XI
My life between 1882 and 1900 is a simple chronicle of work done. Perhaps it may be of no interest to my readers. In that case let the chapter be omitted, because it is purely personal. During this period my beard grew grey; I advanced from forty-six to sixty-four; from middle age I became old; but I never ceased to rejoice in my work; to find every novel—there was one a year—the most delightful I had ever written; to fall in love with my heroine; to admire my young men of virtue; and to desire, above all things, that my villain should reap the fruit of his iniquities. Thus are we made. When villainies are exposed, we desire nothing so much as the performer’s punishment; no punishment can be too severe for so great a villain; we burn to see him scourged. Yet we never wax in the least indignant over our own meannesses and frailties—call them not villainies, though their fruits may be as poisonous as the monstrous growths that follow the crimes of fiction.
Eighteen novels in eighteen years! It seems a long list; how can one write so much and yet survive? My friends, may I ask why a painter is allowed to produce a couple of pictures and more every year and no one cries out upon him for his haste in production; yet if a story-teller gives to the world a novel every year, the criticaster yaps at his heels and asks all the world to observe the haste which the novelist makes to get rich. Poor novelist! It is not often, indeed, that he does get rich. In my own case I was endowed by nature with one quality which, I am sure, I may proclaim without boasting. It is that of untiring industry. It is no merit in me to work continuously. I am not happy when I am not working. I cannot waste the afternoon in a club smoking-room; nor can I waste two hours before dinner in a club library; nor can I waste a whole morning pottering about a garden; and in the evening, after dinner, I am fain to repair to my study, there to look over proofs, hunt up points, and arrange for the next day’s work. Again, when I have fiction in hand I cannot do any good with it for more than three or four hours a day—say from nine till half-past twelve. In the afternoon I must work at other things. What those things have been, I will speak of presently.
I find that, on an average, a novel has taken me about eight or ten months from the commencement to the end. If you turn this statement into a little sum in arithmetic, you will find that it means about a thousand words a day. Do not, however, imagine that I write a thousand words a day. Not at all. My method (again advising readers not interested in this confession to go on to the next chapter) always has been the same. The central motif of the story is first settled and decided upon. It should be a plain, clear, and intelligible motif—one which all the world can understand. Round this theme has to be grouped a collection of characters whose actions, conversations, and motives form a clear and consistent story while they supply views of life, pictures of life, and illustrations of life. It is obvious that to find these characters is the great difficulty; it is obvious that one may easily fall into mistakes and decide upon characters without much interest to the reader. Now the writer does not understand this until too late. I could name one of my stories where the central theme was very good and should have been striking, but the tale was marred by the lack of interest in the principal character.
However, the motif, the story, and the characters having been decided upon, the next step is the presentation, which involves practice and study in the art of construction. I would not insist too strongly on the study required for the construction of a story, because if an aspirant has not the gift, no study will endow him with it. But he should certainly pay great attention at the outset. Above all, he should aim at presenting his situations with a view to dramatic effect; not, that is, to let down the curtain at the end of a chapter upon a tableau, but to lead up to the situation dramatically, to present it dramatically, and to group his characters, so to speak, dramatically. He should also avoid long descriptions of character; very few writers can do these well; it is best for the ordinary novelist to make his characters describe themselves in dialogue. This is easy, provided that the writer has got a clear grip of each character and can make him talk, without effort, up to his character. He will, of course, have an eye to proportion. It is amazing to find how many novels are ruined for want of due proportion between the parts, so that the beginning overshadows the end, or the end is out of harmony with the beginning.
For my own part, I proceed, after the preliminaries, which generally take three weeks or a month of irritating experiment, failure, and patient trying over and over again, to write at headlong speed the first two or three chapters. These I lay aside for a few days and then take them up again; the heat of composition is over and one can then estimate in cold blood what the thing means and how it promises. In any case, it has all to be written over again: the first draft is chaotic; the dialogue is only suggested; the situations are slurred; things irrelevant or of no consequence are introduced. Then I set to work to rewrite, to correct, and to expand. Very often the first rough chapter becomes an introduction, followed by two or three chapters which begin the story. At the same time I go on to another rough draft of future chapters. So the novel is constructed much on the principle of a tunnel, in which the rough boring and blasting goes on ahead, while the completion of the work slowly follows. After a little there is no longer the least trouble about quantity of material; it becomes solely a question of selection; the characters are all alive and they are working out the story in their own way—there are sometimes a dozen situations from which one only can be chosen—and their talk is incessant and, for the most part, wide of the mark—that is to say, it interests them but it does not advance the story. And so the time passes; the summer follows the spring; the novelist is absorbed almost everyday for three or four hours with his work. Unless he is working at other things he lives in a dream; he does not want to talk much; he does not want society; he wants only to be left alone. To dream away one’s life is pleasant; but alas! no one knows how swiftly the time passes in a dream. For thirty years I have been dreaming during the greater part of every year. What should I have done had it not been for this pageant of Dreamland, which has kept me perfectly happy, though sometimes careless and oblivious of the outer world?
Perhaps it is superfluous to describe the methods of my work; as I said before, my readers may pass over this chapter; it may, however, be of some use to young aspirants to know how a craftsman in their art worked—may I add?—non sine gloriâ, not without a certain measure of success.
I do not propose to describe the genesis of these novels, or to relate the chronicles of small beer about their production, the opinions of the press upon them, and their pecuniary returns. I have stated my general method of writing a novel; not, mind, so many pages, or so many hours a day; not sitting down by a blind rule, nor waiting till the inspiration came—that is only another name for prolonged idleness under a nonsensical pretence; but I exercised upon myself a certain amount of pressure at the outset, when the work was difficult and the way thorny; and afterwards, when the way was easy I sat down morning after morning unless indisposition, or some engagement which must be kept, forbade. As to the appearance of these novels, they all came out in serial form simultaneously in America as well as in England. Let me here express my great and lasting gratitude to my agents, Mr. A.P. Watt and his son, by whose watch and ward my interests have been so carefully guarded for eighteen years. During that time I have always been engaged for three years in advance; I have been relieved from every kind of pecuniary anxiety; my income has been multiplied by three at least; and I have had, through them, the offer of a great deal more work than I could undertake. I cannot speak too strongly of the services rendered to me by my literary agents. Of course, there are different kinds of agents. There is the agent, for example, who knows nothing about his business. But the agent who does know his business, who knows also editors, publishers, and their arrangements, may be of immense use to the novelist, the essayist, the traveller—in short, to the author of any book that can command a circulation and a public demand.
And such an agent is Mr. A.P. Watt.
Of the eighteen novels, by far the best, in my own judgment, is Dorothy Forster. It was, I think, in 1869 that I first visited what is perhaps the most interesting county in the whole of England—Northumberland. It was in Bamborough Castle that I first heard the story of Dorothy Forster. It occurred to me then, before I had begun to think of becoming a novelist, that the story was a subject which presented great possibilities; but as yet I had only written one story, which was a failure. In 1874 I was married. I had by that time written certain novels which had some success, and I had already resolved vaguely upon undertaking the subject as soon as I could find time and opportunity. After my marriage I made the very interesting discovery that my wife’s family had changed their name in the year 1698, or thereabouts, from Forster to Barham; that they were descendants of the Forsters of Addlestone and Bamborough, through Chief Justice Forster of Queen Elizabeth’s time, and that Dorothy Forster, my heroine, was therefore my wife’s cousin, though ever so many times removed. This was, I say, a very interesting discovery. We went down to Bamborough a year or two later, making a pilgrimage to the old home. In 1880 or 1881 I went again by myself, the purpose of writing the book having grown more definite. I visited all the places that I wanted for the story, and made many notes as to the local surroundings. In 1882 I took my father-in-law with me, and we made together a posting-tour of the country. This is quite the best way to see the country-side, and I really think that I have seen nearly the whole of Northumberland—not quite all, but the most important part—in these four visits. In 1883 I wrote the story—with great ease, because it was already in my head—and in 1884 it came out in the Graphic, being most beautifully illustrated by my late friend, Charles Green, whose drawing, to my mind, was surpassed by few, while his conscientious care in the selection of the most telling situations and in draping his models with correct costumes was beyond all praise. He gave me three or four of the drawings, which I had framed. They now hang on my staircase, where I can see them everyday, and so be reminded of Dorothy, of Northumberland, and of Charles Green. The book dealt with the Rebellion of 1715, but in its side issues. I leave battle-pieces to any who choose; I know my own limitations, which do not include exercises in military strategy. A battle is beyond me; the marching and the charging and the points of vantage confuse me. So also courts and grandeurs are beyond me. But I had my brave and loving Dorothy with me. All through the book, in every chapter and on every page, I loved her and I let her talk and act; to be with her was better from my point of view than the clang and clash of a dozen battles.
Four other stories out of the eighteen also belonged to the eighteenth century. They were For Faith and Freedom (end of seventeenth century), The World Went Very Well Then, St. Katherine’s by the Tower, and The Orange Girl.a The first of these, like Dorothy Forster, was a story showing how a great rebellion, that of Monmouth’s, affected the fortunes of a small group. The battle of Sedgemoor, the, haute politique, the intrigues of the Court, belonged to another novel, unwritten. Mine had to do with the by-ways, the side-currents, the backwater of that movement. Conan Doyle brought out his novel of Micah Clarke at the same time and on the same subject. I do not think the two stories injured each other.
One anecdote in connection with this story illustrates the “long arm of coincidence.” The people in my novel were sent out to Barbadoes as political convicts. I desired above all things to follow them there. Indeed, it was necessary unless a great opportunity should be thrown away. But I could find nothing on the subject. Defoe, it is true, talked about Virginia and the Plantations, and in his own manner, apparently, gave exact details. When, however, one looked into the pages, the exact details were only there in appearance—he did not know the daily life. Now I wanted everything: the hours of work, the kind of work, the dress, the food, the treatment of the prisoners by the overseers—everything. What was I to do? I went to the British Museum: nothing seemed known. I became sorrowfully aware that I should have to invent the details, or to guess at them from the very meagre notes at my disposal. Now to me, pondering sadly on this necessity, there came one evening half-a-dozen catalogues of second-hand books. I turned them over idly, marking such books as seemed likely to be of help in the restoration of the past, when suddenly I came upon a title that made me jump. It was “The Journal of A. B——, sometime chyrurgeon to the Duke of Monmouth, with his trial and sentence to the Plantations of Barbadoes; his Captivity there; and his Escape. Price, One Guinea.” Heavens! What luck! For here was the very thing I wanted! In the morning I drove off early to the bookseller’s. The book was gone! An American had picked it up the day before. But I had at least the title, and, armed with this, I went off again to the British Museum. In the vast ocean of pamphlets in the library this was found. I caused the whole thing to be copied out bodily, with the result that I had a chapter charged with real life, and with the actualities of convict labour in the late seventeenth century. Needless to say that none of my reviewers noticed this chapter. One man to whom I told the story coldly observed, “Then you stole that chapter.” Why, a man who writes a novel of past life, as a history of past life, must steal—if you call it so! He may invent, but then it will not be past life; he must use the old material if he can find it; if he cannot find it, he cannot write a novel of past life.
The third story of the past is called The World Went Very Well Then. The leading incident round which the story is constructed was, in like manner, found by me. About the end of the seventeenth century there was a certain young lieutenant of the Navy, who promised a girl at Deptford marriage when he should return from his next cruise. He did return; she reminded him of his promise; he laughed at her. She fell on her knees and prayed solemnly that God Almighty would smite him in that part which he should feel the most. He was then appointed captain of a ship. He took her into action, having the reputation of a brave and gallant officer. He was seized with sudden cowardice and struck the flag at the first shot. That was my material for the story, and very good material it was. The story came out in the Illustrated London News, and was admirably illustrated by Mr. Forestier.
Another eighteenth-century story, suggested by an incident of the time, was St. Katherine’s by the Tower. In this story the young suitor comes home to marry his sweetheart. He arrives full of love and of happiness. To his amazement the girl shrinks from him, rejects him, with every sign of loathing and disgust. More than this, she falls into melancholia, threatening decline. The lover thinks that his death alone will cause her recovery. He courts death in many ways, but death avoids him. He therefore joins a company of so-called “traitors,” and is sentenced to death. The rest of the story may be found in the pages of the book.
Of the other novels I must speak very briefly. They are either studies of the East End and of the people, as All Sorts and Conditions of Men, The Children of Gibeon, The Alabaster Box—a story of a settlement—and The Rebel Queen, or they are stories of today. All in a Garden Fair presents an account, somewhat embroidered, of my own literary beginnings. Herr Paulus is a story of spiritualistic fraud—I have always rejoiced to think that the story was considered a great blow to Sludge and his friends. Armorel of Lyonesse is an exposure of the impudent charlatan who produces artistic and literary works under his own name which are executed by another’s hand—a fraud more common, I have been told, ten years ago, than it is now. The City of Refuge is a story of life in one of the American communities. The Master Craftsman is the history of the politician who makes himself by the aid of an ambitious woman. Beyond the Dreams of Avarice is a tale of the evil influence of the inheritance of great wealth. Of course such a theme easily brings to the stage a number of people of all kinds and all conditions. The prospect of wealth corrupts and demoralises everyone—the man of science, the man of pleasure, the colonial, the actor, the American.
The Fourth Generation is the most serious of all my novels. Here we have to deal with the truth that the children do undoubtedly suffer for the sins of the fathers. It is impossible to deny the facts of the case; they are conspicuous in every family, in all history. It seems unjust. The Hebrew Prophets considered the case; one of them proclaimed the law; another defined its limitation. In the novel I have admitted the law. I have shown how, by reason of an undetected crime, one member of a family after another is struck with misfortune and degraded by crimes. Yet there are the limitations. A reviewer, in speaking in commendation of the story, said that he was amazed to find a reference to a Hebrew Prophet in the preface. The amazement was caused by his inability to understand that a novel may be a perfectly serious document and that a novelist may illustrate a most important law of humanity by a simple, even an amusing, story. The limitations are plainly laid down by the Prophet Ezekiel. They amount to this: The father, by his sins, may condemn his children for many generations to poverty, to the loss of social position, to the loss of all the advantages to which they were born; he may reduce them all to servitude; he may make it impossible for them to retrieve their former position, so that they can neither get oblivion of the past nor make a new beginning on the foundation of the old evils. But he cannot touch the souls of his children. “As I live, saith the Lord God”—hear the Prophet’s more than solemn words—“the soul of every man is mine.” If the children commit sins and crimes, they will make it still harder for their descendants, but the crimes are not caused by the sins of the fathers. “Amazing,” said my reviewer.
When I read the criticasters’ paragraphs about novels “with a purpose,” I ask myself what novel I have written that had not a purpose. Among my shorter stories Katherine Regina, the most successful, shows the misery of being left destitute without special training or knowledge. The Inner House is an allegory in which it is shown that everything worth having in life depends upon death, the appointed end. One reviewer said it was an attack on socialism. Twenty others immediately followed suit, glad of a chance of noticing without reading. In Deacon’s Orders is a study in religiosity, which is an emotion quite apart from religion.
The Revolt of Man I brought out anonymously. It shows the world turned upside down. Women rule everything and do the whole of the intellectual work; the Perfect Woman is worshipped instead of the Perfect Man. The reception of the book was at first extremely cold; none of the reviews noticed it except slightingly; it seemed as if it was going to fail absolutely. Then an article in the Saturday Review, written in absolute ignorance of the authorship, started all the papers. I sent for my friend the editor to lunch with me, and confessed the truth. In five or six weeks we had got through about nine thousand copies. When I say that the advanced woman has never ceased to abuse the book and the author, its success will be understood.
My course as a novelist—or anything else—is now nearly finished. I do not suppose I can, even in the few years or weeks that may be left to me, do anything so good as the work that lies behind. But of all forms of work, there is none, to me at least, which could possibly be more delightful than that of fiction. One never wearies of the work; it fills the brain with groups of people, all curious and all interesting, some most charming and some most villainous. I have never attempted what is called analysis of character. Most so-called “analyses” of character are mere laborious talks—attempts to do on many pages what should be done in single strokes and in easy dialogue. If my people do not reveal themselves by their acts and words, then I have failed. But, character is complex? Quite so; the most complex character can only be understood by acts and words. The analysers start with a view of art which is not mine. I admit, however, that in the hands of one or two writers the results have been very fine. But it is not the art of Fielding, Smollett, Scott, Thackeray, Dickens, Reade. With all these writers the analysis of character takes the form of presentation of character by act and word. At the outset, all we know of a person in the tale is that he has done certain things. Then, by degrees, perhaps without the knowledge or the intention of the writer, the character talks and acts in such a way, under the influence of conditions of birth, education, and surroundings, as to make us understand how complex is his character, how strangely mixed of good and evil. And this kind of art seems to me by far the higher and the truer, and to give better results, simply because no writer is able at the outset to say, “Thus and thus shall be the character of my hero; so complex; shot with so many hues; so full of changes and surprises; so shifting and so blown about here and there by every wind that sweeps his level.” For my own part I like my characters to tread the stage speaking and acting so that all the world may understand them and their revelation of themselves in works and ways, in thoughts and speech. Mine, it will be objected, is a simple form of art. Is it not, however, the art of Dickens, Scott, and Fielding? Let me belong to the school of the Masters; let me be content to follow humbly and at however great a distance in the lines laid down by them.
To return to my work. “Why do you not give us,” said one to me, “the fun and laughter of The Golden Butterfly?” Well, you see, I was in my thirties then, and I am now in my sixties. The bubbling spirits of a sanguine and cheerful temperament made me happy and made of the world a Garden of Delight in those days. The spirits which enabled me to contribute to the cheerfulness of my readers when that book and certain other of my collaborations were written are gone. They cannot exist with my present time of life. What is left me is at best but a sobered cheerfulness. Yet, I think, my work has never yet been gloomy. Thank Heaven! I have had less during my life, so far, to make me gloomy in the sixties than falls to the lot of many men in the thirties. Let me, in what remains of life, preserve cheerfulness, if only the cheerfulness of common gratitude. No one ought to acknowledge more profoundly than myself the happiness that has been bestowed upon me; the domestic peace; the freedom from pecuniary troubles; literary success in a measure unhoped for; a name known all over the English-speaking world; and circles of friends. And with them a whole army of enemies—exactly such enemies as one, at the outset, would desire above all things, to make: the spiritualistic fraud with his lying pretensions and his revelations revealing nothing from the other world; the sickly sentimentalist blubbering over the righteous punishment of the sturdy rogue; and the shrieking sisterhood. They are all my enemies, and if, at the beginning of life, I had been asked what enemies I would make—could I have made a better choice?