One day, during a chat concerning the success of a well-known magazine that was current some five-and-twenty or thirty years ago, which he edited, Henty laughingly complained to the writer about the way in which boys of this type troubled him with their opinions. One of them—it was in the early days when this corrupt word was beginning to be utilised in boy life as something very forcible and expressive—wrote and asked him why he put such “rot” in his paper. One fancies one can recall at the present moment the grim, half-amused, half-angry expression of the editor’s face as he related the anecdote. But it is only fair to say that such young gentlemen are the exceptions, and when a boy does praise, he can do it with a warmth that makes his favourite author’s cheeks glow with pride, for he feels that the criticism is very honest and true.
And boys can write very very pleasant letters, such as set one thinking that one would like to know the writers. Some of their letters show very plainly what the young correspondents have thought as they read, though they often enough cause much amusement by their naïveté, especially those which come suddenly from the most out-of-the-way places. These are some of the great rewards which come to a writer, and make up for many a long day of drudgery in the cause of duty on days when nature is preaching idleness to a worker, and is calling to him with her myriad voices to leave the pen and desk and come and commune with her while there is time; on days—those rare days—when she is all smiles, and full of suggestions of those bright days of the past, which seem to have become rarer as one has been growing old.
Henty had a little selection of correspondents’ letters sent from out-of-the-way places. One was from an American boy, written with all the quaint naïveté and ignorance of one who was on his travels to see what the world was really like. He writes from Italy, after “doing” England with his father:—
Hotel Europa, Venezia, March 22nd, 1889.
Dear Mr Henty,
I am an American boy, ten years old, travelling in Europe. I read some of your books at home, and enjoyed them so much that, as soon as I arrived in London, I wanted to go to Mr Blackie’s, hoping to see you and all your books. So when I had been to Westminster Abbey and the Tower, my father took me there; but I could not see you, and the books were shut up. But the gentleman was very kind to me, and brought some of them out, and I went home laden. I think The Lion of Saint Mark is splendid. I am reading it here, and am sure Malleo lived in this house. I have been to the very place in the Piazetta where Matteo and Francis had their first conversation.
Yours respectfully, —.
Nothing could be more amusing than the boy’s mingling of shrewdness and innocence respecting the author’s connection with his publisher. There is something in it suggestive of the days of Newbery and Dodsley, with an idea evidently in the boy’s mind that publishers kept authors in stock. But it is the letter of a clever boy notwithstanding, blessed with a father aiming at increasing his boy’s store of knowledge in the wisest way extant.
Such letters come abundantly to a boys’ author; but Henty thought far more highly of those which he received from girls, for where there is a girl in the same family the brothers’ books are generally common stock, and are carefully read, appreciated, and judged. The author declares that girls write more intelligently and evince greater judgment in their criticisms, while those who write, especially American girls, make a point of requesting an answer, and do not shrink from asking for the author’s autograph to add to the collection being made.
At the same time, unconscious of the estimation in which the sister is held by her correspondent, the boy does not fail to write in a half-contemptuous spirit like this: “Dear Mr -, I have read your story, which I and my brother think splendid. Emmie has read it too, and she says it’s delightful; but then, she’s only a girl.”
A propos of the boy seeker for an author’s autograph, there are many of these acquisitive young gentlemen who make applications by post and do not get one, even on days when the author is in his most amiable frame of mind. Possibly this is due to the fact that they are perfectly unconscious of being propagators of a custom which has grown into a heavy tax. Others, more wise in their young generation, make a point of enclosing a carefully-directed and stamped envelope, which places the person addressed in the position of a creditor, whose conscience immediately smites him with the suggestion that it would be churlish and rude not to reply. And somehow almost invariably those young gentlemen obtain the addition to their collection that they have sought.
Boys’ writers most probably do not have more worries than other people, but they have to submit to one nuisance from the selfish and thoughtless which does go very much against the grain. Fancy being a man who feels himself in duty bound to fulfil an engagement to write some four, five, or six thousand words of a story pretty well every day. Is it not extremely probable that when that long tale of words is written he will lay the pen down with a feeling of weariness, almost of loathing and disgust. Imagine his feelings, then, when he finds in his correspondence a letter from some absolute stranger, enclosing a long manuscript which he has written “especially for boys,” with the request that “as the recipient is so clever and knows so well exactly what a boy likes, he will be good enough to read it at once and give his opinion upon its merits”? Now, human nature is human nature, and as a weary writer has a great deal of that sad human nature in his composition, and is prone to be irritable, surely it is not surprising that for a few minutes he falls into a fretful state, and mentally asks this would-be scribe why he does not send his MS to an editor or other practised judge of people’s works for his opinion about the unknown one’s literary production?
Henty uttered his wail to one of his visitors who recorded an interview, and then confessed to being as weak and amiable as many others of his craft, for he says: “I do generally read them, and have helped several men to get publishers; but, of course, the great majority of the stories are hopelessly unfit for boys. One does not like to write back and say that the work is confounded rubbish, although I suppose it would be the most merciful thing to do, as it would prevent the writer from wasting his time. I let them down as lightly as I can.”