After this picture of an inclement night, behold us seated by agreat blazing fire, which looked so comfortable and deliciousthat I felt inclined to lie down and roll among the hot coals.The usual furniture of a lawyer's office was around us,--rows ofvolumes in sheepskin, and a multitude of writs, summonses, andother legal papers, scattered over the desks and tables. Butthere were certain objects which seemed to intimate that we hadlittle dread of the intrusion of clients, or of the learnedcounsellor himself, who, indeed, was attending court in a distanttown. A tall, decanter-shaped bottle stood on the table, betweentwo tumblers, and beside a pile of blotted manuscripts,altogether dissimilar to any law documents recognized in ourcourts. My friend, whom I shall call Oberon,--it was a name offancy and friendship between him and me,--my friend Oberon lookedat these papers with a peculiar expression of disquietude.
"I do believe," said he, soberly, "or, at least, I could believe,if I chose, that there is a devil in this pile of blotted papers.You have read them, and know what I mean,--that conception inwhich I endeavored to embody the character of a fiend, asrepresented in our traditions and the written records ofwitchcraft. Oh, I have a horror of what was created in my ownbrain, and shudder at the manuscripts in which I gave that darkidea a sort of material existence! Would they were out of mysight!"
"And of mine, too," thought I.
"You remember," continued Oberon, "how the hellish thing used tosuck away the happiness of those who, by a simple concession thatseemed almost innocent, subjected themselves to his power. Justso my peace is gone, and all by these accursed manuscripts. Haveyou felt nothing of the same influence?"
"Nothing," replied I, "unless the spell be hid in a desire toturn novelist, after reading your delightful tales."
"Novelist!" exclaimed Oberon, half seriously. "Then, indeed, mydevil has his claw on you! You are gone! You cannot even pray fordeliverance! But we will be the last and only victims; for thisnight I mean to burn the manuscripts, and commit the fiend to hisretribution in the flames."
"Burn your tales!" repeated I, startled at the desperation of theidea.
"Even so," said the author, despondingly. "You cannot conceivewhat an effect the composition of these tales has had on me. Ihave become ambitious of a bubble, and careless of solidreputation. I am surrounding myself with shadows, which bewilderme, by aping the realities of life. They have drawn me aside fromthe beaten path of the world, and led me into a strange sort ofsolitude,--a solitude in the midst of men,-where nobody wishesfor what I do, nor thinks nor feels as I do. The tales have doneall this. When they are ashes, perhaps I shall be as I was beforethey had existence. Moreover, the sacrifice is less than you maysuppose, since nobody will publish them."
"That does make a difference, indeed," said I.
"They have been offered, by letter," continued Oberon, reddeningwith vexation, "to some seventeen booksellers. It would make youstare to read their answers; and read them you should, only thatI burnt them as fast as they arrived. One man publishes nothingbut school-books; another has five novels already underexamination."
"What a voluminous mass the unpublished literature of Americamust be!" cried I.
"Oh, the Alexandrian manuscripts were nothing to it!" said myfriend. "Well, another gentleman is just giving up business, onpurpose, I verily believe, to escape publishing my book. Several,however, would not absolutely decline the agency, on my advancinghalf the cost of an edition, and giving bonds for the remainder,besides a high percentage to themselves, whether the book sellsor not. Another advises a subscription."
"The villain!" exclaimed I.
"A fact!" said Oberon. "In short, of all the seventeenbooksellers, only one has vouchsafed even to read my tales; andhe--a literary dabbler himself, I should judge--has theimpertinence to criticise them, proposing what he calls vastimprovements, and concluding, after a general sentence ofcondemnation, with the definitive assurance that he will not beconcerned on any terms."
"It might not be amiss to pull that fellow's nose," remarked I.
"If the whole 'trade' had one common nose, there would be somesatisfaction in pulling it," answered the author. "But, theredoes seem to be one honest man among these seventeen unrighteousones; and he tells me fairly, that no American publisher willmeddle with an American work,--seldom if by a known writer, andnever if by a new one,--unless at the writer's risk."
"The paltry rogues!" cried I. "Will they live by literature, andyet risk nothing for its sake? But, after all, you might publishon your own account."
"And so I might," replied Oberon. "But the devil of the businessis this. These people have put me so out of conceit with thetales, that I loathe the very thought of them, and actuallyexperience a physical sickness of the stomach, whenever I glanceat them on the table. I tell you there is a demon in them! Ianticipate a wild enjoyment in seeing them in the blaze; such asI should feel in taking vengeance on an enemy, or destroyingsomething noxious."
I did not very strenuously oppose this determination, beingprivately of opinion, in spite of my partiality for the author,that his tales would make a more brilliant appearance in the firethan anywhere else. Before proceeding to execution, we broachedthe bottle of champagne, which Oberon had provided for keeping uphis spirits in this doleful business. We swallowed each atumblerful, in sparkling commotion; it went bubbling down ourthroats, and brightened my eyes at once, but left my friend sadand heavy as before. He drew the tales towards him, with amixture of natural affection and natural disgust, like a fathertaking a deformed infant into his arms.
"Pooh! Pish! Pshaw!" exclaimed he, holding them at arm's-length."It was Gray's idea of heaven, to lounge on a sofa and read newnovels. Now, what more appropriate torture would Dante himselfhave contrived, for the sinner who perpetrates a bad book, thanto be continually turning over the manuscript?"
"It would fail of effect," said I, "because a bad author isalways his own great admirer."
"I lack that one characteristic of my tribe,--the only desirableone," observed Oberon. "But how many recollections throng uponme, as I turn over these leaves! This scene came into my fancy asI walked along a hilly road, on a starlight October evening; inthe pure and bracing air, I became all soul, and felt as if Icould climb the sky, and run a race along the Milky Way. Here isanother tale, in which I wrapt myself during a dark and drearynight-ride in the month of March, till the rattling of the wheelsand the voices of my companions seemed like faint sounds of adream, and my visions a bright reality. That scribbled pagedescribes shadows which I summoned to my bedside at midnight:they would not depart when I bade them; the gray dawn came, andfound me wide awake and feverish, the victim of my ownenchantments!"
"There must have been a sort of happiness in all this," said I,smitten with a strange longing to make proof of it.
"There may be happiness in a fever fit," replied the author. "Andthen the various moods in which I wrote! Sometimes my ideas werelike precious stones under the earth, requiring toil to dig themup, and care to polish and brighten them; but often a deliciousstream of thought would gush out upon the page at once, likewater sparkling up suddenly in the desert; and when it hadpassed, I gnawed my pen hopelessly, or blundered on with cold andmiserable toil, as if there were a wall of ice between me and mysubject."
"Do you now perceive a corresponding difference," inquired I,"between the passages which you wrote so coldly, and those fervidflashes of the mind?"
"No," said Oberon, tossing the manuscripts on the table. "I findno traces of the golden pen with which I wrote in characters offire. My treasure of fairy coin is changed to worthless dross. Mypicture, painted in what seemed the loveliest hues, presentsnothing but a faded and indistinguishable surface. I have beeneloquent and poetical and humorous in a dream,--and behold! it isall nonsense, now that I am awake."
My friend now threw sticks of wood and dry chips upon the fire,and seeing it blaze like Nebuchadnezzar's furnace, seized thechampagne bottle, and drank two or three brimming bumpers,successively. The heady liquor combined with his agitation tothrow him into a species of rage. He laid violent hands on thetales. In one instant more, their faults and beauties would alikehave vanished in a glowing purgatory. But, all at once, Iremembered passages of high imagination, deep pathos, originalthoughts, and points of such varied excellence, that the vastnessof the sacrifice struck me most forcibly. I caught his arm.
"Surely, you do not mean to burn them!" I exclaimed.
"Let me alone!" cried Oberon, his eyes flashing fire. "I willburn them! Not a scorched syllable shall escape! Would you haveme a damned author?--To undergo sneers, taunts, abuse, and coldneglect, and faint praise, bestowed, for pity's sake, against thegiver's conscience! A hissing and a laughing-stock to my owntraitorous thoughts! An outlaw from the protection of thegrave,--one whose ashes every careless foot might spurn,unhonored in life, and remembered scornfully in death! Am I tobear all this, when yonder fire will insure me from the whole?No! There go the tales! May my hand wither when it would writeanother!"
The deed was done. He had thrown the manuscripts into the hottestof the fire, which at first seemed to shrink away, but sooncurled around them, and made them a part of its own ferventbrightness. Oberon stood gazing at the conflagration, and shortlybegan to soliloquize, in the wildest strain, as if Fancy resistedand became riotous, at the moment when he would have compelledher to ascend that funeral pile. His words described objectswhich he appeared to discern in the fire, fed by his own preciousthoughts; perhaps the thousand visions which the writer's magichad incorporated with these pages became visible to him in thedissolving heat, brightening forth ere they vanished forever;while the smoke, the vivid sheets of flame, the ruddy andwhitening coals, caught the aspect of a varied scenery.
"They blaze," said he, "as if I had steeped them in the intensestspirit of genius. There I see my lovers clasped in each other'sarms. How pure the flame that bursts from their glowing hearts!And yonder the features of a villain writhing in the fire thatshall torment him to eternity. My holy men, my pious and angelicwomen, stand like martyrs amid the flames, their mild eyes liftedheavenward. Ring out the bells! A city is on fire.See!--destruction roars through my dark forests, while the lakesboil up in steaming billows, and the mountains are volcanoes, andthe sky kindles with a lurid brightness! All elements are but onepervading flame! Ha! The fiend!"
I was somewhat startled by this latter exclamation. The taleswere almost consumed, but just then threw forth a broad sheet offire, which flickered as with laughter, making the whole roomdance in its brightness, and then roared portentously up thechimney.
"You saw him? You must have seen him!" cried Oberon. "How heglared at me and laughed, in that last sheet of flame, with justthe features that I imagined for him! Well! The tales are gone."
The papers were indeed reduced to a heap of black cinders, with amultitude of sparks hurrying confusedly among them, the traces ofthe pen being now represented by white lines, and the whole massfluttering to and fro in the draughts of air. The destroyer kneltdown to look at them.
"What is more potent than fire!" said he, in his gloomiest tone."Even thought, invisible and incorporeal as it is, cannot escapeit. In this little time, it has annihilated the creations of longnights and days, which I could no more reproduce, in their firstglow and freshness, than cause ashes and whitened bones to riseup and live. There, too, I sacrificed the unborn children of mymind. All that I had accomplished--all that I planned for futureyears--has perished by one common ruin, and left only this heapof embers! The deed has been my fate. And what remains? A wearyand aimless life,--a long repentance of this hour,--and at lastan obscure grave, where they will bury and forget me!"
As the author concluded his dolorous moan, the extinguishedembers arose and settled down and arose again, and finally flewup the chimney, like a demon with sable wings. Just as theydisappeared, there was a loud and solitary cry in the streetbelow us. "Fire!" Fire! Other voices caught up that terribleword, and it speedily became the shout of a multitude. Oberonstarted to his feet, in fresh excitement.
"A fire on such a night!" cried he. "The wind blows a gale, andwherever it whirls the flames, the roofs will flash up likegunpowder. Every pump is frozen up, and boiling water would turnto ice the moment it was flung from the engine. In an hour, thiswooden town will be one great bonfire! What a glorious scene formy next--Pshaw!"
The street was now all alive with footsteps, and the air full ofvoices. We heard one engine thundering round a corner, andanother rattling from a distance over the pavements. The bells ofthree steeples clanged out at once, spreading the alarm to many aneighboring town, and expressing hurry, confusion, and terror, soinimitably that I could almost distinguish in their peal theburden of the universal cry,--"Fire! Fire! Fire!"
"What is so eloquent as their iron tongues!" exclaimed Oberon."My heart leaps and trembles, but not with fear. And that othersound, too, -deep and awful as a mighty organ,--the roar andthunder of the multitude on the pavement below! Come! We arelosing time. I will cry out in the loudest of the uproar, andmingle my spirit with the wildest of the confusion, and be abubble on the top of the ferment!"
From the first outcry, my forebodings had warned me of the trueobject and centre of alarm. There was nothing now but uproar,above, beneath, and around us; footsteps stumbling pell-mell upthe public staircase, eager shouts and heavy thumps at the door,the whiz and dash of water from the engines, and the crash offurniture thrown upon the pavement. At once, the truth flashedupon my friend. His frenzy took the hue of joy, and, with a wildgesture of exultation, he leaped almost to the ceiling of thechamber.
"My tales!" cried Oberon. "The chimney! The roof! The Fiend hasgone forth by night, and startled thousands in fear and wonderfrom their beds! Here I stand,--a triumphant author! Huzza!Huzza! My brain has set the town on fire! Huzza!"
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