The Tory party came in the end to realize that there was nothing really dangerous in the poetry of this unhappy boy. Wise old Tories like Sir Walter Scott had known it from the beginning, and young Tories like Tennyson and Rossetti proclaimed it. Keats himself was no longer alive to offend them with his Cockney manners, so they took up his writings, and made them a bulwark of leisure-class culture in a stage of arrested mentality, a resource of critics who wish to keep the young from thinking about dangerous modern questions. But I venture the opinion that if this Cockney stable-keeper’s son had grown to manhood, he would have taken care of his own destiny, and seen to it that dilettanti idlers and aesthetic decadents should find no comfort in his name and example. His letters give abundant evidence of his capable mind, and assure us that if he had been blessed with health he would have matured into a thinker, even as John Milton, the great companion of his later days.
How much the lip-servers of Keats really understand him, was proven by a peculiar incident which befell me in my own youth. Twenty-two years ago I published “The Journal of Arthur Stirling,” a passionate defense of the right of young poets to survive; and of course I sang enraptured praise of Keats, and made him a text for excited tirades. At that time there was a newspaper in New York called the “Evening Telegram,” owned by James Gordon Bennett, a dissipated rowdy who might have been a blood brother to the Tory crowd which conducted “Blackwood’s” and the “Quarterly” a hundred years ago. This “Evening Telegram” published a page of book reviews every Saturday, boasting it the most widely circulated book page in the United States. Its opinion, therefore, was of importance to a young writer hoping to live by his pen. It reviewed “The Journal of Arthur Stirling,” saying that we might have sympathized with the struggles of an unfortunate poet, had he not committed the indiscretion of giving us samples of his writings, which enabled us to be certain that he had no idea whatever of poetry. For example, said the editor, here was one of Arthur Stirling’s effusions. Read it:
Sit thee by the ingle, when
The sear faggot blazes bright,
Spirit of a winter’s night!—
Sit thee there, and send abroad
With a mind self-overaw’d
Fancy, high-commission’d;—send her!
She has vassals to attend her;
She will bring, in spite of frost,
Beauties that the earth hath lost;
She will bring thee, all together,
All delights of summer weather;
All the buds and bells of May
From dewy sward or thorny spray;
All the heapèd Autumn’s wealth,
With a still, mysterious stealth;
She will mix these pleasures up,
Like three fit wines in a cup,
And thou shalt quaff it!—
Poor Arthur Stirling was supposed to be dead, so I asked a friend to write to the editor of the “Evening Telegram” and point out to him that he had misunderstood the book; the lines quoted were not submitted as the work of Arthur Stirling, they happened to be the work of John Keats! The editor published this reply with an easygoing comment; it made a good joke, he said, but as a matter of fact he was justified in his criticism, because the lines belonged to the very early work of Keats, which was practically without poetic merit. My friend wrote again, expressing surprise that the editor should make such a statement; for this poem, entitled “Fancy,” belonged to the last two years of Keats’ life, the wonderful years which produced all his greatest writings. Palgrave, whose authority none would dispute, had included it in the “Golden Treasury,” which contained only thirteen poems by Keats. The editor of the “Evening Telegram” was unable to find space for that letter!
CHAPTER LX
THE PREDATORY ARTIST
Says Mrs. Ogi: “Here is Haldeman-Julius, discussing the thesis of your book. He says: ‘You may say that because Balzac drew his characters largely from the bourgeoisie he was conducting a subtle propaganda in behalf of a class; or, in general, that he was a bourgeois author. But such a view would be a travesty of literary criticism.’”
Says Ogi: “That is what a great many people are going to call this book. But let us see what we can make of Balzac.”
At this point the mail arrives, and in it a letter to Mrs. Ogi, telling some bad news about a friend. A look of deep distress comes upon her face, and Ogi, watching her, is suddenly inspired. “Hold that expression!” he cries.
“What do you mean?” falters Mrs. Ogi.
“It’s what I need for a story! I want to get all the details of it—the trembling of your lips, the look in your eyes. Hold it now! It is copy!”