2
The best novels are written from a blending of all three motives. But it is doubtful if a good novel has ever been written in which the desire to satisfy some instinct in himself was not present in the writer’s purpose.
Just what this instinct is can’t so easily be answered. Without doubt the greatest part of it is the instinct of paternity. Into the physiological aspects of the subject we shall not enter, though they are supported by a considerable body of evidence. The longing to father—or mother—certain fictitious characters is not often to be denied. Sometimes the story as a story, as an entity, is the beloved child of its author. Did not Dickens father Little Nell? How, do you suppose, Barrie has thought of himself in relation to some of his youngsters? Any one who has read Lore of Proserpine not only believes in fairies but understands the soul of Maurice Hewlett. The relation of the creator of a story to his persons is not necessarily parental. It is always intensely human.
O. Henry was variously a Big Brother (before the Big Brothers had been thought of), a father, an uncle, a friend, a distant cousin, a mere acquaintance, a sworn enemy of his people. It has to be so. For the writer lives among the people he creates. The cap of Fortunatus makes him invisible to them but he is always there—not to interfere with them nor to shape their destinies but to watch them come together or fly apart, to hear what they say, to guess what they think (from what they say and from the way they behave), to worry over them, applaud them, frown; but forever as a recorder.