“I write every day from ten in the morning till two in the afternoon, alone and undisturbed.... I generally scribble off the first rough draft of a story very rapidly in pencil; then I copy it out in pen and ink, chapter by chapter, with fastidious care, not only because I like a neat manuscript, but because I think everything that is worth doing at all is worth doing well.... I find, too, that in the gradual process of copying by hand, the original draft, like a painter’s first sketch, gets improved and enlarged.”
The “Romance,” then, according to this salubrious programme, entered quietly into a state of being. Miss Corelli was doubtful whether it would ever find a publisher: her first notion was to offer it to Arrowsmith, as a railway-stall novelette. Possibly the success of “Called Back” suggested the Bristol publisher, the title she first fixed upon, “Lifted Up,” being eminently suggestive of a shilling series. However, the manuscript never went westwards—a matter which good Mr. Arrowsmith has excellent cause to regret—for, in the interim, as a kind of test of its merit or demerit, Miss Corelli sent it to Bentley’s. The “readers” attached to that house advised its summary rejection. Moved by curiosity to inspect a work which his several advisers took the trouble to condemn in such singularly adverse terms, Mr. George Bentley decided to read the manuscript himself, and the consequence of his unprejudiced and impartial inspection was approval and acceptance.
Letters were exchanged, terms proposed and agreed upon. “I am glad that all is arranged,” wrote Mr. Bentley; “nothing now remains but to try to make a success of your first venture. The work has the merit of originality, and its style writing will, I think, commend it.”
A later letter from him says: “I expect our rather ‘thick’ public will be slow in appreciating the ‘Romance,’ but if it once takes, it may go off well.”
These extracts are interesting as showing the view taken by a veteran publisher—one who had been dealing with books and authors since early manhood—of a work by an absolutely unknown writer. His opinion of Miss Corelli’s powers is represented by a further letter dispatched to her in February, 1886: “I shall be perfectly ready to give full consideration to anything which proceeds from your pen, all the more readily, too, because I see you love wholesome thought, and will not lend yourself to corrupt and debase the English mind.... I have no greater pleasure than to bring to light a bright writer like yourself. After all, the Brightness must be in the author, and so the sole praise is to her.”
After his first visit to Miss Corelli, in July of that year, Mr. Bentley wrote as follows: “The afternoon remains with me as a pleasant memory. I am so glad to have seen you. I little expected to see so young a person as the authoress of works involving in their creation faculties which at your age are mostly not sufficiently developed for such works.”
Miss Corelli was allowed to retain her copyright, a fact which, though regarded by her as of slight import at the time, has since proved of some pecuniary advantage, seeing that the “Romance” is now in its twentieth edition.
The wise old publisher saw nothing attractive, explanatory, or salable in such a name as “Lifted Up,” so a new title was asked for. Scott once said there was nothing in a name, and certainly it did not matter what such a magician as he was, called a book, any more than it matters what name any firmly established author fixes upon; but a new writer can seldom afford to despise the gentle art of alliteration or the appellation which appeals to the eye, ear, and imagination.
Both Dr. Charles Mackay and his son George Eric were appealed to by the young beginner in that literary career to which they were both accustomed. Both demanded a reading of the manuscript that they might be guided by its contents as to the title. But Marie refused to show her manuscript to any one. She told her stepfather that he would only “laugh at her silly fancies.” She would not let George Eric read it, because she wanted to surprise him by quoting some of his poetry in the book from the “Love-Letters of a Violinist,” which title she, by-the-bye, had suggested. She said her story was “about this world and the next,” whereupon Dr. Mackay, who happened to be reading Lewis Morris’s “Songs of Two Worlds” at the time, suggested “A Romance of Two Worlds.”
So, as “A Romance of Two Worlds,” the book appeared. Up to this time Miss Corelli had naturally had no experience with reviewers. She had heard of them, of course, being a member of a literary household, and she had every reason to suppose that they would, in the ordinary course of events, write criticisms upon the “Romance.” In this expectation, however, she was doomed to disappointment. It received only four reviews, all brief and distinctly unfavorable. It may not be uninteresting, at this distance of time, to quote the criticism which appeared in a leading journal, as it is a very fair sample of the rest: