“Publishers, though very few would acknowledge this, can really do very little for a book. What helps more than anything is for the book to be talked about.”
His death was a loss to the entire literary profession.
He lived at Hampstead in a charming old house not far from George du Maurier and Frank Holl; in fact, in the early days of my married life, there was quite a little colony of interesting people living in that neighbourhood, and we often drove up on Sundays for luncheon or to call on those delightful folk.
Are there any novelists to-day who make enormous sums? When Sir Walter Besant himself died he left only £6000.
Looking back into the recesses of one’s memory two women writers, who died within a few weeks of each other (1906), come to mind; two women entirely distinct in their lives and in their deaths, in their writings, in their purpose. One rich, popular, and brilliant; the other poor, popular, and—less brilliant, perhaps, but so extraordinarily brave and persevering, that if it be true that genius is the capacity to take infinite pains, no one will deny the late Mrs. J. H. Riddell’s genius.
The first woman writer of these two was Mrs. Craigie (John Oliver Hobbes).
And Mrs. Craigie was herself a dual personality. As a girl she was full of romance, sentiment, enthusiasm, and fire. Mrs. Craigie as a woman renounced romance—of which she had but a sad experience—and sought solace in religion. The dissection of love and the solace of religion became the keynotes of her writings.
“John Oliver Hobbes” was another person altogether. He was a cynic, clever, brilliant, at times as hard as his name implied. He was the mask, the curb by which the budding womanhood of Mrs. Craigie was extinguished and held in check. The death of this duplex personality was a real loss.