Robinson, Theodore Watts, etc., etc.
Who are the dramatists of to-day? Grundy, Pinero, Henry Arthur Jones, W.
S. Gilbert, Haddon Chambers, Comyns Carr, Carton, Raleigh, George E. Sims (mark the virtue of that long-mysterious "r").
And who in the past have done anything for our prose dramatic literature?
Sheridan and Oliver Goldsmith, and, earlier still, Congreve, Wycherley, Farquhar, and Vanbrugh. Nay, which are the mighty names in our literature? Chaucer, Spenser, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Herrick, Dryden, Alexander Pope, Butler, Sterne, Byron, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Walter Scott, Robert Burns.
You may even look at the greatest names in the world"s literature. Homer, Virgil (Maro), Horace, Firdusi, Omar Khayyam, Cervantes, Calderon, Petrarch, Rabelais, Dante Alighieri, Schiller, Voltaire, Rousseau, Moliere, Corneille, Racine, Honore de Balzac, Flaubert, Victor Hugo, Verlaine, Heinrich Heine.
Of course there are not a few minus the "r," as Milton, Keats, Goethe, Swift, etc., etc.
There seems indeed to be a sub-species of "sons"--Ben Jonson, Dr.
Johnson, William Watson, John Davidson, Austin Dobson. Nevertheless there is an overwhelming preponderance of "r" sounds in the names of the world"s authors. What is the underlying reason? Is there a certain rugged virility in the letter, which made it somehow expressive of the nature of the original owners? "N" is certainly suave and plausible in comparison, and might well produce a posterity of publishers. What adds some colour to the suspicion is that, when writers have chosen _noms de guerre_, they have frequently--though all unconsciously--taken names in "r." This explains why all the lady novelists run to "George." Publisher _versus_ author may now be expressed symbolically as N/R, N over R, the N of money over the R of art.
With our artists I find a less strong tendency to "l"s" as well as to "r"s," and it is therefore only appropriate that a Leighton should long preside over the Royal Academy, a Millais be its chief ornament, and finally its head, and a Whistler its chief omission; that constable and Walker should be the glory of English art, that Reynolds should be our national portrait-painter, and Landseer our animal-painter, and Wilkie our domestic painter. Turner made up for his surname by the superfluity of "l"s" in his William Mallord, Raphael starts as an R. A., while Michael Angelo, with his predominance in "l"s," is rightly king of art.
The absence of "l" in Hogarth"s name and the strong presence of "r" of course denotes that the satirist was more of a literary man than an artist. The "r" in Whistler, on the other hand, clearly indicates the literary faculty of the author of "The Gentle Art of Making Enemies." And if Du Maurier"s real future was hinted in his orthography, Leech and Tenniel and Phil May and Linley Sambourne have vindicated their "l"s." So have Luke Fildes, Alma Tadema, H. T. Wells, G. D. Leslie, John Collier, Val Prinsep, Solomon J. Solomon, Frank Bramley, Phil Morris, Calderon, Leader, Nettleship, Seymour Lucas, Waterlow, William Strutt, Albert Moore, W. W. Ouless, C. W. Wyllie, Sir John Gilbert, Louise Jopling, Onslow Ford, and even W. C. Horsley. There are only three foreign Academicians at the time of writing, but they all boast the "l."
With musicians there is a tendency to "m"s" and "n"s," which sounds harmonious enough, Mendelssohn, Ma.s.senet, Mascagni, Mackenzie, Schumann, have both letters; Mozart but one. Haydn, Beethoven, Chopin, Saint-Saens, Sullivan, Charles Salaman, Edward Solomon, Frederic Cowen, run "n"-wards with the unanimity of publishers, while Gounod, Stanford, Audran, Sebastian Bach, Donizetti, work in the "n" otherwise, and Wagner has the librettist"s "r" in addition. Would you play the piano? You must have the "n" of the piano, like Pachmann, Rubinstein, Rosenthal, Hofmann, Frederick Dawson, Madame Schumann, f.a.n.n.y Davies, Agnes Zimmermann, Leonard Borwick, Nathalie Janotha, Sapellnikoff, Sophie Menter. Even for other instruments, including the human voice divine, the "n" is advisable. Paganini, Jenny Lind, Norman Neruda, Christine Nilsson--all patronized it largely. Adelina Patti, Johannes Wolf, and many others make a "Christian" use of it. If, on the other hand, you wish to manufacture pianos your chance of founding a first-cla.s.s firm will be largely enhanced if your name begins with "b."
Actors, like authors, roll their "r"s"; and if their names are pseudonyms, so much the greater proof that some occult instinct makes them elect for that virile letter. Who are our leading actors and actor-managers? The double-r"s: Henry Irving, Herbert Beerbohm Tree (two pairs), Forbes-Robertson, George Alexander, Arthur Roberts, Edward S.
Willard, Edward Terry, Charles Brookfield, Wilson Barrett, Fred Terry, Fred Kerr, Charles Warner, W. Terriss, George Grossmith, Charles Hawtrey, Arthur Bourchier (two pairs). Scarcely any leading actor lacks one "r,"
as Charles Wyndham, Cyril Maude, Louis Waller, etc., etc. Those without any "r"s" may console themselves with the memory of Edmund Kean, though Garrick--a name almost wholly compact of "r"--is the patron saint of the stage.
The ladies follow the gentlemen. From Ellen Terry and Winifred Emery to Ada Rehan and Mrs. Patrick Campbell, from Rose Leclercq and Marie Bancroft to Marion Terry and Irene Vanbrugh, few dare dispense with the "r."
But I have said enough. I have opened up new perspectives for the curious and the philosophic, which they may follow up for themselves. Here is a fresh field for faddists and mystagogues. Already I have proved as much as many systems of mediaeval philosophy which strove to extract the essence of things from the study of words and letters. Already I have collected more evidence than the sectarians of the Shakespeare-Bacon.
Bacon write Shakespeare, indeed! A man without an "r" to his name, pointed out by his "n" for a publisher, and, indeed, not without some of the characteristics of the cla.s.s. Seriously, the truth is that l, m, n, and r are the leading letters in name-making; but still there does seem to be more in the coincidence to which I have drawn attention than mere accident explains.
XXV
AUTHORS AND PUBLISHERS
It is done. The publishers have formed a League. The poor sweated victims of the author"s greed have at last turned upon the oppressor. Mr. Gosse, on a memorable occasion, confusedly blending the tones of the prophet of righteousness with the accents of the political economist, admonished the greedy author that he was killing the goose with the golden eggs. And now the goose has resolved to be a goose no longer. The Authors" Society, a sort of trade union, has been answered by the creation of a Publishers"
Union, with all the delightful potentialities of a literary lock-out. It is time, therefore, for a person without prejudice to say a word to both sides.
With the spirit which prompted the creation of the Authors" Society, Literature has nothing to do. To define Literature exactly is not easy.
To say at what point words become or cease to be literature is a problem similar in kind to the sophistical Greek puzzle of saying at what point the few become many. Perhaps we shall find a solution by looking at the genesis and history of written words. Literature, we find, began as religion. The earliest books of every nation are sacred books. Herbert Spencer dwells on the veneration which the average person feels for the printed word, his almost touching belief in books and newspapers. "I read it in a book" is equivalent to saying "It is certainly true." The great philosopher has failed to see that this instinct is a survival from the times when the only books were holy books. The first book published in Europe, as soon as printing was invented, was the Latin Bible--the Mazarin Bible as it is called; and it is the Bible which is responsible for the belief in print. Despite the degradation of the printed word to-day, there is something fine in this tenacious popular instinct, as there is something ign.o.ble in all Literature which palters with it. The Literature of every country is still sacred. The books of its sages and seers should still be holy books to it. The true man of letters always was and must always be a lay priest, even though he seem neither to preach nor to be religious in the popular sense of those terms. The qualities to be sought for in Literature are therefore inspiration and sincerity. The man of letters is born, not made. His place is in the Temple, and it is not his fault that the moneychangers have set up their stalls there. But, in addition to these few chosen spirits, born in every age to be its teachers, there is an overwhelming mult.i.tude of writers called into being by the conditions of the time. These are the artists whom Stevenson likened to the "Daughters of Joy." They are cunning craftsmen, turning out what the public demands, without any priestly consciousness, and sometimes even without conscience, mere tradesmen with--at bottom--the souls of tradesmen. Their work has charm, but lacks significance. They write essays which are merely amusing, histories which are only facts, and stories which are only lies.
The capacity of the world for reading the uninspired is truly astonishing, and the hundred worst books may be found in every bookseller"s window. Would that it were of books that Occam had written: "Non sunt multiplicandi praeter necessitatem"! The men who produce these unnecessary books perform a necessary function, as things are. Why should they be less well treated than bootmakers or tailors, butchers or bakers or candlestick makers? Why should they not get as much as possible for their labours? Why should they not, like every other kind of working-man, found a Labour Union? Indeed, instead of censuring these authors for trying to obtain a fair wage, I feel rather inclined to reproach them for not having more closely imitated the methods of Trades-Unionism, for not having welded the whole writing body into a strong a.s.sociation for the enforcement of fair prices and the suppression of sweating, which is more monstrous and wide-spread in the literary than in any other profession whatever. Such an organisation would be met by many difficulties, for writing differs from other species of skilled labour by the immense differences of individual talent, while from professions in which there are parallel variations of skill, _e.g._, law and medicine, it differs by the fact that there is no initial qualification (by examination) attesting a minimum amount of skill. Not even grammar is necessary for authorship, or even for successful authorship. Besides which, writing is done by innumerable persons in their spare time--Literature is a world of inky-fingered blacklegs. Thus, writing admits neither of the union-fixed minimum wage of the manual labourer, nor of the etiquette-fixed fee of the professional; so that the methods of the trade union are only partially applicable to the ink-h.o.r.n.y-handed sons of toil. But even the possible has not yet been achieved, so that the current idea of an organization of the writing cla.s.ses, against which publishers have had to gird up their loins to fight, has very little foundation. There is nothing but a registered disorganisation. What the publishers are really afraid of is not a Society, but a man, and that man a middle-man? no other than that terrible bogey, the agent, who drinks champagne out of their skulls.
So much for the author-craftsman. But what of the author-priest? Do the commercial conditions apply to him? Certainly they do--with this important modification, that, while with the author-craftsman the commercial conditions may justly regulate the matter and manner of his work, with the author-priest the commercial conditions do not begin until he has completed his work. The state of the market, the condition of the public mind--these will have no influence on the work itself. Not a comma nor a syllable will he alter for all the gold of Afric[*]. But, the ma.n.u.script once finished, the commercial considerations begin. The prophet has written his message, but the world has yet to hear it. Now, we cannot easily conceive Isaiah or Jeremiah hawking round his prophecies at the houses of publishers, or permitting a smart Yankee to syndicate them through the world, or even allowing popular magazines to dribble them out by monthly instalments. But the modern prophet has no housetop, and it is as difficult to imagine him moving his nation by voice alone as arranging with a local brother-seer to trumpet forth the great tidings simultaneously at New York in order to obtain the American copyright.
Even if he should try to teach the people by word of mouth, there will be bare benches unless he charges for admission, as all lecturers will tell you. People value at nothing what they can get for nothing; and, as Stevenson suggested, "if we were charged so much a head for sunsets, or if G.o.d sent round a drum before the hawthorns came in flower, what a work should we not make about their beauty!" No, the prophet cannot escape the commercial question. For, in order that his message may reach his age, it must be published, and publication cannot be achieved without expense.
[* Transcriber"s note: So in original.]
Tolsto himself, who gives his books freely to the world, cannot really save the public the expense of buying them. All he sacrifices is that comparatively small proportion of the returns which is claimed by the author in royalties; he cannot eliminate the profits of the publisher, the bookseller, etc., etc. For between the message and its hearers come a great number of intermediaries, many of them inevitable. We will a.s.sume for the purposes of our a.n.a.lysis that our prophet is already popular. The hearers are waiting eagerly. Here is the ma.n.u.script, there are the readers. Problem--to bring them together. This is the task of the publisher. Incidentally, the publisher employs the printer, bookbinder, etc.; but this part of the business, though usually undertaken by the publisher, does not necessarily belong to him. He is essentially only the distributor. In return for this function of distribution, whether it includes supervising mechanical production or not, the publisher is ent.i.tled to his payment. How much? Evidently, exactly as much as is made by capital and personal service in business generally. The shillings of the public are the gross returns for the book. These have to be divided between all the agents employed in producing the book--author, printer, binder, publisher, bookseller, etc. This is not literally what happens, but it is arithmetically true in the long run. How much for each?
Evidently just as much as they can each get, for there is no right but might and nothing but tug-of-war. There is nothing absolute in the part.i.tion of profits: infinite action and reaction. While the costs of the mechanical part are comparatively stable, the relation of author and publisher oscillates ceaselessly; and while the cautious publisher by the multiplicity of his transactions may rely upon an average of profits, like all business men plucking stability out of the heart of vicissitude, the author has no such surety. Between merit and reward there is in literature no relation. Just as the music-hall singer may earn a larger income than the statesman, so may the tawdry tale-teller drive the thinker and artist out of the market.
The artistic value of a book is therefore absolutely unrelated to the commercial value; but such commercial value as there is--to whom should it fall if not to the author? Like the other parties, he has a right to all he can get. You will say it is very sordid to think of money; you will speak of divine inspiration; you would rather see him go on the rates; to save him from base reward you even borrow his books instead of buying them; you cannot understand why he should prefer an honest Copyright Act to a halo. Good! Put it that I agree with you. It is sordid to sell one"s muse. One should be like Mr. Harold Skimpole, and let the butcher and the baker go howl. The thought of money sullies the fairest ma.n.u.script. The touch of a cheque taints. Good again! _Only_, when the great poem is written, when the great novel is done, _there is money in it_! Who is to have this money? The author? Certainly not. We are agreed his soul must be kept virgin. _But why the publisher?_ (Above all, why the American publisher?) Why not the printer? Why not the binder or the bookseller? Why not the deserving poor? None of these will be defiled by the profits. Why should the money not be used to found a Lying-in Hospital, or an Asylum for Decayed Authors, or a Museum to keep Honest Publishers in? Why should not authors have the _kudos_ of paying off the National Debt? If they are to be the only Socialists in a world of individualists, let them at least have the satisfaction of knowing their money is applied to worthy public purposes.
But I do _not_ agree with you. "The best work at the best prices" is no unworthy motto. The Authors" Society, indeed, tries to put this non-moral principle of valuation upon an ethical basis. It says, for instance, that if the publisher reckons his office expenses in the cost of production, then the author has a right to reckon his, even including any journeys or researches he may have had to make in order to write his book. But this right is not only an ethical fallacy: it is a politico-economical one, because the economical question is only concerned with the _distribution_ of the work, and the money or the heart"s blood that went to make it has nothing to do with the question, while the publisher"s office expenses are of the essence of the question. Some authors also claim that the publisher has no right to make successful books pay for unsuccessful. But here again he has every right. The publisher is not a piece-worker; he has to keep a large organization going, involving ramifications in every town. It is the existence of this network, of this distributive mechanism, that enables the successful book to be sold everywhere; and the publisher, like every business man, must allow percentages for bad debts and unprofitable speculations. Publishers have a right to capture the bulk of the profits of authors" first books, because they largely supply the author with his public. It is surprising how even good books have to be pressed on an unwilling world, much as cards are forced by conjurers. The number of people that select their books by their own free-will is incredibly small. On the other hand, when a popular author brings a publisher a book, it is he who improves the publisher"s distributing agency, by bringing him new clients, and even sometimes strengthening his position with booksellers and libraries, by enabling him, armed with a book universally in demand, to fight against deductions and discounts throughout his business generally. And, just as the publisher may rightly depress the profits of an unknown author, so the popular author has a moral right to larger royalties--which right, however, would avail him nothing were it not backed by might. It is in the compet.i.tion of rival publishers that his strength lies.
And here comes in the question of the agent. Publishers may rave as they will, but authors have every right to employ agents to save them from the unpleasant task of chaffering and of speaking highly of themselves. And it is the author who pays the agent, not the publishers, their whinings notwithstanding. The agent may indeed squeeze out larger sums than publishers like to disgorge, but how can he obtain more than the market-value? Political economy is dead against the possibility. He cannot, in fact, obtain more than the author may and frequently does obtain for himself. If a competing publisher offers a larger sum than will pay him in coin, at any rate he will not offer more than will pay him in reputation, or in the extension of his _clientele_ on the lines indicated above. It is still only the market-value. If the reputation honourably built up by the labours of years comes to have a monetary value outside the monetary value of the particular book--a sort of goodwill value, in fact,--why should the author or his agent be abused for obtaining it? Will not the publisher in his turn grind down the unknown man to the lowest possible penny? The prostration of the publisher before the celebrity is only equalled by his insolence toward the obscure. Is there any author who has not suffered in his beginnings from the greed of publishers? Far from making money at the start, how many authors have got a hearing without having had to pay for it out of their own pockets? "The wrongs of publishers" is a good red-herring to draw across the track, a smart counter-cry. But publishers have still the game in their hands all along the line. Not a few still keep their accounts secret, still recklessly supply themselves with that opportunity which, the proverb says, makes even honest men thieves. As for America--what goes on across that week of ocean who dares conjecture? And now, what with rumors of wars and free silver--ah me!
In forming a Masters" Union, the publishers have at last abandoned the pretence of being swayed by any but pecuniary considerations in the exercise of their high function. There is something refreshing in this clearing of the air, in this abandonment of the Joseph Surface manner.
And yet, I confess, my heart shelters a regret for the old style of publisher, as for the old style of author. Something of picturesque clings even to Jacob Tonson, with "his two left legs." The publisher as the patron of genius, the nurser of young talent, the re-inspirer of old, the scholar and gentleman, at once the friend and the banker of his authors, makes a pleasing figure. It was perhaps more ideal than real, for even of Murray we read in "Lord Beaconsfield"s Letters ": "Washington Irving demanded a large price. Murray murmured. Irving talked of posterity and the badness of the public taste, and Murray said that authors who wrote for posterity must publish on their own account."
Still, if the publisher would live up to this ideal, his would remain an honorable profession, instead of sinking to a trade. He would rank with the rare theatrical manager to whom art is dearer than profit--if such a one still survives. But the trail of business is over the age: the theatrical manager is a shameless tradesman, and more and more the publisher will become the mere distributer, if indeed he be not eliminated by a mechanical organisation. The popular author needs only a central store to supply the trade with his printed writings, the cost of production of which is covered by the first day"s sales. This is, of course, to ignore the publisher in his aspect of initiator of series, art books and encyclopaedias. But to originate is to depart from publishing proper and to become ent.i.tled to the profits of the inventor; nay, almost to step over into the province of authorship and the dignity thereof.
But if we can forgive the publisher for succ.u.mbing to the business spirit of the age, we cannot as readily acquiesce in the huckstering spirit that has crept over literature. The "battle of the books" has become one of account-books, and the literary columns of the newspapers bristle with pecuniary paragraphs. Even the "chatter about Sh.e.l.ley" was better than the contemporary gossip about the takings of authors, for the most part vastly exaggerated. A paragraph which must have inflated him with pride led to a friend of mine being haled up before the Income Tax Commissioners. "How long have you been an author?" he was asked in addition. "Six years," he replied. "And you have only paid income tax for five!" was the horrified exclamation. Here is the nemesis of all this foolish fuss about _L. S. D._ The British mind now supposes authorship to be a trade, like any other. You go into it, and you at once begin to make a regular income; and, once successful, you go on steadily earning large sums, automatically. The thing works itself. You are never ill or uninspired; you are never to let your mind lie fallow, never to travel and gather new inspiration, never to shut up shop and loaf. You simply go on making so much a year--for do not the papers say so? And that you should cherish the immoral sentiments contained in the following stanzas, as at least two authors of my acquaintance do, is simply incredible to the envious Philistine.
THE AUTHOR TO THE SYNDICATOR.
Thou lord, of bloated syndicates, Thou master of the mint, Who payest at the highest rates And takest without stint, Go back, go back to wild New York, Go back across the sea; Go, corners make in beans and pork, No corners make in me.
For thou art "cute and thou art smart, No dead flies hang on thee; Thou carest not one jot for Art, But only _L. S. D._ Go "back, go back, etc.
Thy aims are low, thy profits high; Thy mind is only bent, Whatever live, whatever die, To scoop in cent per cent.
Go back, go back, etc.
To thee the greatest authors are Those who most greatly sell; But he whose soul is as a Star-- Why, he may go to H-ll!
Go back, go back to wild New York, Go back across the sea; Go, corners make in beans and pork, No corners make in me.
An author"s income must be indeed difficult to adjudge. He is the manufacturer of a patent article--which only he can turn out. But he is also the vendor thereof, and his transactions involve sales of serial--as well as of book-rights synchronised in two or more countries--a tedious and delicate task. And a great part of his business--"the tributes that take up his time," the MSS. he has to read, etc., etc.--must be conducted entirely without profit, or rather must be run at a loss. Who can determine what are the working expenses of so complex an industrial enterprise? An artist subtracts the cost of his models: may an author subtract the cost of the experiences which supply him with his material, and, if so, how are they to be estimated? Mr. Conan Doyle and Mr. Anthony Hope both write historical novels; but while the former buys and studies large quant.i.ties of books, and travels to see castles and battlefields, the latter professedly works from intuition. Are both these men"s incomes to be treated alike? Goethe deliberately fell in love so as to write poems when the pa.s.sion had subsided: how much should be deducted from his gross returns to cover the working expenses of his love-affairs? And even when we do not go about it in such cold blood, our art--is it not woven of our pain and our pa.s.sion, our "emotions recollected in tranquility"?
Do these emotions cost us nothing? Do they not "wear and tear" our system, justifying us in writing off 5 per cent. for depreciation in our machinery? Countless are the problems that arise out of this new view of authorship as an exact trade. Scientifically speaking, the author is a pieceworker, whose productiveness is fitful and temporary. However widely the fame of his business extend, he cannot extend it; he cannot increase his output by adding new clerks or new branches: every order received means work for his own brain and his own hands. If he keep other hands they are called ghosts, and such ghosts are frowned upon even by the Psychical Society.
No, the more I think of it, the more it is borne in upon me that authors should be exempted from income tax altogether--if, indeed, the income itself should not rather be provided for them (free of duty) by a grateful Government. Carlyle is said to have claimed exemption on the ground that the earnings of a writer are incalculable: it seems to me that it is rather the working expenses which are incalculable. "I sometimes sit and yearn for anything in the shape of an income that would come in," wrote poor sick Stevenson on a languorous summer afternoon,--by the way, I hope his doctors" expenses were deducted from his gross returns, as incurred in order to keep the writing machinery going; or did he perchance fly to Samoa to escape the tax altogether?--"Mine has all got to be gone and fished for with the immortal mind of man. What I want is the income that really comes in of itself, while all you have to do is just to blossom and exist, and sit on chairs." Poor R. L. S.!--does it not make you think of "mighty poets in their misery dead"? Does it not--if you are more prosaic--bring home to you the absurdity of taxing professional incomes as though they were akin to those which "come in" to the happy folk who have but "to blossom and exist and sit on chairs"? And will you not, whoever you are, rejoice that the work done with so much art and conscience and suffering, obtained, in Stevenson"s latter days, its highest possible money-reward through the much-abhorred Agent? Why do not millionaires hear of the woes of authors and send them anonymous bank-notes? Why do not "national testimonials" happen in the author"s lifetime in the shape of purses of gold? They are more digestible than posthumous stones. Alas! the author"s path is th.o.r.n.y enough. And it is against this jaded, unhappy creature that the publishers have had to make a Union! Well, well, there will soon be no Authors" Union except the Workhouse.
XXVI
THE PENALTIES OF FAME
There is one form of persecution to which celebrity or notoriety is subject, which Ouida has omitted in her impa.s.sioned protest. It is interviewing carried one step further--from the ridiculous to the sublime of audacity. The auto-interview, one might christen it, if the officiating purist would pa.s.s the hybrid name. Yon are asked to supply information about yourself by post, prepaid. The ordinary interview, whatever may be said against it, is at least painless; and, annoying as it is to after-reflection to have had your brain picked of its ideas by a stranger who gets paid for them, still the mechanical vexations of literature are entirely taken over by the journalist who hangs on your lips; though, if I may betray the secrets of the prison-house, he often expects you to supply the questions as well as the answers. But when you are asked to write your life for a biographical dictionary, or to communicate particulars about yourself to a newspaper, it is difficult, however equable your temperament, not to feel a modic.u.m of irritation. It is not only the labour of writing and the cost of stamps that anger you.
Your innate modesty is outraged. How is it possible for you to say all those nice things about yourself which you know to be your due, and which a third person might even exaggerate? What business have editors to expose you to such inner conflict? A scholar I knew suffered agonies from this source. He was constantly making learned discoveries which n.o.body understood but himself, and so editors were always pestering him to write leaderettes about them. He got over the difficulty by leaving blanks for the eulogistic adjectives, which the editors had to fill in. As thus: "Mr. Theophilus Rogers, the ---- savant, has unearthed another papyrus in Asia Minor which throws a flood of light on the primitive seismology of Syria." Once a careless editor forgot to fill in the lacuna, and the paper lost a lot of subscribers by reason of its improper language, whilst the friends of Theophilus wanted him to bring an action for libel, unconscious that it would lie against himself.
But perhaps the climax of irritation is reached when, having troubled to write down autobiographical details, having wrestled with your modesty and overthrown it, having posted your letter and prepaid it, the ---- editor rejects your contribution without thanks. This hard fate overtook me--_moi qui vous parle_--not very long ago. The conductor of a penny journal, not unconnected with literary t.i.t-bits, honoured me with a triple interrogatory. This professional Rosa Dartle wanted to know--
(1) The conditions under which you write your novels.
(2) How you get your plots and characters.
(3) How you find your t.i.tles.
I was very busy. I was very modest. But the accompanying a.s.surance that an anxious world was on the _qui vive_ for the information appealed to my higher self, and I took up my pen and wrote:--