After becoming acquainted with a number of the metropolitan people of the pen, she was obliged to give up many of her illusions regarding them. Some of whom she had formed a flattering opinion, on acquaintance fell far below the mark. Others who flew high on paper, kept shockingly near the ground off paper. Some who had been successful were struggling frantically against a turn of the tide. But that which astonished and pained her most was their lack of ennobling ideals. Their pens were ever pointed toward the market, their talk was of prices, not ideas, and the shrine at which they worshipped was the ninth letter of the alphabet.
For the most part they were so busy writing and talking of what they had written and intended to write, that none read another’s production. Like swimmers in a turbulent sea, their energies were wholly given to the business of keeping afloat. In slavery to the baker and meat-seller, they expressed only such sentiments as they believed acceptable to the commonplace majority,—otherwise marketable products. They trimmed, tempered, pruned, whittled and cut their literary wares, to make them suit what they supposed to be the public’s wants, without regard to conscience or convictions.
Did all angle in these shallow waters? No! Here and there a worthy few had boldly refused to write down to the low level of average intelligence. They had penned their honest thought, and by so doing had brought a respectable portion of the public up to their plane, fame and money sometimes coming with it. Consciously or unconsciously they had operated a great law of the universe, that of giving one’s best to get the best.
In other words they had faithfully followed their highest ideals, in the face of possible ruin, under the pressure of poverty and the frowns of public taste and opinion. To do this is to live a great principle, to set the soul free. Whoever does this shall reap the reward of principle; he shall find his measure full. The multitude whose slavish bonds of ignorance he defies will cringe and fawn at his feet and pour its gold into his coffers.
The ideal is the real. If it be high its faithful followers are lifted up.
Workers who spend their lives in throwing sops to the mass of mediocre minds pay the inevitable penalty at last. They fall into the contempt of the very monster whose favor they have courted, who at heart respects only its masters, not its slaves.
One day Bardell, a straggler whose weapon was the pencil and whose field was the dreadful one of the commonest newspaper art, stopped at Mrs. Doring’s desk, as he often did, for a word or two. She regarded him as an almost hopeless bungler, but liked his unassertive, dreamy personality. Some of his drawings were altogether abominable, and in none of them did he seem to have the slightest pride.
He was undersized and queer-looking, with a big square head, a thin stooping body, large hollow eyes, and a face that suggested a worn-out spirit.
Ordinarily he had almost no words about anything, yet seemed to derive a silent pleasure from hanging near Cartice’s desk a few moments, when he brought his drawings to the “art man” of the house. His self-effacement was so refreshing to Cartice after much contact with pushing ninth-letter people, that she showed him marked civility.