by Unknown
A few years ago, if any one in Fleet Street had said that the day would come when I would devote my time in trying to lose my reputation, I would have smiled incredulously. That was before I had a reputation. To be as statistical as time will allow — for before I go to bed I have seven and a half yards of fiction to write — it took me fifteen years’ hard work to acquire a reputation. For two years after that I worked as diligently to retain it, not being quite certain whether it was really there, and for the last five years I have done my best to get rid of it. Mr. R. L. Stevenson has a story of a dynamiter who tried in vain to leave an infernal machine anywhere. It was always returned to him as soon as he dropped it, or just as he was making off. My reputation is as difficult to lose. I have not given up the attempt yet, but I am already of opinion that it is even harder to lose a reputation in letters than to make one. My colleagues will bear me out in this.
If I recollect aright — for I have published so much that my works are now rather mixed up in my mind, and I have no time to verify anything — the first place I thought to leave my reputation in was a volume of pot-boilers, which I wrote many years ago” for an obscure publication. At that time I was working hard for a reputation elsewhere, and these short stories were only scribbled off for a livelihood. My publisher heard of them recently, and offered me a hundred pounds for liberty to republish them in book form. I pointed out to him that they were very poor stuff, but he said that that had nothing to do with it; I had a reputation now, and they would sell. “With certain misgivings — for I was not hardened yet — I accepted my publisher’s terms, and the book was soon out. The first book I published, which was much the best thing I ever wrote, was only reviewed by three journals, of which two were provincial weeklies. They said it showed signs of haste, though every sentence in it was a labor. I sent copies of it to six or seven distinguished literary men — some of whom are four-in-hand now — and two of them acknowledged receipt of it, though neither said he had read it. My pot-boilers, however, had not been out many weeks before the first edition was exhausted. The book was reviewed everywhere, and, in nine cases out of ten, enthusiastically lauded. It showed a distinct advance on all my previous efforts. They were model stories of their kind. They showed a mature hand. The wit was sparkling. There were pages in the book that no one could read without emotion. In the old days I was paid for these stories at the rate of five shillings the thousand words; but they would make a reputation in themselves now. It has been thus all along. I drop my reputation into every book I write now, but there is no getting rid of it. The critics and the public return it to me, remarking that it grows bigger.
I tried to lose my reputation in several other books of the same kind, and always with the same result. Barnacles are nothing to a literary reputation. Then I tried driving four-in-hand. There are now only five or six of us who are four-in-hand novelists, but there are also four-in-hand essayists, four-in-hand critics, etc., and we all work on the same principle. Every one of us is trying to shake himself free of his reputation. We novelists have, perhaps, the best chance, for there are so few writers of fiction who have a reputation to lose that all the magazine editors come to us for a serial tale. Next year I expect to be six-in-hand, for the provincial weeklies want me as well as the magazines. Any mere outsider would say I was safe to get rid of my reputation this year, for I am almost beating the record in the effort. A novelist of repute, who did not want to lose his reputation, would not think of writing more than one story at a time, and he would take twelve months, at least, to do it. That is not my way. Hitherto, though I have been a member of the literary four-in-hand club, I have always been some way ahead with at least two of my tales before they begin to appear in serial form. You may give up the attempt to lose your reputation, however, if you do not set about it more thoroughly than that; and the four novels which I began in January in two English magazines, one American magazine, and an illustrated paper, were all commenced in the second week of December (I had finished two novels in the last week of November). My original plan was to take them day about, doing about four chapters of each a month; but to give my reputation a still better chance of absconding, I now write them at any time. Nowadays I would never think of working out my plot beforehand. My thinking begins when I take up my pen to write, and ends when I lay it down, or even before that. In one of my stories this year I made my hero save the heroine from a burning house. Had I done that in the old days they would have ridiculed me, but now they say I reveal fresh talent in the delightful way in which I retell a story that has no doubt been told before. The beaten tracks, it is remarked, are the best to tread when the public has such a charming guide as myself. My second novel opens with a shipwreck, and I am nearly three chapters in getting my principal characters into the boats. In my first books I used to guard carefully against the introduction of material that did not advance the story, yet at that time I was charged with “padding.” In this story of the shipwreck there is so much padding that I could blush — if I had not given all that up — to think of it. Instead of confining myself to my own characters, I describe all the passengers in the vessel — telling what they were like in appearance, and what was their occupation, and what they were doing there. Then, when the shipwreck comes, I drown them one by one. By one means or another, I contrive to get six chapters out of that shipwreck, which is followed by two chapters of agony in an open boat, which I treat as if it were a novelty in fiction, and that, again, leads up to a chapter on the uncertainty of life. Most flagrant padding of all is the conversation. It always takes my characters at least two pages to say anything. They approach the point in this fashion:
Tom walked excitedly into the room, in which Peter was awaiting him. The two men looked at each other.
“You wanted to see me?” Tom said at last.
“Yes,” said Peter, slowly, “I wanted to see you.”
Tom looked at the other uneasily.
“Why did you want to see me?” he asked, after a pause.
“I shall tell you,” replied Peter, pointing to a chair.
Tom sat down, and seemed about to speak. But he changed his mind. Peter looked at him curiously.
“Perhaps,” Peter said at last, “you know my reasons for requesting an interview with you here?”
“I cannot say that I do,” answered Tom.
There was another pause, during which the ticking of the clock could be distinctly heard.
“You have no idea?” inquired Peter.
“I have no idea,” replied Tom.
“Do you remember,” asked the older man, a little nervously, “that when old John Vansittart disappeared so suddenly from the Grange there were some persons who believed that he had been foully murdered?”
Tom passed his hand through his hair. “John Yansittart,” he muttered to himself.
“The affair,” continued Peter, “was never cleared up.”
“It was never cleared up,” said Tom. “But why,” he added, “ do you return to this subject?”
“You may well ask,” said Peter, “ why I return to it.”
And so on. There is so much of this kind of thing in my recent novels that if all the lines of it were placed on end I daresay they would reach round the world. Yet I am never charged with padding now. My writing is said to be beautifully lucid. My shipwreck has made several intelligent critics ask if I have ever been a sailor, though I don’t mind saying here, that, like Douglas Jerrold, I only dote upon the sea from the beach. I have been to Dover, but no further, and you will find my shipwreck told (more briefly) in Marryat. I dashed it off less than two months ago, but for the life of me I could not say whether my ship was scuttled, or went on fire, or sprang a leak. Henceforth I shall only refer to it as the shipwreck, and my memory will do all that is required of it if it prevents my mistaking the novel that contains the shipwreck. Even if I did that, however, I know from experience that my reputation would be as safe as the lives of my leading characters. I began my third novel, meaning
to make my hero something of a coward, but though I worked him out after that pattern for a time, I have changed my plan. He is to be peculiarly heroic henceforth. This will not lose me my reputation. It will be said of my hero that he is drawn with no ordinary skill, and that the author sees the two-sidedness of every man’s character. As for the fourth story, it is the second one over again, with the shipwreck omitted. One night when I did not have a chapter to write — a rare thing with me — I read over the first part of this fourth tale — another rare thing — and found it so slip-shod as to be ungrammatical. The second chapter is entirely taken up with a disquisition on bald heads, but the humor of it will be said to increase my reputation. Sometimes when I become despondent of ever losing my reputation, I think of taking a whole year to write one novel in, just to see what I really could do. I wonder whether the indulgent public would notice any difference? Perhaps I could not write carefully now if I tried. The small section of the public that guesses which of the four-in-hand writers I am may think for a moment that this story of how I tried in vain to lose my reputation will help me toward the goal. They are wrong, however. The public will stand anything from us now — or they would get something better.
Q.
A YEAR or two ago it was observed that three writers were using the curiously popular signature “Q.” This was hardly less confusing than that one writer should use three signatures (Grant Allen, Arbuthnot Wilson, and Anon), but as none of the three was willing to try another letter, they had to leave it to the public (whose decision in such matters is final) to say who is Q to it. The public said, “Let him wear this proud letter who can win it,” and for the present at least it is in the possession of the author of “The Splendid Spur” and “The Blue Pavilions.” It would seem, too, as if it were his “to keep,” for “Q” is like the competition cups that are only yours for a season, unless you manage to carry them three times in succession. Mr. Quiller-Couch has been champion Q since 1890.
The interesting question is not so much, What has he done to be the only prominent Q of these years as Is he to be the Q of all time? If so, he will do better work than he has yet done, though several of his latest sketches — and one in particular — are of very uncommon merit. Mr. Quiller-Couch is so unlike Mr. Kipling that one immediately wants to compare them. They are both young, and they have both shown such promise that it will be almost sad if neither can write a book to live — as, of course, neither has done as yet. Mr. Kipling is the more audacious, which is probably a matter of training. He was brought up in India, where one’s beard grows much quicker than at Oxford, and where you not only become a man (and a cynic) in a hurry, but see and hear strange things (and print them) such as the youth of Oxford miss, or, becoming acquainted with, would not dare insert in the local magazine of the moment. So Mr. Kipling’s first work betokened a knowledge of the world that is by no means to be found in “Dead Man’s Rock,” the first book published by Mr. Quiller-Couch. On the other hand, it cannot truly be said that Mr. Kipling’s latest work is stronger than his first, while the other writer’s growth is the most remarkable thing about him. It is precisely the same Mr. Kipling who is now in the magazines that was writing some years ago in India (and a rare good Mr. Kipling, too), but the Mr. Quiller-Couch of to-day is the Quiller-Couch of “Dead Man’s Rock” grown out of recognition. To compare their styles is really to compare the men. Mr. Kipling’s is the more startling, the stronger (as yet), and the more mannered. Mark Twain, it appears, said he reads Mr. Kipling for his style, which is really the same thing as saying you read him for his books, though the American seems only to have meant that he eats the beef because he likes the salt. It is a journalistic style, aiming too constantly at sharp effects, always succeeding in getting them. Sometimes this is contrived at the expense of grammar, as when (a common trick with the author) he ends a story with such a paragraph as “Which is manifestly unfair.” Mr. Quiller-Couch has never sinned in this way, but his first style was somewhat turgid, even melodramatic, and compared with Mr. Kipling’s, lacked distinction. From the beginning Mr. Kipling had the genius for using the right word twice in three times (Mr. Stevenson only misses it about once in twelve), while Mr. Quiller-Couch not only used the wrong word, but weighted it with adjectives. The charge, however, cannot be brought against him to-day, for having begun by writing like a Mr. Haggard not quite sure of himself (if one can imagine, such a Mr. Haggard), and changing to an obvious imitation of Mr. Stevenson, he seems now to have made a style for himself. It is clear and careful, but not as yet strong-winged. Its distinctive feature is that it is curiously musical.
“Dead Man’s Rock” is a capital sensational story to be read and at once forgotten. It was followed by “The Astonishing History of Troy Town,” which was humorous, and proved that the author owed a debt to Dickens. But it was not sufficiently humorous to be remarkable for its humor, and it will go hand in hand with “Dead Man’s Bock” to oblivion. Until “The Splendid Spur” appeared Mr. Quiller-Couch had done little to suggest that an artist had joined the ranks of the story-tellers. It is not in any way a great work, but it was among the best dozen novels of its year, and as the production of a new writer it was one of the most notable. About the same time was published another historical romance of the second class (for to nothing short of Sir Walter shall we give a first-class in this department), “Micah Clarke,” by Mr. Conan Doyle. It was as inevitable that the two books should be compared as that he who enjoyed the one should enjoy the other. In one respect “Micah Clarke” is the better story. It contains one character, a soldier of fortune, who is more memorable than any single figure in “The Splendid Spur.” This, however, is effected at a cost, for this man is the book. It contains, indeed, two young fellows, one of them a John Ridd, but no Diana Yernon would blow a kiss to either. Both stories are weak in pathos, despite Joan, but there are a score of humorous situations in “The Splendid Spur” that one could not forget if he would — which he would not — as, for instance, where hero and heroine are hidden in barrels in a ship, and hero cries through his bunghole, “Wilt marry me, sweetheart?” to which heroine replies, “ Must get out of this cask first.” Better still is the scene in which Captain Billy expatiates, with a mop and a bucket, on the merits of his crew. But the passages are for reading, not for hearing about. Of the characters, this same Captain Billy is not the worst, but perhaps the best is Joan, Mr. Quiller-Couch’s first successful picture of a girl. A capital eccentric figure is killed (some good things are squandered in this book) just when we are beginning to find him a genuine novelty. Anything that is ready to leap into danger seems to be thought good enough for the hero of a fighting romance, so that Jack Marvel will pass (though Delia, as is right and proper, is worth two of him, despite her coming-on disposition). The villain is a failure, and the plot poor. Nevertheless there are some ingenious complications in it. Jack’s escape by means of the hangman’s rope, which was to send him out of the world in a few hours, is a fine rollicking bit of sensation. Where Mr. Quiller-Couch and Mr. Conan Doyle both fail as compared with the great master of romance is in the introduction of historical figures and episodes. Scott would have been a great man if he had written no novel but “The Abbot” (one of his second best), and no part of “The Abbot” but the scene in which Mary signs away her crown. Mr. Quiller-Couch almost entirely avoids such attempts, and even Mr. Conan Doyle only dips into them timidly. There is, one has been told, a theory that the romancist has no right to picture history in this way. But he makes his rights when he does it as Scott did it.
Since “The Splendid Spur,” Mr. Quiller-Couch has published nothing in book form which can be considered an advance on his best novel, but there have appeared by him a number of short Cornish sketches, which are perhaps best considered as experiments. They are perilously slight, and where they are successful one remembers them as sweet dreams or like a bar of music. All aim at this effect, so that many should not be taken at a time, and some (as was to be expected with such delicate work)
miss their mark. It might be said that in several of these melodies Mr. Quiller-Couch has been writing the same thing again and again, determined to succeed absolutely, if not this time then the next, and if not the next then the time after. In one case he has succeeded absolutely. “The Small People” is a prose “Song of the Shirt.” To my mind this is a rare piece of work, and the biggest thing for its size that has been done in English fiction for some years.
These sketches have been called experiments. They show (as his books scarcely show) that Mr. Quiller-Couch can feel. They suggest that he may be able to do for Cornwall what Mr. Hardy has done for Dorset — though the methods of the two writers are as unlike as their counties. But that can only be if in filling his notebook with these little comedies and tragedies Mr. Quiller-Couch is preparing for more sustained efforts.
“Our hope and heart is with thee
We will stand and mark.”
RULES FOR CARVING.
Rule I. — It is not good form to climb onto the table. There is no doubt a great temptation to this. When you are struggling with a duck, and he wobbles over just as you think you have him, you forget yourself. The common plan is not to leap upon the table all at once. This is the more usual process: The carver begins to carve sitting. By and by he is on his feet, and his brow is contracted. His face approaches the fowl, as if he wanted to inquire within about everything except that the duck is reluctant to yield any of its portions. One of his feet climbs into his chair, then the other. His knees are now resting against the table, and, in his excitement, he, so to speak, flings himself upon the fowl. This brings us to Rule II. — Carving should not be made a matter of brute force. It ought from the outset to be kept in mind that you and the duck are not pitted against each other in mortal combat. Never wrestle with any dish whatever; in other words, keep your head, and if you find yourself becoming excited, stop and count a hundred. This will calm you, when you can begin again.