However, before examining the novels themselves, it is proper to put down here some things that Mr. Lincoln has said, at one time or another, showing his attitude toward them. Of course his attitude toward other kinds of fiction is a part of his general attitude, and so:
“I read all sorts of books and at all times. I don’t know that I can name any particular author who may be called my favourite. I am very fond of Stevenson, for instance—but then, so I am of Kipling, except his more recent stories, which have a bit too much British Empire in them to please me,—of Mark Twain, of W. J. Locke, and many others. I think I like a story for the story’s sake. I like to like my characters or dislike them in the old-fashioned way. It is for this reason perhaps that the work of such writers as Arnold Bennett, William De Morgan, Joseph Conrad, and others, of the realistic school, so-called, does not appeal to me as much as—well, as Mr. Locke’s work, for instance. I realise,—no one can help realising—the fine literary craftsmanship in a book like Lord Jim. It is a wonderful piece of character mosaic, and yet in reading it I am always conscious of the literary work. I say to myself, ‘This is marvellous; see how the writer is picking his hero to pieces, thought by thought, motive by motive.’ And being so conscious of the writer, I do not lose myself in the story. This is not offered as a criticism; certainly I should not presume to criticise Mr. Bennett or Mr. Conrad. It is more of a confession of something lacking on my part. I enjoy reading Lord Jim, or The Old Wives’ Tale, but I do not return to them again and again as I do to The Beloved Vagabond or The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne. Perhaps this is, as some of my realistically inclined friends tell me, a childish love for romance on my part. Well, perhaps it is. If it is, I can’t help it; as I said, this statement is not offered as an excuse, but a confession.
“This sort of thing shows in my own stories. It would be very hard for me to write a long story which should end dismally. It is only too true that stories in real life frequently end that way, but I don’t like my yarns to do so. So it is fair to presume that in whatever books I may hereafter write, the hero and the heroine will be united, virtue rewarded and vice punished, as has happened in those for which I am already responsible. Perhaps this same weakness for a story, a cheerful story, makes me care little for the so-called problem novel. It doesn’t mean that I am not fond of novels dealing with certain kinds of problems. Winston Churchill’s The Inside of the Cup I liked immensely; but the sex problem, the divorce question, and all that sort of thing does not appeal to me. A morbid lot of disagreeable people, married or otherwise, moping and quarrelling through a long story seem to me scarcely worth while. To a specialist in nervous diseases such a study might be interesting, but I really doubt if the average healthy man or woman finds it so. Certainly we should not care to associate with such people were they living near us. We should get away from them if we could.
“Perhaps I could write a story with gloomy situations and an unhappy ending, but I wouldn’t like to try it. I would much rather try to make people cheerful and keep myself cheerful at the same time. There’s enough sorrow in this world without finding it in books.”
So he spoke ten years ago; so, with possibly the change of an illustration or two, would he speak today. From nine in the morning until noon or one o’clock he disappears into his workshop, frequently a place known only to himself, and either writes (with a soft, stubby pencil, on large sheets of yellow paper) or thinks about characters and the very attenuated skeleton which, for Mr. Lincoln, constitutes the “plot.”
“I know there are people who can turn out a short story in two or three hours and it will be good enough to sell, but I cannot help feeling that it would have been much better if the writer had devoted more time to it. In my case, doing work that is satisfactory to me in any degree means that I must fairly sweat it out, if I may use the expression.” There usually comes a time when he gets “a letter about once a week asking how the thing is coming along. That has been a frequent experience, especially when there are a lot of characters in my story, and I’m having more or less trouble with them. The story keeps stretching itself out. I think I may have to adopt Mark Twain’s method, and begin throwing my people down the well.” There is a genial artifice about nearly all his tales. Some years ago an interviewer for the Boston Globe touched on the subject of “specialty” writing, which was a natural topic, as all of Mr. Lincoln’s fiction is a highly specialised affair, not only in its general localisation on Cape Cod but in its characterisation and homely wit and humour. The author said:
“A man writes what he knows. If he tries anything else it must fall—show hollow. And I find that it is necessary to write to your audience—that one must consider that a large number of his readers are to be women, and he must write things that will appeal to the women of today.”
“You don’t mean that you would consider the women to the point of writing stuff that would be saleable, and refrain from writing stuff which appealed to you, but might not be saleable?”
“Well,” said Mr. Lincoln, slowly, “I haven’t any ‘message’ that I know of. I’m not much of a high-brow. I have standards, though. And if I am to do the thing I want to do, I must get my book printed. But I’ve never been satisfied—although I did like The Postmaster pretty well.”
This was ten years ago, and Mr. Lincoln has gone on, unchanging. He has the most enviable record of any living American writer. No book of his has been a failure. Some have done better than others, but with no serious qualification of the statement it can be said that each book has added to his audience, so that he has for some years been an unfailing best seller. Perhaps there has been a noticeable increase in his popularity with and since The Portygee (1919), which was published serially and then surprised the publishers by beating Lincoln records as a book. Or the gain may be traceable to the preceding book, “Shavings,” and its successful dramatisation. But in his sustained, unbroken and increasing popularity as a fictionist Mr. Lincoln has no competitor. There are others whose individual books have sold more heavily, whose total sales may be larger, but they have had lapses, and their popularity has either been impaired or lost. Even as I write the process known in the trade as “slipping” is observable, here and there, in the case of one of the most popular American authors, a person with a long record of immediate successes, one of whose work the American soldier, in 1917-18, could not apparently get enough. Time does this thing, but apparently it cannot touch, except to enhance, the passion for the work of this native of Cape Cod, who clips his words a little and sometimes says “hev” and “hed” for “have” and “had”—about whom there is even a suspicion of the Down East nasal twanging as he talks. A wholly lovable personality. He once wrote: