"Why talk of hindrances to publishing such a book, when you know full well it will never be written?"
"I thought you would be driven to some such stupid knock-down argument. Whether or not the book will ever be finished is a question that lies on the knees of the gods. I am writing at it every day. And just such a book was written once and even published; as I discovered the other day in an essay by Mr. Austin Dobson. The author, I grant you, was a Dutchman (Mr. Dobson calls him 'Vader Cats,') and the book contains everything from a long didactic poem on Marriage (I also have written a long didactic poem on Marriage) to a page on Children's Games. (My book shall have a chapter on Children's Games, with their proper tunes.) As for poetry—poetry, says Mr. Dobson, with our Dutch poet is not by any means a trickling rill from Helicon: 'it is an inundation à la mode du pays, a flood in a flat land, covering everything far and near with its sluggish waters.' As for the illustrations, listen to this for the kind of thing I demand:—
"Perhaps the most interesting of these is to be found in the large head-piece to the above-mentioned Children's Games, the background of which exhibits the great square of Middleburgh, with its old Gothic houses and central clump of trees. This is, moreover, as delightful a picture as any in the gallery. Down the middle of the foreground, which is filled by a crowd of figures, advances a regiment of little Dutchmen, marching to drum and fife, and led by a fire-eating captain of fifteen. Around this central group are dispersed knots of children playing leap-frog, flying kites, blowing bubbles, whipping tops, walking on stilts, skipping, and the like. In one corner the children are busy with blind man's buff; in the other the girls, with their stiff head-dresses and vandyked aprons, are occupied with their dolls. Under the pump some seventeenth-century equivalent for chuck-farthing seems to be going on vigorously; and, not to be behind-hand in the fun, two little fellows in the distance are standing upon their heads. The whole composition is full of life and movement, and—so conservative is childhood—might, but for the costume and scene, represent a playground of to-day."
"Perhaps the most interesting of these is to be found in the large head-piece to the above-mentioned Children's Games, the background of which exhibits the great square of Middleburgh, with its old Gothic houses and central clump of trees. This is, moreover, as delightful a picture as any in the gallery. Down the middle of the foreground, which is filled by a crowd of figures, advances a regiment of little Dutchmen, marching to drum and fife, and led by a fire-eating captain of fifteen. Around this central group are dispersed knots of children playing leap-frog, flying kites, blowing bubbles, whipping tops, walking on stilts, skipping, and the like. In one corner the children are busy with blind man's buff; in the other the girls, with their stiff head-dresses and vandyked aprons, are occupied with their dolls. Under the pump some seventeenth-century equivalent for chuck-farthing seems to be going on vigorously; and, not to be behind-hand in the fun, two little fellows in the distance are standing upon their heads. The whole composition is full of life and movement, and—so conservative is childhood—might, but for the costume and scene, represent a playground of to-day."
"Such are the pictures which shall emerge, like islands, among my dull pages. And there shall be other pages, to be found for the looking.… I must make another call upon your memory, my friend, and refer it to a story of Hans Andersen's which fascinated the pair of us in childhood, when we were not really a pair but inseparables, and before you had grown wise; the story of the Student and the Goblin who lodged at the Butterman's. The Student, at the expense of his dinner, had rescued a book from the butter-tub and taken it off to his garret, and that night the Goblin, overcome by curiosity, peeped through the keyhole, and lo! the garret was full of light. Forth and up from the book shot a beam of light, which grew into the trunk of a mighty tree, and threw out branches over the bowed head of the student; and every leaf was fresh, and every flower a face, and every fruit a star, and music sang in the branches. Well, there shall be even such pages in my book."
"Excuse me," said I, "but, knowing your indolence, I begin to tire of the future indicative, which (allow me to repeat) you first employed in this discussion."
"I did not," said the other part of me stoutly. "And if I did, 'tis a trick of the trade. You of all people ought to know that I write romances."
I do not at all demur to having the value of my books enhanced by the contributions of others—by dear grandpapa's autograph on the fly-leaf, for example. But it annoys me to be blamed for other folks' opinions.
The other day a visitor called and discoursed with me during the greater part of a wet afternoon. He had come for an interview—'dreadful trade,' as Edgar said of samphire-gathering—and I wondered, as he took his departure, what on earth he would find to write about: for I love to smoke and listen to other men's opinions, and can boast with Montaigne that during these invasive times my door has stood open to all comers. He was a good fellow, too; having brains and using them: and I made him an admirable listener.
It amused me, some while after, to read the interview and learn that I had done the talking and uttered a number of trenchant sayings upon female novelists. But the amusement changed to dismay when the ladies began to retort. For No. 1 started with an airy restatement of what I had never said, and No. 2 (who had missed to read the interview) misinterpreted No. 1.'s paraphrase; and by these and other processes within a week my digestive silence had passed through a dozen removes, and was incurring the just execration of a whole sex. I began to see that my old college motto—Quod taciturn velis nemini dixeris—which had always seemed to me to err, if at all, on the side of excess, fell short of adequacy to these strenuous times.