Peeps at People / Being Certain Papers from the Writings of Anne Warrington Witherup

by John Kendrick Bangs

"Are you going to read from your own works in America, or not? Dr. Doyle, Dr. Watson, Anthony Hope, Matthew Arnold, and Richard Le Gallienne have done it. How about yourself?" I said.

Mr. Sienkiewicz sighed.

"I wanted to, but I can't," said he. "Nobody will have me."

"Nonsense," said I. "Have you? They'll all have you."

"But," he added, "how can I? One must be introduced, and how can chairmen of the evening introduce me?"

"They have intelligence," said I. And some of them have, so I was quite right.

"Yes, but they have no enunciation or memory," said he. "I can explain forever the pronunciation of my name, but your American chairman can never remember how it is pronounced. I shall not go."

And so I departed from the house of Mr. Sienkiewicz.

I can't really see why, when he was making a name for himself, he did not choose one that people outside of his own country could speak occasionally without wrecking their vocal chords—one like Boggs, for instance.