“What men desire is nearly the same in all cities,” we remarked—and not without truth as we think.
“Is it money you mane?” he said, again relapsing. “Yes; money, no doubt, is the grand desideratum—the to prepon, the to kalon the to pan!” Plato and Pope were evidently at his fingers’ ends. We did not conclude from this slight evidence that he was thoroughly imbued with the works either of the poet or the philosopher; but we hold that for the ordinary purposes of conversation a superficial knowledge of many things goes further than an intimacy with one or two. “Money,” continued he, “is everything, no doubt;—rem—rem; rem, si possis recte, si non,⸺; you know the rest. I don’t complain of that. I like money myself. I know its value. I’ve had it, and—I’m not ashamed to say it, Sir—I’ve been without it.”
“Our sympathies are completely with you in reference to the latter position,” we said—remembering, with a humility that we hope is natural to us, that we were not always editors.
“What I complain of is,” said our new friend still whispering, as he passed his hand over his arms and legs, to learn whether the temperature of the room was producing its proper effect, “that if a man here in London have a diamond, or a pair of boots, or any special skill at his command, he cannot take his article to the proper mart, and obtain for it the proper price.”
“Can he do that in Constantinople?” we enquired.
“Much better and more accurately than he can in London. And so he can in Paris!” We did not believe this; but as we were thinking after what fashion we would express our doubts, he branched off so quickly to a matter of supply and demand with which we were specially interested, that we lost the opportunity of arguing the general question. “A man of letters,” he said, “a capable and an instructed man of letters, can always get a market for his wares in Paris.”
“A capable and instructed man of letters will do so in London,” we said, “as soon as he has proved his claims. He must prove them in Paris before they can be allowed.”
“Yes;—he must prove them. By the by, will you have a cheroot?” So saying, he stretched out his hand, and took from the marble slab beside him two cheroots which he had placed there. He then proceeded to explain that he did not bring in his case because of the heat, but that he was always “muni,”—that was his phrase—with a couple, in the hope that he might meet an acquaintance with whom to share them. I accepted his offer, and when we had walked round the chamber to a light provided for the purpose, we reseated ourselves. His manner of moving about the place was so good that I felt it to be a pity that he should ever have a rag on more than he wore at present. His tobacco, I must own, did not appear to me to be of the first class; but then I am not in the habit of smoking cheroots, and am no judge of the merits of the weed as grown in the East. “Yes;—a man in Paris must prove his capability; but then how easily he can do it, if the fact to be proved be there! And how certain is the mart, if he have the thing to sell!”
We immediately denied that in this respect there was any difference between the two capitals, pointing out what we believe to be a fact—that in one capital as in the other, there exists, and must ever exist, extreme difficulty in proving the possession of an art so difficult to define as capability of writing for the press. “Nothing but success can prove it,” we said, as we slapped our thigh with an energy altogether unbecoming our position as a Turkish bather.
“A man may have a talent then, and he cannot use it till he have used it! He may possess a diamond, and cannot sell it till he have sold it! What is a man to do who wishes to engage himself in any of the multifarious duties of the English press? How is he to begin? In New York I can tell such a one where to go at once. Let him show in conversation that he is an educated man, and they will give him a trial on the staff of any newspaper;—they will let him run his venture for the pages of any magazine. He may write his fingers off here, and not an editor of them all will read a word that he writes.”
Here he touched us, and we were indignant. When he spoke of the magazines we knew that he was wrong. “With newspapers,” we said, “we imagine it to be impossible that contributions from the outside world should be looked at; but papers sent to the magazines—at any rate to some of them—are read.”
“I believe,” said he, “that a little farce is kept up. They keep a boy to look at a line or two and then return the manuscript. The pages are filled by the old stock-writers, who are sure of the market let them send what they will—padding-mongers who work eight hours a day, and hardly know what they write about.” We again loudly expressed our opinion that he was wrong, and that there did exist magazines, the managers of which were sedulously anxious to obtain the assistance of what he called literary capacity, wherever they could find
