A weight was lifted from Mrs Abbot’s mind. She caught the situation at once. Three or four years’ separation! What might not happen! Although she strove to speak calmly as a great lady should, she could not keep a certain eagerness out of her voice. ‘But will you not correspond during that time?’
This was another important question. Again Millicent paused, and considered her answer. ‘I will neither write nor be written to. If, eventually, I marry your son—if his love can stand the test of absence and silence—at least you shall not say I did not give him every opportunity of terminating our engagement.’
Mrs Abbot rose and assumed a pleasant manner—so pleasant that, considering the respective positions of herself and Miss Keene, it should have been irresistible. ‘I am compelled to say that such a decision is all I could expect. You must forgive me if, with my views for my son’s career, I have said anything hasty or unjust. I will now wish you good-morning; and I am sure, had we met under other circumstances, we might have been great friends.’
Whatever of dignity and majesty Mrs Abbot dropped as she put on this appearance of friendliness was taken up by the girl. She took no notice of her visitor’s outstretched hand. She rang the bell for the servant, and bowed coldly and haughtily as Mrs Abbot swept from the room.
But bravely as she had borne herself under the eyes of her inquisitor, when the rumble of the carriage wheels died away from the quiet street, Millicent Keene threw herself on the sofa and burst into a flood of tears. ‘O my love!’ she sobbed out. ‘It is hard; but it is right. It will never be, I know! It is too long—too long to wait and hope. Can you be true, when everything is brought to bear against me? Will you forget? Will the love of to-day seem but a boy’s idle dream? Shall I ever forget?’
EPISODES OF LITERARY MANUSCRIPTS.
A great deal might be said on the subject of manuscripts. From the carefully illuminated specimens of old, preserved in our public museums, down to the hastily scribbled printer’s ‘copy’ of to-day, each bears a history, and could contribute to unfold some portion of the life of the author whose hand had wrought it. Indeed, were it possible for each written sheet to tell its own story—we here refer to manuscripts of more modern date—what a picture of intellectual endurance, disappointments, poverty, and ofttimes despair, would be brought to light; what tales of huntings amongst publishers, rebuffs encountered, and hardships undergone, would be added to literary biography.
Thackeray has himself told us how his Vanity Fair was hawked about from publisher to publisher, and its failure everywhere predicted. For a long period, Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre shared the same fate. Again, Mr Kinglake’s carefully composed Eothen, the labour of several years, was destined to go the weary round of publishers in vain; and it was only when its author induced one of that cautious fraternity to accept the classic little work as a present, that he at length enjoyed the gratification of seeing it in print. The first chapter of The Diary of a Late Physician was offered successively to the conductors of the three leading London magazines, and rejected as ‘unsuitable to their pages,’ and ‘not likely to interest the public,’ until Mr Warren, then a young man of three-and-twenty, and a law student, bethought himself of Blackwood. ‘I remember taking my packet,’ he says, ‘to Mr Cadell’s in the Strand, with a sad suspicion that I should never see or hear anything more of it; but shortly after, I received a letter from Mr Blackwood, informing me that he had inserted the chapter, and begging me to make arrangements for immediately proceeding regularly with the series. He expressed his cordial approval of that portion, and predicted that I was likely to produce a series of papers well suited to his magazine, and calculated to interest the public.’
Turning now for a moment to the disciples of dramatic authorship, we discover that their experience is similar to that of many authors. Poor Tom Robertson—that indefatigable actor and dramatist—sank into his grave almost before he saw the establishment of his fame; and John Baldwin Buckstone, during his struggling career, was in the habit of pawning his manuscripts with Mr Lacy, the theatrical publisher, in order to procure bread. Upon one occasion, when met by a sympathising actor in the street, he appeared with scarcely a shoe to his feet, and almost broken-hearted, declaring that all his earthly anticipations were centred upon the acceptance of a comedy, the rejection of which would certainly prove fatal to his existence. In the end, happily for him, the comedy was accepted.
The following anecdote is connected with the history of the Odéon, one of the first theatres in Paris. One day a young author came to ascertain the fate of his piece, which, by the way, had appeared such a formidable package upon its receipt, that the secretary was not possessed of sufficient moral courage to untie the tape that bound it. ‘It is not written in the style to suit the theatre,’ he replied, handing back the manuscript. ‘It is not bad, but it is deficient in interest.’ At this juncture, the young man smiled, and untying the roll, he displayed some quires of blank paper! Thus convicted, the secretary shook hands with the aspirant, invited him to dinner, and shortly afterwards assisted him to a successful début at the Odéon. Another author once waited upon the popular manager of a London theatre inquiring the result of the perusal of his manuscript; whereupon the other, having forgotten all about it, carefully opened a large drawer, exhibiting a heterogeneous mass of documents, and exclaimed: ‘There! help yourself. I don’t know exactly which is yours; but you may take any one of them you like!’