UNWRITTEN BOOKS
From "Recreations of an Anthologist"
by Brander Matthews
To most of the admirers of
Dickens the 'Mystery of Edwin Drood' remains still a mystery, since the author
died suddenly and before he had himself disclosed his own answer to his serial
conundrum. We may give as many guesses as we choose, we cannot be absolutely
certain that our solution of the problem is the real one. Thackeray was far
above any mystery-mongering of this sort, and he scorned to entrap his readers
into puzzling over a mere enigma of plot; but he had acquired from Dickens the
inartistic habit of beginning the intermittent publication of a novel before he
had composed the final chapters, and 'Denis Duval' remains to us an interrupted
beginning of what might have been a worthy companion of 'Henry Estnond.' More
than one attempt was made to complete Dickens's broken narrative, but no rash
writer was hardy enough to venture on a continuation of Thackeray's novel. When
Wilkie Collins left a serial unfinished, Sir Walter Besant kindly supplied a
conclusion; and Mr. Quiller-Couch did a like friendly service for Robert Louis
Stevenson.
Here
in America Hawthorne tried three times to get his strange story of the bloody
footstep into a shape satisfactory to his fastidious sense of form, and he
allowed 'The Dolliver Romance' to begin to appear in a magazine before he had
completed the manuscript. The sudden death of Dickens and of Thackeray was his
also, and his installment of life in this world was sharply cut off - to be
continued in our next. As in Thackeray's case, so in Hawthorne's, the
impossibility of completing what the master had begun was so plain that even
the most foolishly conceited have restrained their pens from the
task. As Hawthorne's classmate, Longfellow, beautifully phrased it:
There, in
seclusion and remote from men,
The wizard hand
lies cold,
Which at its
topmost speed let fall the pen,
And left the
tale half-told.
Ah! who shall
lift that wand of magic power,
And the lost
clue regain?
The unfinished
window in Aladdin's tower
Unfinished must
remain.
Hawthorne,
however, and Thackeray had at least begun these books; the 'Dolliver Romance'
and 'Denis Duval' remain
unfinished, but
they were not absolutely' , unwritten. There are in the records of literature
other books by other authors
actually
announced as these were, but never even begun. Some of these unwritten books
may have been thought out, composed, ready to be set down in black and white
with pen and ink, complete in the author's head, and lacking the final and
almost mechanical registration. Others seem to have been mere
projects, little more than vague dreams, for a possible future realisation. At
one stage of its existence every book is but a castle in the air; and, the
persevering author acts on Thoreau's assertion, that the air is the proper
place for a castle, and that what needs to be done is only to build a solid
foundation under it.
Moliere
is said by most of his biographers to have made a translation from Lucretius;
and if this ever really existed it is now lost. But another of Moliere's works
never did exist - the comedy of 'L
'Homme de Cour' - which he used to talk about as certain to be his final
masterpiece, but of which nothing is now known. So Richard Brinsley Sheridan
made ready to write a successor to the 'Rivals' and the 'School for Scandal,'
on the theme of 'Affectation,' but this admirable subject did not tempt him to
the actual labor of composition. He made a few notes for the proposed play, and
pursued it no further. Perhaps he was too absorbed in the pleasures of society
or in the delights of politics; perhaps he was satisfied with the comedies he
had already written and willing to rest his title to remembrance upon these.
Michael Kelly tells us how he once said to Sheridan that the manager of Drury
Lane would never write another comedy, since he was afraid - afraid of the
author of the 'School for Scandal'. And like Moliere and like Sheridan,
Cervantes had projected a final play, destined to eclipse all its predecessors
- 'Engano a los Ojos' - and yet not destined to see the light of day, since the
author of 'Don Quixote' died before it was ready, if indeed it was ever begun.
For
years the paper covers of every new book that Victor Hugo issued continued to
announce as soon to be published a romance entitled 'La Quinquengrogne.'
Many posthumous volumes of the French poet's writing in prose and verse
have been sent forth by his literary executors, but of this
oddly entitled fiction nothing has been heard. Theophile Gautier's 'Capitaine
Fracasse' was proclaimed as almost ready for print for many long years before
the first word of it was actually written; but at last Gautier did write up to
his title. Which one of his Romanticist companions in arms was it who achieved
instant fame on his declaration of intention to astound the world sooner or
later with a treatise, 'Sur l'Incommodite des Commodes?' - a treatise which,
like a bill in Congress, has been read by title only.
In 1862,
Alphonse Daudet in like manner announced as "in press" a volume of
stories, which was to be called 'Le Pentameron,' and which remained unpublished
and probably unwritten when he died in 1897. A novel of Daudet's -'Trousseaux
et Layettes' - about which he was in the habit of conversing with his intimates
in the later years of his life, seems to have been begun, but apparently it was
not very far advanced when death overtook him. And the younger Dumas has left
on record more than one reference to a comedy to be called 'La Route de
Thebes', planned before 'Francillon,' but never brought to the point of
perfection during the author's lifetime.
In the original
prospectus of M. Jules Jusserand's admirable series of critical biographies,
'Les Grands Ecrivains Francais,' it was asserted that M. Anatole France would
contribute the volume on Racine and M. Jules Lemaitre that on Alfred de Musset.
But when the time came to publish the book on Racine its author was found to be
not M. France, but M. Gustave Larroumet; and the volume on Musset was prepared,
not by M. Lemaitre, but by Mme. Arvede Barine. Boileau was to have been
undertaken by M. Ferdinand Brunetiere, and Rousseau by the late Victor
Cherbuliez; but M. Gustave Lanson was the author of the account of the great
classic critic, and M. Chuquet was responsible for the biography
of the progenitor of French Romanticism. It is more than ten years since the
prospectus of this series was prepared, and M. Brunetiere has not yet given us
his promised study of Voltaire, nor has M. Paul Bourget vouchsafed us his
analysis of Balzac.
Taine
was to have written the life of Sainte-Beuve for this series, but he died
before he had accomplished the pleasant and appropriate task. In like manner
Lowell at the time of his death had made little progress with the volume on
Hawthorne which he had agreed to prepare for the corresponding series in this
country, Mr. Warner's 'American Men of Letters'; and to an American in London,
with whom he was talking over his theme, Lowell expressed his gentle
dissatisfaction with the volume on Hawthorne contributed to the 'English Men of
Letters' by Mr. Henry James. Lowell remarked that Hawthorne was of New England,
all compact, and could be treated adequately only by a New Englander, whereas
Mr. James, in so far as he was an American at all, was a New Yorker.
The
'American Men of Letters' series has had almost as many substitutions as the
'Grands Ecrivains Francais.' Mr . Thomas Bailey Aldrich was to have written the
volume on N. P. Willis, and Professor Beers did write it. Mr. George W. Cable
undertook to prepare an account of William Gilmore Simms, and Professor Trent
did prepare it. Mr. Howells was expected to write the life of Long fellow, and
Colonel Higginson took it over. And in the original prospectus of the
corresponding British series, the earliest of the three, Mr. John Morley's
'English Men of Letters', the editor reserved to himself two authors, Gray and
Burke. The study of Burke he has published, but that of Gray he turned over to
Mr. Gosse. And the volume on Berkeley which the late Professor Huxley was to
prepare for Mr. Morley's series never got itself written,
although that on Hume did.
It was more or
less in rivalry with Mr. Morley's series that Mr. Andrew Lang began a
collection of 'English Worthies,' which the editor himself was to provide with
a biography of Izaak Walton - a project abandoned apparently when the series
itself was given up. An it was for this set of 'English Worthies' that Robert
Louis Stevenson made ready to celebrate the deeds of Wellington, as unlikely a
subject as could well be chosen by him - although his master, Scott, had made
money by a huge book about Napoleon. When one of Stevenson's intimates - one of
his collaborators, indeed - was asked
why the victor of Waterloo had been selected by the author of the 'Strange Case
of Dr. Jekyll and Mr.Hyde,' the laughing answer was, "Oh, Louis thinks he
has an eye for strategy and tactics."
To
the excellent series of 'History and Literature Primers,'
which was edited by J. R. Green, the historian, and which contains the extraordinarily
successful primer of English literature by Mr. Stopford Brooke and the equally
illuminative primer of Greek literature by Professor Jebb, Dean Farrar was to
contribute a primer of Latin literature. And to a kindred as series of little
books on 'Classical Writers,' Professor James Bryce had promised a study
of Herodotus. Both of these books, now overdue for more than half a score of
years, remain unwritten.
And
what has become of the 'Book of the
Forty-five Mornings' - most alluring title - which Mr. Rudyard Kipling dangled
before our eyes almost as long ago? Everything comes to him who waits, but have
we not waited long enough for this?
Perhaps
one or another of these unwritten books by men of letters still alive may get
themselves into print all in good
time;
and, perhaps, none of them will ever see the light. And it may be that their authors
are wise in their own generation, in so far as they may prefer the
contemplation of a possibility never to be attempted to any effort to possess a
reality that might be a bitter disappointment. No unwritten book can ever be a
reproach to an author or a burden to his friends, nor can it gratify his
enemies. No unwritten poem can be picked to pieces by criticasters. No
unwritten play can be damned by faint praise. As Scribe, that wiliest of
playwrights, once declared, "What is cut out is never hissed." What
is unwritten cannot be abused offensively, nor can it be eulogized effusively -
which to a sincere author may be even more distasteful.
No author was ever
more frankly sincere than Whittier; and it was Whit tier who wrote:
Let the thick
curtain fall;
I better know
than all
How little I
have gained,
How vast the
unattained.
Sweeter
than any sung
My songs that
found no tongue,
Nobler than any
fact
My wish that
failed the act.
Others shall
sing the song,
Others shall
right the wrong-
Finish what I
begin-
And all I fail
of, win.
(1899)