As a result of this Thyrsis paid all his bank-account for a violin, and went to see a teacher.
“You are too old,” the teacher said.
But Thyrsis answered, “I will work as no one ever worked before.”
“We all do that,” replied the other, with a smile. And so they began.
And so all day long, with fingers raw, and arms and back shuddering with exhaustion, Thyrsis sat and practiced, the spirit of Music beckoning him on. It was in a boarding-house, and there was a nervous old man in the next room, and in the end Thyrsis had to move. By the time he went away to the country, he was able to play a melody in tune; and then he would take some one that had fascinated him, and practice it and practice it night and day. He would take his fiddle every morning at eight and stride out into the forest, and there he would stay all day with the squirrels. They told him once how a new arrival, driving over in the hotel ‘bus at early dawn, had passed an old Italian woman toiling up a hill and singing for dear life the “Tannhauser March.” It chanced that the new arrival was a musician, and he leaned out and asked the old woman where she had learned it. And this was her explanation;
“Dey ees a crazy feller in de woods—he play it all day for tree weeks!”
Section 14. By this time Thyrsis had finished at college, passing comfortably near the bottom of his class, and had betaken himself to a university as a graduate student. He was duly registered for a lot of courses, and spent his time when he should have been at the lectures, sitting in a vacant class-room reading the book that had fascinated him last. His note-book began at that time to show two volumes a day on an average, and once or twice he stopped at night to wonder how it had actually been possible for him to read poetry fourteen hours a day for a whole week and not be tired.
He taught himself German, and that led to another great discovery—he made the acquaintance of Goethe. The power of that mighty spirit took hold of him, so that he prayed to him when he was lonely, and kept the photograph of the young poet in his pocket, to gaze at it as at a lover. The great eyes came to haunt him so that one night he awoke crying out, because he had dreamed he was going to meet Goethe.
In the catalog of the university there were listed a number of courses in “rhetoric and English composition”. They were for the purpose of teaching one how to write, and the catalog set forth convincingly the methods whereby this was done. Thyrsis wished to know all there was to know about writing, and so ne enrolled himself for an advanced course, and went for an hour every day and listened to expositions of the elements of sentence-structure by Prof. Osborne, author of “American Prose Writers” and “The Science of Rhetoric”. The professor would give him a theme, and bid him bring in a five-hundred word composition. Perhaps it was that Thyrsis was lacking in the play-spirit; at any rate he could not write convincingly on the subject of “The Duty of the College Man to Support Athletics.” He struggled for a month against his own impotence, and then went to see his instructor.
“I think,” he said, “I shall have to drop Course A.”
The professor gazed over his spectacles at him.
“Why?”
“I don’t think I am getting any good out of it.”
“But how can you tell what good you are getting?”
“I don’t seem to feel that I am,” said Thyrsis, deprecatingly.
“It is not to be supposed that you would feel it,” said the other—“not at this early stage. You must wait.”
“But I don’t like the method, sir.”
“What’s wrong with the method?”
Thyrsis was embarrassed. He was not sure, he said; but he did not think that writing could be taught. Anyway, one had first to have something worth saying—
“Are you laboring under the delusion that you know anything about writing?” demanded the professor. (He had written across Thyrsis’ last composition the words, “Feeble and trivial”.)
“Why, no,” began the boy.
“Because if you are, let me disabuse your mind at once. There is no one in the class who knows less about writing than yourself.”
“I think,” said Thyrsis, “it’s because I can’t bring myself to write in cold blood. I have to be interested. I’m sure that is the trouble.”
“I’m sure,” said the other, “that the trouble is that you think you know too much.”
“I’m sorry, sir,” said Thyrsis, humbly. “I’ve tried my best—”
“It is my business to teach students to write. I’ve given my life to that, and I think I know something about it. But you think you know more than I do. That’s all.”
And so they parted. Thyrsis kept a vivid recollection of this interview, for the reason that at a later stage of his career he came into contact with Prof. Osborne again, and got another glimpse of the authoritarian attitude towards the art of letters.
Section 15. Thyrsis had not many friends at college, and none at all at the university. He had no time to make any; and besides, there was a certain facetious senior who had caught him hurrying through the corridors one day, declaring in excitement that—
“Banners yellow, glorious, golden,
On its roof did float and flow!”
But he had long ago ceased to hope for a friend, or to care what anybody thought about him; it was clear to him by this time that he had made himself into a poet, and was doomed to be unhappy. His mother had given up all hope of seeing him a bishop, and they had compromised upon a judgeship; but here at the university there was a law-school, and he met the students, and saw that this, too, could not be. These “lawyers” were not seeking knowledge for the love of it—they were studying a trade, by which they could rise in the world. They were not going out to do battle for truth and justice—they were perfecting themselves in cunning, so that they might be of help in money-disputes; they were sharpening their wits, to make them useful tools for the opening of treasure-chests. And this attitude to life was written all over their personalities; they seemed to Thyrsis a coarse and roistering crew, and he shrunk from them in repugnance.
He went his own impetuous way. He stayed at the university until he had taught himself French and Italian, as well as German, and had read all the best literature in those languages. And likewise he heard all the best music, and went about full of it day and night. By this time he had definitely beaten his devils, and had come to be master of himself; and though nobody guessed anything about it, there was a new marvel going on within him—he had, in a spiritual sense, become pregnant.