“Please do what you wish—you may be quite right and I wrong. I shall be very glad to be wrong, as I sincerely desire your success, because you have a worthy motive and an honorable ambition in writing, and not any lower aim competing with your Art-Love.
* * * * * *
“I enter into your feelings about being ‘passed over,’ but I observe that reputations which grow gradually and always grow, come to compel attention at some time or other.”
It would appear from the next letter that the novelist had been throwing out a hint that the doughty knights of Grub Street might be approached with a preface of a nature to make them pause ere they ground her latest work under heel. Mr. Bentley’s letter in reply, like that which follows it, is redolent of his sturdy independence and sound common sense.
“April 21st, 1889.
“As to an appeal to critics, I never make one. No good book, that is a really literary production, should require it, and any other sort of book doesn’t deserve it.”
“May 27th, 1889.
“The criticism will do no harm, though it may exercise some in trying to understand how the blowing hot and cold can be reconciled. For years almost the whole Press regularly attacked Miss Broughton, and I have often said that in a long business life I have never known any one so decried as she was by the Press, who yet had the good fortune to see the public set aside the verdict of the critics. May the public so deal with you, and leave the critics to their isolation.”
The following was written after Mr. Gladstone’s first visit to the novelist. It should be explained that Mr. Gladstone, when he first called, found Miss Corelli “out,” and was afterwards invited by her to come to tea on a particular date:
“June 4th, 1889.