The Journal of Arthur Stirling : ("The Valley of the Shadow") Part 49

And look at me!

Who will dare to say that I might not have sung it? What chance have I had--have I not been handicapped and stunted, beaten and discouraged, punished as if I had been a loafer--by _you_, the world? Here I am--I am only a boy--and thrilling with unutterable things! And I am going down, down to destruction! Why, for what I had to say I needed years and years to ripen; and how can I tell now--how can any man tell now--what those things would have been?

And I--what am I?--a worm, an atom! But what happens to me to-day may happen to another to-morrow, and may happen to a hundred in a century. And who knows?--who cares?

What do you do with your railroad presidents? You take good care that _they_ get their work done, don't you? They have secretaries to catch every word, they have private cars to carry them where they would go, men to run and serve them, to make smooth their paths and save their every instant for them! But your poet, your man of genius--who makes smooth _his_ paths, who helps _him_? He needs n.o.body to run and serve him--he needs no cars and no palaces, no gold and precious raiment--no, nor even praise and honor! What he needs--I have said it once--he needs but to be left alone, to listen to the voices of his soul, and to have some one bring him food to keep him alive while he does it. That--only that!--think of it--for the most precious things of this life, the things that alone save this life from being a barren mockery and a grinning farce! And he can not have them--and you, you enlightened society, you never care about it, you never _think_ of it!

If he comes a master, he can force his way; or if he be rich, or if some one honor him, then he can live his life and heed nothing. But when he is poor! And when he is weak! And when he is young! G.o.d help him, G.o.d help him!--for you, you great savage world, you _crush_ him.

You send him to the publishers! And he is young, and crude, and inexperienced! He has not found himself, he has not found his voice, he stammers, he falters, he is weak! And you send him to the publishers!

I have said it once, I say it again: that the publisher is part of the world and his law is a law of iron--he publishes the books that will sell.

And this feeble voice, this young love, this tender aspiration, this holy purpose--oh, it is a thing to make one shudder!

And these things higher yet, these things so precious that we dare not whisper them--this new awe of righteousness--this new rage at what the world loves best--this flash of insight that will astound a new age!

You send it all to the publisher!

But what _can_ you do? I will tell you what you can do--I will tell you what you _will_ do when you come finally to honor what is truly precious in this life--when you are really civilized and enlightened--when you really believe in and value Genius.

You will provide it that your young poet, your young wors.h.i.+per, come elsewhere to receive a judgment than to the money-making publisher, and to the staring, vulgar crowd. You will provide it that he does not measure his voice against the big-drum thumping of the best-selling pomposities of the hour. You will provide it that he come, with all honor and all dignity, to the best and truest men that you can engage for the service; and that he come to be judged by one standard, and that not the standard of sales.

Whether it be true, whether it be n.o.ble, whether it be sincere; whether it show imagination, whether it have melody, beauty, love, aspiration, knowledge; whether, in short, in those forms or in any other forms, it have _power_! Whether the man who wrote it is a man worth training, whether he will repay society for its trust, whether he will bring new beauty into the world!--And then, if these things be true, so long as he works, and grows, and proves his value, so long shall he have the pittance that he needs until he be the master of his voice.

Yes, you never thought of that before! I read everything--everywhere--and I never heard it before. And what does that tell about the poverty and blindness and stupidity of this world? Are we not rich enough? Are we not the richest nation in the world? Have we not railroads and houses, food and clothing and bank-stocks enough to make the brain reel? And do we not call ourselves a Christian land? And wors.h.i.+p as divine the Teacher who said that "man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of G.o.d"?

Oh, you world!

And what would it do? What would it mean? I will tell you a few things that it would mean.

First of all it would mean that the man who felt in him the voice of G.o.d would know that there was a road he could travel, would know that there was a home for him. He would no longer face the fearful alternative of mediocrity or starvation. He would no longer be tempted, he would no longer be forced to turn from his faith, and stunt his development, and wreck his plans, by base attempts to compromise between his highest and what the world will pay for. Can you have any idea what that would mean to an artist? You say that you love art! Can you have any idea of the effect which that would have upon art? Upon the art of your country--upon American literature! To have a band of perhaps a hundred--perhaps a thousand, proved and chosen--the best and strongest that could be found--and set free and consecrated to the search for beauty! Try it for fifty years--try it for ten years--try the method of raising your poets in your gardens instead of flinging them into your weed-beds--and see what the result would be! See if in fifty years American literature would not have done more than all the rest of the world!

And what would it cost?--O G.o.d! Is there a railroad in this country so small that its earnings would not pay for it--for the whole of the thousand? Why, pay a poet five hundred dollars a year, and he is a rich man; if he is not, he is no poet, but a knave.

And there would be waste?--Yes--where is there not waste? But grant that in the whole thousand there is just _one_ who is a master mind; and that him you set free and keep from defeat--that him with all his glory you make yours--and then tell me if there be any other way in this world that you could have done so much for man with your money!

--No, these are not your ways, oh you cruel world! You let every man go his way--you let him starve, you let him die in any hole that he can find. The poet--tenderest and most sensitive of all men! The poet--the master of the arts of suffering! Exposed on every side, nervous, haunted, unused to the world, knowing how to feel and knowing that alone! Is not his life an agony under any conditions,--is he not tortured for you--the world? And you leave him helpless, despairing!

What is the matter with you?--How can you be so blind? There are some of you who really love books--look and see the story of genius--if it be not a thing to make you shudder and turn sick. It has been so through all the ages, and it will be so through all the ages to come, until society has a conscience and a soul. Tell me if there is anything in this world more frightful than the lot of the poets who have been born poor--of Marlowe and Chatterton and Goldsmith, Johnson and Burns and Keats! And who can tell how many were choked before even their first utterance?

I can not talk of that, for it makes me sick; but I will talk of the poets who were born rich. Is it not singular--is it not terrible--how many of the great stalwart ones were rich? To be educated, to own books, to hear music, to dwell in the country, to be free from men and men's judgments! Oh, the words break my heart!

--But was not Goethe rich, and did he not have these things? And was not Hugo rich? And Milton? When he left college he spent five years at his father's country place and wrote four poems that have done more to make men happy than if they had cost many millions of dollars.

But let me come to what I spoke of before, the seven poets of this century in England.

I name Wordsworth and Byron, Tennyson, Browning and Swinburne, Sh.e.l.ley and Keats. I said that six of them were independent, and that the other--the greatest--died like a dog.

Wordsworth came first; he was young and poor and struggling, and a friend left him just such an independence as I have cried for; and he consecrated himself to art, and he revolutionized English poetry, he breathed truth into a whole nation again. And when he was clear and looked back, he made such statements as these: that "a poet has to _create_ the taste by which he is to be enjoyed," and that "my poetry has never brought me enough to pay for my shoe-strings."

And see how the publishers and critics--how the literary world--received him! How they jeered and jibed, and took fifty years to understand him! Oh think of these things, think what they mean, you who love literature! Think that the world owes its possession of Wordsworth's poetry to the accident that a friend died and left him some money!

I name Byron; he was a rich man. I name Tennyson; he had a little competence, and he gave up the idea of marriage and for ten years devoted himself to art; and when he was thirty-two he published his work--and then they gave him a pension!

I name Browning; Browning went his own way, heeding no man; and he never had to think about money. I name Swinburne; and the same was true of him.