第17章 ON GETTING ON IN THE WORLD.(2)
But then not one novelist in a thousand ever does tell us the real story of their hero.They linger for a dozen pages over a tea-party,but sum up a life's history with "he had become one of our merchant princes,"or "he was now a great artist,with the world at his feet."Why,there is more real life in one of Gilbert's patter-songs than in half the biographical novels ever written.He relates to us all the various steps by which his office-boy rose to be the "ruler of the queen's navee,"and explains to us how the briefless barrister managed to become a great and good judge,"ready to try this breach of promise of marriage."It is in the petty details,not in the great results,that the interest of existence lies.
What we really want is a novel showing us all the hidden under-current of an ambitious man's career--his struggles,and failures,and hopes,his disappointments and victories.It would be an immense success.Iam sure the wooing of Fortune would prove quite as interesting a tale as the wooing of any flesh-and-blood maiden,though,by the way,it would read extremely similar;for Fortune is,indeed,as the ancients painted her,very like a woman--not quite so unreasonable and inconsistent,but nearly so--and the pursuit is much the same in one case as in the other.Ben Jonson's couplet--"Court a mistress,she denies you;
Let her alone,she will court you"--
puts them both in a nutshell.A woman never thoroughly cares for her lover until he has ceased to care for her;and it is not until you have snapped your fingers in Fortune's face and turned on your heel that she begins to smile upon you.
But by that time you do not much care whether she smiles or frowns.
Why could she not have smiled when her smiles would have filled you with ecstasy?Everything comes too late in this world.
Good people say that it is quite right and proper that it should be so,and that it proves ambition is wicked.
Bosh!Good people are altogether wrong.(They always are,in my opinion.We never agree on any single point.)What would the world do without ambitious people,I should like to know?Why,it would be as flabby as a Norfolk dumpling.Ambitious people are the leaven which raises it into wholesome bread.Without ambitious people the world would never get up.They are busybodies who are about early in the morning,hammering,shouting,and rattling the fire-irons,and rendering it generally impossible for the rest of the house to remain in bed.
Wrong to be ambitious,forsooth!The men wrong who,with bent back and sweating brow,cut the smooth road over which humanity marches forward from generation to generation!Men wrong for using the talents that their Master has intrusted to them--for toiling while others play!
Of course they are seeking their reward.Man is not given that godlike unselfishness that thinks only of others'good.But in working for themselves they are working for us all.We are so bound together that no man can labor for himself alone.Each blow he strikes in his own behalf helps to mold the universe.The stream in struggling onward turns the mill-wheel;the coral insect,fashioning its tiny cell,joins continents to one another;and the ambitious man,building a pedestal for himself,leaves a monument to posterity.
Alexander and Caesar fought for their own ends,but in doing so they put a belt of civilization half round the earth.Stephenson,to win a fortune,invented the steam-engine;and Shakespeare wrote his plays in order to keep a comfortable home for Mrs.Shakespeare and the little Shakespeares.