Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 120
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.
But we thought it well to set down our interview as a guide to others.
The New Education
“SO YOU’RE GOING back to college in a fortnight,” I said to the Bright Young Thing on the veranda of the summer hotel. “Aren’t you sorry?”
“In a way I am,” she said, “but in another sense I’m glad to go back. One can’t loaf all the time.”
She looked up from her rocking-chair over her Red Cross knitting with great earnestness.
How full of purpose these modern students are, I thought to myself. In my time we used to go back to college as to a treadmill.
“I know that,” I said, “but what I mean is that college, after all, is a pretty hard grind. Things like mathematics and Greek are no joke, are they? In my day, as I remember it, we used to think spherical trigonometry about the hardest stuff of the lot.”
She looked dubious.
“I didn’t elect mathematics,” she said.
“Oh,” I said, “I see. So you don’t have to take it. And what have you elected?”
“For this coming half semester — that’s six weeks, you know — I’ve elected Social Endeavour.”
“Ah,” I said, “that’s since my day, what is it?”
“Oh, it’s awfully interesting. It’s the study of conditions.”
“What kind of conditions?” I asked.
“All conditions. Perhaps I can’t explain it properly. But I have the prospectus of it indoors if you’d like to see it. We take up Society.”
“And what do you do with it?”
“Analyse it,” she said.
“But it must mean reading a tremendous lot of books.”
“No,” she answered. “We don’t use books in this course. It’s all Laboratory Work.”
“Now I am mystified,” I said. “What do you mean by Laboratory Work?”
“Well,” answered the girl student with a thoughtful look upon her face, “you see, we are supposed to break society up into its elements.”
“In six weeks?”
“Some of the girls do it in six weeks. Some put in a whole semester and take twelve weeks at it.”
“So as to break up pretty thoroughly?” I said.
“Yes,” she assented. “But most of the girls think six weeks is enough.”
“That ought to pulverize it pretty completely. But how do you go at it?”
“Well,” the girl said, “it’s all done with Laboratory Work. We take, for instance, department stores. I think that is the first thing we do, we take up the department store.”
“And what do you do with it?”
“We study it as a Social Germ.”
“Ah,” I said, “as a Social Germ.”
“Yes,” said the girl, delighted to see that I was beginning to understand, “as a Germ. All the work is done in the concrete. The class goes down with the professor to the department store itself—”
“And then—”
“Then they walk all through it, observing.”
“But have none of them ever been in a departmental store before?”
“Oh, of course, but, you see, we go as Observers.”
“Ah, now, I understand. You mean you don’t buy anything and so you are able to watch everything?”
“No,” she said, “it’s not that. We do buy things. That’s part of it. Most of the girls like to buy little knick-knacks, and anyway it gives them a good chance to do their shopping while they’re there. But while they are there they are observing. Then afterwards they make charts.”
“Charts of what?” I asked.
“Charts of the employes; they’re used to show the brain movement involved.”
“Do you find much?”
“Well,” she said hesitatingly, “the idea is to reduce all the employes to a Curve.”
“To a Curve?” I exclaimed, “an In or an Out.”
“No, no, not exactly that. Didn’t you use Curves when you were at college?”
“Never,” I said.
“Oh, well, nowadays nearly everything, you know, is done into a Curve. We put them on the board.”
“And what is this particular Curve of the employe used for?” I asked.
“Why,” said the student, “the idea is that from the Curve we can get the Norm of the employe.”
“Get his Norm?” I asked.
“Yes, get the Norm. That stands for the Root Form of the employe as a social factor.”
“And what can you do with that?”
“Oh, when we have that we can tell what the employe would do under any and every circumstance. At least that’s the idea — though I’m really only quoting,” she added, breaking off in a diffident way, “from what Miss Thinker, the professor of Social Endeavour, says. She’s really fine. She’s making a general chart of the female employes of one of the biggest stores to show what percentage in case of fire would jump out of the window and what percentage would run to the fire escape.”
“It’s a wonderful course,” I said. “We had nothing like it when I went to college. And does it only take in departmental stores?”
“No,” said the girl, “the laboratory work includes for this semester ice-cream parlours as well.”
“What do you do with them?”
“We take them up as Social Cells, Nuclei, I think the professor calls them.”
“And how do you go at them?” I asked.
“Why, the girls go to them in little laboratory groups and study them.”
“They eat ice-cream in them?”
“They have to,” she said, “to make it concrete. But while they are doing it they are considering the ice-cream parlour merely as a section of social protoplasm.”
“Does the professor go?” I asked.
“Oh, yes, she heads each group. Professor Thinker never spares herself from work.”
“Dear me,” I said, “you must be kept very busy. And is Social Endeavour all that you are going to do?”
“No,” she answered, “I’m electing a half-course in Nature Work as well.”
“Nature Work? Well! Well! That, I suppose, means cramming up a lot of biology and zoology, does it not?”
“No,” said the girl, “it’s not exactly done with books. I believe it is all done by Field Work.”
“Field Work?”
“Yes. Field Work four times a week and an Excursion every Saturday.”
“And what do you do in the Field Work?”
“The girls,” she answered, “go out in groups anywhere out of doors, and make a Nature Study of anything they see.”
