Frenzied Fiction

S >> Stephen Leacock >> Frenzied Fiction

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11

"Entirely," said the Great Actor, throwing his leonine
head forward again. "I have devoted years of study to
the part. The whole conception of the part of Hamlet has
been wrong."

We sat stunned.

"All actors hitherto," continued the Great Actor, "or
rather, I should say, all so-called actors--I mean all
those who tried to act before me--have been entirely
mistaken in their presentation. They have presented Hamlet
as dressed in black velvet."

"Yes, yes," we interjected, "in black velvet, yes!"

"Very good. The thing is absurd," continued the Great Actor,
as he reached down two or three heavy volumes from the
shelf beside him. "Have you ever studied the Elizabethan era?"

"The which?" we asked modestly.

"The Elizabethan era?"

We were silent.

"Or the pre-Shakespearean tragedy?"

We hung our head.

"If you had, you would know that a Hamlet in black velvet
is perfectly ridiculous. In Shakespeare's day--as I could
prove in a moment if you had the intelligence to understand
it--there was no such thing as black velvet. It didn't
exist."

"And how then," we asked, intrigued, puzzled and yet
delighted, "do _you_ present Hamlet?"

"In _brown_ velvet," said the Great Actor.

"Great Heavens," we exclaimed, "this is a revolution."

"It is. But that is only one part of my conception. The
main thing will be my presentation of what I may call
the psychology of Hamlet."

"The psychology!" we said.

"Yes," resumed the Great Actor, "the psychology. To make
Hamlet understood, I want to show him as a man bowed down
by a great burden. He is overwhelmed with Weltschmerz.
He carries in him the whole weight of the Zeitgeist; in
fact, everlasting negation lies on him--"

"You mean," we said, trying to speak as cheerfully as we
could, "that things are a little bit too much for him."

"His will," went on the Great Actor, disregarding our
interruption, "is paralysed. He seeks to move in one
direction and is hurled in another. One moment he sinks
into the abyss. The next, he rises above the clouds. His
feet seek the ground, but find only the air--"

"Wonderful," we said, "but will you not need a good deal
of machinery?"

"Machinery!" exclaimed the Great Actor, with a leonine
laugh. "The machinery of _thought_, the mechanism of
power, of magnetism--"

"Ah," we said, "electricity."

"Not at all," said the Great Actor. "You fail to understand.
It is all done by my rendering. Take, for example, the
famous soliloquy on death. You know it?"

"'To be or not to be,'" we began.

"Stop," said the Great Actor. "Now observe. It is a
soliloquy. Precisely. That is the key to it. It is
something that Hamlet _says to himself_. Not a _word of
it_, in my interpretation, is actually spoken. All is
done in absolute, unbroken silence."

"How on earth," we began, "can you do that?"

"Entirely and solely _with my face_."

Good heavens! Was it possible? We looked again, this time
very closely, at the Great Actor's face. We realized with
a thrill that it might be done.

"I come before the audience _so_," he went on, "and
soliloquize--thus--follow my face, please--"

As the Great Actor spoke, he threw himself into a
characteristic pose with folded arms, while gust after
gust of emotion, of expression, of alternate hope, doubt
and despair, swept--we might say chased themselves across
his features.

"Wonderful!" we gasped.

"Shakespeare's lines," said the Great Actor, as his face
subsided to its habitual calm, "are not necessary; not,
at least, with my acting. The lines, indeed, are mere
stage directions, nothing more. I leave them out. This
happens again and again in the play. Take, for instance,
the familiar scene where Hamlet holds the skull in his
hand: Shakespeare here suggests the words 'Alas, poor
Yorick! I knew him well--'"

"Yes, yes!" we interrupted, in spite of ourself, "'a
fellow of infinite jest--'"

"Your intonation is awful," said the Actor. "But listen.
In my interpretation I use no words at all. I merely
carry the skull quietly in my hand, very slowly, across
the stage. There I lean against a pillar at the side,
with the skull in the palm of my hand, and look at it in
silence."

"Wonderful!" we said.

"I then cross over to the right of the stage, very
impressively, and seat myself on a plain wooden bench,
and remain for some time, looking at the skull."

"Marvellous!"

"I then pass to the back of the stage and lie down on my
stomach, still holding the skull before my eyes. After
holding this posture for some time, I crawl slowly forward,
portraying by the movement of my legs and stomach the
whole sad history of Yorick. Finally I turn my back on
the audience, still holding the skull, and convey through
the spasmodic movements of my back Hamlet's passionate
grief at the loss of his friend."

"Why!" we exclaimed, beside ourself with excitement,
"this is not merely a revolution, it is a revelation."

"Call it both," said the Great Actor.

"The meaning of it is," we went on, "that you practically
don't need Shakespeare at all."

"Exactly, I do not. I could do better without him.
Shakespeare cramps me. What I really mean to convey is
not Shakespeare, but something greater, larger--how shall
I express it--bigger." The Great Actor paused and we
waited, our pencil poised in the air. Then he murmured,
as his eyes lifted in an expression of something like
rapture. "In fact--ME."

He remained thus, motionless, without moving. We slipped
gently to our hands and knees and crawled quietly to the
door, and so down the stairs, our notebook in our teeth.

III WITH OUR GREATEST SCIENTIST

As seen in any of our College Laboratories

It was among the retorts and test-tubes of his physical
laboratory that we were privileged to interview the Great
Scientist. His back was towards us when we entered. With
characteristic modesty he kept it so for some time after
our entry. Even when he turned round and saw us his face
did not react off us as we should have expected.

He seemed to look at us, if such a thing were possible,
without seeing us, or, at least, without wishing to see us.

We handed him our card.

He took it, read it, dropped it in a bowlful of sulphuric
acid and then, with a quiet gesture of satisfaction,
turned again to his work.

We sat for some time behind him. "This, then," we thought
to ourselves (we always think to ourselves when we are
left alone), "is the man, or rather is the back of the
man, who has done more" (here we consulted the notes
given us by our editor), "to revolutionize our conception
of atomic dynamics than the back of any other man."

Presently the Great Scientist turned towards us with a
sigh that seemed to our ears to have a note of weariness
in it. Something, we felt, must be making him tired.

"What can I do for you?" he said.

"Professor," we answered, "we have called upon you in
response to an overwhelming demand on the part of the
public--"

The Great Scientist nodded.

"To learn something of your new researches and discoveries
in" (here we consulted a minute card which we carried in
our pocket) "in radio-active-emanations which are already
becoming" (we consulted our card again) "a household
word--"

The Professor raised his hand as if to check us.

"I would rather say," he murmured, "helio-radio-active--"

"So would we," we admitted, "much rather--"

"After all," said the Great Scientist, "helium shares in
the most intimate degree the properties of radium. So,
too, for the matter of that," he added in afterthought,
"do thorium, and borium!"

"Even borium!" we exclaimed, delighted, and writing
rapidly in our notebook. Already we saw ourselves writing
up as our headline _Borium Shares Properties of Thorium_.

"Just what is it," said the Great Scientist, "that you
want to know?"

"Professor," we answered, "what our journal wants is a
plain and simple explanation, so clear that even our
readers can understand it, of the new scientific discoveries
in radium. We understand that you possess, more than any
other man, the gift of clear and lucid thought--"

The Professor nodded.

"And that you are able to express yourself with greater
simplicity than any two men now lecturing."

The Professor nodded again.

"Now, then," we said, spreading our notes on our knee,
"go at it. Tell us, and, through us, tell a quarter of
a million anxious readers just what all these new
discoveries are about."

"The whole thing," said the Professor, warming up to his
work as he perceived from the motions of our face and
ears our intelligent interest, "is simplicity itself. I
can give it to you in a word--"

"That's it," we said. "Give it to us that way."

"It amounts, if one may boil it down into a phrase--"

"Boil it, boil it," we interrupted.

"Amounts, if one takes the mere gist of it--"

"Take it," we said, "take it."

"Amounts to the resolution of the ultimate atom."

"Ha!" we exclaimed.

"I must ask you first to clear your mind," the Professor
continued, "of all conception of ponderable magnitude."

We nodded. We had already cleared our mind of this.

"In fact," added the Professor, with what we thought a
quiet note of warning in his voice, "I need hardly tell
you that what we are dealing with must be regarded as
altogether ultramicroscopic."

We hastened to assure the Professor that, in accordance
with the high standards of honour represented by our
journal, we should of course regard anything that he
might say as ultramicroscopic and treat it accordingly.

"You say, then," we continued, "that the essence of the
problem is the resolution of the atom. Do you think you
can give us any idea of what the atom is?"

The Professor looked at us searchingly.

We looked back at him, openly and frankly. The moment
was critical for our interview. Could he do it? Were we
the kind of person that he could give it to? Could we
get it if he did?

"I think I can," he said. "Let us begin with the assumption
that the atom is an infinitesimal magnitude. Very good.
Let us grant, then, that though it is imponderable and
indivisible it must have a spacial content? You grant me
this?"

"We do," we said, "we do more than this, we _give_ it
to you."

"Very well. If spacial, it must have dimension: if
dimension--form. Let us assume _ex hypothesi_ the form
to be that of a spheroid and see where it leads us."

The Professor was now intensely interested. He walked to
and fro in his laboratory. His features worked with
excitement. We worked ours, too, as sympathetically as
we could.

"There is no other possible method in inductive science,"
he added, "than to embrace some hypothesis, the most
attractive that one can find, and remain with it--"

We nodded. Even in our own humble life after our day's
work we had found this true.

"Now," said the Professor, planting himself squarely in
front of us, "assuming a spherical form, and a spacial
content, assuming the dynamic forces that are familiar
to us and assuming--the thing is bold, I admit--"

We looked as bold as we could.

"Assuming that the _ions_, or _nuclei_ of the atom--I
know no better word--"

"Neither do we," we said.

"That the nuclei move under the energy of such forces,
what have we got?"

"Ha!" we said.

"What have we got? Why, the simplest matter conceivable.
The forces inside our atom--itself, mind you, the function
of a circle--mark that--"

We did.

"Becomes merely a function of pi!"

The Great Scientist paused with a laugh of triumph.

"A function of pi!" we repeated in delight.

"Precisely. Our conception of ultimate matter is reduced
to that of an oblate spheroid described by the revolution
of an ellipse on its own minor axis!"

"Good heavens!" we said. "Merely that."

"Nothing else. And in that case any further calculation
becomes a mere matter of the extraction of a root."

"How simple," we murmured.

"Is it not," said the Professor. "In fact, I am accustomed,
in talking to my class, to give them a very clear idea,
by simply taking as our root F--F being any finite constant--"

He looked at us sharply. We nodded.

"And raising F to the log of infinity. I find they
apprehend it very readily."

"Do they?" we murmured. Ourselves we felt as if the Log
of Infinity carried us to ground higher than what we
commonly care to tread on.

"Of course," said the Professor, "the Log of Infinity is
an Unknown."

"Of course," we said very gravely. We felt ourselves here
in the presence of something that demanded our reverence.

"But still," continued the Professor almost jauntily, "we
can handle the Unknown just as easily as anything else."

This puzzled us. We kept silent. We thought it wiser to
move on to more general ground. In any case, our notes
were now nearly complete.

"These discoveries, then," we said, "are absolutely
revolutionary."

"They are," said the Professor.

"You have now, as we understand, got the atom--how shall
we put it?--got it where you want it."

"Not exactly," said the Professor with a sad smile.

"What do you mean?" we asked.

"Unfortunately our analysis, perfect though it is, stops
short. We have no synthesis."

The Professor spoke as in deep sorrow.

"No synthesis," we moaned. We felt it was a cruel blow.
But in any case our notes were now elaborate enough. We
felt that our readers could do without a synthesis. We
rose to go.

"Synthetic dynamics," said the Professor, taking us by
the coat, "is only beginning--"

"In that case--" we murmured, disengaging his hand.

"But, wait, wait," he pleaded "wait for another fifty
years--"

"We will," we said very earnestly. "But meantime as our
paper goes to press this afternoon we must go now. In
fifty years we will come back."

"Oh, I see, I see," said the Professor, "you are writing
all this for a newspaper. I see."

"Yes," we said, "we mentioned that at the beginning."

"Ah," said the Professor, "did you? Very possibly. Yes."

"We propose," we said, "to feature the article for next
Saturday."

"Will it be long?" he asked.

"About two columns," we answered.

"And how much," said the Professor in a hesitating way,
"do I have to pay you to put it in?"

"How much which?" we asked.

"How much do I have to pay?"

"Why, Professor--" we began quickly. Then we checked
ourselves. After all was it right to undeceive him, this
quiet, absorbed man of science with his ideals, his atoms
and his emanations. No, a hundred times no. Let him pay
a hundred times.

"It will cost you," we said very firmly, "ten dollars."

The Professor began groping among his apparatus. We knew
that he was looking for his purse.

"We should like also very much," we said, "to insert your
picture along with the article--"

"Would that cost much?" he asked.

"No, that is only five dollars."

The Professor had meantime found his purse.

"Would it be all right," he began, "that is, would you
mind if I pay you the money now? I am apt to forget."

"Quite all right," we answered. We said good-bye very
gently and passed out. We felt somehow as if we had
touched a higher life. "Such," we murmured, as we looked
about the ancient campus, "are the men of science: are
there, perhaps, any others of them round this morning
that we might interview?"

IV. WITH OUR TYPICAL NOVELISTS

Edwin and Ethelinda Afterthought--Husband and Wife--In
their Delightful Home Life.

It was at their beautiful country place on the Woonagansett
that we had the pleasure of interviewing the Afterthoughts.
At their own cordial invitation, we had walked over from
the nearest railway station, a distance of some fourteen
miles. Indeed, as soon as they heard of our intention
they invited us to walk. "We are so sorry not to bring
you in the motor," they wrote, "but the roads are so
frightfully dusty that we might get dust on our chauffeur."
This little touch of thoughtfulness is the keynote of
their character.

The house itself is a delightful old mansion giving on
a wide garden, which gives in turn on a broad terrace
giving on the river.

The Eminent Novelist met us at the gate. We had expected
to find the author of _Angela Rivers_ and _The Garden of
Desire_ a pale aesthetic type (we have a way of expecting
the wrong thing in our interviews). We could not resist
a shock of surprise (indeed we seldom do) at finding him
a burly out-of-door man weighting, as he himself told
us, a hundred stone in his stockinged feet (we think he
said stone).

He shook hands cordially.

"Come and see my pigs," he said.

"We wanted to ask you," we began, as we went down the
walk, "something about your books."

"Let's look at the pigs first," he said. "Are you anything
of a pig man?"

We are always anxious in our interviews to be all things
to all men. But we were compelled to admit that we were
not much of a pig man.

"Ah," said the Great Novelist, "perhaps you are more of
a dog man?"

"Not altogether a dog man," we answered.

"Anything of a bee man?" he asked.

"Something," we said (we were once stung by a bee).

"Ah," he said, "you shall have a go at the beehives,
then, right away?"

We assured him that we were willing to postpone a go at
the beehives till later.

"Come along, then, to the styes," said the Great Novelist,
and he added, "Perhaps you're not much of a breeder."

We blushed. We thought of the five little faces around
the table for which we provide food by writing our
interviews.

"No," we said, "we were not much of a breeder."

"Now then," said the Great Novelist as we reached our
goal, "how do you like this stye?"

"Very much indeed," we said.

"I've put in a new tile draining--my own plan. You notice
how sweet it keeps the stye."

We had not noticed this.

"I am afraid," said the Novelist, "that the pigs are all
asleep inside."

We begged him on no account to waken them. He offered to
open the little door at the side and let us crawl in. We
insisted that we could not think of intruding.

"What we would like," we said, "is to hear something of
your methods of work in novel writing." We said this with
very peculiar conviction. Quite apart from the immediate
purposes of our interview, we have always been most
anxious to know by what process novels are written. If
we could get to know this, we would write one ourselves.

"Come and see my bulls first," said the Novelist. "I've
got a couple of young bulls here in the paddock that will
interest you."

We felt sure that they would.

He led us to a little green fence. Inside it were two
ferocious looking animals, eating grain. They rolled
their eyes upwards at us as they ate.

"How do those strike you?" he asked.

We assured him that they struck us as our beau ideal
of bulls.

"Like to walk in beside them?" said the Novelist, opening
a little gate.

We drew back. Was it fair to disturb these bulls?

The Great Novelist noticed our hesitation.

"Don't be afraid," he said. "They're not likely to harm
you. I send my hired man right in beside them every
morning, without the slightest hesitation."

We looked at the Eminent Novelist with admiration. We
realized that like so many of our writers, actors, and
even our thinkers, of to-day, he was an open-air man in
every sense of the word.

But we shook our heads.

Bulls, we explained, were not a department of research
for which we were equipped. What we wanted, we said, was
to learn something of his methods of work.

"My methods of work?" he answered, as we turned up the
path again. "Well, really, I hardly know that I have any."

"What is your plan or method," we asked, getting out our
notebook and pencil, "of laying the beginning of a new
novel?"

"My usual plan," said the Novelist, "is to come out here
and sit in the stye till I get my characters."

"Does it take long?" we questioned.

"Not very. I generally find that a quiet half-hour spent
among the hogs will give me at least my leading character."

"And what do you do next?"

"Oh, after that I generally light a pipe and go and sit
among the beehives looking for an incident."

"Do you get it?" we asked.

"Invariably. After that I make a few notes, then go off
for a ten mile tramp with my esquimaux dogs, and get back
in time to have a go through the cattle sheds and take
a romp with the young bulls."

We sighed. We couldn't help it. Novel writing seemed
further away than ever.

"Have you also a goat on the premises?" we asked.

"Oh, certainly. A ripping old fellow--come along and
see him."

We shook our heads. No doubt our disappointment showed
in our face. It often does. We felt that it was altogether
right and wholesome that our great novels of to-day should
be written in this fashion with the help of goats, dogs,
hogs and young bulls. But we felt, too, that it was not
for us.

We permitted ourselves one further question.

"At what time," we said, "do you rise in the morning?"

"Oh anywhere between four and five," said the Novelist.

"Ah, and do you generally take a cold dip as soon as you
are up--even in winter?"

"I do."

"You prefer, no doubt," we said, with a dejection that
we could not conceal, "to have water with a good coat of
ice over it?"

"Oh, certainly!"

We said no more. We have long understood the reasons for
our own failure in life, but it was painful to receive
a renewed corroboration of it. This ice question has
stood in our way for forty-seven years.

The Great Novelist seemed to note our dejection.

"Come to the house," he said, "my wife will give you a
cup of tea."

In a few moments we had forgotten all our troubles in
the presence of one of the most charming chatelaines it
has been our lot to meet.

We sat on a low stool immediately beside Ethelinda
Afterthought, who presided in her own gracious fashion
over the tea-urn.

"So you want to know something of my methods of work?"
she said, as she poured hot tea over our leg.

"We do," we answered, taking out our little book and
recovering something of our enthusiasm. We do not mind
hot tea being poured over us if people treat us as a
human being.

"Can you indicate," we continued, "what method you follow
in beginning one of your novels?"

"I always begin," said Ethelinda Afterthought, "with a
study."

"A study?" we queried.

"Yes. I mean a study of actual facts. Take, for example,
my _Leaves from the Life of a Steam Laundrywoman_--more
tea?"

"No, no," we said.

"Well, to make that book I first worked two years in a
laundry."

"Two years!" we exclaimed. "And why?"

"To get the atmosphere."

"The steam?" we questioned.

"Oh, no," said Mrs. Afterthought, "I did that separately.
I took a course in steam at a technical school."

"Is it possible?" we said, our heart beginning to sing
again. "Was all that necessary?"

"I don't see how one could do it otherwise. The story
opens, as no doubt you remember--tea?--in the boiler room
of the laundry."

"Yes," we said, moving our leg--"no, thank you."

"So you see the only possible _point d'appui_ was to
begin with a description of the inside of the boiler."

We nodded.

"A masterly thing," we said.

"My wife," interrupted the Great Novelist, who was sitting
with the head of a huge Danish hound in his lap, sharing
his buttered toast with the dog while he adjusted a set
of trout flies, "is a great worker."

"Do you always work on that method?" we asked.

"Always," she answered. "For _Frederica of the Factory_
I spent six months in a knitting mill. For _Marguerite
of the Mud Flats_ I made special studies for months and
months."

"Of what sort?" we asked.

"In mud. Learning to model it. You see for a story of
that sort the first thing needed is a thorough knowledge
of mud--all kinds of it."

"And what are you doing next?" we inquired.

"My next book," said the Lady Novelist, "is to be a study
--tea?--of the pickle industry--perfectly new ground."

"A fascinating field," we murmured.

"And quite new. Several of our writers have done the
slaughter-house, and in England a good deal has been done
in jam. But so far no one has done pickles. I should
like, if I could," added Ethelinda Afterthought, with
the graceful modesty that is characteristic of her, "to
make it the first of a series of pickle novels, showing,
don't you know, the whole pickle district, and perhaps
following a family of pickle workers for four or five
generations."

"Four or five!" we said enthusiastically. "Make it ten!
And have you any plan for work beyond that?"

"Oh, yes indeed," laughed the Lady Novelist. "I am always
planning ahead. What I want to do after that is a study
of the inside of a penitentiary."

"Of the _inside_?" we said, with a shudder.

"Yes. To do it, of course, I shall go to jail for two or
three years!"

"But how can you get in?" we asked, thrilled at the quiet
determination of the frail woman before us.

"I shall demand it as a right," she answered quietly. "I
shall go to the authorities, at the head of a band of
enthusiastic women, and demand that I shall be sent to
jail. Surely after the work I have done, that much is
coming to me."

"It certainly is," we said warmly.

We rose to go.

Both the novelists shook hands with us with great
cordiality. Mr. Afterthought walked as far as the front
door with us and showed us a short cut past the beehives
that could take us directly through the bull pasture to
the main road.

We walked away in the gathering darkness of evening very
quietly. We made up our mind as we went that novel writing
is not for us. We must reach the penitentiary in some
other way.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11