DO WRITERS WRITE TOO MUCH?
ON a newspaper placard, the other day, I saw announced a new novel by acelebrated author. I bought a copy of the paper, and turned eagerly tothe last page. I was disappointed to find that I had missed the firstsix chapters. The story had commenced the previous Saturday; this wasFriday. I say I was disappointed and so I was, at first. But mydisappointment did not last long. The bright and intelligent sub-editor,according to the custom now in vogue, had provided me with a shortsynopsis of those first six chapters, so that without the trouble ofreading them I knew what they were all about.
“The first instalment,” I learned, “introduces the reader to a brilliantand distinguished company, assembled in the drawing-room of Lady Mary’smaisonette in Park Street. Much smart talk is indulged in.”
I know that “smart talk” so well. Had I not been lucky enough to missthat first chapter I should have had to listen to it once again.Possibly, here and there, it might have been new to me, but it would haveread, I know, so very like the old. A dear, sweet white-haired lady ofmy acquaintance is never surprised at anything that happens.
“Something very much of the same kind occurred,” she will remember, “onewinter when we were staying in Brighton. Only on that occasion the man’sname, I think, was Robinson.”
We do not live new stories—nor write them either. The man’s name in theold story was Robinson, we alter it to Jones. It happened, in the oldforgotten tale, at Brighton, in the winter time; we change it toEastbourne, in the spring. It is new and original—to those who have notheard “something very like it” once before.
“Much smart talk is indulged in,” so the sub-editor has explained. Thereis absolutely no need to ask for more than that. There is a Duchess whosays improper things. Once she used to shock me. But I know her now.She is really a nice woman; she doesn’t mean them. And when the heroineis in trouble, towards the middle of the book, she is just as amusing onthe side of virtue. Then there is a younger lady whose speciality isproverbs. Apparently whenever she hears a proverb she writes it down andstudies it with the idea of seeing into how many different forms it canbe twisted. It looks clever; as a matter of fact, it is extremely easy.
_Be virtuous and you will be happy_.
She jots down all the possible variations: _Be virtuous and you will beunhappy_.
“Too simple that one,” she tells herself. _Be virtuous and your friendswill be happy if you are not_.
“Better, but not wicked enough. Let us think again. _Be happy andpeople will jump to the conclusion that you are virtuous_.
“That’s good, I’ll try that one at to-morrow’s party.”
She is a painstaking lady. One feels that, better advised, she mighthave been of use in the world.
There is likewise a disgraceful old Peer who tells naughty stories, butwho is good at heart; and one person so very rude that the wonder is whoinvited him.
Occasionally a slangy girl is included, and a clergyman, who takes theheroine aside and talks sense to her, flavoured with epigram. All thesepeople chatter a mixture of Lord Chesterfield and Oliver Wendell Holmes,of Heine, Voltaire, Madame de Stael, and the late lamented H. J. Byron.“How they do it beats me,” as I once overheard at a music hall a stoutlady confess to her friend while witnessing the performance of a clevertroup, styling themselves “The Boneless Wonders of the Universe.”
The synopsis added that: “Ursula Bart, a charming and unsophisticatedyoung American girl possessed of an elusive expression makes her firstacquaintance with London society.”
Here you have a week’s unnecessary work on the part of the author boileddown to its essentials. She was young. One hardly expects an elderlyheroine. The “young” might have been dispensed with, especially seeingit is told us that she was a girl. But maybe this is carping. There areyoung girls and old girls. Perhaps it is as well to have it in black andwhite; she was young. She was an American young girl. There is but oneAmerican young girl in English fiction. We know by heart theunconventional things that she will do, the startlingly original thingsthat she will say, the fresh illuminating thoughts that will come to heras, clad in a loose robe of some soft clinging stuff, she sits before thefire, in the solitude of her own room.
To complete her she had an “elusive expression.” The days when we usedto catalogue the heroine’s “points” are past. Formerly it was possible.A man wrote perhaps some half-a-dozen novels during the whole course ofhis career. He could have a dark girl for the first, a light girl forthe second, sketch a merry little wench for the third, and draw yousomething stately for the fourth. For the remaining two he could goabroad. Nowadays, when a man turns out a novel and six short storiesonce a year, description has to be dispensed with. It is not thewriter’s fault. There is not sufficient variety in the sex. We used tointroduce her thus:
“Imagine to yourself, dear reader, an exquisite and gracious creature offive feet three. Her golden hair of that peculiar shade”—here wouldfollow directions enabling the reader to work it out for himself. He wasto pour some particular wine into some particular sort of glass, and waveit about before some particular sort of a light. Or he was to get up atfive o’clock on a March morning and go into a wood. In this way he couldsatisfy himself as to the particular shade of gold the heroine’s hairmight happen to be. If he were a careless or lazy reader he could savehimself time and trouble by taking the author’s word for it. Many ofthem did.
“Her eyes!” They were invariably deep and liquid. They had to be prettydeep to hold all the odds and ends that were hidden in them; sunlight andshadow, mischief, unsuspected possibilities, assorted emotions, strangewild yearnings. Anything we didn’t know where else to put we said washidden in her eyes.
“Her nose!” You could have made it for yourself out of a pen’orth ofputty after reading our description of it.
“Her forehead!” It was always “low and broad.” I don’t know why it wasalways low. Maybe because the intellectual heroine was not then popular.For the matter of that I doubt if she be really popular now. Thebrainless doll, one fears, will continue for many years to come to beman’s ideal woman—and woman’s ideal of herself for precisely the sameperiod, one may be sure.
“Her chin!” A less degree of variety was permissible in her chin. Ithad to be at an angle suggestive of piquancy, and it had to contain atleast the suspicion of a dimple.
To properly understand her complexion you were expected to provideyourself with a collection of assorted fruits and flowers. There areseasons in the year when it must have been difficult for theconscientious reader to have made sure of her complexion. Possibly itwas for this purpose that wax flowers and fruit, carefully kept from thedust under glass cases, were common objects in former times upon thetables of the cultured.
Nowadays we content ourselves—and our readers also, I am inclined tothink—with dashing her off in a few bold strokes. We say that whenevershe entered a room there came to one dreams of an old world garden, thesound of far-off bells. Or that her presence brought with it the scentof hollyhocks and thyme. As a matter of fact I don’t think hollyhocks dosmell. It is a small point; about such we do not trouble ourselves. Inthe case of the homely type of girl I don’t see why we should not borrowMr. Pickwick’s expression, and define her by saying that in some subtleway she always contrived to suggest an odour of chops and tomato sauce.
If we desire to be exact we mention, as this particular author seems tohave done, that she had an “elusive expression,” or a penetratingfragrance. Or we say that she moved, the centre of an indefinablenuance.
But it is not policy to bind oneself too closely to detail. A wisefriend of mine, who knows his business, describes his hero invariably inthe vaguest terms. He will not even tell you whether the man is tall orshort, clean shaven or bearded.
“Make the fellow nice,” is his advice. “Let every woman reader picturehim to herself as her particular man. Then everything he says and doesbecomes o
f importance to her. She is careful not to miss a word.”
For the same reason he sees to it that his heroine has a bit of everygirl in her. Generally speaking, she is a cross between Romola and DoraCopperfield. His novels command enormous sales. The women say he drawsa man to the life, but does not seem to know much about women. The menlike his women, but think his men stupid.
Of another famous author no woman of my acquaintance is able to speak toohighly. They tell me his knowledge of their sex is simply marvellous,his insight, his understanding of them almost uncanny. Thinking it mightprove useful, I made an exhaustive study of his books. I noticed thathis women were without exception brilliant charming creatures possessedof the wit of a Lady Wortlay Montagu, combined with the wisdom of aGeorge Eliot. They were not all of them good women, but all of them wereclever and all of them were fascinating. I came to the conclusion thathis lady critics were correct: he did understand women. But to return toour synopsis.
The second chapter, it appeared, transported us to Yorkshire where:“Basil Longleat, a typical young Englishman, lately home from college,resides with his widowed mother and two sisters. They are a delightfulfamily.”
What a world of trouble to both writer and to reader is here saved. “Atypical young Englishman!” The author probably wrote five pages,elaborating. The five words of the sub-editor present him to me morevividly. I see him positively glistening from the effects of soap andwater. I see his clear blue eye; his fair crisp locks, the naturalcurliness of which annoys him personally, though alluring to everybodyelse; his frank winning smile. He is “lately home from college.” Thattells me that he is a first-class cricketer; a first-class oar; that as ahalf-back he is incomparable; that he swims like Captain Webb; is in thefirst rank of tennis players; that his half-volley at ping-pong has neverbeen stopped. It doesn’t tell me much about his brain power. Thedescription of him as a “typical young Englishman” suggests moreinformation on this particular point. One assumes that the American girlwith the elusive expression is going to have sufficient for both.
“They are a delightful family.” The sub-editor does not say so, but Iimagine the two sisters are likewise typical young Englishwomen. Theyride and shoot and cook and make their own dresses, have common sense andlove a joke.
The third chapter is “taken up with the humours of a local cricketmatch.”
Thank you, Mr. Sub-editor. I feel I owe you gratitude.
In the fourth, Ursula Bart (I was beginning to get anxious about her)turns up again. She is staying at the useful Lady Mary’s place inYorkshire. She meets Basil by accident one morning while riding alone.That is the advantage of having an American girl for your heroine. Likethe British army: it goes anywhere and does anything.
In chapter five Basil and Ursula meet again; this time at a picnic. Thesub-editor does not wish to repeat himself, otherwise he possibly wouldhave summed up chapter five by saying it was “taken up with the humoursof the usual picnic.”
In chapter six something happens:
“Basil, returning home in the twilight, comes across Ursula Bart, in alonely point of the moor, talking earnestly to a rough-looking stranger.His approach over the soft turf being unnoticed, he cannot helpoverhearing Ursula’s parting words to the forbidding-looking stranger: ‘Imust see you again! To-morrow night at half-past nine! In the gatewayof the ruined abbey!’ Who is he? And why must Ursula see him again atsuch an hour, in such a spot?”
So here, at cost of reading twenty lines, I am landed, so to speak, atthe beginning of the seventh chapter. Why don’t I set to work to readit? The sub-editor has spoiled me.
“You read it,” I want to say to him. “Tell me to-morrow morning what itis all about. Who was this bounder? Why should Ursula want to see himagain? Why choose a draughty place? Why half-past nine o’clock atnight, which must have been an awkward time for both of them—likely tolead to talk? Why should I wade though this seventh chapter of threecolumns and a half? It’s your work. What are you paid for?”
My fear is lest this sort of thing shall lead to a demand on the part ofthe public for condensed novels. What busy man is going to spend a weekof evenings reading a book when a nice kind sub-editor is prepared infive minutes to tell him what it is all about!
Then there will come a day—I feel it—when the business-like Editor willsay to himself: “What in thunder is the sense of my paying one man towrite a story of sixty thousand words and another man to read it and tellit again in sixteen hundred!”
We shall be expected to write our novels in chapters not exceeding twentywords. Our short stories will be reduced to the formula: “Little boy.Pair of skates. Broken ice, Heaven’s gates.” Formerly an author,commissioned to supply a child’s tragedy of this genre for a Christmasnumber, would have spun it out into five thousand words. Personally, Ishould have commenced the previous spring—given the reader the summer andautumn to get accustomed to the boy. He would have been a good boy; thesort of boy that makes a bee-line for the thinnest ice. He would havelived in a cottage. I could have spread that cottage over two pages; thethings that grew in the garden, the view from the front door. You wouldhave known that boy before I had done with him—felt you had known him allyour life. His quaint sayings, his childish thoughts, his great longingswould have been impressed upon you. The father might have had a dash ofhumour in him, the mother’s early girlhood would have lent itself topretty writing. For the ice we would have had a mysterious lake in thewood, said to be haunted. The boy would have loved o’ twilights to standupon its margin. He would have heard strange voices calling to him. Youwould have felt the thing was coming.
So much might have been done. When I think of that plot wasted in ninewords it makes me positively angry.
And what is to become of us writers if this is to be the new fashion inliterature? We are paid by the length of our manuscript at rates fromhalf-a-crown a thousand words, and upwards. In the case of fellows likeDoyle and Kipling I am told it runs into pounds. How are we to live onnovels the serial rights of which to most of us will work out at four andnine-pence.
It can’t be done. It is no good telling me you can see no reason why weshould live. That is no answer. I’m talking plain business.
And what about book-rights? Who is going to buy novels of three pages?They will have to be printed as leaflets and sold at a penny a dozen.Marie Corelli and Hall Caine—if all I hear about them is true—willpossibly make their ten or twelve shillings a week. But what about therest of us? This thing is worrying me.