“YOUTHFUL GENIUS OFFERS HIMSELF FOR SALE!”
Thyrsis rushed through this article, writhing with horror and dismay. The woman had made him into what they called a “human interest” feature. There was very little about his book, but there was much about the picturesque circumstances under which he had written it. There was a description of their personal appearance—of Corydon’s sweet face and soulful black eyes, and of his broad forehead and sensitive lips. There was also a complete description of their domestic ménage, including the chafing-dish and the odor of lamb-chops. There was a highly diverting account of how they had “eloped” with only eight dollars in the world; together with all the agonies of their parents, as imagined by the sympathetic lady.
They had been butchered to make a holiday for the readers of a yellow journal! “This is a wonderfully interesting world,” the paper seemed to say—“well worth the penny it costs to read about it! Here on the first page is Antonio Petronelli, who cut up his sweetheart with a butcher-knife, and packed her in a trunk. And here are seven people burned in a tenement-house; and an interview with Shrike, the plunger, who made three millions out of the wheat-corner. But most diverting of all are these two little cherubs who ran away and got married, and now want the world to support them while they write masterpieces of literature!”
And could not one see the great public devouring the tale—the Wall Street clerks in the cars, and the shop-girls over their sandwiches and coffee, and the loungers in the cafes of the Tenderloin! Could not one picture their smiles—not contemptuous, but genial, as of people who have learned that it is indeed an interesting world, and well worth the penny it costs to read about it!
Section 3. Corydon shed tears of rage over this humiliation, and she wrote a letter full of bitter scorn to the newspaper woman. In reply to it came a friendly note to the effect that she had done the best thing in the world for them—that when they knew more about life and the literary game, they would recognize this!
The tangible results of the adventure were three. First there came a letter, written on scented note-paper, from a lady who commended their noble ideals and wished them success—but who did not sign her name. Second, there came a visit from a brother poet—a man about forty years of age, shabby and pitiful, with watery, light blue eyes and a feeble straggly moustache, and a manner of agonized diffidence. He stood in the doorway and shifted from one foot to the other, and explained that he had read the article, and had come because he, too, was an unrecognized genius. He had written two volumes of poetry, which were the greatest poetry ever produced in English—Milton and Shakespeare would be forgotten when the world had read these volumes. For ten years he had been trying to find some publisher or literary man to recognize him; and perhaps Thyrsis would be the man.
He came in and sat on the bed and unwrapped his two volumes—several hundred typewritten pages, elaborately bound up in covers of faded pink silk. And Thyrsis read one and Corydon the other, while the poet sat by and watched them and twisted his hands nervously. His poetry was all about stars and blue-bells and moonlight, about springtime and sighing lovers, about cold, rain-beaten graves and faded leaves of autumn—the subjects and the images which have been the stock in trade of minor poets for two thousand years and more. Thyrsis, as he read, could have marked fifty phrases which were feeble imitations of things in Tennyson and Longfellow and Keats; and he read for half an hour, in the vain hope of finding a single vigorous line.
This interview was a very painful one. He could not bear to hurt the poor creature’s feelings, and he did not know how to get rid of him. The matter was made still more difficult by the presence of Corydon, who did not know the models, and therefore thought the poetry was good. She let the visitor go on to pour out his heart; until at last came a climax that Thyrsis had been expecting all along. The man explained that he was a bookkeeper, out of work, and with a wife and three children on the verge of starvation; and then he tried to borrow some money from them!
The third result was the important one. It was a letter from a publishing-house.
“We are on the lookout for vital and worth-while books,” it read, “and we are not afraid to venture. We have been much interested in the account of your work, and we should be very glad if you would give us a chance to read it immediately.”