Unvarnished Tales

Transcribed from the 1886 edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
BY WILLIAM MACKAY.
LONDON: SWAN SONNENSCHEIN, LOWREY AND CO., PATERNOSTER SQUARE.
1886.

Printed by Hazell, Watson, & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury.
TO REGINALD SHIRLEY BROOKS.
In the Times newspaper of Monday, 1st July, 18–, there appeared a notice of Mr. White’s last novel. The notice—for one cannot dignify with the name of review an article which did not exceed a quarter of a column—contained the following sentence:—
“Mr. White’s novels appear to us to lack but one element. Having achieved that one thing needful, Mr. White at once and without cavil takes his place in the first rank of modern novelists. In one word, Mr. White must learn to study Human Nature from the life. His characters are too often evolved from his inner consciousness, and as beings thus produced are apt to be wanting in backbone, it is not surprising that many of this popular author’s works are weak and flabby—shadows without substance—pictures without colour. If Mr. White were to give one-half of the time to the study of the men and women by whom he is surrounded, which he gives to the elaboration of plot and the cultivation of style, we do not know that there is any seat in the republic of letters which we would deny him.”
Mr. White was a timid gentleman, with thin reddish hair—a very tall forehead and weak eyes. He was also a very well tailored man, and lived in a neatly-appointed villa, in the Hilgrove Road, St. John’s Wood, N.W. He was married, but had no children. He was by profession a briefless barrister, but he made his name by writing novels. It so happened that the public applauded Mr. White from the very first moment that he appealed to them—at least in book form: his tentative efforts in periodicals having fallen very short of creating a furor . His nonsense, which, it must be confessed, was not of a very rollicking description, suited their nonsense. And that was the whole secret of his success. Being a very industrious man, he wrote a great many fictions, and being modest withal, attributed his fame to hard work rather than to any endowment of genius.