Vicariously Vicarious

The title of this article below -- Confessions of a Vicarious Person -- caught me, but the phrase is not really  meant alas, to characterize human intelligence. Here because I still like the title.







cit---The Bookman, Volumes 15-16-1903
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Possibly some people are born vicarious. Certainly, some other people have vicariousness thrust upon them. In proof take these experiences of a person whose ruling principle it is to mind her own business.

The first of them came to pass in my salad days, when the prophetic shadow of a literary career earned for me a certain pitying tolerance faintly touched with envy, and—to be wholly frank—admiration. Back in my province, white blackbirds were jfienty compared with folk who wrote things. Judge, then, the sensation caused by a summer visitor to one of the first families, who, it was given out, had a novel nearly ready for the press. There was a delicious vagueness as to publishers and date of issue, but doubt was impossible, to even the most captions, in face of the fact that the authoress secluded herself three mornings a week upon the plea of finishing the great work in time.

She was herself a poem in flesh and blood—tall, svelte, with dusk eyes and floss silk hair falling, when let down, quite to her knees. She came to see me, ostensibly to show me the length of it. Her real purpose fairly took my breath. All in a huddle, punctuated by little, breathless sobs, she told her amazing story—how she had begun by stealing compositions at school, and, spurred by the praise they evoked, had gone on to stealing love stories from old, old magazines and sending them to a publication that paid for contributions only in praise. Once her name was in print, her fond parents, her fonder lover, had declared she must write a novel. She had agreed; further, she had begun by stealing a first chapter from an old—time serial, thinking it would be easy, once the stage was set, to go on with the story in her own way. But in the middle of chapter second she had stuck hard and fast—that

was two years back—she was bound to stay stuck unless I would help her. Couldn’t I, wouldn’t I, ask the privilege of “reading her novel in manuscript”— and finish it before I brought it back? She did not, of course, like to mention money, but she had thousands in her own right—I might make my own terms. Unless I did help her the end would be a tragedy—she would die rather than be found out. All she wanted was to justify outwardly the fond faith of her dear ones. Once she could show them a bit of really creditable work she would marry, and forswear all thought of lit— erature.

A truly moving tale, but somehow it rang false. All I would agree to was an overlooking of the manuscript, with a view to suggesting a way around the hard comer. She shook her head despairingly, but in due time there came the inchoate novel. My examination was brief. Between untidy sheets torn from a greasy ledger, scrawled over with aim— less sentences, shockingly misspelled in every other word, there was a letter which I read, taking it to be a fragment of the story. It ran thuswise:

“Mabel: If you are accidentally telling the truth and there is a man fool enough to marry you, take him—quick— before he has the chance to find you out. Your father swears he’ll never give you another summer ward-robe, now your sisters are both grown up, so you’ll be wise not to let any sort of a chance slip.

“Your Affectionate Mother.”

The untidy manuscript went home with the letter uppermost, and indorsed in my boldest hand: “Examined by mistake.” Otherwise there was neither note nor comment. Next week the “authoress” also went home, first telling her confidantes that my enviously cruel criticism had so nearly broken her heart she was almost persuaded to give up a literary career.

The woman in the second case was younger, and, if possible, prettier than the first. I knew her in a way—that is to say, her family and pedigree were an open book to me, though we had never come in personal touch. I was by this time in New York with a book or so in print. Nebulous word came to me from home that the young woman was becoming a literary person upon the strength of her name, which happened to be the same as that of a comet among the erotic stars of a season. Notwithstanding it took me somewhat aback to have her write me: “I have written a book—and sold it to Dash & Quad—that is, if I can make it a heap better. I know I can't do that—but you can. Do it and I’ll give you half the money. And I’ll come to New York, and we’ll write a heap of books together. I'm sure I could think up ever so many if I had you to tell me how."

F rankness so naive compelled kindness. As gently as possible I told the young woman that no book could be truly "made better” save by the real writer of it. She took my rebuff so charmingly I wondered not a little. When at last—her book was published, my wonder evaporated. I found that in the effort at betterment she had put into it whole pages, sometimes whole chapters, verbatim et literatim, from a book of my own. She was by this time in New York. At our next meeting I told her how genuinely I regretted what she had done, pointing out that, while I should make no trouble for her, she had put a weapon in the hands of possible enemies by which they might wholly discredit any future work of hers. The look which answered me was a revelation, it was so full of'pained surprise. “Why!” she said. “You knew all about that. I asked you to help me and you wouldn’t do it. I offered you half the money! You can’t say I cheated! Besides, what harm have I done? The peo~ ple who read your book will never look into mine.” Then she went away full of a sad, resigned dignity. It took me some little time to get over feeling that I was really the person culpable.

Case three has to do with a poet who dawned upon me in full flush of having won the prize in a State-wide contest. Local celebrity no longer contented him, neither did poesy. He came casually to

the city, pining for the flesh-pots of prose, yet full of a certain condescension toward the magazines. First he came to me for advice. Would I hold it undignified in one of his position to send to editors, unsolicited, the excetlent stories he had to tell? What was the practice of famous persons? He wished to go where he belonged, but felt he could not afford a false step.

Now, I am above advising even my worst enemies, but I did tell him that, to my best understanding, few got into the magazines without trying long, and strong, and hard. Further, that I knew he had stories to tell; if he could write them as he talked them, there was no rea— son why he should not succeed. Thereat he beamed and tapped his breast-pocket significantly, saying: "I was so sure of what you would advise I have something ready. I shall drop in and leave it with Gridley, the man who lunched with us yesterday. I think you said he was editor of the Pictorial Dream.”

I smiled. I owed Gridley one, and felt that shortly Fate was to balance the account. Instead, the fickle jade took a fresh “fall out of me.” Gridley promptly sent back the story, with a suggestion that the author take my judgment of it before sending it elsewhere. So, of course, it came to me, along with a hurt letter: “What is wrong with this? Anything, or nothing? Or is it merely that I was misled into choosing the wrong editor?”

Three months, at least, that tale was my Nemesis. There was a rattling real story in it——-but oh, the telling! Never was moving incident so frightfully butch— ered. I sent it back with suggestions. As promptly as possible it was returned with a line: “Please show me what you mean.” Thereupon I wrote it more than half way. The author copied it, tried it on another editor, got another rejection, and came back at me, asking if I had sportively misled him. The situation was by this so strained, withal humourous, I took the bold course— wrote the story spang through, from title to tailpiece, with no more regard for the supposed author than if he had been a ghost. It was easy work—only putting flesh and blood on the bones of a piteous skeleton. Six months afterward the poet, again casually in the city, said to me withcarefully veiled triumph: “You’ll be interested in the next number of the Beauty Book. They are printing that thing of mine, C laiborne’s Ghost—I believe I sent you a rough draft of it; finished, it is, of course, very different.”

I did not find it so. Barring a possible hundred words, the story was printed as it left my hand. That, however, I had looked for. What surprised me was to have the poet say expansively, that now he had found out how easy it was, he should write a lot of stories. I agree that it was easy. But, unaccountably, Claiborne’s Ghost has so far had no suc— cessor.

Over case four I puzzle a bit, wondering whether or no I am partner in the crime. Chance flung in my way oppor— tunity for a socio—psychological experiment, which I could not or did not resist. The opportunity was a woman with fine frocks, little money and boldly hand— some. She was, moreover, coarsefibred, unhappy, and ambitious as Lucifer, without the least knowledge of what a scruple meant. Yet her verbal morals were, like her manners and costumes, carefully tailor-made. According to her own account, a past of lurid virtue had thrown her upon her own resources. And she had a yearning to write that was absolutely pathetic, in view of her limitations. It would be flattery to call what‘ she wrote bathos—nothing short of genius turned to idiocy could have done so badly. She had been through a sort of college and knew many books by heart, yet had not a trace of culture. How to reconcile her attainments with her ignorance was wholly beyond me.

Goodness knows what induced editors to print the letters she sent back to a syndicate of small Western papers. Some of the editors did it under pressure of contract, kicking hard. When she fell ill, I wrote the letters for her, thereby putting the kickers to rout. The writing was no burden, rather a pastime, yet she watched me scribble with something of envious awe. “You do a letter in just an hour!” she said one day; then, with a

keen look: “I wonder how long it would take you to write a book?”

“Once I wrote a book in two weeks—with three murders, a fire and an elopement in it,” I said, smiling at thought of a penny-dreadful whose price had helped me through a specially lean summer. She gasped:

“And you could do it again? Writing

about just a woman—like me—big you ~

know—and pretty—and he lov-e-ed her-— but he meant bad by her and she ran away and made herself somebody—and then he wished he hadn’t ?"

I wanted to laugh. Her eyes, desperately earnest, forbade. To relieve- the tension, I said: “Yes, I could do it; but I should charge a lot,” naming a figure I fancied as much beyond her as the national debt. But she took me up eagerly, crying: “I'll pay your price! No, I haven't got the money, but I know who has got it, and will give it to me for the asking.”

I tried to back out—vainly. She held me to my word. And then my familiar demon whispered: “Why not? Think of the fun.”

The fun came largely after the book was finished. The supposed authoress had to be taken through it chapter by chapter, and drilled as to words and usages to her wholly strange. She had, further, to be enlightened as to the meaning of various allusions, classic, literary, legendary and current. The process gave me a new insight into human stupidity. I am still at a loss to comprehend how a seeing and hearing creature in this era ever kept itself so densely uninformed.

For the rest, the book was published, sold fairly well, was flamboyantly reviewed and advertised, and used to point immorals in various enlightened publica— tions, over names more or less known. By help of it the woman whose name figures on the title-page got a certain social entrée and married fairly well. Notwithstanding, I am no longer open to vicarious engagements.

Patience Croswell.