Mr. Arnold Bennett writes:—"I have every sympathy with the widespread indignation of my fellow-authors, but personally I am not very closely concerned. My position is secure: no one is likely to tamper with the Five Towns in an attempt to improve their washing facilities."
"Might I suggest to the learned pundits of the House of Lords, if it is not too late," writes Mrs. Florence Barclay, "that a writer who, in his day, enjoyed such a circulation as that of Sir Walter Scott—this is, of course, fundamentally a question of circulation—is not to be treated in this cavalier fashion? For oneself, whatever fate may be in store for the precious local associations of one's past work, it is fortunately possible to make the future secure. I am laying the scene of my new romance, of which the fifth chapter is almost completed, on the top of an inaccessible hill."
Mr. H. G. Wells points out that there is no particular need in his case to take action. He hopes that by the day when the conditions in time and space of his latest novel come into being every household in the country will be supplied with its own water by a process of filtered absorption from the atmosphere.
It is anticipated that something definite will be done by the special committee of the Authors Society which has been appointed with the view of extending the law of copyright so as to secure the author's undoubted property in his local associations.
BILLET DOUX.
Monday's breakfast is never a jovial affair. One always has the feeling that something dreadful has happened or is going to happen. Thus, three days ago I had with a light heart handed over my practice to a locum and my books to an accountant, telling the one to look up my bad patients and the other to look up my bad debts, while I went away to end the week with the Wrefords. Twelve hours ago it had seemed that I should never know such happiness in this world again as I had found with them, and here we all were on Monday morning with everything changed, Mrs. Wreford sulking in bed and Wreford displaying a polite but firm hatred of me and all the world. In this case my feeling was that something dreadful was happening.
"Mornin', Wreford," said I, as I took my place at table.
"Mornin', Everall," he grunted, barely looking up from his letters, and that seemed to end the dialogue. When, however, one's host is also one's most valuable patient, there is call for a special effort. He had all the correspondence, I had none; in an emergency this suggested itself as a matter of comment.