Miss Ida Hector — H. R. H. dictates his works to her — Wishes for change of occupation — Dream-pictures — H. R. H.‘s theory of Romance-writing — Literary coincidences — Examples from the works of H. R. H. — The Spectator.
When I returned from Mexico in 1891 I fell into very poor health. Everything, especially my indigestion, went wrong, so wrong that I began to think that my bones would never grow old. Amongst other inconveniences I found that I could no longer endure the continual stooping over a desk which is involved in the writing of books. It was therefore fortunate for me that about this time Miss Ida Hector, the eldest daughter of Mrs. Hector, better known as Mrs. Alexander, the novelist, became my secretary, and in that capacity, as in those of a very faithful friend and companion, to whose sound sense and literary judgment I am much indebted, has so remained to this day. From that time forward I have done a great deal of my work by means of dictation, which has greatly relieved its labour. Some people can dictate, and others cannot. Personally I have always found the method easy, provided that the dictatee, if I may coin a word, is patient and does not go too fast. I imagine, for instance, that it would be impossible to dictate a novel to a shorthand-writer. Also, if the person who took down the words irritated one in any way, it would be still more impossible. Provided circumstances are congenial, however, the plan has merits, since to many the mere physical labour of writing clogs the mind. So, at least, various producers of books seem to have found. Among them I recall Thackeray and Stevenson.
Of the next few years of my life there is not much to tell. I lived here at Ditchingham in a very quiet and retired fashion, rarely visiting London, wrote a few novels, and for recreation occupied myself with farming and gardening, for which occupations I have always had an instinctive taste. The work that I did was a good deal attacked: it was the fashion to attack me in those days. Possibly owing to my ill-health some of it may not have been quite up to the mark; I do not know. What I do know is that I grew heartily tired of the writing of stories. After the birth of my youngest child, Lilias, which to my great joy happened at the end of the year 1892, my health and spirits began to mend and my energy to return, largely owing, I think, to the treatment of my friend Dr. Lyne Stivens. I was still a youngish man, but had reached that time of life when I felt that if I was to make any change of occupation it must be done at once. And I longed to make a change, for this humdrum existence in a country parish, staring at crops and cultivating flowers, was, I felt, more suitable to some aged man whose life’s work was done than to myself. Also at this time the unrealities of fiction-writing greatly wearied me, oddly enough much more than they do at present, when they have become a kind of amusement and set-off to the more serious things and thoughts with which my life is occupied.
Still it is true that even now, if circumstances allowed of it, I do not think I should write much more fiction, at any rate of the kind that people would buy. With the exception of certain stories that I should like to tell for their own sake, and not to earn money by them. I should occupy my time with writings of a different sort, connected, probably, for the most part with the land, agriculture, and social matters. For instance, I should dearly like to finish my survey of rural England, and to undertake that of Scotland, Wales, and Ireland — tasks, I suppose, that I shall never be able to execute. Only this year23 I had arranged to make an effort to investigate and write on the agriculture of Ireland. But then, of a sudden, I was appointed to the Dominions Royal Commission, and how could I find time for both? The months that I had proposed to devote to Ireland I have been obliged to spend in writing a story.
22 1912. — Ed.
I know that folk — very superior folk — exist who affect to scorn the base person who does one kind of work when he would like to do another, merely because the former does and the latter does not pay. There is something to be said for this position, but if a man chances to realise that he does not live unto himself alone, and to have many dependent upon him, directly or indirectly, or if he chances to desire to render gratuitous services to his country, he must, in such a case, “cut his coat according to his cloth.”
Therefore, although I should have dearly liked to place on record my views of Irish agriculture, in place thereof I have found myself obliged to edit certain of the reminiscences of Mr. Allan Quatermain. To be honest, these have amused me not a little, perhaps because I always find it easy to write of Allan Quatermain, who, after all, is only myself set in a variety of imagined situations, thinking my thoughts and looking at life through my eyes. Indeed there are several subjects with which I always find it not difficult to deal — for instance, Old Egypt, Norsemen, and African savages. Of these last, however, I prefer to write in the company of the late Allan Quatermain.
At the time of which I am now speaking, the early nineties, it was, however, otherwise, for then, being much younger, I wearied of fiction and longed for the life of action to which I had been bred and that, indeed, is native to my character. In truth, the dislike and revolt of my heart in those days still haunts me as a kind of nightmare which is perhaps sufficiently amusing to relate.
Many people have their favourite dreams, and within the last year or so I have developed a very fair specimen of this class of illusion which comes to me in an oft-repeated vision of the mind. Who does not know that order of dream wherein we seem to move among the dead and in their company, with eager yet trembling feet, to try the cold waters of the stream of Death?
Well, through the ivory gates of such a dream as this at times I seem to see my spiritual heritage spread large before me in a world of pictured silence. There, at the back of the picture, rises the mighty cliff whereon, at intervals, the great golden figures, which I take it are images and not alive, seem to keep watch and ward over the illimitable lands beneath; while between them, also at intervals of scores or hundreds of leagues, pour the cataracts gathered I know not whence. In a fold of that cliff lie the blue waters of the Holy Lake, surrounded by wide cedars and huge, immemorial pines that spring two hundred feet without a bough and, at their crown, end always in a single bent plume of green, as though up on high some strong wind shaped them with a steady hand. Along the foot of the cliff runs a great river that, like the Nile, floods the lands at certain seasons, and makes them bear a hundredfold. Winding almost at right angles from the mountain slope, it flows across the boundless plain, past a white and wonderful city whose domes and palaces I only see from far away, for here my guide has never led me. There on its banks soar gracious palms; there willows weep; there spread aspens with leaves just about to quiver; and there, through the sparse woodlands, roam the wild things of the New Creation, seeking their food from God and fearing no hurt from aught that serves Him. Facing this river, to the right as I see it, but far across the plain, are lovely mountains not so very lofty, where, from the other river of the lake, amidst slender ferns, rush waterfalls that descend in bursts of stirless spray.
There, too, in the east — can it be the east, I wonder? — is the very well and fount of light: a soft but radiant light that casts no shadow, since it grows and flows above, beneath, around, and everywhere. Its shape is that of a luminous fan. While the day increases — how long that day is I do not know — so does the glory of that fan extend till it fills all those celestial skies: till it bends across them beyond the mighty cliff where stand the golden guards, as in the funeral paintings of Old Egypt the image of the goddess Nout bends across the heavens and holds the earth in her embracing arms. Then, as at length the night draws on, this wondrous fan folds itself again to a cluster of jewelled stars, large as young moons and of every lovely hue, varying from that of a kind of shining blackness to those of steel blue, and scarlet, and red fire, that girdle the firmament with a glittering belt as might do the Milky Way drawn near.
Overlooking all these wonders, at the foot of the cliff, beyond the borders of the lake but at a lower level, in this fantastic dream of mine stands a strange and silent house built for me by hands that I have known. I see its central hall, where all those I loved or love in life steal in and out. I see a certain chamber, low and large, which overlooks the dreaming landscape, and, more nearly, the walks of garden trees hung with bells of white and purple blossom, with unknown, golden fruits and creeping strands of vine. Standing in the recessed doorway of this chamber, I see in its far corner, seated at a desk above a covered terrace, myself, younger than I am now, wearing some sort of white garments and bending over the desk at work, with papers spread before me.
At the sight a kind of terror seizes me lest this fair place should be but a scented purgatory where, in payment for my sins, I am doomed to write fiction for ever and a day!
“At what do I work?” I ask, alarmed, of the guide who, shining steadily, stands at my side and shows me all.
“You write the history of a world” (or was it “of the world”? — I am not sure), is the answer, and in my dream I breathe again.
For truly it would be a horrible fate to be doomed from aeon to countless aeons to the composition of romance.
Of course what I have set down is but a fancy such as might come to an imaginative child. Still, that landscape, which I know as well as, if not better than, any on the earth, has charms and glories of its own. Therefore I have wasted half an hour of my time and some few minutes of my reader’s in attempting very briefly to describe that which in truth no words can carry.
I confess that in any other life I should prefer some change of employment, but if I should be doomed to write there I hope that the subject-matter of my toil may, as in the vision, prove to be not fiction but history, which I love. In all the worlds above us there must be much history to record. Also there must be much good work to do, which is fortunate. At least I can conceive no idle heaven — where it “is always afternoon.” To me such a place would be the reverse of heaven. To me happiness and work well done, or service faithfully accomplished, are words with a like meaning.
And now, with many apologies, I will turn to mundane things again. Before I do so, however, as I dare say I shall allude to the subject no more, I will add a word on the general matter of the writing of romances. This, I gather, from remarks that have been made to me and many letters that I have received, is supposed to be a very easy art, if indeed it is worthy to be classified under that high name. As a matter of fact it is difficult. In a novel, as the word is generally understood, the author may discourse upon a thousand topics; nothing, or at any rate very little, is barred to him. He may burrow in the obscene depths of human nature; he may discuss politics, religion, metaphysics, socialism, “love” in all its forms, the elemental or artificial divisions between the sexes — oh! what is there that he may not and does not discuss? Nothing that appears in the columns of the daily papers, nothing that is within the range of the human intellect, lies beyond his legitimate, or illegitimate, scope.
In romance all this is different; the lines between which he must move are by comparison extremely narrow: as I remember, Besant put it admirably when answering some onslaught on myself in connection with “Montezuma’s Daughter”: “There is but one bag of tricks in romance.”
The love interest, at least among the English-speaking peoples, must be limited and restrained in tone, must follow the accepted lines of thought and what is defined as morality. Indeed it may even be omitted, sometimes with advantage. The really needful things are adventure — how impossible it matters not at all, provided it is made to appear possible — and imagination, together with a clever use of coincidence and an ordered development of the plot, which should, if possible, have a happy ending, since few folk like to be saddened by what they read. If they seek melancholy, it can be found in ample measure in real life or in the daily papers. Still, the rule of the happy ending is one that may be broken at times; at least I have dared to do so on some occasions, and notably in the instance of “Eric Brighteyes.” I remember that Charles Longman remonstrated with me on this matter at the time, but I showed him that the story demanded it — that, although I too wept over the evil necessity, it must be so!
Now adventure in this narrow world of ours is a limited quantity, and imagination, after all, is hemmed in by deductions from experience. When we try to travel beyond these the results become so unfamiliar that they are apt to lack interest to the ordinary mind. I think I am right in saying that no one has ever written a really first-class romance dwelling solely, for example, upon the utterly alien life of another world or planet with which human beings cannot possibly have any touch. Homer and others bring such supernormal life into the circle of our own surroundings and vivify it by contact, or by contrast, with the play of human nature as exemplified in their characters. But it will not stand alone. We are not strong and skilled enough to carve out of quite unknown material figures so life-like that even in a dreaming hour they can pass as real. I repeat, therefore, that the lines which close in the kingdom of romance are very narrow, and that the material which must be used is so much handled that nowadays it has become difficult to fashion from it any shape that is novel enough, or sufficiently striking to catch the attention of the world.
What is there that has not been used? Who, to take a single instance, can hope to repeat the effect of Robinson Crusoe on his desert island, or the thrill of that naked footprint in the sand? Defoe exhausted these long ago; everything of the sort that follows must be a mere pastiche.
To pass over other salient and familiar examples, I may with humility remark that even a second “She” would offer difficulties to her originator. In my own day some have been tried, and proved very ephemeral creations. The stock of such ideas, in short, is being rapidly used up. There are only a certain number of pieces of glass in the kaleidoscope, and the total of the patterns that these can form is, after all, but limited. With all the world explored and exhausted, I feel sorry for the romance writers of the future, for I know not whither they will turn without bringing themselves into competition with the efforts of dead but still remembered hands and exposing themselves to the sneers of the hunters-out of “plagiarisms.”
History remains to them, it is true, but that ground has already been well tilled. Also historical romances seem at present to be losing their hold, perhaps because the reader of today fears lest he should be acquiring some useful information against his will. The holiday task, or reminiscences of it, looms largely in his mind. Still, new avenues may open to those unborn scribes of which at present we can catch no glimpse. In a day to come there may even be romances of microbes which will fix the attention and engage the imaginative faculties of dim and distant generations.
Now as to the method of romance-writing. It should, in my judgment, be swift, clear, and direct, with as little padding and as few trappings as possible. The story is the thing, and every word in the book should be a brick to build its edifice. Above all, no obscurity should be allowed. Let the characters be definite, even at the cost of a little crudeness, and so with the meaning of each sentence. Tricks of “style” and dark allusions may please the superior critic; they do not please the average reader, and — though this seems to be a fact that many forget, or only remember to deplore — a book is written that it may be read. The first duty of a story is to keep him who peruses it awake; if he is a tired man and it succeeds in doing this, then, within its limitations, it is a good tale. For instance, when a year or so ago Mr. Kipling, who as a rule goes to bed early, told me that he had sat up to I know not what hour and got chilled through reading “The Ghost Kings” because he could not lay it down, it gave me a higher opinion of that work than I could boast before. In romance “grip” is almost everything. Whatever its faults, if a book has grip, these may be forgiven.
Again, such work should be written rapidly and, if possible, not rewritten, since wine of this character loses its bouquet when it is poured from glass to glass. It should be remembered, also, that the writer of a romance must, so far as it is concerned, live during its progress in an atmosphere quite alien to that of everyday life. Now this in a workaday world is not easy to grown people, who perhaps have many affairs and anxieties to distract them, even if they possess or have acquired the power of dividing their brains into more or less watertight compartments. Indeed, for longer than a certain period it becomes almost impossible. Therefore, as the quality of the resulting story will depend upon the preservation of this atmosphere of romance while it is being evolved, it is highly desirable that the actual period of evolution should be short. Personally I have proved this, again and again, almost to the extent that, in the case of my own books, I can judge how long they have taken to write by their quality, although I may long have forgotten the amount of time I spent on each.
So it comes to this: the way to write a good romance is to sit down and write it almost without stopping. Of course some preliminary reflection is desirable to realise a central idea round which the story must revolve. For example, in “She” that central idea was a woman who had acquired practical immortality, but who found that her passions remained immortal too. In “The Holy Flower,” which I finished yesterday, to take another case, the central idea is that of a gorilla which is worshipped as a god and periodically slays the king who holds his office as the brute’s priest and servant, with all the terrors that result from such a situation. In the case of both these books, as of many others, I had nothing more in my mind when I set myself to face them. Of course in such circumstances beginnings are hard — c’est le premier pas qui coute — but after the thing will generally evolve itself. It is merely a case of what Anthony Trollope used to call “cobbler’s wax.” Or, if it “will not do so,” the author had better give up romance-writing and take up some useful occupation that is more congenial.
Of course these are only my views, but they are based upon an experience that is now painfully extended. Other men may have other and better methods so far as they are concerned. They presuppose, however, that the writer is to a sufficient degree possessed by the Spirit of Romance, without which he will do nothing of any permanent or even of immediate value. The faculty of imaginative insight must be a part of his intellectual outfit. He must be able, as he creates, to summon each scene whereof he treats before the eyes of his mind. He must see the characters and their surroundings: the lion springing, the Zulu regiments rushing with uplifted spears, the fire eating into the grass of the hillside, while before it the scorched snakes glide and hiss. He must share the every hope and care of those whom ............