“‘Then,’ I went on, ticking off each item on my fingers, ‘come Tom Cragg, the pugilist——’
“‘Better and better!’ nodded the Tinker.
“‘——a long-legged soldier of the Peninsula, an adventure at a lonely tavern, a flight through woods at midnight pursued by desperate villains, and—a most extraordinary tinker.’”
The tinker approves of all these things, but urges that there must also be in the story blood, and baronets, and, above all, love and plenty of it, and though Peter Vibart is doubtful about these ingredients because he lacks experience of them, as he goes on his journey he makes acquaintance with them all, and they are all in the story before it ends. The tinker was only interpreting the passion for romance that is in Everyman when he pleaded for the inclusion of picturesque or emotional elements that Peter was for omitting, and the instant and continuing popularity of “The Broad Highway” shows that he was a correct interpreter.
Born no longer ago than 1878, Farnol is younger than that in everything but years. If he is seldom seen in literary circles it is simply because the country draws him more than the town; he is the most sociable of men, and his intimates will tell you that the geniality, the warmth of feeling, the shrewd, humorous philosophy that are in his books are also in himself; that his love of romance is as genuine and inherent as every other sense belonging to him, and, consequently, when he sits to write on the themes that naturally appeal to him he merely follows Samuel Daniel’s counsel and dips his pen into his heart.
JOHN GALSWORTHY
John Galsworthy
In attempting a personal description of almost any living poet or novelist it is becoming such a customary thing to say he does not look in the least like an author that I am beginning to feel a consuming curiosity to know what an author looks like and what can cause him to look so entirely different from men of other professions that you can tell him for one at a glance. In my own experience, the worst poetry nowadays is written by men of the most picturesquely poetical appearance, and the best by men who are stout, or bald, or of an otherwise commonplace or unattractive exterior. Nor among the many literary persons I have met do I remember meeting even one novelist of genius who looked it. How this myth of the ideal author, the splendid creature carrying his credentials in his face, came into being is not within my knowledge. An old gentleman of my acquaintance who had, in his time, set eyes on Dickens assured me that he was an insignificant little person who might have passed for a retired sea-captain. Thackeray rather resembled a prize fighter who had gone flabby. Trollope, with his paunch and massive beard suggested the country squire. Browning would not have seemed out of place as a bank manager, and though Tennyson was said to look a typical poet, he really looked much more like a typical stage brigand.
The fact is that while other trades and professions have developed recognizable characteristics in such as follow them, literature has naturally failed to do that. For men are drawn into it from all sections of the community and there is no more reason that they should conform to a family likeness than that they should each write the same kind of books. They do not even, in appearance, live up to the books they write. Stanley Weyman looks as unromantic as Austin Chamberlain; that daring realist George Moore gazes on you with the blue-eyed innocence of a new curate; and the mild and gentle aspect of Thomas Burke does not harmonize with the violence and grim horrors of his tales of Chinatown.