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Page 48
Well, Napoleon agreed to underwrite, for Cavour, the whole project of
Italian Unity. Everybody thought it was going through all right, when
suddenly Napoleon, from a place called Villafranca, wired that the deal
was off.
That floored Cavour. He was down and out. He couldn't realize ten cents
on the dollar on his securities. If he had been like your man, Thayer
would have had to bring his book to an end with that chapter. He would
have left the reader plunged in gloom.
Cavour was mad for awhile and went up to Switzerland to cool off. Thayer
describes the way he went up to a friend's house, near Lake Geneva, with
his coat on his arm. "Unannounced, he strode into the drawing-room,
threw himself into an easy-chair, and asked for a glass of iced water."
Then he poured out his wrath over the Villafranca incident, but he
didn't waste much time over that. In a few moments he was
enthusiastically telling of the new projects he had formed. "We must not
look back, but forward," he told his friends. "We have followed one
road. It is blocked. Very well, we will follow another."
That's the kind of man Cavour was. You forgot that he was a European
statesman. When you saw him with his coat off, drinking ice-water and
talking about the future, you felt toward him just as you would toward a
first-rate American who was of Presidential size.
Now, I'm not saying that there's any more realism to the square inch in
a Life of Cavour than in a Life of Napoleon III. It would take as much
labor on the part of a biographer to tell what Napoleon III really was
as to tell what Cavour really was--perhaps more. But you come up against
the law of supply and demand. You can't get around that. There isn't
much inquiry for Napoleon, now that his boom is over.
The way Thayer figured it was, I suppose, something like this. It would
take eight or ten years to assemble the materials for a first-rate
biography such as he wished to make. If he chose Napoleon there would be
steady deterioration in the property, and when the improvements were put
on there would be no demand. If he put the same work on Cavour, he would
get the unearned increment. I think he showed his sense.
Of course the biographer has the advantage of you in one important
particular. He knows how his story is coming out In a way, he's betting
on a certainty. Now you, as I judge, don't know how your story is coming
out, and if it doesn't come out, all you have to do is to say that is
the way you meant it to be. You cut off so many square feet of reality,
and let it go at that. Now that is very convenient for you, but from the
reader's point of view, it's unsatisfactory. It mixes him up, and he
feels a grudge against you whenever he thinks how much better he might
have spent his time than in following a plot that came to nothing. You
see you are running up against that same law of supply and demand. There
are so many failures in the world that the market is overstocked with
them. There is a demand for successes.
When I was in an old house which I took on the foreclosure of a mortgage
the other day, I came upon a little old novel, of a hundred years ago.
It was the sentimental kind that you despise. It was called "Alonzo and
Melissa," which was enough to condemn it in your eyes. But the preface
seemed to me to have some sense.
The author says: "It is believed that this story contains no indecorous
stimulants, nor is it filled with inexplicated incidents imperceptible
to the understanding. When anxieties have been excited by involved and
doubtful events, they are afterwards elucidated by their consequences.
In this the writer believes that he has generally copied Nature."
I have a feeling that those inexplicated incidents in your novel might
have been elucidated by their consequences if you had chosen a person
whose actions were of the kind to have some important consequences. In
tying up to an inconsequential person you lost that chance.
I don't mean to discourage you, because I believe you have it in you to
make a novel that would be as interesting as half the biographies that
are written. But you must learn a trick from the successful biographers,
and not invest in second-rate realities. The best is none too good. You
have to exercise judgment in your initial investment.
Now, if I were going to build a realistic novel, and had as much skill
in detail as you have, and as much intellectual capital to invest, I
would go right down to the business centre, so to speak, and invest in a
really valuable piece of reality; and then I would develop it. The first
investment might seem pretty steep, but it would pay in the end. If you
could get a big man, enthusiastic over a big cause, in conflict with big
forces, and bring in a lot of worth-while people to back him up, and
then bring the whole thing to some big conclusion, you would have a
novel that would be as real as the biographies I have been reading, and
as interesting. I think it would be worth trying.
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