the matter of the publication of my new Vicar, and had to think
very much of the ultimate rewards of punctuality and its opposite.
About the end of March, 1869, I got a dolorous letter from the
editor. All the Once a Week people were in a terrible trouble. They
had bought the right of translating one of Victor Hugo's modern
novels, L'Homme Qui Rit; they bad fixed a date, relying on positive
pledges from the French publishers; and now the great French author
had postponed his work from week to week and from month to month,
and it had so come to pass that the Frenchman's grinning hero would
have to appear exactly at the same time as my clergyman. Was it
not quite apparent to me, the editor asked, that Once a Week could
not hold the two? Would I allow my clergyman to make his appearance
in the Gentleman's Magazine instead?
My disgust at this proposition was, I think, chiefly due to Victor
Hugo's latter novels, which I regard as pretentious and untrue to
nature. To this perhaps was added some feeling of indignation that
I should be asked to give way to a Frenchman. The Frenchman had
broken his engagement. He had failed to have his work finished by
the stipulated time. From week to week and from month to month he
had put off the fulfilment of his duty. And because of these laches
on his part,--on the part of this sententious French Radical,--I was
to be thrown over! Virtue sometimes finds it difficult to console
herself even with the double comfort. I would not come out in the
Gentleman's Magazine, and as the Grinning Man could not be got out
of the way, by novel was published in separate numbers.
The same thing has occurred to me more than once since. "You no
doubt are regular," a publisher has said to me, "but Mr. ---- is
irregular. He has thrown me out, and I cannot be ready for you till
three months after the time named." In these emergencies I have
given perhaps half what was wanted, and have refused to give the
other half. I have endeavoured to fight my own battle fairly, and
at the same time not to make myself unnecessarily obstinate. But
the circumstances have impressed on my mind the great need there is
that men engaged in literature should feel themselves to be bound
to their industry as men know that they are bound in other callings.
There does exist, I fear, a feeling that authors, because they are
authors, are relieved from the necessity of paying attention to
everyday rules. A writer, if he be making (pounds)800 a year, does not think
himself bound to live modestly on (pounds)600, and put by the remainder
for his wife and children. He does not understand that he should
sit down at his desk at a certain hour. He imagines that publishers
and booksellers should keep all their engagements with him to
the letter;--but that he, as a brain-worker, and conscious of the
subtle nature of the brain, should be able to exempt himself from
bonds when it suits him. He has his own theory about inspiration
which will not always come,--especially will not come if wine-cups
overnight have been too deep. All this has ever been odious to
me, as being unmanly. A man may be frail in health, and therefore
unable to do as he has contracted in whatever grade of life. He who
has been blessed with physical strength to work day by day, year
by year--as has been my case--should pardon deficiencies caused
by sickness or infirmity. I may in this respect have been a little
hard on others,--and, if so, I here record my repentance. But
I think that no allowance should be given to claims for exemption
from punctuality, made if not absolutely on the score still with
the conviction of intellectual superiority.
The Vicar of Bullhampton was written chiefly with the object of
exciting not only pity but sympathy for fallen woman, and of raising
a feeling of forgiveness for such in the minds of other women. I
could not venture to make this female the heroine of my story. To
have made her a heroine at all would have been directly opposed
to my purpose. It was necessary therefore that she should be
a second-rate personage in the tale;--but it was with reference to
her life that the tale was written, and the hero and the heroine with
their belongings are all subordinate. To this novel I affixed a
preface,--in doing which I was acting in defiance of my old-established
principle. I do not know that any one read it; but as I wish to
have it read, I will insert it here again:--
"I have introduced in the Vicar of Bullhampton the character of a
girl whom I will call,--for want of a truer word that shall not in
its truth be offensive,--a castaway. I have endeavoured to endow
her with qualities that may create sympathy, and I have brought
her back at last from degradation, at least to decency. I have not
married her to a wealthy lover, and I have endeavoured to explain
that though there was possible to her a way out of perdition, still
things could not be with her as they would have been had she not
fallen.
"There arises, of course, the question whether a novelist, who
professes to write for the amusement of the young of both sexes,
should allow himself to bring upon his stage a character such as
that of Carry Brattle. It is not long since,--it is well within the
memory of the author,--that the very existence of such a condition
of life as was hers, was supposed to be unknown to our sisters and
daughters, and was, in truth, unknown to many of them. Whether that
ignorance was good may be questioned; but that it exists no longer
is beyond question. Then arises the further question,--how far the
conditions of such unfortunates should be made a matter of concern
to the sweet young hearts of those whose delicacy and cleanliness
of thought is a matter of pride to so many of us. Cannot women,
who are good, pity the sufferings of the vicious, and do something
perhaps to mitigate and shorten them without contamination from the
vice? It will be admitted probably by most men who have thought
upon the subject that no fault among us is punished so heavily
as that fault, often so light in itself but so terrible in its
consequences to the less faulty of the two offenders, by which a
woman falls. All of her own sex is against her, and all those of
the other sex in whose veins runs the blood which she is thought
to have contaminated, and who, of nature, would befriend her, were
her trouble any other than it is.
"She is what she is, and she remains in her abject, pitiless,
unutterable misery, because this sentence of the world has placed
her beyond the helping hand of Love and Friendship. It may be said,
no doubt, that the severity of this judgment acts as a protection
to female virtue,--deterring, as all known punishments do deter, from
vice. But this punishment, which is horrible beyond the conception
of those who have not regarded it closely, is not known beforehand.
Instead of the punishment, there is seen a false glitter of gaudy
life,--a glitter which is damnably false,--and which, alas I has
been more often portrayed in glowing colours, for the injury of
young girls, than have those horrors which ought to deter, with
the dark shadowings which belong to them.
"To write in fiction of one so fallen as the noblest of her sex,
as one to be rewarded because of her weakness, as one whose life