Literary Stepping-Stones

AT a meeting of a certain Writers’ Guild, not long ago, there occurred a general confession, during which several of the ‘arrived’ related their first timid adventures along the insidious shoals which lead to the solid ground of editorial recognition. Each told how he first came to sell an offspring of his pen, and what he did with the money. The variety of literary experiences ranged from that of the magazine-story writer, who broke into print with a newspaper item that brought him a dollar and a half to buy a pair of silk socks, to the Pallas-like entrance from obscurity of a young woman, who, not having ‘written’ anything in her life, leaped full armed into fame with a two-hundred-dollar short story.

Thinking over these early beginnings of some of our still industrious climbers, one is moved to wonder about the early beginnings of the truly great ones of the trade. Henry James, for instance. It would be enlightening to know for just what scholarly emission he received his first bona-fide and undeniable and soul-inspiring check. And Stevenson. I have often wondered whether that incomparably dull essay of his, Roads, were not the misshapen, colorless embryo that was to develop into Aes Triplex and Treasure Island.

It is difficult to recollect when the verb ’to write’ took, in my vocabulary, a meaning disassociated from my efforts Spencerian or vertical. Long before I could read, I used to spend happy hours transcribing, with pencil and paper, the stories in my Andersen and Grimm. I did not know one letter from another, but I filled whole pages with straggling lines of characters, copied laboriously with cramped little fingers as one draws a picture. Gradually, these took on individuality, and I taught myself to read in this way, but I preferred print to writing until after I started to school.

My first story, about a New York society woman who gave a bull-fight in Madison Square Garden, — not at any time since have I conceived such an original plot, —was written when I was nine years old; but I was well on in high school when I first came to know the smug pleasure of hearing a girl in the locker hall whisper to another girl, indicating me, —

‘She writes, you know.’

As the recognized literary member of the family, whose stories had appeared in print in the high-school paper, I was naturally disgruntled when my sister Elizabeth, who was not generally recognized as literary, received five dollars from a magazine for something she had ‘written.’ Immediately I set to work to redeem myself. The Woman,s Home Companion at that time conducted a department called the ‘Help One Another Club,’ and, reading that the ‘club’ desired helpful hints for invalids, I conceived a wholly mythical bedridden aunt, and wrote of her an equally mythical life history, telling, in two hundred words, how she had kept a large family happily and safely together. For this touching biography, I received a crisp, new one-dollar bill. Elizabeth had gained a like amount from the invention of an invalid friend in Texas, and we went down town to luncheon and the matinée. We knew a lovely tea-room, where it was a joy to eat, and whenever one of us had any money she invited the other to lunch.

During the year after my first success, I earned a number of lunches by writing helpful hints for the Woman’s Home Companion and the Ladies’ Home Journal, and I learned early that the more imaginative my hints were, the more sure they were of publication.

Stevenson once remarked that a check never seemed like money to him, and that when he received one in the mail he went in terror lest payment on it be stopped, or the bank fail before he could cash it. For myself, I like the dignity and importance which a check imparts. All my early literary successes were paid for with oneor two-dollar bills, which were so plebeian and homey that they prevented me from realizing that I was actually writing for the magazines. My first check came from Good Housekeeping. I had written the story of a colony club in our city — a true story this time — and was paid eighteen dollars therefor. I decided at once to go into the ‘writing game’ for life, and used fourteen dollars of my check to buy an International Dictionary and a stand. It was one purchase, at all events, that I did not afterwards regret.

With the help and stimulus of the dictionary, I essayed higher flights, and landed next time in the Atlantic Monthly with a contribution for this Club. Elizabeth was the only one who knew about it before I sent it in; it was the first thing I had ever submitted to a literary magazine; and the essay represented, also, the first typewriting that I had ever done. It consisted of probably twelve hundred words, but I worked all day over the final copy, perspiring freely before a friend’s typewriter, and using about a hundred sheets of paper. I learned then the power of an inked ribbon to transfer its color from the human fingers to a white margin, thereby eliminating the open spaces which the advertising experts assure us are imperiously necessary as being restful to the eye. In appearance my essay was as smeared and blotchy and disreputable as a piece of writing could well be. I mailed it without hope, and it was accepted at once, which fact has always enabled me to discount the pessimistic utterances of certain writers as to the treatment of beginners by the editors.

I shall never, never forget the day that wonderful acceptance came. We had guests in the house, and the women folks were all arraying themselves for a day’s shopping. I was taking a bath. I expect that every crisis in my life will find me taking a bath. I often wake in the night shivering from a recurrent and awful dream in which my tulle veil and orange flowers lie waiting in their box and a pair of white satin shoes stand empty side by side, while I struggle with frantic and terrified ablutions that will not complete themselves and lengthen out interminably, my relatives and bridegroom calling to me all the time.

On this occasion, I had hurriedly begun to dress, when there came a thundering pound upon the door.

Thinking that somebody had fallen downstairs, I rushed to open it, and there stood Elizabeth, jumping up and down, waving a white envelope and crying, —

‘ook! The Atlantic! An acceptance! An acceptance!’

‘It is n’t. I don’t believe it,’ I stammered incoherently, while I tore open the envelope. I hope that the editor who penned those magic lines, ‘Dear madam: We shall be very happy to accept your Club on “The Unattainable,"’ received, from the All-encircling Good, that day, enough happiness to balance the pleasure that he gave. It was quite too much for me to bear. I had never been so happy in my life, and I put my head down on the edge of the chiffonier and began to cry.

Elizabeth, who should be named the Zealot because of her facile enthusiasms, still stood there, making loud vocal noises and patting me on the back. One guest, hearing the commotion, and seeing only an envelope and me with my head on the chiffonier, believed, not unnaturally, that somebody was dead and that I was about to faint away. She hastened back to her room for her traveling flask. Before I could protest or explain, she was pouring whiskey down my throat, and I went immediately into a violent choking fit, which so alarmed my mother on the floor below that she hurried upstairs as fast as she could with a glass of water, with which I was deluged by the time the situation became clear.

Then everybody talked and questioned and congratulated, for we are fond and foolish folk, who rejoice mightily over one another’s good fortune. I do not recall what payment I received for that Club essay, nor what I did with the money. The remuneration was immaterial. The acceptance was the thing — the sweetest, most blissful reality. I have had many acceptances since then, but none so exciting and momentous. The first great thrill cannot come again.