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HOW TO FAIL IN LITERATURE: A LECTURE BY ANDREW LANG

A. L.

HOW TO FAIL IN LITERATURE

Some have the gift, the natural incommunicable power, without the ambition, others have the ambition but no other gift from any Muse. This class is the more numerous, but the smallest class of all has both the power and the will to excel in letters. The desire to write, the love of letters may shew itself in childhood, in boyhood, or youth, and mean nothing at all, a mere harvest of barren blossom without fragrance or fruit. Or, again, the concern about letters may come suddenly, when a youth that cared for none of those things is waning, it may come when a man suddenly finds that he has something which he really must tell. Then he probably fumbles about for a style, and his first fresh impulses are more or less marred by his inexperience of an art which beguiles and fascinates others even in their school-days.

It is impossible to prophesy the success of a man of letters from his early promise, his early tastes; as impossible as it is to predict, from her childish grace, the beauty of a woman.

Editors and publishers, these keepers of the gates of success, are not infallible, but their opinion of a beginner's work is far more correct than his own can ever be. They should not depress him quite, but if they are long unanimous in holding him cheap, he is warned, and had better withdraw from the struggle. He is either incompetent, or he has the makings of a Browning. He is a genius born too soon. He may readily calculate the chances in favour of either alternative.

So much by way of not damping all neophytes equally: so much we may say about success before talking of the easy ways that lead to failure. And by success here is meant no glorious triumph; the laurels are not in our thoughts, nor the enormous opulence which falls in the lap of a Dickens or a Trollope. Faint and fleeting praise, a crown with as many prickles as roses, a modest hardly-gained competence, a good deal of envy, a great deal of gossip--these are the rewards of genius which constitute a modern literary success. Not to reach the moderate competence in literature is, for a professional man of letters of all work, something like failure. But in poetry to-day a man may succeed, as far as his art goes, and yet may be unread, and may publish at his own expense, or not publish at all. He pleases himself, and a very tiny audience: I do not call that failure. I regard failure as the goal of ignorance, incompetence, lack of common sense, conceited dulness, and certain practical blunders now to be explained and defined.

The most ambitious may accept, without distrust, the following advice as to How to fail in Literature. The advice is offered by a mere critic, and it is an axiom of the Arts that the critics "are the fellows who have failed," or have not succeeded. The persons who really can paint, or play, or compose seldom tell us how it is done, still less do they review the performances of their contemporaries. That invidious task they leave to the unsuccessful novelists. The instruction, the advice are offered by the persons who cannot achieve performance. It is thus that all things work together in favour of failure, which, indeed, may well appear so easy that special instruction, however competent, is a luxury rather than a necessary. But when we look round on the vast multitude of writers who, to all seeming, deliberately aim at failure, who take every precaution in favour of failure that untutored inexperience can suggest, it becomes plain that education in ill-success, is really a popular want. In the following remarks some broad general principles, making disaster almost inevitable, will first be offered, and then special methods of failing in all special departments of letters will be ungrudgingly communicated. It is not enough to attain failure, we should deserve it. The writer, by way of insuring complete confidence, would modestly mention that he has had ample opportunities of study in this branch of knowledge. While sifting for five or six years the volunteered contributions to a popular periodical, he has received and considered some hundredweights of manuscript. In all these myriad contributions he has not found thirty pieces which rose even to the ordinary dead level of magazine work. He has thus enjoyed unrivalled chances of examining such modes of missing success as spontaneously occur to the human intellect, to the unaided ingenuity of men, women, and children.

He who would fail in literature cannot begin too early to neglect his education, and to adopt every opportunity of not observing life and character. None of us is so young but that he may make himself perfect in writing an illegible hand. This method, I am bound to say, is too frequently overlooked. Most manuscripts by ardent literary volunteers are fairly legible. On the other hand there are novelists, especially ladies, who not only write a hand wholly declining to let itself be deciphered, but who fill up the margins with interpolations, who write between the lines, and who cover the page with scratches running this way and that, intended to direct the attention to after-thoughts inserted here and there in corners and on the backs of sheets. To pin in scraps of closely written paper and backs of envelopes adds to the security for failure, and produces a rich anger in the publisher's reader or the editor.

The cultivation of a bad handwriting is an elementary precaution, often overlooked. Few need to be warned against having their MSS. typewritten, this gives them a chance of being read with ease and interest, and this must be neglected by all who have really set their hearts on failure. In the higher matters of education it is well to be as ignorant as possible. No knowledge comes amiss to the true man of letters, so they who court disaster should know as little as may be.

Mr. Stevenson has told the attentive world how, in boyhood, he practised himself in studying and imitating the styles of famous authors of every age. He who aims at failure must never think of style, and should sedulously abstain from reading Shakespeare, Bacon, Hooker, Walton, Gibbon, and other English and foreign classics. He can hardly be too reckless of grammar, and should always place adverbs and other words between "to" and the infinitive, thus: "Hubert was determined to energetically and on all possible occasions, oppose any attempt to entangle him with such." Here, it will be noticed, "such" is used as a pronoun, a delightful flower of speech not to be disregarded by authors who would fail. But some one may reply that several of our most popular novelists revel in the kind of grammar which I am recommending. This is undeniable, but certain people manage to succeed in spite of their own earnest endeavours and startling demerits. There is no royal road to failure. There is no rule without its exception, and it may be urged that the works of the gentlemen and ladies who "break Priscian's head"--as they would say themselves--may be successful, but are not literature. Now it is about literature that we are speaking.

As a rule, authors who would fail stick to one bad sort of writing; either to the newspaper commonplace, or to the out of the way and inappropriate epithets, or to the common word with a twist on it. But there are examples of the combined method, as when we call the trees round a man's house his "domestic boscage." This combination is difficult, but perfect for its purpose. You cannot write worse than "such." To attain perfection the young aspirant should confine his reading to the newspapers and to those modern authors who are most praised for their style by the people who know least about the matter. Words like "fictional" and "fictive" are distinctly to be recommended, and there are epithets such as "weird," "strange," "wild," "intimate," and the rest, which blend pleasantly with "all the time" for "always"; "back of" for "behind"; "belong with" for "belong to"; "live like I do" for "as I do." The authors who combine those charms are rare, but we can strive to be among them.

On the subject of style another hint may be offered. Style may be good in itself, but inappropriate to the subject. For example, style which may be excellently adapted to a theological essay, may be but ill-suited for a dialogue in a novel. There are subjects of which the poet says

To return to style, and its appropriateness: all depends on the work in hand, and the audience addressed. Thus, in his valuable Essay on Style, Mr. Pater says, with perfect truth:

The allusive style has its proper place, like another, if it is used by the right man, and the concentrated and structural style has also its higher province. It would not do to employ either style in the wrong place. In a rambling discursive essay, for example, a mere straying after the bird in the branches, or the thorn in the way, he might not take the safest road who imitated Mr. Pater's style in what follows:

"In this way, according to the well-known saying, 'The style is the man,' complex or simple, in his individuality, his plenary sense of what he really has to say, his sense of the world: all cautions regarding style arising out of so many natural scruples as to the medium through which alone he can expose that inward sense of things, the purity of this medium, its laws or tricks of refraction: nothing is to be left there which might give conveyance to any matter save that." Clearly the author who has to write so that the man may read who runs will fail if he wrests this manner from its proper place, and uses it for casual articles: he will fail to hold the vagrom attention!

ONLY.

Only a spark of an ember, Only a leaf on the tree, Only the days we remember, Only the days without thee. Only the flower that thou worest, Only the book that we read, Only that night in the forest, Only a dream of the dead, Only the troth that was broken, Only the heart that is lonely, Only the sigh and the token That sob in the saying of Only!

In literature this is a certain way of failing, but I believe a person might make a livelihood by writing verses like these--for music. Another good way is to be very economical in your rhymes, only two to the four lines, and regretfully vague. Thus:

SHADOWS.

In the slumber of the winter, In the secret of the snow, What is the voice that is crying Out of the long ago?

When the accents of the children Are silent on the stairs, When the poor forgets his troubles, And the rich forgets his cares.

What is the silent whisper That echoes in the room, When the days are full of darkness, And the night is hushed in gloom?

'Tis the voice of the departed, Who will never come again, Who has left the weary tumult, And the struggle and the pain.

And my heart makes heavy answer, To the voice that comes no more, To the whisper that is welling From the far off happy shore.

If you are not satisfied with these simple ways of not succeeding, please try the Grosvenor Gallery style. Here the great point is to make the rhyme arrive at the end of a very long word, you should also be free with your alliterations.

LULLABY.

When the sombre night is dumb, Hushed the loud chrysanthemum, Sister, sleep! Sleep, the lissom lily saith, Sleep, the poplar whispereth, Soft and deep!

Filmy floats the wild woodbine, Jonquil, jacinth, jessamine, Float and flow. Sleeps the water wild and wan, As in far off Toltecan Mexico.

See, upon the sun-dial, Waves the midnight's misty pall, Waves and wakes. As, in tropic Timbuctoo, Water beasts go plashing through Lilied lakes!

Alliteration is a splendid source of failure in this sort of poetry, and adjectives like lissom, filmy, weary, weird, strange, make, or ought to make, the rejection of your manuscript a certainty. The poem should, as a rule, seem to be addressed to an unknown person, and should express regret and despair for circumstances in the past with which the reader is totally unacquainted. Thus:

GHOSTS.

We met at length, as Souls that sit At funeral feast, and taste of it, And empty were the words we said, As fits the converse of the dead, For it is long ago, my dear, Since we two met in living cheer, Yea, we have long been ghosts, you know, And alien ways we twain must go, Nor shall we meet in Shadow Land, Till Time's glass, empty of its sand, Is filled up of Eternity. Farewell--enough for once to die-- And far too much it is to dream, And taste not the Lethaean stream, But bear the pain of loves unwed Even here, even here, among the dead!

That is a cheerful intelligible kind of melody, which is often practised with satisfactory results. Every form of imitation is to be recommended.

Imitation does a double service, it secures the failure of the imitator and also aids that of the unlucky author who is imitated. As soon as a new thing appears in literature, many people hurry off to attempt something of the same sort. It may be a particular trait and accent in poetry, and the public, weary of the mimicries, begin to dislike the original.

"Most can grow the flowers now, For all have got the seed; And once again the people Call it but a weed."

In fiction, if somebody brings in a curious kind of murder, or a study of religious problems, or a treasure hunt, or what you will, others imitate till the world is weary of murders, or theological flirtations, or the search for buried specie, and the original authors themselves will fail, unless they fish out something new, to be vulgarised afresh. Therefore, imitation is distinctly to be urged on the young author.

These are general counsels, and apply to the production of books. But, when you have done your book, you may play a number of silly tricks with your manuscript. I have already advised you to make only one copy, a rough one, as that secures negligence in your work, and also disgusts an editor or reader. It has another advantage, you may lose your copy altogether, and, as you have not another, no failure can be more complete. The best way of losing it, I think and the safest, is to give it to somebody you know who has once met some man or woman of letters.. This somebody must be instructed to ask that busy and perhaps casual and untidy person to read your manuscript, and "place" it, that is, induce some poor publisher or editor to pay for and publish it. Now the man, or woman of letters, will use violent language on receiving your clumsy brown paper parcel of illegible wares, because he or she has no more to do with the matter than the crossing sweeper. The MS. will either be put away so carefully that it can never be found again, or will be left lying about so that the housemaid may use it for her own domestic purposes, like Betty Barnes, the cook of Mr. Warburton, who seems to have burned several plays of Shakespeare.

The MS. in short will go where the old moons go.

And all dead days drift thither, And all disastrous things.

Not only can you secure failure thus yourself, but you can so worry and badger your luckless victim, that he too will be unable to write well till he has forgotten you and your novel, and all the annoyance and anxiety you have given him. Much may be done by asking him for "introductions" to an editor or publisher. These gentry don't want introductions, they want good books, and very seldom get them. If you behave thus, the man whom you are boring will write to his publisher:

Dear Brown,

A wretched creature, who knows my great aunt, asks me to recommend his rubbish to you. I send it by to-day's post, and I wish you joy of it.

I do not think it is necessary to warn young lady novelists, who possess beauty, wealth, and titles, against asking Reviewers to dine, and treating them as kindly, almost, as the Fairy Paribanou treated Prince Ahmed. They only act thus, I fear, in Mr. William Black's novels.

Advice on how to secure the reverse of success should not be given to young authors alone. Their kinsfolk and friends, also, can do much for their aid. A lady who feels a taste for writing is very seldom allowed to have a quiet room, a quiet study. If she retreats to her chill and fireless bed chamber, even there she may be chevied by her brothers, sisters, and mother. It is noticed that cousins, and aunts, especially aunts, are of high service in this regard. They never give an intelligent woman an hour to herself.

"Is Miss Mary in?"

"Yes, ma'am, but she is very busy."

"Oh, she won't mind me, I don't mean to stay long."

Then in rushes the aunt.

"Over your books again: my dear! You really should not overwork yourself. Writing something"; here the aunt clutches the manuscript, and looks at it vaguely.

"Well, I dare say it's very clever, but I don't care for this kind of thing myself. Where's your mother? Is Jane better? Now, do tell me, do you get much for writing all that? Do you send it to the printers, or where? How interesting, and that reminds me, you that are a novelist, have you heard how shamefully Miss Baxter was treated by Captain Smith? No, well you might make something out of it."

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