To dream over literary projects, Balzac says, is like "smoking enchanted
cigarettes," but when we try to tackle our projects, to make them real,
the enchantment disappears. We have to till the soil, to sow the seed,
to gather the leaves, and then the cigarettes must be manufactured, while
there may be no market for them after all. Probably most people have
enjoyed the fragrance of these enchanted cigarettes, and have brooded
over much which they will never put on paper. Here are some of "the
ashes of the weeds of my delight"--memories of romances whereof no single
line is written, or is likely to be written.
Of my earliest novel I remember but little. I know there had been a
wreck, and that the villain, who was believed to be drowned, came home
and made himself disagreeable. I know that the heroine's mouth was _not_
"too large for regular beauty." In that respect she was original. All
heroines are "muckle-mou'd," I know not why. It is expected of them. I
know she was melancholy and merry; it would not surprise me to learn that
she drowned herself from a canoe. But the villain never descended to
crime, the first lover would not fall in love, the heroine's own
affections were provokingly disengaged, and the whole affair came to a
dead stop for want of a plot. Perhaps, considering modern canons of
fiction, this might have been a very successful novel. It was entirely
devoid of incident or interest, and, consequently, was a good deal like
real life, as real life appears to many cultivated authors. On the other
hand, all the characters were flippant. This would never have done, and
I do not regret novel No. I., which had not even a name.
The second story had a plot, quantities of plot, nothing but plot. It
was to have been written in collaboration with a very great novelist,
who, as far as we went, confined himself to making objections. This
novel was stopped (not that my friend would ever have gone on) by "Called
Back," which anticipated part of the idea. The story was entitled "Where
is Rose?" and the motto was--
"_Rosa quo locorum_
_Sera moratur_."
The characters were--(1) Rose, a young lady of quality. (2) The Russian
Princess, her friend (need I add that, to meet a public demand, _her_
name was Vera?). (3) Young man engaged to Rose. (4) Charles, his
friend. (5) An enterprising person named "The Whiteley of Crime," the
universal Provider of Iniquity. In fact, he anticipated Sir Arthur
Doyle's Professor Moriarty. The rest were detectives, old ladies, mob,
and a wealthy young Colonial larrikin. Neither my friend nor I was fond
of describing love scenes, so we made the heroine disappear in the second
chapter, and she never turned up again till chapter the last. After
playing in a comedy at the house of an earl, Rosa and Vera entered her
brougham. Soon afterwards the brougham drew up, _empty_, at Rose's own
door. Where _was_ Rose? Traces of her were found, of all places, in the
Haunted House in Berkeley Square, which is not haunted any longer. After
that Rose was long sought in vain.
This, briefly, is what had occurred. A Russian detective "wanted" Vera,
who, to be sure, was a Nihilist. To catch Vera he made an alliance with
"The Whiteley of Crime." He was a man who would destroy a parish
register, or forge a will, or crack a crib, or break up a Pro-Boer
meeting, or burn a house, or kidnap a rightful heir, or manage a
personation, or issue amateur bank-notes, or what you please. Thinking
to kill two birds with one stone, he carried off Rose for her diamonds
and Vera for his friend, the Muscovite police official, lodging them both
in the Haunted House. But there he and the Russian came to blows, and,
in the confusion, Vera made her escape, while Rose was conveyed, _as
Vera_, to Siberia. Not knowing how to dispose of her, the Russian police
consigned her to a nunnery at the mouth of the Obi. Her lover, in a
yacht, found her hiding-place, and got a friendly nun to give her some
narcotic known to the Samoyeds. It was the old _truc_ of the Friar in
"Romeo and Juliet." At the mouth of the Obi they do not bury the dead,
but lay them down on platforms in the open air. Rose was picked up there
by her lover (accompanied by a chaperon, of course), was got on board the
steam yacht, and all went well. I forget what happened to "The Whiteley
of Crime." After him I still rather hanker--he was a humorous ruffian.
Something could be made of "The Whiteley of Crime." Something _has_ been
made, by the author of "Sherlock Holmes."
In yet another romance, a gentleman takes his friend, in a country place,
to see his betrothed. The friend, who had only come into the
neighbourhood that day, is found dead, next morning, hanging to a tree.
Gipsies and others are suspected. But the lover was the murderer. He
had been a priest, in South America, and the lady was a Catholic (who
knew not of his Orders). Now the friend fell in love with the lady at
first sight, on being introduced to her by the lover. As the two men
walked home, the friend threatened to reveal the lover's secret--his
tonsure--which would be fatal to his hopes. They quarrelled, parted, and
the ex-priest lassoed his friend. The motive, I think, is an original
one, and not likely to occur to the first comer. The inventor is open to
offers.
The next novel, based on a dream, was called "In Search of Qrart."
What is _Qrart_? I decline to divulge this secret beyond saying that
_Qrart_ was a product of the civilisation which now sleeps under the
snows of the pole. It was an article of the utmost value to humanity.
Farther I do not intend to commit myself. The Bride of a God was one of
the characters.
The next novel is, at present, my favourite cigarette. The scene is
partly in Greece, partly at the Parthian Court, about 80-60 B.C. Crassus
is the villain. The heroine was an actress in one of the wandering Greek
companies, splendid strollers, who played at the Indian and Asiatic
Courts. The story ends with the representation of the "Bacchae," in
Parthia. The head of Pentheus is carried by one of the Bacchae in that
drama. Behold, it is not a mask, but _the head of Crassus_, and thus
conveys the first news of the Roman defeat. Obviously, this is a novel
that needs a great deal of preliminary study, as much, indeed, as
"Salammbo."
Another story will deal with the Icelandic discoverers of America. Mr.
Kipling, however, has taken the wind out of its sails with his sketch,
"The Finest Story in the World." There are all the marvels and portents
of the _Eyrbyggja Saga_ to draw upon, there are Skraelings to fight, and
why should not Karlsefni's son kill the last mastodon, and, as
Quetzalcoatl, be the white-bearded god of the Aztecs? After that a
romance on the intrigues to make Charles Edward King of Poland sounds
commonplace. But much might be made of that, too, if the right man took
it in hand. Believe me, there are plenty of stories left, waiting for
the man who can tell them. I have said it before, but I say it again, if
I were king I would keep court officials, Mr. Stanley Weyman, Mr. Mason,
Mr. Kipling, and others, to tell me my own stories. I know the kind of
thing which I like, from the discovery of _Qrart_ to that of the French
gold in the burn at Loch Arkaig, or in "the wood by the lochside" that
Murray of Broughton mentions.
Another cigarette I have, the adventures of a Poet, a Poet born in a
Puritan village of Massachusetts about 1670. Hawthorne could have told
me my story, and how my friend was driven into the wilderness and lived
among the Red Men. I think he was killed in an attempt to warn his
countrymen of an Indian raid; I think his MS. poems have a bullet-hole
through them, and blood on the leaves. They were in Carew's best manner,
these poems.
Another tale Hawthorne might have told me, the tale of an excellent man,
whose very virtues, by some baneful moral chemistry, corrupt and ruin the
people with whom he comes in contact. I do not mean by goading them into
the opposite extremes, but rather something like a moral _jettatura_.
This needs a great deal of subtlety, and what is to become of the hero?
Is he to plunge into vice till everybody is virtuous again? It wants
working out. I have omitted, after all, a schoolboy historical romance,
explaining _why Queen Elizabeth was never married_. A Scottish paper
offered a prize for a story of Queen Mary Stuart's reign. I did not get
the prize--perhaps did not deserve it, but my story ran thus: You must
know that Queen Elizabeth was singularly like Darnley in personal
appearance. What so natural as that, disguised as a page, her Majesty
should come spying about the Court of Holyrood? Darnley sees her walking
out of Queen Mary's room, he thinks her an hallucination, discovers that
she is real, challenges her, and they fight at Faldonside, by the Tweed,
Shakespeare holding Elizabeth's horse. Elizabeth is wounded, and is
carried to the Kirk of Field, and laid in Darnley's chamber, while
Darnley goes out and makes love to my rural heroine, the lady of
Fernilee, a Kerr. That night Bothwell blows up the Kirk of Field,
Elizabeth and all. Darnley has only one resource. Borrowing the riding
habit of the rural heroine, the lady of Fernilee, he flees across the
Border, and, for the rest of his life, personates Queen Elizabeth. That
is why Elizabeth, who was Darnley, hated Mary so bitterly (on account of
the Kirk of Field affair), and _that is why Queen Elizabeth was never
married_. Side-lights on Shakespeare's Sonnets were obviously cast. The
young man whom Shakespeare admired so, and urged to marry, was--Darnley.
This romance did not get the prize (the anachronism about Shakespeare is
worthy of Scott), but I am conceited enough to think it deserved an
honourable mention.
Enough of my own cigarettes. But there are others of a more fragrant
weed. Who will end for me the novel of which Byron only wrote a chapter;
who, as Bulwer Lytton is dead? A finer opening, one more mysteriously
stirring, you can nowhere read. And the novel in letters, which Scott
began in 1819, who shall finish it, or tell us what he did with his fair
Venetian courtezan, a character so much out of Sir Walter's way? He
tossed it aside--it was but an enchanted cigarette--and gave us "The
Fortunes of Nigel" in its place. I want both. We cannot call up those
who "left half told" these stories. In a happier world we shall listen
to their endings, and all our dreams shall be coherent and concluded.
Meanwhile, without trouble, and expense, and disappointment, and reviews,
we can all smoke our cigarettes of fairyland. Would that many people
were content to smoke them peacefully, and did not rush on pen, paper,
and ink!