IV. WITH OUR TYPICAL NOVELISTS
Edwin and Ethelinda Afterthought--Husband and Wife--In
their Delightful Home Life.
It was at their beautiful country place on the Woonagansett
that we had the pleasure of interviewing the Afterthoughts.
At their own cordial invitation, we had walked over from
the nearest railway station, a distance of some fourteen
miles. Indeed, as soon as they heard of our intention
they invited us to walk. "We are so sorry not to bring
you in the motor," they wrote, "but the roads are so
frightfully dusty that we might get dust on our chauffeur."
This little touch of thoughtfulness is the keynote of
their character.
The house itself is a delightful old mansion giving on
a wide garden, which gives in turn on a broad terrace
giving on the river.
The Eminent Novelist met us at the gate. We had expected
to find the author of _Angela Rivers_ and _The Garden of
Desire_ a pale aesthetic type (we have a way of expecting
the wrong thing in our interviews). We could not resist
a shock of surprise (indeed we seldom do) at finding him
a burly out-of-door man weighting, as he himself told
us, a hundred stone in his stockinged feet (we think he
said stone).
He shook hands cordially.
"Come and see my pigs," he said.
"We wanted to ask you," we began, as we went down the
walk, "something about your books."
"Let's look at the pigs first," he said. "Are you anything
of a pig man?"
We are always anxious in our interviews to be all things
to all men. But we were compelled to admit that we were
not much of a pig man.
"Ah," said the Great Novelist, "perhaps you are more of
a dog man?"
"Not altogether a dog man," we answered.
"Anything of a bee man?" he asked.
"Something," we said (we were once stung by a bee).
"Ah," he said, "you shall have a go at the beehives,
then, right away?"
We assured him that we were willing to postpone a go at
the beehives till later.
"Come along, then, to the styes," said the Great Novelist,
and he added, "Perhaps you're not much of a breeder."
We blushed. We thought of the five little faces around
the table for which we provide food by writing our
interviews.
"No," we said, "we were not much of a breeder."
"Now then," said the Great Novelist as we reached our
goal, "how do you like this stye?"
"Very much indeed," we said.
"I've put in a new tile draining--my own plan. You notice
how sweet it keeps the stye."
We had not noticed this.
"I am afraid," said the Novelist, "that the pigs are all
asleep inside."
We begged him on no account to waken them. He offered to
open the little door at the side and let us crawl in. We
insisted that we could not think of intruding.
"What we would like," we said, "is to hear something of
your methods of work in novel writing." We said this with
very peculiar conviction. Quite apart from the immediate
purposes of our interview, we have always been most
anxious to know by what process novels are written. If
we could get to know this, we would write one ourselves.
"Come and see my bulls first," said the Novelist. "I've
got a couple of young bulls here in the paddock that will
interest you."
We felt sure that they would.
He led us to a little green fence. Inside it were two
ferocious looking animals, eating grain. They rolled
their eyes upwards at us as they ate.
"How do those strike you?" he asked.
We assured him that they struck us as our beau ideal
of bulls.
"Like to walk in beside them?" said the Novelist, opening
a little gate.
We drew back. Was it fair to disturb these bulls?
The Great Novelist noticed our hesitation.
"Don't be afraid," he said. "They're not likely to harm
you. I send my hired man right in beside them every
morning, without the slightest hesitation."
We looked at the Eminent Novelist with admiration. We
realized that like so many of our writers, actors, and
even our thinkers, of to-day, he was an open-air man in
every sense of the word.
But we shook our heads.
Bulls, we explained, were not a department of research
for which we were equipped. What we wanted, we said, was
to learn something of his methods of work.
"My methods of work?" he answered, as we turned up the
path again. "Well, really, I hardly know that I have any."
"What is your plan or method," we asked, getting out our
notebook and pencil, "of laying the beginning of a new
novel?"
"My usual plan," said the Novelist, "is to come out here
and sit in the stye till I get my characters."
"Does it take long?" we questioned.
"Not very. I generally find that a quiet half-hour spent
among the hogs will give me at least my leading character."
"And what do you do next?"
"Oh, after that I generally light a pipe and go and sit
among the beehives looking for an incident."
"Do you get it?" we asked.
"Invariably. After that I make a few notes, then go off
for a ten mile tramp with my esquimaux dogs, and get back
in time to have a go through the cattle sheds and take
a romp with the young bulls."
We sighed. We couldn't help it. Novel writing seemed
further away than ever.
"Have you also a goat on the premises?" we asked.
"Oh, certainly. A ripping old fellow--come along and
see him."
We shook our heads. No doubt our disappointment showed
in our face. It often does. We felt that it was altogether
right and wholesome that our great novels of to-day should
be written in this fashion with the help of goats, dogs,
hogs and young bulls. But we felt, too, that it was not
for us.
We permitted ourselves one further question.
"At what time," we said, "do you rise in the morning?"
"Oh anywhere between four and five," said the Novelist.
"Ah, and do you generally take a cold dip as soon as you
are up--even in winter?"
"I do."
"You prefer, no doubt," we said, with a dejection that
we could not conceal, "to have water with a good coat of
ice over it?"
"Oh, certainly!"
We said no more. We have long understood the reasons for
our own failure in life, but it was painful to receive
a renewed corroboration of it. This ice question has
stood in our way for forty-seven years.
The Great Novelist seemed to note our dejection.
"Come to the house," he said, "my wife will give you a
cup of tea."
In a few moments we had forgotten all our troubles in
the presence of one of the most charming chatelaines it
has been our lot to meet.
We sat on a low stool immediately beside Ethelinda
Afterthought, who presided in her own gracious fashion
over the tea-urn.
"So you want to know something of my methods of work?"
she said, as she poured hot tea over our leg.
"We do," we answered, taking out our little book and
recovering something of our enthusiasm. We do not mind
hot tea being poured over us if people treat us as a
human being.
"Can you indicate," we continued, "what method you follow
in beginning one of your novels?"
"I always begin," said Ethelinda Afterthought, "with a
study."
"A study?" we queried.
"Yes. I mean a study of actual facts. Take, for example,
my _Leaves from the Life of a Steam Laundrywoman_--more
tea?"
"No, no," we said.
"Well, to make that book I first worked two years in a
laundry."
"Two years!" we exclaimed. "And why?"
"To get the atmosphere."
"The steam?" we questioned.
"Oh, no," said Mrs. Afterthought, "I did that separately.
I took a course in steam at a technical school."
"Is it possible?" we said, our heart beginning to sing
again. "Was all that necessary?"
"I don't see how one could do it otherwise. The story
opens, as no doubt you remember--tea?--in the boiler room
of the laundry."
"Yes," we said, moving our leg--"no, thank you."
"So you see the only possible _point d'appui_ was to
begin with a description of the inside of the boiler."
We nodded.
"A masterly thing," we said.
"My wife," interrupted the Great Novelist, who was sitting
with the head of a huge Danish hound in his lap, sharing
his buttered toast with the dog while he adjusted a set
of trout flies, "is a great worker."
"Do you always work on that method?" we asked.
"Always," she answered. "For _Frederica of the Factory_
I spent six months in a knitting mill. For _Marguerite
of the Mud Flats_ I made special studies for months and
months."
"Of what sort?" we asked.
"In mud. Learning to model it. You see for a story of
that sort the first thing needed is a thorough knowledge
of mud--all kinds of it."
"And what are you doing next?" we inquired.
"My next book," said the Lady Novelist, "is to be a study
--tea?--of the pickle industry--perfectly new ground."
"A fascinating field," we murmured.
"And quite new. Several of our writers have done the
slaughter-house, and in England a good deal has been done
in jam. But so far no one has done pickles. I should
like, if I could," added Ethelinda Afterthought, with
the graceful modesty that is characteristic of her, "to
make it the first of a series of pickle novels, showing,
don't you know, the whole pickle district, and perhaps
following a family of pickle workers for four or five
generations."
"Four or five!" we said enthusiastically. "Make it ten!
And have you any plan for work beyond that?"
"Oh, yes indeed," laughed the Lady Novelist. "I am always
planning ahead. What I want to do after that is a study
of the inside of a penitentiary."
"Of the _inside_?" we said, with a shudder.
"Yes. To do it, of course, I shall go to jail for two or
three years!"
"But how can you get in?" we asked, thrilled at the quiet
determination of the frail woman before us.
"I shall demand it as a right," she answered quietly. "I
shall go to the authorities, at the head of a band of
enthusiastic women, and demand that I shall be sent to
jail. Surely after the work I have done, that much is
coming to me."
"It certainly is," we said warmly.
We rose to go.
Both the novelists shook hands with us with great
cordiality. Mr. Afterthought walked as far as the front
door with us and showed us a short cut past the beehives
that could take us directly through the bull pasture to
the main road.
We walked away in the gathering darkness of evening very
quietly. We made up our mind as we went that novel writing
is not for us. We must reach the penitentiary in some
other way.
But we thought it well to set down our interview as a
guide to others.
