The Delicious Vice | Page 6

was not accused of prejudice.
But if all these everyday obstacles were absent there would yet remain
insurmountable reasons why women can never be novel-readers in the
sense that men are. Your wife, for instance, or the impenetrable
mystery of womanhood that you contemplate making your wife some
day--can you, honestly, now, as a self-respecting husband of either de
facto or in futuro, quite agree to the spectacle of that adored lady sitting
over across the hearth from you in the snug room, evening after
evening, with her feet--however small and well-shaped--cocked up on
the other end of the mantel and one of your own big colorado maduros
between her teeth! We men, and particularly novel-readers, are liberal
even generous, in our views; but it is not in human nature to stand that!
Now, if a woman can not put her feet up and smoke, how in the name

of heaven, can she seriously read novels? Certainly not sitting bolt
upright, in order to prevent the back of her new gown from rubbing the
chair; certainly not reclining upon a couch or in a hammock. A boy, yet
too young to smoke may properly lie on his stomach on the floor and
read novels, but the mature veteran will fight for his end of the mantel
as for his wife and children. It is physiological necessity, inasmuch as
the blood that would naturally go to the lower extremities, is thus
measurably lessened in quantity and goes instead to the head, where a
state of gentle congestion ensues, exciting the brain cells, setting free
the imagination to roam hand in hand with intelligence under the spell
of the wizard. There may be novel-readers who do not smoke at the
game, but surely they cannot be quite earnest or honest--you had better
put in writing all business agreements with this sort.
* * * * *
No boy can ever hope to become a really great or celebrated
novel-reader who does not begin his apprenticeship under the age of
fourteen, and, as I said before, stick to it as long as he lives. He must
learn to scorn those frivolous, vacillating and purposeless ones who,
after beginning properly, turn aside and whiling away their time on
mere history, or science, or philosophy. In a sense these departments of
literature are useful enough. They enable you often to perceive the most
cunning and profoundly interesting touches in fiction. Then I have no
doubt that, merely as mental exercise, they do some good in keeping
the mind in training for the serious work of novel-reading. I have
always been grateful to Carlyle's "French Revolution," if for nothing
more than that its criss-cross, confusing and impressive dullness
enabled me to find more pleasure in "A Tale of Two Cities" than was to
be extracted from any merit or interest in that unreal novel.
This much however, may be said of history, that it is looking up in
these days as a result of studying the spirit of the novel. It was not
many years ago that the ponderous gentlemen who write criticisms
(chiefly because it has been forgotten how to stop that ancient waste of
paper and ink) could find nothing more biting to say of Macaulay's
"England" than that it was "a splendid work of imagination," of
Froude's "Caesar" that it was "magnificent political fiction," and of
Taine's "France" that "it was so fine it should have been history instead
of fiction." And ever since then the world has read only these three

writers upon these three epochs--and many other men have been
writing history upon the same model. No good novel-reader need be
ashamed to read them, in fact. They are so like the real thing we find in
the greatest novels, instead of being the usual pompous official lies of
old-time history, that there are flesh, blood and warmth in them.
In 1877, after the railway riots, legislative halls heard the French
Revolution rehearsed from all points of view. In one capital, where I
was reporting the debate, Old Oracle, with every fact at hand from "In
the beginning" to the exact popular vote in 1876, talked two hours of
accurate historical data from all the French histories, after which a
young lawyer replied in fifteen minutes with a vivid picture of the
popular conditions, the revolt and the result. Will it be allowable, in the
interest of conveying exact impression, to say that Old Oracle was
"swiped" off the earth? No other word will relieve my conscience.
After it was all over I asked the young lawyer where he got his French
history.
"From Dumas," he answered, "and from critical reviews of his novels.
He's short on dates and documents, but he's long on the general facts."
Why not? Are not novels history?