NANTY DISCOURSES ON THE WRITING OF BOOKS
When I casually mentioned to Nanty--yesterday afternoon over our
tea--that I had begun to write a book I was unprepared for her
opposition, which almost amounted to a command that I should do nothing
of the kind. But then she misunderstood me from the very beginning,
which was only natural now I come to reflect upon it, added to which
she has a disconcerting habit of jumping to conclusions.
At the outset of our conversation her manner was depressed as she
looked into the fire.
"Ah, well," she said at length, "it can't be helped! I suppose you
mean a first-person, diary, daily-round sort of book?"
I nodded, pleased at her acumen.
"It is the worst and most tiresome kind, but perhaps it will be best
for your poor husband."
"My poor husband!" I echoed.
"Yes."
"Will you kindly explain?"
"It will be difficult, but I'll try."
She settled herself in her chair more comfortably.
"It appears to me that women, dear Marguerite, write books from several
motives, the principal being that, unknown to herself, a woman will get
rid in this way of her own self-consciousness. It is hard on the
public; it is a blessing in disguise to her friends."
"Nanty!"
"I don't say you are of that sort. Why, I believe the child's eyes are
actually full of tears!" she added in consternation.
"Go on," I said.
"But you're going to be hurt."
I shook my head.
"Well, I will add at once that I should not expect to find in the pages
of your book as much self-consciousness as is customary in a young girl
of your years. General Macintosh is not a person to encourage
illusions about oneself. To live with him must be an education,
painful but liberal."
I smiled faintly.
"Some women write books because they are lonely. An absorbing
occupation, even if badly performed, helps to pass the time, and they
yearn to see themselves in print. In fact, all writers yearn to see
themselves in print--a most natural desire on their part, but one to be
discouraged in this age of over-publication. Other women write because
they say they '_love_ it.' I am not sure that this type isn't the
worst of the lot. They imagine because they love it that they must
necessarily do it well. Not at all, the deduction is a poor one. I
love bridge, but rarely pull off a 'no trumper.'
"And a few, a _very_ few, write because they have really something to
say, something to tell. Something new--no, not new, there is nothing
new under the sun, but a fresh way of telling an old story. A burning
force, something stronger than themselves, which is another name for
genius, compels them to speak, to give their message, and the world is
the gainer. Now why do you want to write? Which of these four
impulses is yours?"
She rose and drew on her gloves.
"A burning force stronger than myself, which is another name for
genius."
She laughed.
"You're not offended with me?" she asked as I conducted her to the gate.
"Just a teeny bit, Nanty."
"Well, you mustn't be."
She took my two hands in both of hers.
"I couldn't dream of permitting you to sulk with me, little Marguerite.
I've known you since the days when you wore a pinafore and had to be
slapped for washing some snails in the best toilet ware in my spare
room before throwing them to the ducks--nasty child. It seems hard to
discourage you, to talk to you thus, but whatever in the name of
fortune has put such a dreadful idea into your head?"
"Do you think it so dreadful?"
"Terribly dreadful!" she returned. "I knew an authoress--I beg her
pardon, I mean an author--who after a small success with her first
book--nasty, miry sort of book it was too--left her husband, quite a
decent man as men go, with red hair and freckles (they lived in the
country), and went to London to see life as she called it, which meant
sitting on the top of a penny omnibus and eating rolls and butter at an
A.B.C. She wore her hair _à la_ Sarah Bernhardt, and expected to have
an intrigue, which never came off, the lady being past forty and plain
at that. When her second edition money--I think it got into a second
edition--was finished she was very glad and thankful to creep back to
her husband, who in a big, magnanimous way took her in, which I
wouldn't have done. Then I knew another author--successful fifth
edition this was--whose head became so swelled that some cows in a
field--she was lying in a ditch composing--took it for a mangel-wurzel
one day and ate it."
"Do you expect me to laugh here?" I asked.
"Not at all," she reassured me. "I only want to impress you before it
is too late. I have one more case. A poor girl wrote a book called
_Awakenings_, or some such title. A reviewer on an ultra-superior,
provincial paper, the _Damchester Guardian_ I think it was, cut it to
pieces with the cleverness, cruelty and ruthlessness of extreme youth.
The critic must have been young, for only youth is really hard. There
was not a good word for it; it was described as maudlin, sentimental
twaddle. The girl--she was a fool of course, but we can't all be born
clever--committed suicide. This was a bit of rare good luck for her
publisher, for he got an advertisement for nothing, and sold forty
thousand copies of the book in three months."
Nanty paused for breath. John, the coachman, looked respectfully ahead
and pretended he didn't mind waiting; and I called her attention to our
bank of crocuses.
"Don't like crocuses," she said.
I laughed.
"Still obstinate?"
"No," I replied, "I gave up my book over my second cup of tea."
"Dear Marguerite," she said, kissing me. "I am sure you will make your
husband very happy."
"I hope so."
"You're bound to, if you are as earnest as all that about it. Your
face looks like--like--a toadstool!"
"Thank you," I laughed.
"I'm not going to say pretty things to you. You get quite enough from
that silly Dimbie of yours. But now tell me before I go, just to
satisfy my curiosity, what is your reason for wishing to write this
book? I always thought you such a simple child."
I closed the carriage door and looked away.
She leaned forward and turned my face round.
"Why, she's actually blushing!" she ejaculated.
"Home," I said to John, wresting my face away.
"But it's not home," she contradicted, "and won't be home till you tell
me why you are blushing like a peony."
"Nanty," I cried, "you are too bad."
"Marguerite, why are you looking so guilty and ashamed?"
"I'm not," I said stoutly.
"You are."
"Why should I look ashamed?"
"That's what I want to get at. I ask you the simplest question, upon
which your countenance becomes that of a criminal run to earth."
"Pictorial exaggeration," I said lightly. "And, Nanty, I'm catching
cold. Remember it is only March."
"Take this rug," she replied coolly. "I shall not let you go till you
give me your reason for wishing to appear in print."
"But I don't," I said with heat.
"You said you did."
"Never. You imagined that. I simply said I was writing a book--a
daily-round sort of journal, as you described it. I never referred to
publication."
Nanty turned up her veil and stared at me for some seconds.
"Well, well, well!" she said at length. "I wonder you didn't say so
sooner."
"You never gave me an opportunity. At my first words you were off at a
tangent, and then I became interested in your awful experiences."
She sat back and laughed.
"The impudence of the child drawing me like this. If you don't want
your books published write fifty of them. It will keep you well out of
mischief and do nobody any harm."
Then she fell into a brown study, and I prepared to tiptoe softly
through the gate, when she cried suddenly--
"Wait! You have still not told me why you are doing this scribbling.
I should have thought you would have found plenty to do without
writing. There is your house--your sewing----"
"You will laugh."
"I won't."
"Promise."
"I promise."
"Well," I began, "I----"
Nanty was looking at the sunset.
"I want to write, I must write," I went on more firmly, "because I am
so--happy. It sounds silly, ridiculous, I know, and you won't
understand, but----"
I paused. Nanty was still looking at the sunset. "You see, I was
never very happy before I was married because of Peter--father, I mean.
You have visited us often, so you know. You know how he worries poor
mother. It was impossible to be happy. But now it is all so
different, so wonderful, so tranquil, that I sometimes feel almost sick
with happiness. It is too good to last, it cannot last. I am
sometimes frightened. And I cannot let Dimbie know how I feel. Once
you told me not to let the man I loved be too sure of it. The moment
in which a man knows he has gained your love he ceases to value it."
"Did I say that?"
"Yes, you said that to me the day I was married. So what am I to do?
I can't tell Amelia; I can't write it to mother, for Peter would sneer.
I must have an outlet for my feelings, or they will overwhelm me. When
I have sung and danced and rushed round the garden after Jumbles I can
fly to my book. I can enter, 'Dimbie is a dear,' 'Dimbie is _my_
husband, and he will be home in half an hour.' 'One Tree Cottage is
the sweetest spot on earth, and I, Marguerite Westover, am the happiest
girl in the world.' When the last half hour before his homecoming
hangs heavily I can enter all the events of the day. It will pass the
time. In the years to come, when I am an old, old woman, I can turn
back the pages and read again of my first wonderful year. It will be a
book only for myself, only for my eyes. That which Dimbie could not
understand I can put between its covers. A man, I imagine, cannot
always understand the way a woman feels about things that touch her
deeply, like--well, like when Dimbie and I say our prayers together.
And the song of a bird, a thrush woke us the other morning. It was
perched on a bough in a shaft of warm sunlight, and was pouring out its
little heart just as though it were breaking with happiness. My eyes
were full of tears, and Dimbie saw them. He said--well, he didn't
understand. He thought I was sad, and I couldn't explain even to him
that my tears were of joy. And Amelia--she looks at me so when six
o'clock comes and I cannot keep my feet still. I brush up the hearth
and put Dimbie's slippers to warm, and cut the magazines, and place our
two chairs side by side, very close together, and put a daffodil in my
hair, and go to the window, and wander to the kitchen, and go to the
front door, and back to the kitchen to see how the meat is doing,
and----"
I broke off, for Nanty had held up her hands for me to cease, and when
she turned to me her eyes were full of tears.
"Write your book, Marguerite," she whispered. "Write your book." Then
she stooped and kissed me, and then she gave a laugh, but there was a
little sob in it.
I looked at her wonderingly.
"You say I told you to hide your love from the man you have married. I
take the words back. Better too much love than too little between
husband and wife, for theirs is a union dependent on much affection and
sacrifice if they would be happy. And God forbid that sorrow,
disillusionment shall ever enter into your life. God forbid that you
shall ever be lonely, stretch out a hand at night and find emptiness,
pour out your troubles and find a deaf ear turned to you, offer a
caress which is met with a curse."
Her voice was so low I could hardly catch the bitterness of her words.
"But can such things ever be?" I cried.
She laughed a little dry laugh.
"I have known of them. It would seem that some marriages were not made
in heaven."
I thought of Peter and mother. Had Nanty's marriage been unhappy too?
She had been alone ever since I could remember. The mistress of a
handsome house, lovely garden...
Nanty broke in----
"And when you write your book, don't let it all be of Dimbie. Some
women haven't got a Dimbie, and women are the principal readers of
women's books. Enter as well all the little worries and cares which
are bound to crop up sooner or later, so that the contrast between your
life and the life of some lonely, unloved woman may not be too cruel.
She will laugh at Amelia's smashing the best china, enjoy your
misfortunes, cheer up when Dimbie is down with typhoid and not expected
to live."
"But you forget my book will only be for myself. I don't know enough
to write one for other people. Dimbie says I am very ignorant."
"Oh, of course! And that after all is the best sort of book, the one
you write for yourself. Some publisher will be saved endless care and
worry. Your friends will be saved the necessity of turning down side
streets when they see you coming along--they have barely four-and-six
for one of the classics, or a book they really want, let alone yours."
I laughed.
"You are not polite."
"No, Marguerite; I love you, and I want to save you from your friends.
But perhaps some day when it is finished, when your year is over, when
you are too busy, like so many modern girls, to do anything but play
golf and bridge, or there may be another interest in your life, you
might let me have a look at it. A manuscript written out of sheer
happiness might be interesting, though a trifle tiresome. There has
been _The Sorrows of Werther_. Why not _The Joys of Marguerite_?
Besides, your grammar and punctuation might require some correction."
"Nanty," I said, "you are making fun of me, and I'm very cold."
"Marguerite," she commanded, "give me another kiss, and then I'll go.
I have enjoyed my afternoon with the little bride."
"I hear the whistle of Dimbie's train."
"What an astonishing thing!" she remarked sarcastically.
"I mean, won't you stay and see him?"
"No, I won't. I'm going home."
"John must have been interested in our conversation."
"John grows deafer each day," she said as she drove away.
I wandered down the lane to meet Dimbie, and presently he turned the
corner.