Well, it’s not such an easy thing to turn out that stuff. I hope it’s something the chief will like.”
He took it and, as I noticed, for I hung about to see, read it at once, and I saw him begin to smile and finally chuckle.
“This thing’s all right,” he called. “You needn’t worry. Gaither’ll be pleased with this, I know,” and he began to edit it.