SORROW AND SONG.*
SAD though Mr. Curwen's subject be, every reader will allow that he has treated it in an attractive manner. It is always interesting to follow the career of men of genius, and the biographies of poets that have been unfortunate excite far more of our sympathy than the lives of the successful and the happy. The author states that " the study of ' Literary Struggle' in a cosmopolitan and his- torical sense has been so magnetically attractive," that if not actually a duty, it has been a pleasure he has been unable to control. We can understand the fascination, but it is doubtful whether such a study is altogether wholesome, and the result in his case is an inference which will not bear examination. Mr. Curwen's object has been "to write the lives of some few repre- sentative men who, careless of contemporary success, careless of aught but of working out their own life-thoughts and their own ideals in their own way, and of doing what lay in them, battled on to the last, and died, if need were—and invariably there was need —in the very struggle itself. In illustration of this argument, he has selected the biographies of Henry Murger, Novalis, Petofi, Balzac, Poe, and Andre Chenier, men of genius, no doubt, and unfortunate men, no doubt, but assuredly not men who can be re- garded as martyrs to the necessity of working out their own ideals. We do not propose to examine with any critical minuteness the manner in which Mr. Carken has performed his task, but it is necessary to observe that the book does not give signs of the studious care which appears to be promised in the preface. Of much, for instance, that has been told of Chenier, he appears to be ignorant, and some of his translations are often loose and unsatisfactory.
But we pass without further comment from the literary form of the work to the purpose of the writer, and accepting his statements, we shall endeavour to show from them the fallacy of his argument with regard to the miseries of the literary profession. Before examining his "cases," it may be well, however, to say a few words on the general subject. Every medical man, every lawyer, every clergyman has passed through .a preliminary course of education and training, without which he cannot attempt to gain a livelihood in either of the professions. He has served his time, like an apprentice at a trade, and has ob- tained certain credentials in proof that he is not an interloper. Generally this preliminary training has cost a considerable sum of money, and the embryo barrister or physician has often a long time to wait before he will receive a fee. Literature, on the other hand, is a profession which any one may adopt. It is open to all alike, and clever men, who are too lazy or too Bohemian in their habits to succeed in more regular vocations—or in vocations esteemed more regular—regard Literature as an unappropriated region, which can be entered without danger, and almost without toil. There are men of genius, too, but never, let us thankfully acknowledge, of the first order, who imagine, as some of their biographers think also, that they are neither bound by the common rules that govern society nor by the higher laws of morality, and these men, careless, extravagant, sensitive, and excitable, full of noble impulses, but incapable of steady application, find a charm in literature which no other profession can offer them. Its independence suits their habits. They can choose any hours for their work, they can follow it as seriously or as lightly as they like, they can live where they please, and they discover pretty often that a change of place and company, a bout of idleness or of extravagance, is conducive to brilliancy of thought. For these and similar reasons, literature captivates many men who would be unfitted for success in the better-recognised professions. It is no wonder, therefore, that again and again the career presents start- ling instances of failure. How could it be otherwise? Industry, self-restraint, even adequate knowledge, are often lacking, and success without these common-place virtues and acquirements ja denied even to genius. The profession of literature is as labori- ous as any, but Bohemians will not work except fitfully ; there- fore, forsooth! we are asked to curse a miserable world that does not know and reward its benefactors. Let us apply these remarks to some of Mr. Curwen's "representative men," and see how the • Borrow and Bong: Studies of Literary Struggle. By Henry Came- .5 .vole London: Henry B. Sing and Co. 1875.
sensitive man of genius, equally with the coarser-grained artisan, -suffers from a reckless defiance of law.
The story of Henry Murger's career is well told, but it does not, we venture to think, prove Mr. Curwen's position. Murger chose literature as his profession, but he chose also to live irregularly, and undermined his constitution with coffee and mid- night studies. Then he falls in love with the wife of a drunken professor, or rather, the wily woman" makes love to him, and when her husband leaves her, the boy-lover undertakes the duties of "protector." He could scarcely earn enough for his own wants before, and now he is ready to provide for another man's wife ; but then, what in common life is called "improvidence" goes by another name among Bohemians. Shortly the lady grows tired of Murger, whose passion for her was sincere, and departs with one of his best friends. He becomes ill, and is warned by the doctors to live regularly, abstain from coffee, and go to bed early. He does nothing of the kind, but rejects their advice, and loses his health. Irregularity marks his whole course ; sometimes he lives for days together on dry bread, sometimes he throws away his hardly-earned money on Havanna cigars, bon-bons, and em- broidered shirts. A terrible disease attacks him, and again and again he is foreed to take refuge in the hospital. Poor fellow ! he has wonderful projects in his head, but nothing in his purse, and often he is overwhelmed with discouragements. Yet when at last he gains some success upon a journal called the Corsaire, he "writes plaintively of the necessity of sacrificing to vile prose.' " For the Vie Bohenw be received altogether about 134,—wretched pay, no doubt, but it was Murger's first venture. The publisher's success must have been great, 'for he printed 70,000 copies, and we admit the misfortune of the writer in receiving such an inadequate compensation. He gained a name by the book, however, and "henceforth he had but to write what he would, and gather in a golden harvest." When prosperity as a man of letters was thus secured to Murger, he was but twenty-seven years of age. It is not often that a barrister or physician wins success so early. Still, however, he remained a genuine Bohemian, careless of his opportunities, unfitted for steady occupation, working only when he felt inclined, spending money 'freely when he received it, and passing the last days of each month in poverty. "His correspondence is full of laughing descriptions of duns, and debts, and shifts." "Murger," says Mr. Curwen, "died at the age of thirty-nine, from the effects of the want and misery of the unaided struggles of his youth." Supposing that this were the case, and that his sufferings were not the fruit of his contempt for moderation and regularity of life, Murger did but 'fall in his prime, as so many a tradesman or professional man falls, worn out at the very time when he has reached the goal of his ambition. Every day the Mars' obituary records such cases, and literature is no more answerable than any other profession for failures like these.
The sorrows of Novalis, related with much detail by Mr. Curwen, excite interest and sympathy, but still less can it be said in this instance that the poet's sufferings were due to the " wretchedness " of the literary profession. Novalis was a man of business as well as a man of letters, and the one bitter grief of his life was due neither to business nor to literature, but to the loss of Sophie Kiihn, a lovely girl, to whom he was betrothed. And a similar loss stirred to its very depths the heart of Feta, the popular poet of Hungary, whose painful struggles in early life are described with picturesque detail by Mr. Curwen. Even in his case, however, it can hardly be said that these struggles were due to his deliberate choice of literature as a means of livelihood, for the young poet's first impulse was to reject every kind of regular employment, and his chief purpose, when able to form one, was to try his fortune on the stage. When he gained universal applause as the great lyric poet of his country, he had still a strange hankering after histrionic honours, but was hissed off the stage. As a poet, however, Petiifi was the idol of his countrymen ; and this high position, be it remembered, was won at the early age of twenty-three. A success so marvellous turned his head a little, and on more than one occasion the poet acted like a fool ; but his career was glorious, and his death on the battle-field when fighting for the independence of his country one -which any poet or patriot might be glad to die. Sorrow and Song is scarcely the title to place above a biography of Peta.
The memoir of Balzac, to which the writer devotes ninety pages, is more distinctly that of a literary man. The brilliant success he achieved was gained by literature, his misfortunes had another origin. The garret life of his early days was due to his choice of literature, at a time when, according to Mr. Curwen, he had no literary gifts. Balzac was conscious of the power within him long
before he gave evidence of it to the world, and one admires the resolute will, the patient persistence of a young man who devoted himself with entire fidelity to one great purpose, and for the sake of it lived poet-like in an attic upon meagre diet. This was a time of privation, but scarcely one of misery ; his worst misfor- tunes sprang out of business projects into which he afterwards launched, and thus became burdened with a debt which "was the beginning of the disasters that decided all the misery of his life." Literature is not to blame for the great novelist's perplexities. A man who schemed so wildly, who committed such extravagant follies, who neglected so pertinaciously the prudence necessary to success, must inevitably suffer in purse and reputation. And the man who does his utmost to destroy his constitution has surely no claim to immunity from the inevitable penalty because he happens to be a man of letters.
The misery of Edgar Allan Poe, to give one more illustration, is supposed by Mr. Curwen to be owing to the wretched uncer- tainty of a literary career ; but read the memoir of Poe, and it is impossible to accept this conclusion. The poet was wanting in self-respect and sobriety, in steadiness of purpose, in common- sense, and wanting these gifts, it was inevitable that he should fail in the struggle of life. Again and again a solid and honour- able position in literature was within his reach, and yet, by some supreme act of folly, he lost his hold upon it. If Poe had been in any occupation save the one he selected, his conduct would have been accounted infinitely foolish and blameworthy. He happened to be a man of genius, and therefore a goodly portion of this blame appears to be lifted off from the man's shoulders and thrown upon his profession. The writer is honest in his portrait of the poet, and there are in it some dark traits which Poe's latest biographer, Mr. Ingram, does not accept; but the picture, whether accurate or not, fails to illus- trate the purpose of the book, as detailed in the preface.
Our space is exhausted, and we close these volumes with the remark that although Mr. Curwen has not succeeded in his argu- ment, he has written a suggestive and singularly readable work.
Previous page
