“Yes; even your public.”
He brooded a little.
“I am told that Lucas Malet’s publishers believe in the book,” he said, after a longish pause, “and are prepared to spend a small fortune in pushing it. And that, of course, means that it will interfere with, and perhaps seriously injure, the sales of my own story. But it seems to me that the public—the real public—will never read a novel that has for its chief attraction a man with no legs.”
I suggested that he should postpone the publication of his book until the rage for Sir Richard Calmady had died down. But no! This would not suit him. He must catch the real holiday season at its full tide. August was the best month in the year, and the first week the best week in the month, and the fifth day the best day of the week.
Hall Caine always shows great perspicacity in selecting the date of publication for his books; he will never allow it to synchronise with any other big event. Moreover, his book must be born to an expectant world; it must be well [125] ]advertised beforehand. Unlike other writers, he does not work hard at a book, finish it and then hand it over to a publisher to deal with more or less as he thinks fit. In a sense, he is his own publisher, and as a rule he interests himself in the sale of a new work of his own, in its distribution, its printing and binding, etc., as much as the actual publisher himself.
. . . . . . . .
It used to be a popular belief—but Arnold Bennett has done much to kill it—that an author laughs and cries with the creatures of his imagination, that he lives and dreams with them, and that when his book is finished, and the time comes for him to part from them, he does so with pain that is little short of anguish. So far as most authors are concerned, this is exactly opposite to the real facts. Before an author is half-way through his novel he is heartily sick of his characters; his beautiful heroine is an unmitigated nuisance and his hero an incredible bore. He is only too thankful to reach the end of the last chapter and leave his puppets for ever.
But this is not so with Hall Caine. His novels, as you know, do not err on the side of brevity, and though it is possible you may tire of his heroine, you may be absolutely certain that her creator never does. To this novelist the creatures of his imagination are, in one sense, more real than the material beings around him. He is wholly dominated by his imagination. His brain is peopled by creatures of his own fancy. His emotions are engaged on behalf of people who do not exist. His consciousness is confined to the little world he has created for himself and he is saturated with and submerged by fancies that his imagination has bred.
I shall never forget coming across him early one morning in the little shaded footway that winds among trees in the castle grounds to the main drive. His eyes were dim, and he had not perfect control of his voice.
[126]
]“I have been finishing my book,” he said, referring to The Eternal City, “and I wept as I wrote.”