eight pages a day, I have written sixteen; instead of working five
days a week, I have worked seven. I have trebled my usual average,
and have done so in circumstances which have enabled me to give
up all my thoughts for the time to the book I have been writing.
This has generally been done at some quiet spot among the
mountains,--where there has been no society, no hunting, no whist,
no ordinary household duties. And I am sure that the work so done
has had in it the best truth and the highest spirit that I have
been able to produce. At such times I have been able to imbue myself
thoroughly with the characters I have had in hand. I have wandered
alone among the rocks and woods, crying at their grief, laughing at
their absurdities, and thoroughly enjoying their joy. I have been
impregnated with my own creations till it has been my only excitement
to sit with the pen in my hand, and drive my team before me at as
quick a pace as I could make them travel.
The critics will again say that all this may be very well as to
the rough work of the author's own brain, but it will be very far
from well in reference to the style in which that work has been
given to the public. After all, the vehicle which a writer uses for
conveying his thoughts to the public should not be less important
to him than the thoughts themselves. An author can hardly hope to
be popular unless he can use popular language. That is quite true;
but then comes the question of achieving a popular--in other words,
I may say, a good and lucid style. How may an author best acquire
a mode of writing which shall be agreeable and easily intelligible
to the reader? He must be correct, because without correctness he
can be neither agreeable nor intelligible. Readers will expect him
to obey those rules which they, consciously or unconsciously, have
been taught to regard as binding on language; and unless he does
obey them, he will disgust. Without much labour, no writer will
achieve such a style. He has very much to learn; and, when he has
learned that much, he has to acquire the habit of using what he has
learned with ease. But all this must be learned and acquired,--not
while he is writing that which shall please, but long before. His
language must come from him as music comes from the rapid touch of
the great performer's fingers; as words come from the mouth of the
indignant orator; as letters fly from the fingers of the trained
compositor; as the syllables tinkled out by little bells form
themselves to the ear of the telegraphist. A man who thinks much of
his words as he writes them will generally leave behind him work
that smells of oil. I speak here, of course, of prose; for in poetry
we know what care is necessary, and we form our taste accordingly.
Rapid writing will no doubt give rise to inaccuracy,--chiefly because
the ear, quick and true as may be its operation, will occasionally
break down under pressure, and, before a sentence be closed, will
forget the nature of the composition with which it was commenced.
A singular nominative will be disgraced by a plural verb, because
other pluralities have intervened and have tempted the ear into
plural tendencies. Tautologies will occur, because the ear, in
demanding fresh emphasis, has forgotten that the desired force has
been already expressed. I need not multiply these causes of error,
which must have been stumbling-blocks indeed when men wrote in the
long sentences of Gibbon, but which Macaulay, with his multiplicity
of divisions, has done so much to enable us to avoid. A rapid writer
will hardly avoid these errors altogether. Speaking of myself, I
am ready to declare that, with much training, I have been unable to
avoid them. But the writer for the press is rarely called upon--a
writer of books should never be called upon--to send his manuscript
hot from his hand to the printer. It has been my practice to read
everything four times at least--thrice in manuscript and once in
print. Very much of my work I have read twice in print. In spite
of this I know that inaccuracies have crept through,--not single
spies, but in battalions. From this I gather that the supervision
has been insufficient, not that the work itself has been done too
fast. I am quite sure that those passages which have been written
with the greatest stress of labour, and consequently with the
greatest haste, have been the most effective and by no means the
most inaccurate.
The Small House at Allington redeemed my reputation with the spirited
proprietor of the Cornhill, which must, I should think, have been
damaged by Brown, Jones, and Robinson. In it appeared Lily Dale,
one of the characters which readers of my novels have liked the
best. In the love with which she has been greeted I have hardly
joined with much enthusiasm, feeling that she is somewhat of a
French prig. She became first engaged to a snob, who jilted her;
and then, though in truth she loved another man who was hardly
good enough, she could not extricate herself sufficiently from the
collapse of her first great misfortune to be able to make up her
mind to be the wife of one whom, though she loved him, she did not
altogether reverence. Prig as she was, she made her way into the
hearts of many readers, both young and old; so that, from that time
to this, I have been continually honoured with letters, the purport
of which has always been to beg me to marry Lily Dale to Johnny
Eames. Had I done so, however, Lily would never have so endeared
herself to these people as to induce them to write letters to the
author concerning her fate. It was because she could not get over
her troubles that they loved her. Outside Lily Dale and the chief
interest of the novel, The Small House at Allington is, I think,
good. The De Courcy family are alive, as is also Sir Raffle Buffle,
who is a hero of the Civil Service. Sir Raffle was intended to
represent a type, not a man; but the man for the picture was soon
chosen, and I was often assured that the portrait was very like.
I have never seen the gentleman with whom I am supposed to have
taken the liberty. There is also an old squire down at Allington,
whose life as a country gentleman with rather straitened means is,
I think, well described.
Of Can you Forgive Her? I cannot speak with too great affection,
though I do not know that of itself it did very much to increase
my reputation. As regards the story, it was formed chiefly on that
of the play which my friend Mr. Bartley had rejected long since,
the circumstances of which the reader may perhaps remember. The
play had been called The Noble Jilt; but I was afraid of the name
for a novel, lest the critics might throw a doubt on the nobility.
There was more of tentative humility in that which I at last adopted.
The character of the girl is carried through with considerable
strength, but is not attractive. The humorous characters, which are
also taken from the play,--a buxom widow who with her eyes open
chooses the most scampish of two selfish suitors because he is
the better looking,--are well done. Mrs. Greenow, between Captain
Bellfield and Mr. Cheeseacre, is very good fun--as far as the fun
of novels is. But that which endears the book to me is the first
presentation which I made in it of Plantagenet Palliser, with his