“Those are all wide of the mark. I hardly think you are likely to guess correctly.”
“Well,” I said, “there is one comfort: I can see precisely what sort of heroine you are—in appearance. That is a great start. Nowadays, we have to do a heap of guessing as to the embodied element in the heroines we read about. We all have prejudices, and it is nice to get rid of them at the beginning. I knew of a New England lady who was immensely disappointed in her new pastor because, as she said, she ‘never could abide a minister who was light complected.’”
“I am sorry to rob you of the privilege of fashioning the physical heroine after your own fancy. I always like to have at least a little of my own way in the matter of the hero. When he is described too circumstantially there is nothing left for me. You see I might object to the hero who was light complected.”
“O, I can see,” I said, “that you probably dote on these disembodied novels that deal entirely with emotions, that have been trying for a decade or two to get as far as possible from the Dickens Gentleman-with-the-White-Waistcoat point of view. For a long time it seems to have been considered vulgar in a literary sense to descend to the description of clothes—as if clothes were not of great importance in helping us to get at the character of a man—or a woman.”
“But we don’t need that help in a book, do we, when we have the author to tell us what is inside?”
“Yes, that is what those fellows will tell you. But is that really so? When we know what the character looks like—that is, what the author thinks the character looks like—do we not gain a definite and necessary impression beyond that which the author sets out to give?”
“Perhaps the author doesn’t want you to go wandering off that way. When he is so ready to tell you what is inside, what is the use of giving you material for any other impression?”
“Because the reader will have an impression of his own anyway, and the author owes him all the facts. Now, let us suppose that some one was to go on with a story about you, a mysterious young woman in a Pullman coach; can’t you see that it would be vastly more interesting to me because I could picture you easily as the story went on? Don’t you suppose that I should be more likely to be interested in your emotions because I had seen you than I should in seeing you because I had heard about your emotions?”