OUR TENDER LITERARY CELEBRITIES
ONEday, not so very long ago, a well-known American author was laughed at in a morning newspaper. It was apparently not meant for stinging satire. But the author felt it somewhere about him and complained to the editor of the pain. He wrote a letter for publication—long, earnest, very indignant. I am, said he, the victim of a “malignantly humorous attack.” By which process he turned a poor joke on himself into a good one, and incidentally exposed a too tender private temperament to the public gaze.
Sometimes it seems as if the whole body of recent American literature were not worth the damage sustained by character while consuming the fruits of success. There are signs of a bad schooling, of too steady a fare of sweets. For what doth it profit a man to run to a hundred thousand if he turn out a prig? The thing too often happens. His constitution may have been none too robust at the start, but it is awful to think what might become of any of us. Undermined by reciprocal endearments, we, too, might rage at the first word of criticism and swoon at the sound of laughter. Potatoes will sprout in a warm cellar, though some are worse than others. It is the effect of too much shelter in the great author’s life.
I condemn no man. I condemn the influences. Fortified against displeasure, barricaded against even chaff, there comes a time when the soul’s dark cottage needs ventilation. There should be more outside breezes in The Literary Life.