A Successful Novelist: Fame After Fifty^[8]

TO be successful! That is the legitimate ideal every true worker seeks to realize. But success is not the open secret which it appears to be; its elements are often uncomprehended; and its roots generally go deep down, into the very beginnings of life. I can compel my soul to look back into that twilight which shrouds my earliest years, and perceive, even in them, monitions and tendencies working for that future, which in my destiny was fashioned and shaped when as yet there was neither hint nor dream of it. Fortunately, I had parents who understood the

VALUE OF BIBLICAL AND IMAGINATIVE LITERATURE

in the formation of the intellect. The men and women whom I knew first and best were those of the Hebrew world. Sitting before the nursery fire, while the snow fell softly and ceaselessly, and all the mountains round were white, and the streets of the little English town choked with drifts, I could see the camels and the caravans of the Ishmaelitish merchants, passing through the hot, sandy desert. I could see Hagar weeping under the palm, and the waters of the Red Sea standing up like a wall. Miriam clashing the timbrels, and Deborah singing under the oak, and Ruth gleaning in the wheatfields of Bethlehem, were as real to me as were the women of my own home. Before I was six years old, I had been with Christian to the Celestial City, and had watched, with Crusoe, the mysterious footprint on the sand, and the advent of the savages. Then came the wonders of afrites and genii, and all the marvels and miracles of the Arabian tales. These were the mind-builders, and though schools and teachers and text-books did much afterwards, I can never nor will forget the glorious company of men and women from the sacred world, and that marvelous company of caliphs and kings and princesses from Wonder Land and Fairy Land, that expanded my whole nature, and fitted me for the future miracles of Nature and Science, and all the marvelous people of the Poet’s realm.

For eighteen years I was amassing facts and fancies, developing a crude intelligence, waiting for the vitalization of the heart. Then Love, the Supreme Teacher, came; and his first lesson was,

RENUNCIATION.

I was to give up father, and mother, home and kindred, friends and country, and follow where he would lead me, into a land strange and far off. Child-bearing and child-losing; the limitations and delights of frontier life; the intimate society of such great and individual men as Sam Houston, and the men who fought with him; the intense feelings induced by war, its uncertainties and possibilities, and the awful abiding in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, with the pestilence that walked in darkness and the sickness that destroyed at noonday;—all these events with their inevitable “asides” were instrumental in the education and preparation of the seventeen years of my married life.

The calamitous lesson of widowhood, under peculiarly tragic circumstances, was the last initiation of a heart already broken and humbled before Him who doeth all things well, no matter how hard the stroke may be. I thought all was over then; yet all was just beginning. It was the open door to a new life—a life full of comforts, and serene, still,

DELIGHTFUL STUDIES.

Though I had written stories to please my children, and many things to please myself, it had never occurred to me that money could be made by writing. The late William Libbey, a man of singular wisdom and kindness, first made me understand that my brain and my ten fingers were security for a good living. From my first effort I began to gather in the harvest of all my years of study and reading and private writing. For there is this peculiarity about writing—that if in any direction it has merit, it will certainly find a market.

For fifteen years I wrote short stories, poems, editorials, and articles on every conceivable subject, from Herbert Spencer’s theories, to gentlemen’s walking sticks; but bringing to every piece of work, if it was only ten lines, the best of my knowledge and ability; and so earning, with a great deal of pleasure, a very good living. During the earlier years of this time I worked and read on an average

FIFTEEN HOURS A DAY;

for I knew that, to make good work, I must have constant fresh material; must keep up to date in style and method; and must therefore read far more than I wrote. But I have been an omnivorous reader all my life long, and no changes, no cares of home and children, have ever interfered with this mental necessity. In the most unlikely places and circumstances, I looked for books, and found them. These fifteen years on the weekly and monthly periodicals gave me the widest opportunities for information. I had an alcove in the Astor Library, and I practically lived in it. I slept and ate at home, but I lived in that City of Books. I was in the prime of life, but neither society, amusements, nor pleasures of any kind, could draw me away from the source of all my happiness and profit.

Suddenly, after this long novition, I received the “call” for a different work. I had

AN ACCIDENT

which confined me to my room, and which, I knew, would keep me from active work for some months. I fretted for my work, as dry wood frets an inch from the flame, and said, “I shall lose all I have gained; I shall fall behind in the race; all these things are against me.” They were all for me. A little story of what seemed exceptional merit, had been laid away, in the hope that I might some day find time to extend it into a novel. A prisoner in my chair, I finished the book in six weeks, and sent it to Dodd, Mead & Co. On Thanksgiving morning, a letter came, accepting the book, and any of my readers can imagine what a happy Thanksgiving Day that was! This book was “Jan Vedder’s Wife,” and its great and immediate success indicated to me the work I was at length ready for. I was then in my fifty-second year, and every year had been a preparation for the work I have since pursued. I went out from that sick room sure of my

VOCATION;

and, with a confidence founded on the certainty of my equipment, and a determination to trust humanity, and take my readers only into green pastures and ways of purity and heroism, I ventured on my new path as a novelist.

I cannot close this paper without a few words to those who wish to profit by it. I want them to be sure of a few points which, in my narrative, I may not have emphasized sufficiently.

WORDS OF COUNSEL

1. Men and women succeed because they take pains to succeed. Industry and patience are almost genius; and successful people are often more distinguished for resolution and perseverance than for unusual gifts. They make determination and unity of purpose supply the place of ability.

2. Success is the reward of those who “spurn delights and live laborious days.” We learn to do things by doing them. One of the great secrets of success is “pegging away.” No disappointment must discourage, and a run back must often be allowed, in order to take a longer leap forward.

3. No opposition must be taken to heart. Our enemies often help us more than our friends. Besides, a head-wind is better than no wind. Who ever got anywhere in a dead calm?

4. A fatal mistake is to imagine that success is some stroke of luck. This world is run with far too tight a rein for luck to interfere. Fortune sells her wares; she never gives them. In some form or other, we pay for her favors; or we go empty away.

5. We have been told, for centuries, to watch for opportunities, and to strike while the iron is hot. Very good; but I think better of Oliver Cromwell’s amendment.—“make the iron hot by striking it.”

6. Everything good needs time. Don’t do work in a hurry. Go into details; it pays in every way. Time means power for your work. Mediocrity is always in a rush; but whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing with consideration. For genius is nothing more nor less than doing well what anyone can do badly.

7. Be orderly. Slatternly work is never good work. It is either affectation, or there is some radical defect in the intellect. I would distrust even the spiritual life of one whose methods and work were dirty, untidy, and without clearness and order.

8. Never be above your profession. I have had many letters from people who wanted all the emoluments and honors of literature, and who yet said, “Literature is the accident of my life; I am a lawyer, or a doctor, or a lady, or a gentleman.” Literature is no accident. She is a mistress who demands the whole heart, the whole intellect, and the whole time of a devotee.

9. Don’t fail through defects of temper and over-sensitiveness at moments of trial. One of the great helps to success is to be cheerful; to go to work with a full sense of life; to be determined to put hindrances out of the way; to prevail over them and to get the mastery. Above all things else, be cheerful; there is no beatitude for the despairing.

Apparent success may be reached by sheer impudence, in defiance of offensive demerit. But men who get what they are manifestly unfit for, are made to feel what people think of them. Charlatanry may flourish; but when its bay tree is greenest, it is held far lower than genuine effort. The world is just; it may, it does, patronize quacks; but it never puts them on a level with true men.

It is better to have the opportunity of victory, than to be spared the struggle; for success comes but as the result of arduous experience. The foundations of my success were laid before I can well remember; it was after at least forty-five years of conscious labor that I reached the object of my hope. Many a time my head failed me, my hands failed me, my feet failed me, but, thank God, my heart never failed me. Because I knew that no extremity would find God’s arm shortened.