A NOVEL WITH A PURPOSE.
Dear Mr. Punch,
How a few hundred pounds may be easily and honestly earned is a problem which daily exercises the imaginations of thousands. I was fortunate enough to hit upon a plan which I now feel it to be my duty to make as widely known as possible for the benefit of those whose need is greater than mine; for, curiously enough, not only did my work bring me in that direct emolument, upon which I not unwarrantably reckoned, but an elderly lady of unstable views was so taken with the chaotic benevolence of my book, that she bequeathed to me a very handsome legacy indeed, and almost immediately enabled me to realise it. Thus does the absolutely unexpected serve as the handmaid of the perfectly unintended, and enterprise retires from the lodgings of struggle to the villa of repose. My plan briefly was to write a quasi-religious Novel with a Purpose. I knew nothing about religion, and had no literary experience, but the purpose I had, and that purpose was, to make enough money to spend six weeks at Herne Bay, a locality to which I am passionately addicted.
A brief sketch of my proceedings will be the best explanation and guide to others. I first bought a sixpenny scrap-album, a pot of paste, and a pair of strong scissors; and a shillingsworth of penny novelettes of various kinds and dates, and a shillingsworth of cheap manuscript-paper completed my outlay. I then took the goods home and got to work. Glancing through the pile of novelettes, I soon found an opening that struck me as most suitable, cut it out, and pasted it in the scrap-book. Now came the chief literary exercise of my task. I had to go carefully through the passage, changing the names of the places and people, and making a few necessary substitutions, e.g., "The cuckoo was calling, and the dove cooing from the neighbouring woodland," would stand in my version "The cuckoo was cuckooing, and the dove calling from the adjacent thicket," while a sky described as "azure" in the original, would figure as "lapis lazuli," or, even blue.
The introduction safely engineered, I took another novelette from the pile, and holding it firmly in the left hand, I grasped the scissors with the thumb and forefinger of the right, cut three or four extracts at random, of rather more than half a column in length, and pasted these in the album, leaving about space enough for a couple of pages of three-volume novel, between each section.
Thus I dealt with my twelve novelettes, and then went through them again, and even again. Then the hard work began. I had to draw up a list of names of my own, and then to go carefully through the extracts, assigning the speeches to the best of my ability to the most suitable of my own characters. This, however, was infinitely less trouble than inventing dialogue, a process for which I always entertained an insuperable aversion. I was also confronted at times by adventures in my extracts which were quite unsuited for the novel with a purpose, which, according to the justest canons, should never get beyond a sprained ankle; and even that has to be handled with the greatest discretion—generally by the wavering curate. So I had in several places to tone down precipices, stay the inflowing tide with more success than King Canute, and stop runaway horses before they had excited alarm in their fair riders, or brought the discarded lover out into the road, saying in a tone of quiet command, "Stop! This cannot be allowed to go any farther."
Next, through the kindness of a friend, who was a householder, I procured a reading ticket for the British Museum Library, and from the writings of Herbert Spencer, Huxley, Emerson, Matthew Arnold, Ruskin, Dr. Momerie, and Mr. Walter Pater, and largely from the more pretentious Reviews and Magazines, I made copious and tolerably bewildering extracts, which I apportioned among the vacant spaces in my story, with more regard to the length than to the circumstances. I next went carefully over the whole, writing in a line here and there to make things smooth and pleasant, and artfully acknowledging the quotations in an incidental manner. The result was a surprisingly interesting and suggestive work, and when I had copied it all out in a fair, clerkly hand, I found no difficulty in disposing of it, to good advantage, to a publisher of repute. The book caught on immensely. I became for one dazzling season a second-rate lion of the first magnitude. I was pointed out by literary celebrities whom nobody knew, to social recruits who knew nobody. I figured prominently in the Saloons of the Mutual-exploitation Societies, and when my name appeared in the minor Society papers among those present at Mrs. Ophir Crowdy's reception, I felt what it was to be famous—and to remain unspoiled.
A word of advice to those who will act upon my suggestions. Pitch your story in the calm domestic key, upon which the depths and obscurities of essayists, philosophers and divines, will come with pleasing incongruity. Thus:—
Chapter I.
"An English Summer day; old Ponto has been lying in the shade of the great elm at the Rectory Gate, too lazy to make even a vigorous snap at the flies, who are circling with mazy persistency round his great, good-humoured head. At the sound of wheels coming along the road, he pricks up his ears, and moves aside just in time to avoid being run over by the chaise from the Hall." Then the rattle of teacups, and the merry voices of tennis-players are interrupted by the barking of Ponto, and the incident of the tramp, lectured by the Rector, and relieved by Lionel, the philanthropic Atheist.
"'I love the Human, I resent the Divine!' said Lionel, carefully shutting his purse.
"'Why, really,' began the Rector, 'I don't know what I have done to incur your resentment.'
"'Pardon me, Sir,' said Lionel, grimly. 'I am speaking of the Divine with a big D.'
"'We never use a big, big D,' laughed Nettie, gaily shaking her curls.
"'Hush!' said Mabel, raising a warning finger at her little rattle-brain."
After this sally you may give two or three pages of discussion, letting the Rector have a good show with some of the Fathers, while Nettie and Lionel reconstruct things, human and divine, in the gloaming. You may carry your party to town in the season, and tantalise your frivolous readers by taking them just up to the Duchess's door. "Here Lionel and Mr. Crumpetter left the ladies, as they had some important business in hand, promising to return for them at six o'clock. They had to go to an architect's office in Great George Street, to inspect the plans of the new Laundry, which Lionel had persuaded the Earl to erect on the waste ground where he had had his memorable conversation with the tinker."
This plan might advantageously be applied to the fashionable, the military, the sporting, and the adventurous novel. Indeed, most writers seem to think that it has been. Meanwhile, nobody need starve while they can turn their scissors to intelligent use. Yours obediently,
The Retired Clipper.
SKETCH AT A CONCERT.
Variations on the Original Hair.