University of Virginia Library

17. BOOK XVII.
YOUNG AMERICA IN LITERATURE.

I.

Among the various conflicting modes of writing history, there
would seem to be two grand practical distinctions, under which
all the rest must subordinately range. By the one mode, all
contemporaneous circumstances, facts, and events must be set
down contemporaneously; by the other, they are only to be set
down as the general stream of the narrative shall dictate; for
matters which are kindred in time, may be very irrelative in
themselves. I elect neither of these; I am careless of either;
both are well enough in their way; I write precisely as I please.

In the earlier chapters of this volume, it has somewhere been
passingly intimated, that Pierre was not only a reader of the
poets and other fine writers, but likewise—and what is a very
different thing from the other—a thorough allegorical understander
of them, a profound emotional sympathizer with them;
in other words, Pierre himself possessed the poetic nature; in
himself absolutely, though but latently and floatingly, possessed
every whit of the imaginative wealth which he so admired,
when by vast pains-takings, and all manner of unrecompensed
agonies, systematized on the printed page. Not that as yet his
young and immature soul had been accosted by the Wonderful
Mutes, and through the vast halls of Silent Truth, had been
ushered into the full, secret, eternally inviolable Sanhedrim,

where the Poetic Magi discuss, in glorious gibberish, the Alpha
and Omega of the Universe. But among the beautiful imaginings
of the second and third degree of poets, he freely and
comprehendingly ranged.

But it still remains to be said, that Pierre himself had written
many a fugitive thing, which had brought him, not only
vast credit and compliments from his more immediate acquaintances,
but the less partial applauses of the always intelligent,
and extremely discriminating public. In short, Pierre had frequently
done that, which many other boys have done—published.
Not in the imposing form of a book, but in the more
modest and becoming way of occasional contributions to magazines
and other polite periodicals. His magnificent and victorious
debut had been made in that delightful love-sonnet, entitled
“The Tropical Summer.” Not only the public had applauded
his gemmed little sketches of thought and fancy,
whether in poetry or prose; but the high and mighty Campbell
clan of editors of all sorts had bestowed upon him those
generous commendations, which, with one instantaneous glance,
they had immediately perceived was his due. They spoke in
high terms of his surprising command of language; they begged
to express their wonder at his euphonious construction of sentences;
they regarded with reverence the pervading symmetry
of his general style. But transcending even this profound insight
into the deep merits of Pierre, they looked infinitely beyond,
and confessed their complete inability to restrain their
unqualified admiration for the highly judicious smoothness and
genteelness of the sentiments and fancies expressed. “This
writer,” said one,—in an ungovernable burst of admiring fury
—“is characterized throughout by Perfect Taste.” Another,
after endorsingly quoting that sapient, suppressed maxim of
Dr. Goldsmith's, which asserts that whatever is new is false,
went on to apply it to the excellent productions before him;
concluding with this: “He has translated the unruffled gentleman

from the drawing-room into the general levee of letters;
he never permits himself to astonish; is never betrayed into
any thing coarse or new; as assured that whatever astonishes
is vulgar, and whatever is new must be crude. Yes, it is the
glory of this admirable young author, that vulgarity and vigor
—two inseparable adjuncts—are equally removed from him.

A third, perorated a long and beautifully written review, by
the bold and startling announcement—“This writer is unquestionably
a highly respectable youth.”

Nor had the editors of various moral and religious periodicals
failed to render the tribute of their severer appreciation, and
more enviable, because more chary applause. A renowned
clerical and philological conductor of a weekly publication of
this kind, whose surprising proficiency in the Greek, Hebrew,
and Chaldaic, to which he had devoted by far the greater part
of his life, peculiarly fitted him to pronounce unerring judgment
upon works of taste in the English, had unhesitatingly
delivered himself thus:—“He is blameless in morals, and
harmless throughout.” Another, had unhesitatingly recommended
his effusions to the family circle. A third, had no reserve
in saying, that the predominant end and aim of this
author was evangelical piety.

A mind less naturally strong than Pierre's might well have
been hurried into vast self-complacency, by such eulogy as
this, especially as there could be no possible doubt, that the
primitive verdict pronounced by the editors was irreversible,
except in the highly improbable event of the near approach of
the Millennium, which might establish a different dynasty of
taste, and possibly eject the editors. It is true, that in view of
the general practical vagueness of these panegyrics, and the
circumstance that, in essence, they were all somehow of the
prudently indecisive sort; and, considering that they were
panegyrics, and nothing but panegyrics, without any thing
analytical about them; an elderly friend of a literary turn,

had made bold to say to our hero—“Pierre, this is very high
praise, I grant, and you are a surprisingly young author to receive
it; but I do not see any criticisms as yet.”

“Criticisms?” cried Pierre, in amazement; “why, sir, they
are all criticisms! I am the idol of the critics!”

“Ah!” sighed the elderly friend, as if suddenly reminded
that that was true after all—“Ah!” and went on with his
inoffensive, non-committal cigar.

Nevertheless, thanks to the editors, such at last became the
popular literary enthusiasm in behalf of Pierre, that two young
men, recently abandoning the ignoble pursuit of tailoring for
the more honorable trade of the publisher (probably with an
economical view of working up in books, the linen and cotton
shreds of the cutter's counter, after having been subjected to
the action of the paper-mill), had on the daintiest scollopededged
paper, and in the neatest possible, and fine-needle-work
hand, addressed him a letter, couched in the following terms;
the general style of which letter will sufficiently evince that,
though—thanks to the manufacturer—their linen and cotton
shreds may have been very completely transmuted into paper,
yet the cutters themselves were not yet entirely out of the
metamorphosing mill.

“N. B.—If the list does not comprise all your illustrious wardrobe—works,
we mean—, we shall exceedingly regret
it. We have hunted through all the drawers—magazines.

“Sample of a coat—title for the works of Glendinning:

THE
COMPLETE WORKS
OF
GLENDINNING,
AUTHOR OF
That world-famed production, “The Tropical Summer: a Sonnet.”

“The Weather: a Thought.” “Life: an Impromptu.” “The
late Reverend Mark Graceman: an Obituary.” “Honor:
a Stanza.” “Beauty: an Acrostic.” “Edgar:
an Anagram.” “The Pippin: a Paragraph.”

&c. &c. &c. &c.
&c. &c. &c.
&c. &c.
&c.”

From a designer, Pierre had received the following:

II.

These were stirring letters. The Library Form! an Illustrated
Edition! His whole heart swelled.

But unfortunately it occurred to Pierre, that as all his writings

were not only fugitive, but if put together could not possibly
fill more than a very small duodecimo; therefore the Library
Edition seemed a little premature, perhaps; possibly, in
a slight degree, preposterous. Then, as they were chiefly made
up of little sonnets, brief meditative poems, and moral essays,
the matter for the designer ran some small risk of being but
meager. In his inexperience, he did not know that such was
the great height of invention to which the designer's art had
been carried, that certain gentlemen of that profession had gone
to an eminent publishing-house with overtures for an illustrated
edition of “Coke upon Lyttleton.” Even the City Directory
was beautifully illustrated with exquisite engravings of bricks,
tongs, and flat-irons.

Concerning the draught for the title-page, it must be confessed,
that on seeing the imposing enumeration of his titles—
long and magnificent as those preceding the proclamations of
some German Prince (“Hereditary Lord of the back-yard of
Crantz Jacobi; Undoubted Proprietor by Seizure of the bedstead
of the late Widow Van Lorn; Heir Apparent to the
Bankrupt Bakery of Fletz and Flitz; Residuary Legatee of
the Confiscated Pin-Money of the Late Dowager Dunker;
&c. &c. &c.”) Pierre could not entirely repress a momentary
feeling of elation. Yet did he also bow low under the weight
of his own ponderosity, as the author of such a vast load of literature.
It occasioned him some slight misgivings, however,
when he considered, that already in his eighteenth year, his
title-page should so immensely surpass in voluminous statisticals
the simple page, which in his father's edition prefixed the
vast speculations of Plato. Still, he comforted himself with the
thought, that as he could not presume to interfere with the
bill-stickers of the Gazelle Magazine, who every month covered
the walls of the city with gigantic announcements of his name
among the other contributors; so neither could he now—in the
highly improbable event of closing with the offer of Messrs.

Wonder and Wen—presume to interfere with the bill-sticking
department of their business concern; for it was plain that they
esteemed one's title-page but another unwindowed wall, infinitely
more available than most walls, since here was at least
one spot in the city where no rival bill-stickers dared to encroach.
Nevertheless, resolved as he was to let all such bill-sticking
matters take care of themselves, he was sensible of
some coy inclination toward that modest method of certain kid-gloved
and dainty authors, who scorning the vulgarity of a
sounding parade, contented themselves with simply subscribing
their name to the title-page; as confident, that that was sufficient
guarantee to the notice of all true gentlemen of taste.
It was for petty German princes to sound their prolonged titular
flourishes. The Czar of Russia contented himself with putting
the simple word “Nicholas” to his loftiest decrees.

This train of thought terminated at last in various considerations
upon the subject of anonymousness in authorship. He
regretted that he had not started his literary career under that
mask. At present, it might be too late; already the whole
universe knew him, and it was in vain at this late day to attempt
to hood himself. But when he considered the essential
dignity and propriety at all points, of the inviolably anonymous
method, he could not but feel the sincerest sympathy for those unfortunate
fellows, who, not only naturally averse to any sort of
publicity, but progressively ashamed of their own successive productions—written
chiefly for the merest cash—were yet cruelly
coerced into sounding title-pages by sundry baker's and butcher's
bills, and other financial considerations; inasmuch as the
placard of the title-page indubitably must assist the publisher
in his sales.

But perhaps the ruling, though not altogether conscious motive
of Pierre in finally declining—as he did—the services of
Messrs. Wonder and Wen, those eager applicants for the privilege
of extending and solidifying his fame, arose from the idea

that being at this time not very far advanced in years, the
probability was, that his future productions might at least equal,
if not surpass, in some small degree, those already given to the
world. He resolved to wait for his literary canonization until
he should at least have outgrown the sophomorean insinuation
of the Law; which, with a singular affectation of benignity, pronounced
him an “infant.” His modesty obscured from him
the circumstance, that the greatest lettered celebrities of the time,
had, by the divine power of genius, become full graduates in the
University of Fame, while yet as legal minors forced to go to
their mammas for pennies wherewith to keep them in peanuts.

Not seldom Pierre's social placidity was ruffled by polite entreaties
from the young ladies that he would be pleased to grace
their Albums with some nice little song. We say that here his
social placidity was ruffled; for the true charm of agreeable
parlor society is, that there you lose your own sharp individuality
and become delightfully merged in that soft social Pantheism,
as it were, that rosy melting of all into one, ever prevailing
in those drawing-rooms, which pacifically and deliciously belie
their own name; inasmuch as there no one draws the sword of
his own individuality, but all such ugly weapons are left—as of
old—with your hat and cane in the hall. It was very awkward
to decline the albums; but somehow it was still worse,
and peculiarly distasteful for Pierre to comply. With equal
justice apparently, you might either have called this his weakness
or his idiosyncrasy. He summoned all his suavity, and
refused. And the refusal of Pierre—according to Miss Angelica
Amabilia of Ambleside—was sweeter than the compliance
of others. But then—prior to the proffer of her album—in a
copse at Ambleside, Pierre in a gallant whim had in the lady's
own presence voluntarily carved Miss Angelica's initials upon
the bark of a beautiful maple. But all young ladies are not
Miss Angelicas. Blandly denied in the parlor, they courted
repulse in the study. In lovely envelopes they dispatched their

albums to Pierre, not omitting to drop a little attar-of-rose in
the palm of the domestic who carried them. While now Pierre
—pushed to the wall in his gallantry—shilly-shallied as to
what he must do, the awaiting albums multiplied upon him;
and by-and-by monopolized an entire shelf in his chamber; so
that while their combined ornate bindings fairly dazzled his
eyes, their excessive redolence all but made him to faint, though
indeed, in moderation, he was very partial to perfumes. So
that of really chilly afternoons, he was still obliged to drop the
upper sashes a few inches.

The simplest of all things it is to write in a lady's album. But
Cui Bono? Is there such a dearth of printed reading, that the
monkish times must be revived, and ladies books be in manuscript?
What could Pierre write of his own on Love or any
thing else, that would surpass what divine Hafiz wrote so many
long centuries ago? Was there not Anacreon too, and Catullus,
and Ovid—all translated, and readily accessible? And
then—bless all their souls!—had the dear creatures forgotten
Tom Moore? But the handwriting, Pierre,—they want the
sight of your hand. Well, thought Pierre, actual feeling is
better than transmitted sight, any day. I will give them the
actual feeling of my hand, as much as they want. And lips
are still better than hands. Let them send their sweet faces to
me, and I will kiss lipographs upon them forever and a day.
This was a felicitous idea. He called Dates, and had the albums
carried down by the basket-full into the dining-room.
He opened and spread them all out upon the extension-table
there; then, modeling himself by the Pope, when His Holiness
collectively blesses long crates of rosaries—he waved one devout
kiss to the albums; and summoning three servants sent the
albums all home, with his best compliments, accompanied with
a confectioner's kiss for each album, rolled up in the most ethereal
tissue.

From various quarters of the land, both town and country,

and especially during the preliminary season of autumn, Pierre
received various pressing invitations to lecture before Lyceums,
Young Men's Associations, and other Literary and Scientific
Societies. The letters conveying these invitations possessed
quite an imposing and most flattering aspect to the unsophisticated
Pierre. One was as follows:—

III.

But it was more especially the Lecture invitations coming
from venerable, gray-headed metropolitan Societies, and indited
by venerable gray-headed Secretaries, which far from elating
filled the youthful Pierre with the sincerest sense of humility.
Lecture? lecture? such a stripling as I lecture to fifty benches,
with ten gray heads on each? five hundred gray heads in all!
Shall my one, poor, inexperienced brain presume to lay down
the law in a lecture to five hundred life-ripened understandings?
It seemed too absurd for thought. Yet the five hundred,
through their spokesman, had voluntarily extended this
identical invitation to him. Then how could it be otherwise,
than that an incipient Timonism should slide into Pierre, when
he considered all the disgraceful inferences to be derived from
such a fact. He called to mind, how that once upon a time,
during a visit of his to the city, the police were called out to
quell a portentous riot, occasioned by the vast press and contention
for seats at the first lecture of an illustrious lad of nineteen,
the author of “A Week at Coney Island.”

It is needless to say that Pierre most conscientiously and respectfully
declined all polite overtures of this sort.

Similar disenchantments of his cooler judgment did likewise
deprive of their full lusciousness several other equally marked
demonstrations of his literary celebrity. Applications for autographs
showered in upon him; but in sometimes humorously
gratifying the more urgent requests of these singular people
Pierre could not but feel a pang of regret, that owing to the
very youthful and quite unformed character of his handwriting,
his signature did not possess that inflexible uniformity, which
—for mere prudential reasons, if nothing more—should always
mark the hand of illustrious men. His heart thrilled with
sympathetic anguish for posterity, which would be certain to

stand hopelessly perplexed before so many contradictory signatures
of one supereminent name. Alas! posterity would be
sure to conclude that they were forgeries all; that no chirographic
relic of the sublime poet Glendinning survived to their
miserable times.

From the proprietors of the Magazines whose pages were
honored by his effusions, he received very pressing epistolary
solicitations for the loan of his portrait in oil, in order to take
an engraving therefrom, for a frontispiece to their periodicals.
But here again the most melancholy considerations obtruded.
It had always been one of the lesser ambitions of Pierre, to
sport a flowing beard, which he deemed the most noble corporeal
badge of the man, not to speak of the illustrious author.
But as yet he was beardless; and no cunning compound of
Rowland and Son could force a beard which should arrive at
maturity in any reasonable time for the frontispiece. Besides,
his boyish features and whole expression were daily changing.
Would he lend his authority to this unprincipled imposture
upon Posterity? Honor forbade.

These epistolary petitions were generally couched in an elaborately
respectful style; thereby intimating with what deep
reverence his portrait would be handled, while unavoidably
subjected to the discipline indispensable to obtain from it the
engraved copy they prayed for. But one or two of the persons
who made occasional oral requisitions upon him in this matter
of his engraved portrait, seemed less regardful of the inherent
respect due to every man's portrait, much more, to that of a
genius so celebrated as Pierre. They did not even seem to remember
that the portrait of any man generally receives, and
indeed is entitled to more reverence than the original man himself;
since one may freely clap a celebrated friend on the
shoulder, yet would by no means tweak his nose in his portrait.
The reason whereof may be this: that the portrait is better entitled
to reverence than the man; inasmuch as nothing belittling

can be imagined concerning the portrait, whereas many
unavoidably belittling things can be fancied as touching the
man.

Upon one occasion, happening suddenly to encounter a
literary acquaintance—a joint editor of the “Captain Kidd
Monthly”—who suddenly popped upon him round a corner,
Pierre was startled by a rapid—“Good-morning, good-morning;—just
the man I wanted:—come, step round now with
me, and have your Daguerreotype taken;—get it engraved
then in no time;—want it for the next issue.”

So saying, this chief mate of Captain Kidd seized Pierre's
arm, and in the most vigorous manner was walking him off,
like an officer a pickpocket, when Pierre civilly said—“Pray,
sir, hold, if you please, I shall do no such thing.”—“Pooh,
pooh—must have it—public property—come along—only a
door or two now.”—“Public property!” rejoined Pierre, “that
may do very well for the `Captain Kidd Monthly;'—it's very
Captain Kiddish to say so. But I beg to repeat that I do
not intend to accede.”—“Don't? Really?” cried the other,
amazedly staring Pierre full in the countenance;—“why bless
your soul, my portrait is published—long ago published!”—
“Can't help that, sir”—said Pierre. “Oh! come along, come
along,” and the chief mate seized him again with the most
uncompunctious familiarity by the arm. Though the sweetest-tempered
youth in the world when but decently treated, Pierre
had an ugly devil in him sometimes, very apt to be evoked by
the personal profaneness of gentlemen of the Captain Kidd
school of literature. “Look you, my good fellow,” said he,
submitting to his impartial inspection a determinately double
fist,—“drop my arm now—or I'll drop you. To the devil
with you and your Daguerreotype!”

This incident, suggestive as it was at the time, in the sequel
had a surprising effect upon Pierre. For he considered with
what infinite readiness now, the most faithful portrait of any one

could be taken by the Daguerreotype, whereas in former times
a faithful portrait was only within the power of the moneyed,
or mental aristocrats of the earth. How natural then the inference,
that instead, as in old times, immortalizing a genius,
a portrait now only dayalized a dunce. Besides, when every
body has his portrait published, true distinction lies in not having
yours published at all. For if you are published along
with Tom, Dick, and Harry, and wear a coat of their cut, how
then are you distinct from Tom, Dick, and Harry? Therefore,
even so miserable a motive as downright personal vanity helped
to operate in this matter with Pierre.

Some zealous lovers of the general literature of the age, as
well as declared devotees to his own great genius, frequently
petitioned him for the materials wherewith to frame his biography.
They assured him, that life of all things was most
insecure. He might feel many years in him yet; time might
go lightly by him; but in any sudden and fatal sickness, how
would his last hours be embittered by the thought, that he was
about to depart forever, leaving the world utterly unprovided
with the knowledge of what were the precise texture and hue
of the first trowsers he wore. These representations did certainly
touch him in a very tender spot, not previously unknown
to the schoolmaster. But when Pierre considered, that owing
to his extreme youth, his own recollections of the past soon
merged into all manner of half-memories and a general vagueness,
he could not find it in his conscience to present such materials
to the impatient biographers, especially as his chief verifying
authority in these matters of his past career, was now eternally
departed beyond all human appeal. His excellent nurse
Clarissa had been dead four years and more. In vain a young
literary friend, the well-known author of two Indexes and one
Epic, to whom the subject happened to be mentioned, warmly
espoused the cause of the distressed biographers; saying that

however unpleasant, one must needs pay the penalty of celebrity;
it was no use to stand back; and concluded by taking
from the crown of his hat the proof-sheets of his own biography,
which, with the most thoughtful consideration for the
masses, was shortly to be published in the pamphlet form, price
only a shilling.

It only the more bewildered and pained him, when still other
and less delicate applicants sent him their regularly printed
Biographico-Solicito Circulars, with his name written in ink;
begging him to honor them and the world with a neat draft of
his life, including criticisms on his own writings; the printed
circular indiscriminately protesting, that undoubtedly he knew
more of his own life than any other living man; and that only he
who had put together the great works of Glendinning could
be fully qualified thoroughly to analyze them, and cast the ultimate
judgment upon their remarkable construction.

Now, it was under the influence of the humiliating emotions
engendered by things like the above; it was when thus haunted
by publishers, engravers, editors, critics, autograph-collectors,
portrait-fanciers, biographers, and petitioning and remonstrating
literary friends of all sorts; it was then, that there stole into
the youthful soul of Pierre, melancholy forebodings of the utter
unsatisfactoriness of all human fame; since the most ardent
profferings of the most martyrizing demonstrations in his behalf,—these
he was sorrowfully obliged to turn away.

And it may well be believed, that after the wonderful vital
world-revelation so suddenly made to Pierre at the Meadows—
a revelation which, at moments, in some certain things, fairly
Timonized him—he had not failed to clutch with peculiar nervous
detestation and contempt that ample parcel, containing
the letters of his Biographico and other silly correspondents,
which, in a less ferocious hour, he had filed away as curiosities.
It was with an almost infernal grin, that he saw that particular

heap of rubbish eternally quenched in the fire, and felt that as
it was consumed before his eyes, so in his soul was forever
killed the last and minutest undeveloped microscopic germ of
that most despicable vanity to which those absurd correspondents
thought to appeal.