Impressions of Theophrastus Such

Diseases of Small Authorship

Particular callings, it is known, encourage particular diseases. There

is a painter's colic: the Sheffield grinder falls a victim to the

inhalation of steel dust: clergymen so often have a certain kind of sore

throat that this otherwise secular ailment gets named after them. And

perhaps, if we were to inquire, we should find a similar relation

between certain moral ailments and these various occupations, though

here in the case of clergymen there would be specific differences: the

poor curate, equally with the rector, is liable to clergyman's sore

throat, but he would probably be found free from the chronic moral

ailments encouraged by the possession of glebe and those higher chances

of preferment which follow on having a good position already. On the

other hand, the poor curate might have severe attacks of calculating

expectancy concerning parishioners' turkeys, cheeses, and fat geese, or

of uneasy rivalry for the donations of clerical charities.

Authors are so miscellaneous a class that

their personified diseases, physical and moral,

might include the whole procession of human

disorders, led by dyspepsia and ending in

madness--the awful Dumb Show of a world-historic

tragedy. Take a large enough area

of human life and all comedy melts into

tragedy, like the Fool's part by the side of

Lear. The chief scenes get filled with erring

heroes, guileful usurpers, persecuted discoverers,

dying deliverers: everywhere the

protagonist has a part pregnant with doom.

The comedy sinks to an accessory, and if there

are loud laughs they seem a convulsive transition

from sobs; or if the comedy is touched

with a gentle lovingness, the panoramic scene

is one where

Vorticella being the wife of an important townsman had naturally the

satisfaction of seeing 'The Channel Islands' reviewed by all the organs

of Pumpiter opinion, and their articles or paragraphs held as naturally

the opening pages in the elegantly bound album prepared by her for the

reception of "critical opinions." This ornamental volume lay on a

special table in her drawing-room close to the still more gorgeously

bound work of which it was the significant effect, and every guest was

allowed the privilege of reading what had been said of the authoress and

her work in the 'Pumpiter Gazette and Literary Watchman,' the 'Pumpshire

Post,' the 'Church Clock,' the 'Independent Monitor,' and the lively but

judicious publication known as the 'Medley Pie;' to be followed up, if

he chose, by the instructive perusal of the strikingly confirmatory

judgments, sometimes concurrent in the very phrases, of journals from

the most distant counties; as the 'Latchgate Argus,' the Penllwy

Universe,' the 'Cockaleekie Advertiser,' the 'Goodwin Sands Opinion,'

and the 'Land's End Times.'

I had friends in Pumpiter and occasionally paid a long visit there. When

I called on Vorticella, who had a cousinship with my hosts, she had to

excuse herself because a message claimed her attention for eight or ten

minutes, and handing me the album of critical opinions said, with a

certain emphasis which, considering my youth, was highly complimentary,

that she would really like me to read what I should find there. This

seemed a permissive politeness which I could not feel to be an

oppression, and I ran my eyes over the dozen pages, each with a strip or

islet of newspaper in the centre, with that freedom of mind (in my case

meaning freedom to forget) which would be a perilous way of preparing

for examination. This _ad libitum_ perusal had its interest for me. The

private truth being that I had not read 'The Channel Islands,' I was

amazed at the variety of matter which the volume must contain to have

impressed these different judges with the writer's surpassing capacity

to handle almost all branches of inquiry and all forms of presentation.

In Jersey she had shown herself an historian, in Guernsey a poetess, in

Alderney a political economist, and in Sark a humorist: there were

sketches of character scattered through the pages which might put our

"fictionists" to the blush; the style was eloquent and racy, studded

with gems of felicitous remark; and the moral spirit throughout was so

superior that, said one, "the recording angel" (who is not supposed to

take account of literature as such) "would assuredly set down the work

as a deed of religion." The force of this eulogy on the part of several

reviewers was much heightened by the incidental evidence of their

fastidious and severe taste, which seemed to suffer considerably from

the imperfections of our chief writers, even the dead and canonised: one

afflicted them with the smell of oil, another lacked erudition and

attempted (though vainly) to dazzle them with trivial conceits, one

wanted to be more philosophical than nature had made him, another in

attempting to be comic produced the melancholy effect of a half-starved

Merry-Andrew; while one and all, from the author of the 'Areopagitica'

downwards, had faults of style which must have made an able hand in the

'Latchgate Argus' shake the many-glanced head belonging thereto with a

smile of compassionate disapproval. Not so the authoress of 'The Channel

Islands:' Vorticella and Shakspere were allowed to be faultless. I

gathered that no blemishes were observable in the work of this

accomplished writer, and the repeated information that she was "second

to none" seemed after this superfluous. Her thick octavo--notes,

appendix and all--was unflagging from beginning to end; and the 'Land's

End Times,' using a rather dangerous rhetorical figure, recommended you

not to take up the volume unless you had leisure to finish it at a

sitting. It had given one writer more pleasure than he had had for many

a long day--a sentence which had a melancholy resonance, suggesting a

life of studious languor such as all previous achievements of the human

mind failed to stimulate into enjoyment. I think the collection of

critical opinions wound up with this sentence, and I had turned back to

look at the lithographed sketch of the authoress which fronted the first

page of the album, when the fair original re-entered and I laid down the

volume on its appropriate table.

"Well, what do you think of them?" said Vorticella, with an emphasis

which had some significance unperceived by me. "I know you are a great

student. Give me _your_ opinion of these opinions."

"They must be very gratifying to you," I answered with a little

confusion, for I perceived that I might easily mistake my footing, and I

began to have a presentiment of an examination for which I was by no

means crammed.

"On the whole--yes," said Vorticella, in a tone of concession. "A few of

the notices are written with some pains, but not one of them has really

grappled with the chief idea in the appendix. I don't know whether you

have studied political economy, but you saw what I said on page 398

about the Jersey fisheries?"

I bowed--I confess it--with the mean hope that this movement in the nape

of my neck would be taken as sufficient proof that I had read, marked,

and learned. I do not forgive myself for this pantomimic falsehood, but

I was young and morally timorous, and Vorticella's personality had an

effect on me something like that of a powerful mesmeriser when he

directs all his ten fingers towards your eyes, as unpleasantly visible

ducts for the invisible stream. I felt a great power of contempt in her,

if I did not come up to her expectations.

"Well," she resumed, "you observe that not one of them has taken up that

argument. But I hope I convinced you about the drag-nets?"

Here was a judgment on me. Orientally speaking, I had lifted up my foot

on the steep descent of falsity and was compelled to set it down on a

lower level. "I should think you must be right," said I, inwardly

resolving that on the next topic I would tell the truth.

"I _know_ that I am right," said Vorticella. "The fact is that no critic

in this town is fit to meddle with such subjects, unless it be Volvox,

and he, with all his command of language, is very superficial. It is

Volvox who writes in the 'Monitor,' I hope you noticed how he

contradicts himself?"

My resolution, helped by the equivalence of dangers, stoutly prevailed,

and I said, "No."

"No! I am surprised. He is the only one who finds fault with me. He is

a Dissenter, you know. The 'Monitor' is the Dissenters' organ, but my

husband has been so useful to them in municipal affairs that they would

not venture to run my book down; they feel obliged to tell the truth

about me. Still Volvox betrays himself. After praising me for my

penetration and accuracy, he presently says I have allowed myself to be

imposed upon and have let my active imagination run away with me. That

is like his dissenting impertinence. Active my imagination may be, but I

have it under control. Little Vibrio, who writes the playful notice in

the 'Medley Pie,' has a clever hit at Volvox in that passage about the

steeplechase of imagination, where the loser wants to make it appear

that the winner was only run away with. But if you did not notice

Volvox's self-contradiction you would not see the point," added

Vorticella, with rather a chilling intonation. "Or perhaps you did not

read the 'Medley Pie' notice? That is a pity. Do take up the book again.

Vibrio is a poor little tippling creature, but, as Mr Carlyle would say,

he has an eye, and he is always lively."

I did take up the book again, and read as demanded.

"It is very ingenious," said I, really appreciating the difficulty of

being lively in this connection: it seemed even more wonderful than that

a Vibrio should have an eye.

"You are probably surprised to see no notices from the London press,"

said Vorticella. "I have one--a very remarkable one. But I reserve it

until the others have spoken, and then I shall introduce it to wind up.

I shall have them reprinted, of course, and inserted in future copies.

This from the 'Candelabrum' is only eight lines in length, but full of

venom. It calls my style dull and pompous. I think that will tell its

own tale, placed after the other critiques."

"People's impressions are so different," said I. "Some persons find 'Don

Quixote' dull."

"Yes," said Vorticella, in emphatic chest tones, "dulness is a matter of

opinion; but pompous! That I never was and never could be. Perhaps he

means that my matter is too important for his taste; and I have no

objection to _that_. I did not intend to be trivial. I should just like

to read you that passage about the drag-nets, because I could make it

clearer to you."

A second (less ornamental) copy was at her elbow and was already opened,

when to my great relief another guest was announced, and I was able to

take my leave without seeming to run away from 'The Channel Islands,'

though not without being compelled to carry with me the loan of "the

marked copy," which I was to find advantageous in a re-perusal of the

appendix, and was only requested to return before my departure from

Pumpiter. Looking into the volume now with some curiosity, I found it a

very ordinary combination of the commonplace and ambitious, one of those

books which one might imagine to have been written under the old Grub

Street coercion of hunger and thirst, if they were not known beforehand

to be the gratuitous productions of ladies and gentlemen whose

circumstances might be called altogether easy, but for an uneasy vanity

that happened to have been directed towards authorship. Its importance

was that of a polypus, tumour, fungus, or other erratic outgrowth,

noxious and disfiguring in its effect on the individual organism which

nourishes it. Poor Vorticella might not have been more wearisome on a

visit than the majority of her neighbours, but for this disease of

magnified self-importance belonging to small authorship. I understand

that the chronic complaint of 'The Channel Islands' never left her. As

the years went on and the publication tended to vanish in the distance

for her neighbours' memory, she was still bent on dragging it to the

foreground, and her chief interest in new acquaintances was the

possibility of lending them her book, entering into all details

concerning it, and requesting them to read her album of "critical

opinions." This really made her more tiresome than Gregarina, whose

distinction was that she had had cholera, and who did not feel herself

in her true position with strangers until they knew it.

My experience with Vorticella led me for a time into the false

supposition that this sort of fungous disfiguration, which makes Self

disagreeably larger, was most common to the female s*x; but I presently

found that here too the male could assert his superiority and show a

more vigorous boredom. I have known a man with a single pamphlet

containing an assurance that somebody else was wrong, together with a

few approved quotations, produce a more powerful effect of shuddering at

his approach than ever Vorticella did with her varied octavo volume,

including notes and appendix. Males of more than one nation recur to my

memory who produced from their pocket on the slightest encouragement a

small pink or buff duodecimo pamphlet, wrapped in silver paper, as a

present held ready for an intelligent reader. "A mode of propagandism,"

you remark in excuse; "they wished to spread some useful corrective

doctrine." Not necessarily: the indoctrination aimed at was perhaps to

convince you of their own talents by the sample of an "Ode on

Shakspere's Birthday," or a translation from Horace.

Vorticella may pair off with Monas, who had also written his one

book--'Here and There; or, a Trip from Truro to Transylvania'--and not

only carried it in his portmanteau when he went on visits, but took the

earliest opportunity of depositing it in the drawing-room, and

afterwards would enter to look for it, as if under pressure of a need

for reference, begging the lady of the house to tell him whether she,

had seen "a small volume bound in red." One hostess at last ordered it

to be carried into his bedroom to save his time; but it presently

reappeared in his hands, and was again left with inserted slips of paper

on the drawing-room table.

Depend upon it, vanity is human, native alike to men and women; only in

the male it is of denser texture, less volatile, so that it less

immediately informs you of its presence, but is more massive and capable

of knocking you down if you come into collision with it; while in women

vanity lays by its small revenges as in a needle-case always at hand.

The difference is in muscle and finger-tips, in traditional habits and

mental perspective, rather than in the original appetite of vanity. It

is an approved method now to explain ourselves by a reference to the

races as little like us as possible, which leads me to observe that in

Fiji the men use the most elaborate hair-dressing, and that wherever

tattooing is in vogue the male expects to carry off the prize of

admiration for pattern and workmanship. Arguing analogically, and

looking for this tendency of the Fijian or Hawaian male in the eminent

European, we must suppose that it exhibits itself under the forms of

civilised apparel; and it would be a great mistake to estimate

passionate effort by the effect it produces on our perception or

understanding. It is conceivable that a man may have concentrated no

less will and expectation on his wristbands, gaiters, and the shape of

his hat-brim, or an appearance which impresses you as that of the modern

"swell," than the Ojibbeway on an ornamentation which seems to us much

more elaborate. In what concerns the search for admiration at least, it

is not true that the effect is equal to the cause and resembles it. The

cause of a flat curl on the masculine forehead, such as might be seen

when George the Fourth was king, must have been widely different in

quality and intensity from the impression made by that small scroll of

hair on the organ of the beholder. Merely to maintain an attitude and

gait which I notice in certain club men, and especially an inflation of

the chest accompanying very small remarks, there goes, I am convinced,

an expenditure of psychical energy little appreciated by the

multitude--a mental vision of Self and deeply impressed beholders which

is quite without antitype in what we call the effect produced by that

hidden process.

No! there is no need to admit that women would carry away the prize of

vanity in a competition where differences of custom were fairly

considered. A man cannot show his vanity in a tight skirt which forces

him to walk sideways down the staircase; but let the match be between

the respective vanities of largest beard and tightest skirt, and here

too the battle would be to the strong.