PHILADELPHIA
January 1887.
[DEAR BOY:]
What has become of The Current ? It has not come
yet.
If it has suspended publication be sure and get your article
back. You must not destroy a single page you write. You will
find every idea of use to you hereafter.
Sometimes I am afraid you think I don't take interest
enough in your immediate success now with the articles you
send. But I've had thirty years experience and I know how
much that sort of success depends on the articles suiting the
present needs of the magazine, and also on the mood of the
editor when he reads it.
Besides — except for your own disappointment — I know it
would be better if you would not publish under your own name
for a little while. Dr. Holland — who had lots of literary
shrewdness both as writer and publisher — used to say for a
young man or woman to rush into print was sure ruin to their
lasting fame. They either compromised their reputations by
inferior work or they made a great hit and never played up to
it, afterwards, in public opinion.
Now my dear old man this sounds like awfully cold
comfort. But it is the wisest idea your mother has
got. I confess I have
great faith in you — and I try to
judge you as if you were not my son. I think you are going to
take a high place among American authors, but I do not think
you are going to do it by articles like that you sent to
The
Current. The qualities which I think will bring it to you,
you don't seem, to value at all. They are your dramatic eye.
I mean your quick perception of character and of the way
character shows itself in looks, tones, dress, etc., and in
your keen sympathy — with all kinds of people — Now, these are
the requisites for a novelist. Added to that your humour.
You ought to make a novelist of the first class. But you
must not expect to do it this week or next. A lasting, real
success takes time, and patient, steady work. Read Boz's
first sketches of "London Life" and compare them with "Sydney
Carton" or "David Copperfield" and you will see what time and
hard work will do to develop genius.
I suppose you will wonder why I am moved to say all this?
It is, I think, because of your saying "the article sent to
St. Nicholas was the best you would be able to do for
years
to come" and I saw you were going to make it a crucial test of
your ability. That is, forgive me, nothing but nonsense.
Whatever the article may be, you may write one infinitely
superior to it next week or month. Just in proportion as you
feel more deeply, or notice more keenly, and as you acquire
the faculty of expressing your feelings or observations more
delicately and powerfully which faculty must come into
practice. It is not inspiration — it never was that — without
practice, with any writer from Shakespeare down.
Understand me. I don't say, like Papa, stop writing.
God forbid. I would almost as soon say stop breathing,
for it is pretty much the same thing. But only to remember
that you have not yet conquered your art. You are a
journeyman not a master workman, so if you don't succeed, it
does not count. The future is what I look to, for you. I had
to stop my work to say all this, so good-bye dear old chum.
Yours,
MOTHER.
If anything worried Richard at all at this period, I
think it was his desire to get down to steady newspaper work,
or indeed any kind of work that would act as the first step of
his career and by which he could pay his own way in the world.
It was with this idea uppermost in his mind in the late spring
of 1886, and without any particular regret for the ending of
his college career, that he left Baltimore and, returning to
his home in Philadelphia, determined to accept the first
position that presented itself. But instead of going to work
at once, he once more changed his plans and decided to sail
for Santiago de Cuba with his friend William W. Thurston, who
as president of the Bethlehem Steel Company, was deeply
interested in the iron mines of that region. Here and then it
was that Richard first fell in love with Cuba — a love which in
later years became almost an obsession with him. Throughout
his life whenever it was possible, and sometimes when it
seemed practically impossible, my brother would listen to the
call of his beloved tropics and, casting aside all
responsibilities, would set sail for Santiago. After all it
was quite natural that he should feel as he did about this
little Cuban coast town, for apart from its lazy life, spicy
smells, waving
palms and Spanish cooking, it was here that he found the
material for his first novel and greatest monetary success,
"Soldiers of Fortune." Apart from the many purely pleasure
trips he made to Santiago, twice he returned there to
work — once as a correspondent during the Spanish-American War,
and again when he went with Augustus Thomas to assist in the
latter's film version of the play which years before Thomas
had made from the novel.
