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The Delicious Vice

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Who shall we say is the most loved and respected criminal in fiction?
Not Monsignor Rodin, of "The Wandering Jew;" not Thenardier in "Les
Miserables." These are really not criminals; they are allegorical
figures of perfect crime. They are solar centers, so far off and fixed
that one may regard them only with awe, reverence and fear. They are
types of fate, desire, temptation and chastisement. Let us turn to our
own flesh and blood and speak gratefully of them.

* * * * *

Who says Count Fosco? Now there is a criminal worthy of affection and
confidence. What an expansive nature, with kindness presented on every
side. Even the dogs fawned upon him and the birds came at his call. An
accomplished gentleman, considerately mannered--queer, as becomes a
foreigner, yet possessing the touchstone of universal sympathy. Another
man with crime to commit almost certainly would have dispatched it with
ruthless coldness; but how kindly and gently Count Fosco administered
the cord of necessity. With what delicacy he concealed the bowstring
and spoke of the Bosphorus only as a place for moonlight excursions. He
could have presented prussic acid and sherry to a lady in such a manner
as to render the results a grateful sacrifice to his courtesy. It was
all due to his corpulence; a "lean and hungry" villain lacks repose,
patience and the tact of good humor. In almost every small social and
individual attitude Count Fosco was human. He was exceedingly attentive
to his wife in society and bullied her only in private and when
necessary. He struck no dramatic attitudes. "The world is mine oyster!"
is not said by real men bent on terrible deeds. Count Fosco is the
perfect villain, and also the perfect criminal, inasmuch as he not only
acts naturally, but deliberately determines the action instead of being
drawn into it or having it forced upon him.

He was a highly cultivated type of Andy Johnson, inasmuch as crime
with him was not a life purpose, but what is called in business a
"side-line." All of us have our hobbies; the closely confined clerk goes
home and roots up his yard to plant flower bulbs or cabbage plants;
another fancies fowls; another man collects pewter pots and old brass
and the millionaire takes to priceless horses; others of us turn from
useful statistics and go broke on novels or poetry or music. Count Fosco
was an educated gentleman and the pleasure of life was his purpose;
crime and intrigue were his recreations. Andy Johnson was a good
business man and wealth producer; murder was the direction in which
his private understanding of personal disagreements was exercised and
vented. Some men turn to poker playing, which is as wasteful as murder
and not half as dignified. Count Fosco is the villain par excellence of
novels. I do not remember what he did, because "The Woman in White" is
the best novel in the world to read gluttonously at a sitting and then
forget absolutely. It is nearly always a new book if you use it that
way. When the world is dark, the fates bilious, the appetite dead and
the infernal twinges of pain or sickness seem beyond reach of the
doctor, "The Woman in White" is a friend indeed.

* * * * *

But the man of men for villains, not necessarily criminals; but the
ordinary, every-day, picturesque worthies of good, honest scoundrelism
and disreputableness is Sir Robert Louis Stevenson. You can afford
conscientiously to stuff ballot boxes in order that his election may be
secured as Poet Laureate of Rascals. Leaving out John Silver and Billy
Bones and Alan Breck, whom every privately shriven rascal of us simply
must honor and revere as giants of courage, cunning and controlled,
conscience, Stevenson turned from singles and pairs, and in "The Ebb
Tide," drove, by turns, tandem and abreast, a four-in-hand of scoundrels
so buoyant, natural, strong, and yet each so totally unlike the others,
that every honest novel reader may well be excused for shedding tears
when he reflects that the marvelous hand and heart that created them are
gone forever from the haunts of the interestingly wicked. No novelist
ever exposed the human nature of rascals as Stevenson did.

Now, lago was not a villain; he was a venomous toad, a scorpion, a
mad-dog, a poisonous plant in a fair meadow. There was nobody lago
loved, no weakness he concealed, no point of contact with any human
being. His sister was Pandora, his brother made the shirt of Nessus,
himself dealt in Black Plagues and the Leprosy. The old Serpent was
permitted to rise from his belly and walk upright on the tip of his tail
when he met Iago, as a demonstration of moral superiority. But think
of those three Babes-in-the-Wood villains, skipper Davis, the Yankee
swashbuckler and ship scuttler; Herrick, the dreamy poet, ruined by
commerce and early love, with his days of remorse and his days of
compensatary liquor; and Huish, the great-hearted Scotch ruffian, who
chafed at the conventional concealments of trade among pals and never
could--as a true Scotchman--understand why you should wait to use a
knife upon a victim when promptness lay in the club right at hand--think
of them sailing out of Honolulu harbor on the Farallone.

Let who will prefer to have sailed with Jason or Aeneas or Sinbad; but
the Farallone and its precious freight of rascality gets my money every
time. Think of the three incomparable reprobates afloat, with one case
of smallpox and a cargo of champagne, daring to make no port, with over
a hundred million square miles of ocean around them, every ten lookout
knots of it containing a possible peril! It was simply grand--not
pirates, shipwrecks or mutinies could beat that problem. And the pathos
of the sixth day, when, with every man Jack of them looking delirium
tremens in the face and suspecting each the other, Mr. Huish opened a
new case of champagne and--found clear spring water under the French
label! The honest scoundrels had been laid by the heels by a common wine
merchant in the regular way of business! Oh, gentlemen, there should be
honor in business; so that gallant villains can be free of betrayal.

The keynote of these gentlemen is struck in the second chapter, where
all three of them writing lies home--Davis and Herrick, sentimental
equivocations, Huish the strongest of brag with nobody to send it to.
In a burst of weakness Davis tells Herrick what a villain he has been,
through rum, and how he can not let his daughter, "little Adar," know
it. "Yes, there was a woman on board," he said, describing the ship he
had scuttled. "Guess I sent her to hell, if there's such a place. I
never dared go home again, and I don't know," he added, bitterly,
"what's come to them."

"Thank you, Captain," said Herrick, "I never liked you better!"

Is it not in human nature to cuddle to a great sheepish murderer like
that, who groans in secret for his little girl--if even the girl was
truth? I think she turned out a myth, but he had the sentiment.

Was there ever a more melancholy, remorse-stricken wretch than Cap'n
Davis? Or a gentler and seedier poet than Herrick? Or a more finely
sodden and soaked old rum sport than Huish (not--Whish!) But it was not
until they fell in with Attwater that their weakness as scoundrels was
exposed. Attwater was so splendidly religious! He was determined to have
things right if he had to have them so by bloodshed; he saved souls by
bullets. Things were right when they were as he thought they should
be. And believing so, with Torquemada, Alexander Sixtus and other most
religious brethren, he was ready to set up the stake and fagot and
cauterize sin with fire. One thing you can say about the religious folks
that are big with cocksureness and a mission--they may make mistakes,
but the mistake doesn't talk and criticise.

* * * * *

The only rascal worthy to travel in company with Stevenson's rascals is
the Chevalier Balibari, of Castle Barry, in Ireland, whose admirable
memoirs have been so well told by Mr. Thackeray. The Baron de la Motte
in "Denis Duval," was advantageously born to ornament the purple and
fine linen of picturesque unrighteousness--but his was a brief star that
fell unfinished from its place amidst the Pleiades. Thackeray's genius
ran more to disreputable men than to actual villains. But he drew two
scoundrels that will serve as beacon lights to any clean-souled youth
with the instinct to take warning. One was Lord Steyne, the other, Dr.
George Brand Firmin; one the aristocratic, class-bred, cynical brute,
the other the cold, tuft-hunting trained hypocrite. What encouragement
of self-respect Judas Iscariot might have received if he had met Dr.
Firmin!

Dr. Chadband, Mr. Pecksniff, Bill Sykes, Fagin, Mr. Murdstone, of
Dickens' family--they are all strong in impression, but wholly unreal;
mere stage villains and caricatures. A villain who has no good traits,
no hobbies of kindness and affection, is never born into the world; he
is always created by grotesque novel writers.

The villains of Dumas, Hugo, Balzac, Daudet are French. There may have
been, or may be now such prototypes alive in France--because the Dreyfus
case occurred in France, and no doubt much can happen in that fine,
fertile country which translators cannot fully convey over the
frontiers; but they have always seemed to me first cousins to my
friends, the ogres, the evil magicians and the werewolves, and, in that
much, not quite natural.

For heroes of the genuine cavalleria type, plumed, doubleted, pumpt and
magnificent, give me Dumas; for good folks and true, the great American
Fenimore Cooper; but for the blessed company of blooming, breathing
rascals, Stevenson and Thackeray all the time.




VII

HEROES

THE NATURE AND THE FLOWER OF THEM--THE GALLANT D'ARTAGNAN OR THE
GLORIOUS BUSSY.


Let us agree at the start that no perfect hero can be entirely mortal.
The nearer the element of mortality in him corresponds to the heel
measure of Achilles, the better his chance as hero. The Egyptian and
Greek heroes were invariably demi-gods on the paternal or maternal side.
Few actual historic heroes have escaped popular scandal concerning their
origin, because the savage logic in us demands lions from a lion; that
Theseus shall trace to Mars; that courage shall spring from courage.

Another most excellent thing about the ideal hero is that the immortal
quality enables him to go about the business of his heroism without
bothering his head with the rights or wrongs of it, except as the
prevailing sentiment of social honor (as distinguished from the inborn
sentiment of honesty) requires at the time. Of course, there is a lower
grade of measly, "moral heroes," who (thank heaven and the innate sense
of human justice!) are usually well peppered with sorrow and punishment.
The hero of romance is a different stripe; Hyperion to a Satyr. He
doesn't go around groaning page after page of top-heavy debates as to
the inherent justice of his cause or his moral right to thrust a tallow
candle between the particular ribs behind which the heart of his enemy
is to be found--balancing his pros and cons, seeking a quo for each
quid, and conscientiously prowling for final authorities. When you
invade the chiropodical secret of the real hero's fine boot, or brush
him in passing--if you have looked once too often at a certain lady, or
have stood between him and the sun, or even twiddled your thumbs at him
in an indecorous or careless manner--look to it that you be prepared
to draw and mayhap to be spitted upon his sword's point, with honor.
Sdeath! A gentlemen of courage carries his life lightly at the needle
end of his rapier, as that wonderful Japanese, Samsori, used to make the
flimsiest feather preside in miraculous equilibration upon the tip of
his handsome nose.

No hero who does more or less than is demanded by the best practical
opinion of the society of his time is worth more than thirty cents as a
hero. Boys are literary and dramatic critics so far above the critics
formed by strained formulas of the schools that you can trust them.
They have an unerring distrust of the fellow who moves around with his
confounded conscientious scruples, as if the well-settled opinion of the
breathing world were not good enough for him! Who the deuce has got any
business setting everybody else right?

Some of these days I believe it is going to be discovered that the
atmosphere and the encompassing radiance and sweetness of Heaven are
composed of the dear sighs and loving aspirations of earthly motherhood.
If it turns out otherwise, rest assured Heaven will not have reached
its perfect point of evolution. Why is it, then, that mothers
will--will--will--try, so mistakenly, to extirpate the jewel of honest,
manly savagery from the breasts of their boys? I wonder if they know
that when grown men see one of these "pretty-mannered boys," cocksure
as a Swiss toy new painted and directed by watch spring, they feel an
unholy impulse to empty an ink-bottle over the young calf? Fauntleroy
kids are a reproach to our civilization. Men, women and children, all of
us, crowd around the grimy Deignan of the Merrimac crew, and shout and
cheer for Bill Smith, the Rough Rider, who carried his mate out of the
ruck at San Juan and twirls his hat awkwardly and explains: "Ef I hadn't
a saw him fall he would 'a' laid thar yit!"--and go straight home and
pretend to be proud of a snug little poodle of a man who doesn't play
for fear of soiling his picture-clothes, and who says: "Yes, sir, thank
you," and "No, thank you, ma'am," like a French doll before it has had
the sawdust kicked out of it!

* * * * *

Now, when a hero tries to stamp his acts with the precise quality of
exact justice--why, he performs no acts. He is no better than that poor
tongue-loose Hamlet, who argues you the right of everything, and then,
by the great Jingo! piles in and messes it all by doing the wrong thing
at the wrong time and in the wrong manner. It is permitted of course to
be a great moral light and correct the errors of all the dust of earth
that has been blown into life these ages; but human justice has been
measured out unerringly with poetry and irony to such folk. They are
admitted to be saints, but about the time they have got too good for
their earthly setting, they have been tied to stakes and lighted up
with oil and faggots; or a soda phosphate with a pinch of cyanide of
potassium inserted has been handed to them, as in the case of our old
friend, Socrates. And it's right. When a man gets too wise and good for
his fellows and is embarrassed by the healthful scent of good human
nature, send him to heaven for relief, where he can have the goodly
fellowship of the prophets, the company of the noble army of martyrs,
and amuse himself suggesting improvements upon the vocal selections
of cherubim and seraphim! Impress the idea upon these gentry with
warmth--and--with--oil!

* * * * *

The ideal hero of fiction, you say, is Capt. D'Artagnan, first name
unknown, one time cadet in the Reserves of M. de Troisville's company of
the King's Guards, intrusted with the care of the honor and safety of
His Majesty, Louis XIV. Very well; he is a noble gentleman; the
choice does honor to your heart, mind and soul; take him and hold the
remembrance of his courage, loyalty, adroitness and splendid endurance
with hooks of steel. For myself, while yielding to none who honor
the great D'Artagnan, yet I march under the flag of the Sieur Bussy
d'Amboise, a proud Clermont, of blood royal in the reign of Henry III.,
who shed luster upon a court that was edified by the wisdom of M.
Chicot, the "King's Brother," the incomparable jester and philosopher,
who would have himself exceeded all heroes except that he despised the
actors and the audience of the world's theater and performed valiant
feats only that he might hang his cap and bells upon the achievements in
ridicule.

Can it be improper to compare D'Artagnan and Bussy--when the intention
is wholly respectful and the motive pure? If a single protest is
heard, there will be an end to this paper now--at once. There are some
comparisons that strengthen both candidates. For, we must consider the
extent of the theater and the stage, the space of time covering the
achievements, the varying conditions, lights and complexities. As, for
instance, the very atmosphere in which these two heroes moved, the
accompaniment of manner which we call the "air" of the histories, and
which are markedly different. The contrast of breeding, quality and
refinement between Bussy and D'Artagnan is as great as that which
distinguishes Mercutio from the keen M. Chicot. Yet each was his own
ideal type. Birth and the superior privileges of the haute noblesse
conferred upon the Sieur Bussy the splendid air of its own sufficient
prestige; the lack of these require of D'Artagnan that his intelligence,
courage and loyal devotion should yet seem to yield something of their
greatness in the submission that the man was compelled to pay to
the master. True, this attitude was atoned for on occasion by blunt
boldness, but the abased position and the lack of subtle distinction of
air and mind of the noble, forbade to the Fourth Mousquetaire the last
gracious touch of a Bayard of heroism. But the vulgarity was itself
heroic.

* * * * *

Compare the first appearance of the great Gascon at the Hotel de
Troisville, or even his manner and attitude toward the King when he
sought to warn that monarch against forgetfulness of loyalty proved,
with the haughty insolence of indomitable spirit in which Bussy threw
back to Henry the shuttle of disfavor on the night of that remarkable
wedding of St. Luc with the piquant little page soubrette, Jeanne de
Brissac.

D'Artagnan's air to his King has its pathos. It seems to say: "I speak
bluntly, sire, knowing that my life is yours and yet feeling that it is
too obscure to provoke your vengeance." A very hard draught for a man of
fire and fearlessness to take without a gulp. But into Bussy's manner
toward his King there was this flash of lightning from Olympus: "My
life, sire, is yours, as my King, to take or leave; but not even you
may dare to think of taking the life of Bussy with the dust of least
reproach upon it. My life you may blow out; my honor you do not dare
approach to question!"

There are advantages in being a gentleman, which can not be denied. One
is that it commands credit in the King's presence as well as at the
tailor's.

It is interesting to compare both these attitudes with that of
"Athos," the Count de la Fere, toward the King. He was lacking in
the irresistibly fierce insolence of Bussy and in the abasement of
D'Artagnan; it was melancholy, patient, persistent and terrible in its
restrained calmness. How narrowly he just escaped true greatness. I
would no more cast reproaches upon that noble gentleman than I would
upon my grandmother; but he--was--a--trifle--serous, wasn't he? He was
brave, prompt, resourceful, splendid, and, at need, gingerish as the
best colt in the paddock. It is the deuce's own pity for a man to be
born to too much seriousness. Do you know--and as I love my country, I
mean it in honest respect--that I sometimes think that the gentleness
and melancholy of Athos somehow suggests a bit of distrust. One is
almost terrified at times lest he may begin the Hamlet controversies.
You feel that if he committed a murder by mistake you are not absolutely
sure he wouldn't take a turn with Remorse. Not so Bussy; he would throw
the mistake in with good will and not create worry about it. Hang it
all, if the necessary business of murder is to halt upon the shuffling
accident of mistake, we may as well sell out the hero business and rent
the shop. It would be down to the level of Hamlet in no time. Unless, of
course, the hero took the view of it that Nero adopted. It is improbable
that Nero inherited the gift of natural remorse; but he cultivated one
and seemed to do well with it. He used to reflect upon his mother and
his wife, both of whom he had affectionately murdered, and justified
himself by declaring that a great artist, who was also the Roman
Emperor, would be lacking in breadth of emotional experience and
retrospective wisdom, unless he knew the melancholy of a two-pronged
family remorse. And from Nero's standpoint it was one of the best
thoughts that he ever formulated into language.

To return to Bussy and D'Artagnan. In courage they were Hector and
Achilles. You remember the champagne picnic before the bastion St.
Gervais at the siege of St. Rochelle? What light-hearted gayety amid the
flying missiles of the arquebusiers! Yet, do not forget that--ignoring
the lacquey--there were four of them, and that his Eminence, the
Cardinal Duke, had said the four of them were equal to a thousand men!
If you have enough knowledge of human nature to understand the fine
game of baseball, and have at any time scraped acquaintance with the
interesting mathematical doctrine of progressive permutations, you will
see, when four men equal to a thousand are under the eyes of each other,
and of the garrison in the fort, that the whole arsenal of logarithms
would give out before you could compute the permutative possibilities
of the courage that would be refracted, reflected, compounded and
concentrated by all there, each giving courage to and receiving courage
from each and all the others. It makes my head ache to think of it. I
feel as if I could be brave myself.

Certainly they were that day. To the bitter end of finishing the meal;
and they confessed the added courage by gamboling like boys amid awful
thunders of the arquebuses, which made a rumble in their time like their
successors, the omnibuses, still make to this day on the granite streets
of cities populated by deaf folks.

There never was more of a gay, lilting, impudent courage than those four
mousquetaires displayed with such splendid coolness and spirit.

But compare it with the fight which Bussy made, single-handed, against
the assassins hired by Monsereau and authorized by that effeminate
fop, the Due D'Anjou. Of course you remember it. Let me pay you the
affectionate compliment of presuming that you have read "La Dame de
Monsereau," often translated under the English title, "Chicot, the
Jester," that almost incomparable novel of historical romance, by M.
Dumas. If, through some accident or even through lack of culture, you
have failed to do so, pray do not admit it. Conceal your blemish and
remedy the matter at once. At least, seem to deserve respect and
confidence, and appear to be a worthy novel-reader if actually you are
not. There is a novel that, I assure you on my honor, is as good as
the "Three Guardsmen;" but--oh!--so--much--shorter; the pity of it,
too!--oh, the pity of it! On the second reading--now, let us speak with
frank conservatism--on the second reading of it, I give you my word, man
to man, I dreaded to turn every page, because it brought the end nearer.
If it had been granted to me to have one wish fulfilled that fine winter
night, I should have said with humility: "Beneficent Power, string it
out by nine more volumes, presto me here a fresh box of cigars, and the
account of your kindness, and my gratitude is closed."

* * * * *

If the publisher of this series did not have such absurd sensitiveness
about the value of space and such pitifully small ideas about the
nobility of novels, I should like to write at least twenty pages about
"Chicot." There are books that none of us ever put down in our lists of
great books, and yet which we think more of and delight more in than all
the great guns. Not one of the friends I've loved so long and well has
been President of the United States, but I wouldn't give one of them for
all the Presidents. Just across the hall at this minute I can hear the
frightful din of war--shells whistling and moaning, bullets s-e-o-uing,
the shrieks of the dying and wounded--Merciful Heaven! the "Don Juan
of Asturia" has just blown up in Manila Bay with an awful roar--again!
Again, as I'm a living man, just as she has blown up every day, and
several times every day, since May 1, 1898. There are two warriors over
in the play-room, drenched with imaginary gore, immersed in the tender
grace of bestowing chastening death and destruction upon the Spanish
foe. Don't I know that they rank somewhat below Admiral Dewey as heroes?
But do you suppose that their father would swap them for Admiral Dewey
and all the rainbow glories that fine old Yankee sea-dog ever will
enjoy--long may he live to enjoy them all!--do you think so? Of course
not! You know perfectly well that his--wife--wouldn't--let--him!

I would not wound the susceptibilities of any reader; but speaking for
myself--"Chicot" being beloved of my heart--if there was a mean man,
living in a mean street, who had the last volume of "Chicot" in
existence, I would pour out my library's last heart's blood to get
it. He could have all of Scott but "Ivanhoe," all of Dickens but
"Copperfield," all of Hugo but "Les Miserables," cords of Fielding,
Marryat, Richardson, Reynolds, Eliot, Smollet, a whole ton of German
translations--by George! he could leave me a poor old despoiled,
destitute and ruined book-owner in things that folks buy in costly
bindings for the sake of vanity and the deception of those who also
deceive them in turn.

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