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next day all the world had read that she was introducing "tag" as a diversion for the Newport colony.
There came other callers, both women and men ; Percy Ambler, man of fashion and dilettante poet; and with him little Murray Symington, who wrote the literary chat for "Knickerbocker's Weekly", and was therefore a power to be propitiated. There came Blanchard, the young and progressive publisher of the "Beau Monde", a weekly whose circulation rivalled that of "Macin-tyre's". There came also young Macklin, Mrs. Patton's nephew, with his monocle and his killing drawl. Macklin came by these honestly, having been brought up in England; but Thyrsis did not know that—he only heard the young gentleman's passing reference to his yacht, and to his passion for the poetry of Stephane Mallarme; and so he had it in for Macklin. Thyrsis had got involved in a serious discussion with Mrs. Pat-ton and Symington, and was in the act of saying that the social problem could not be much longer left unsolved ; and then he chanced to turn, and discovered young Macklin, surveying him with elaborate superciliousness, and asking with his British drawl, "Aw— I beg pawdon—but what do you mean by the social problem?" And Thyrsis, with a quick glance at him, answered, "I mean you." So Macklin subsided; and Thyrsis learned afterwards that his remark was going the rounds, being considered to be a mot. It appeared the next week in the columns of a paper devoted to "society" gossip; and many a literary reputation had been made by a lesser triumph than that.
Thyrsis got new light upon the making of reputations, when he looked into the next issue of "Knickerbocker's Weekly". There he found that Murray Symington had devoted no less than three paragraphs to
his personality and his book. It was all "sprightly" -that was Murray's tone—but also it was cordial; and it referred to Thyrsis' earlier novel, "The Hearer of Truth", as "that brilliant piece of work". Thyrsis read this with consternation—recalling that when the book had come out, not two years ago, "Knickerbocker's Weekly" had referred to it as a "preposterous concoction". Could it be true that an author's work was "preposterous" while he was starving in a garret, and became "brilliant" when he was found in the drawing-room of Mrs. "Parmy" Patton?
§ 14. THYRSIS went on to penetrate yet deeper into these mysteries; there came a call from Murray Symington, to say that Mrs. Jesse Dyckman wanted him to dinner. Jesse Dyckman he recognized as the name of one of the most popular contributors to the magazines —his short stories of Fifth Avenue life were the delight of the readers of the "Beau Monde".
"But I can't go to dinner-parties with women!" protested Thyrsis. "I don't dress !"
Murray took that message; but in a few minutes he called up again. "She says she doesn't care whether you dress or not."
"But then, I don't eat!" protested Thyrsis, who had recently discovered Horace Fletcher.
>4 I know that won't count," said the other, laughing. "She doesn't want you to eat—she wants you to talk."
Mrs. Jesse Dyckman inhabited an apartment in a "studio-building" not far from Central Park; and here was more luxury and charm—a dining-room done in dark red, with furniture of some black wood, and candles and silver and cut glass, quite after the fashion of the Macintyres. Thyrsis was admitted by a French
maid-servant; and there was Mrs. Dyckman, resplendent in white shoulders and a necklace of pearls; and there was Dyckman himself, even more prosperous and contented-looking than his pictures, and even more brilliant and cynical than his tales. Also there was his sister, Mrs. Partridge, the writer of musical comedies; and a Miss Taylor, who filled the odd corners of the magazines with verses, which Cory don had once described as "cheap cheer-up stuff".
So here was the cream of the "literary world"; and Thyrsis, as he watched and listened to it, was working out the formula of magazine success. Mrs. Dyckman sat next to him, displaying her shoulders and her culture ; it seemed to him that she must have spent all her spare time picking up phrases about the books and pictures and plays and music of the hour, so as to be ready for possible mention of them at her dinner-parties. She had opinions on tap about everything; opinions just enough "advanced" to be striking and original, and yet not too far "advanced" for good form. Jesse Dyckman's short stories were the sort in which you read how the hero handled his cigarette, and were told that the heroine was clad in "dimity en prin-cesse". You learned the names of the latest fashionable drinks, and the technicalities of automobiles, and met with references to far-off an'l intricate standards of social excellence.
To Thyrsis it appeared that he could see before him the whole career of such a man. He had trained himself by years of apprenticeship in snobbery; he had studied the fashions not only in costume and manners, but also in books and opinions. He had been educated in a "fraternity", and had chosen a wife who had been educated in a "sorority"; they had set up in this apart-
ment, with silver service and three French servants, and proceeded to give dinners, and cultivate people who "counted." And so had come the pleasant berth with the "Beau Monde"; one or two stories every month, and one thousand dollars for each story—as one might read in all newspaper accounts of the "earnings of authors".
The "Beau Monde" might have been described as a magazine for the standardizing of the newly-rich. A group of these existed in every town in the country, and had their "society" in every little city. They would come to New York and put up at expensive hotels, and get their education in theatres and opera-houses and "lobster-palaces"; in addition they had this weekly messenger of good form. In its advertising-columns one read of the latest things in cigarettes and highballs and haberdashery and candies and autos; and in its reading-matter one found the leisure-class world, and the leisure-class idea of all other worlds. Young Blanchard himself was in the most "exclusive" society; and if one stayed close to him, one might worm his way past the warders. Among the regular contributors to the "Beau Monde" and to "Macin-tyre's", there were a dozen men who had risen by this method; and some of them had been real writers at the outset—had started with a fund of vigor, at least. But now they spent their evenings at dinner-parties, and their days lounging about in two or three expensive cafes, reading the afternoon papers, exchanging gossip, and acquiring the necessary stock of cynicism for their next picture of leisure-class life.
It was what might have been described as the "court method" of literary achievement. The centre of it was the young prince who held the purse-strings; and the court was a coterie of bookish men of fashion and rich
women whose husbands were occupied in the stock-market. They set the tone and dispensed the favors; one who stood in their good graces would be practically immune to criticism, no matter how seedy his work might come to be. Nobody liked to "roast" a man with whom he had played golf at a week-end party; and who could be so impolite as to slight the work of a lady-poetess whom he had taken in to dinner?
§ 15. THYESIS studied these people, and measured himself against them. He was not blinded by any vanity; he knew that it would not have taken him a week to turn out a short story which would have had the requisite qualities for Macintyre's—which would have been clever and entertaining, would have had genuine sentiment, and as large a proportion of sincerity as the magazine admitted. He could have suggested that he thought it was worth five hundred dollars, and "Billy" Macintyre would have nodded and sent him a check. And then he could have moved up to town, and got a frock-coat, and paid another call upon Mrs. "Parmy" Patton. Then his friend Comings would have put him up for the "Thistle", he would have got to know the men who made literary opinion, and so his career would have been secure.