Poaching, a Protest

THE CONTRIBUTORS’ CLUB

“AMELIA,” I said, stepping into the sitting-room, “some one has gone and used my uncle.”

For a moment she looked at me in blank amazement; then she took the complete-novel magazine out of my hands and fell to investigating for herself how much damage had been done.

My uncle’s personality had been a lasting “hit” locally; he had attained quite a circulation, being widely quoted as a dialect person. The public seemed to find just what it needed in his most unstudied remarks. Even his prayers were famous; it was not so much his broad Scotch manner of speech as his mental standpoint in conferring with the Lord upon important matters; not so much the humor of dialect as of dialectics. I remember how I used to bide the time with my eye on the high-posted bed while he closed the day’s business with a candle and the big Bible before him; and how he ended it with a well-considered Presbyterian prayer during which, at intervals, he asked the Lord candidly if he “heard” him.

I now waited while Amelia turned the pages, and read the description of landmarks in that unmistakable town, — everything I had already talked over with her. And finally she ran her finger along the following passage,— “ He came at last to a long, low house that had once been white and whose veranda was reached by a short steep flight of steps. He remembered the place trim and well-kept; now the paint had fallen away in patches from the walls, and the crazy steps were broken and discolored. Here an old Scotchman had lived who was noted for his eccentricities of speech.”

“Why,” said Amelia, “they have gone and taken his well — and his prayer — and his house ” —

“The scenery and everything,” I said impatiently.

“But,” said Amelia trying to pluck up hope, “you know so much more about him personally, — things that would make him live and move. And as for the scenery, you know character is the great thing, — human character.”

“True enough,” I replied. “But talk as you may, a character has got to live somewhere, and have things to do with. And as for the scenery, it is not so easy to imagine a topography and build a new town on it with all the details that give verity. And as for moving my uncle, that I could not do. He came and went there on that bridge, that plank walk, those hills, and echoing river shores. I admit that character is greater than setting; but still you have got to have the setting just the same. It has been taken, and my uncle has been spoiled. I mean despoiled.”

Amelia began to realize the import of it.

“And as for character,” I continued, “just read how that has been touched upon at a vital point:—‘High and quavering rose the voice, the R’s rolled heavily, and the words rising shrill and insistent at the close: “O Lord, don’t let the rumsellers sell any more rum. Do you hear me now ? Do you hear me now ? ” ’ My uncle,” I commented, “used always to accent that on the word hear, — it makes a great difference in the spirit of it.”

“Just as you have told it to me,” said Amelia. “But how did this writer come to know anything about him of so intimate a nature ?”

“Haven’t you read that place about what the hero did; the place where he ‘crouched outside and listened to the shrill voice of the old man lifted in family prayers ’ ? And how he smiled when he recollected it P There it is. That is how the author came to know about it.”

“Eavesdroppers,” exclaimed Amelia, with a curl of her lip.

“Yes,” I replied. “Possibly on one of those very nights when I was on my innocent knees at Uncle W.’s house, some one was outside laying for literary material, skulking behind the fence to steal my rightful uncle away from me. And now you see what has come of it.”

“It is a wonder,” she said, “that a writer who has discovered a character should not have the consideration to inquire whether there are authors in the family. Some one may have a prior right. Some one may have already made plans that depend upon having him outside of literature when the time comes.”

“Yes, some one,” I mused. “It is certainly aggravating to have to plagiarize your uncle away from a strange writer. And maybe be accused of it. But,” I continued, trying to cheer up lightly, “that was slightly misleading to say he was praying about the rum just because there was a temperance revival in town. It was because of the rum that he had the well set out there by the roadside — that was the continual reason for it. It was a temptation to the wayfarer — a snare to create a public taste for water. He always approved of any one using that well, as if the drinking of water were a moral act, and an index of character. But the well itself is well described. Read that to me; and what the heroine did.”

She read: “A new pump stood in the yard, where he remembered there had been an old well with a windlass. With the recollection of the well came the memory of a day, when he was returning from school with Elizabeth, and they stopped to get a drink. As she reached over to dip the cup in the brimming bucket he had drawn up, a book she held under her arm slipped and dropped splashing in the well.”

“I do not mind losing the mere incident,” I remarked. “My uncle never made complaint about the girl’s dropping that book in his well. But it is quite a different matter,” I said, “quite a different matter for her to come along, and take a book OUT of the well. It did not belong to her. The temperance well itself I should like to have had reserved.”

As we sat brooding I thought heavily of that part of a publisher’s contract that refers to libel suits and puts all the responsibility on yourself. That makes me rattle the change in my pocket. It is this that makes it so serious to be robbed of a relative, for they will not sue you for damages. I thought also of a letter I once received. I had written a book of bona fide adventures — of my own. It was highly praised — almost accepted — sent back. A publisher (since failed) told me honestly that the only trouble with it was that “the public is not willing to accept a successor to Mark Twain.” I had been intruding on preëmpted waters; I had been poaching. I destroyed the evidence long ago.

To such a pass has this condition of affairs brought us that no sooner have our soldiers and sailors opened up a new literary field, than there is an Oklahoma rush of writers bearing down upon it to stake out their claims. I have in mind a map of the world — a literary map for the use of writers — showing the surface of the globe in tracts of local color, and bearing the names of writers whose baronies they are. One can scarce speak of his native town, literarily, without a feeling that he is trespassing.

“Never mind, dear,” said Amelia, with a sudden air of consolation. “You know there is my side of the family. There is my grandfather.”

True enough. What an invincible tar he was. He too — thank Heaven — was eccentric. Everybody ashore said that if he were put into a book — he, besides character and setting, would have plot and dramatic action. There would be the night they came for him to get the schooner away from the mob — out of the port — out of the Lakes — out of America. Such was the feeling against her that she would not be safe in this country; if she got away they would never dare to bring her back. The job had to be done in the face of a whole ward of frenzied Irishmen, who were already coming to wreak vengeance for all the relatives whose blood was on that misguided prow. Who would oppose them ? They ran for the man that would.

Besides his getting her away, there was the story of the trip across the ocean, — what a saucy adventurer they thought her when she appeared at an ocean port, and started out of the country with a height of mast that no ocean boat would ever dare to carry on so small a hull, and leaking from her collision; — how she braved the storm that damaged the Great Eastern; — how she was driven back for six weeks at a run; — how it struck her when she was almost to Europe, and she was only saved by turning tail and manœuvring with the waves until she was almost back to America again; — how he turned her about and “went at” it again;— and how he finally “got there.”

“Well,” I soliloquized, “we’ve got him left anyway.” I could get details any time by stepping into the next room, because my wife’s mother was along on that trip. I almost lost my wife’s mother when she was a little girl. But the captain caught her just as she was sliding on a sea over the lee rail.

Just the other day my wife came into the middle room where I was meditating comfortably. She had an old volume of the Atlantic in her hand. I did not doubt that she had found some article that had escaped me on Transportation, — or maybe Literary Theory.

“Dear.”

“Yes.”

“I have something to tell you.”

“Yes. What is it?”

“ Somebody — has gone and used my grandfather.”

We stared at it together.

Amelia read, “She was of two hundred and thirty tons burden, and was painted green with a white stripe ” —

“Yes, but lots of boats” —

“ But here it is about the bridge-tender that got the bridge open just in time, and” —

“But such an incident might happen to some other” —

“And here she got to Cork. But ol course the name of the boat and everybody is changed.”

I immediately got up and went into the next room. “Where did you put into Europe ? And did you get new masts for that schooner ?”

“The new masts were stepped at Cork,” replied my wife’s mother.

It was beginning to look dark for our book.

“ And hear what the old bridge-tender said,” continued my wife. "' More als drei hundert peeples was gone dead by dot shooner.’ ”

That settled it; I looked it all over. And there went my second book by the board.

“Yes, but that would n’t keep you from writing it, — you know lots more than that,” said Amelia. “And then the character” —

“Character, your grandfather! The story’s gone. Don’t you see,” I said emphatically, “that the true story is now fiction? I can’t write that again and call it fiction. And it is the worst of bad art to claim a thing to be really true in a story. The literary world resents it, because it is taking a mean advantage.”

She does not exactly understand this, — but I do. She cannot realize that we have lost her grandfather entirely. She tells me details hopefully, not seeing that I would have to plagiarize whole sections of the story.

“Well, anyway,” I said, crossing my legs independently, “ I am glad to say that I have n’t come this far through the world without doing some navigating myself. Hereafter I shall write only about things that no one can possibly know but myself.”

“Yes, but you forget,” said Amelia. “ Don’t you know you were warned that the public were already satisfied with their writer on” —

“That’s so. I forgot.”

I picked up a current magazine and fell to considering, in all its bearings, a fact plainly put by a publisher in an interview with regard to last year’s output. He said, “Of the successes, oftentimes the first book contains all there is in a writer. It is based upon the richest experiences of his own life, and they are all there. The second book determines whether he is a real writer or not.”

Therefore, when the material for a man’s first book is seized upon and made unusable, it is not only a book, but a whole career that has been snatched from under him. As for me, I am the author of two first books — that I never had a chance to write.