I did; and it was not altogether imitated from Ik Marvel
either, for I drew upon the easier art of Dickens at
times, and helped myself out with bald parodies of
Bleak House in many places. It was all very well
at the beginning, but I had not reckoned with the future
sufficiently to have started with any clear ending
in my mind, and as I went on I began to find myself
more and more in doubt about it. My material
gave out; incidents failed me; the characters wavered
and threatened to perish on my hands. To crown
my misery there grew up an impatience with the story
among its readers, and this found its way to me one
day when I overheard an old farmer who came in for
his paper say that he did not think that story amounted
to much. I did not think so either, but it was
deadly to have it put into words, and how I escaped
the mortal effect of the stroke I do not know.
Somehow I managed to bring the wretched thing to a
close, and to live it slowly into the past. Slowly
it seemed then, but I dare say it was fast enough;
and there is always this consolation to be whispered
in the ear of wounded vanity, that the world’s
memory is equally bad for failure and success; that
if it will not keep your triumphs in mind as you think
it ought, neither will it long dwell upon your defeats.
But that experience was really terrible. It was
like some dreadful dream one has of finding one’s
self in battle without the courage needed to carry
one creditably through the action, or on the stage
unprepared by study of the part which one is to appear
in. I have hover looked at that story since, so
great was the shame and anguish that I suffered from
it, and yet I do not think it was badly conceived,
or attempted upon lines that were mistaken. If
it were not for what happened in the past I might
like some time to write a story on the same lines
in the future.
XV. DICKENS
What I have said of Dickens reminds me that I had
been reading him at the same time that I had been
reading Ik Marvel; but a curious thing about the reading
of my later boyhood is that the dates do not sharply
detach themselves one from another. This may
be so because my reading was much more multifarious
than it had been earlier, or because I was reading
always two or three authors at a time. I think
Macaulay a little antedated Dickens in my affections,
but when I came to the novels of that masterful artist
(as I must call him, with a thousand reservations as
to the times when he is not a master and not an artist),
I did not fail to fall under his spell.
This was in a season of great depression, when I began
to feel in broken health the effect of trying to burn
my candle at both ends. It seemed for a while
very simple and easy to come home in the middle of
the afternoon, when my task at the printing-office
was done, and sit down to my books in my little study,
which I did not finally leave until the family were
in bed; but it was not well, and it was not enough