The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, September 11, 1904, Page 7

THE SAN FRANCISCO SUNDAY CALL. 3 { o d 5 y ST wlo i \ 2= e 77‘ g 4\,‘3“&"\ 4 P He T B e x5 aoadn o > o TS —— = wgloow V- K. cJerom N a newspaper piacard, the other day, 1 saw announced a new novel by a celebrated author. I bought a copy of the paper and turned eagerly to the last page. I was disappointed to find that I had missed the first six chapters. The story had commenced the previous Saturday; this \ Friday. I say I was disappointed, and so I was at first; but my disappointment did not last long. The bright and intelligent sub-editor according to the custom now in vogue, had provided me h a short synopsis of those first six chapters, so that with- out the trouble of reading them I knew what they were all about. “The first installment,” I learned, “introduces the reader to a brilliant and distinguished company assembled in the drawing-- room of Lady Mary’s maisonette in Park street, and much smart talk was indulged in.” I know that “smart talk” so well. Had I not been lucky in missing that first chapter I should have had to listen to it once again. Possibly enough of it might have been new to me, but it would have read, I feel, so very like the old. A dear, sweet, white-haired lady of my acquaintance:-is never surprised at anything that happens. “Something very' much of the *same kind occurred,” she will remember, “one winter when we were living in Dresden. na Only on that occasion the man's ¢, I think, was Robinson.” We do not like new stories—nor ¢ them, either. “Much smart talk is indulged in.” There is lutely no need to ask for more than that. There is a Duchess improper things. Once she used to shock me, but now I am too familiar with her. She is really a very nice woman; she doesn’t mean them; and when the heroine is in trouble, toward the middle of the book, she is just as amusing on the side,of virtue. There is, besides, 2 younger lady, whose specialty is proverbs. Apparently, whenever she hears a proverb she writes it down, with the idea of seeing into how many different forms it can be made to go. 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 be unhappy.” “Too simple, that one,” she tells herself. “Be virtuous and your friends will be happy, if you are not.” Better, but not wicked enough. Let’s try again: “Be happy and people will jump >§§\\0st - “ e N e U WHAT IN THUNDER IS THE SENSE OF MY PAYING QNE MAN TO WRITE A STORY OF SIXTY THOU- SAND WORDS, AND AMOTHER. MAN TO READ IT,AND TELLIT AGAIN IN SIXTEEN HUNDRED.» to the conclusion that you are virtuous.” *That’s. goad. I'll try that one at to-morrow’s party.” She is a painstaking lady. One feels that, better advised, she might have been of use in the world. There is a disgraceful old peer who tells naughty storjes, but is good at heart, and a very rude person. Occasionally a slangy girl is included, 'and a clergyman who takes the heroine aside and talks sense to her, flavored with epigram. All these people talk 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 stout lady confess to her friend while witnessing the performance of a troupe of contortionists calling themselves “The Boneless Wonders of the Universe.” + * * “It is at this gathering,” the synopsis added, “that Ursula Bart, a charming and unsophisticated American girl, possessed of an elusive expression, makes her first acquaintance with Lon- don society,” ere you have a week's unnecessary work on the part of the author boiled down to its essentials. She was young. One hardly expects an elderly heroine. The “young” might have Been dispensed with, especially seeing it is stated that she is a girl. But maybe this is carping. There are young girls and old girls. Perhaps it is as well to have it in black and white; she was young. She was an American young girl. There is only one American young girl in English fiction. We know by heart the uncpnventional things that she will do, the startlingly original things that she will say, the fresh illuminating thoughts that will come to her, as clad in a loose robe of some soft-clinging stuff she sits before the fire, in the solitude of her own room. To com- plete her, she had an “elusive expression.” The days when we used to catalogue our heroine’s “points” are past. For- merly it was possible ; the man wrote, perhaps, some half a dozen novels during the whole of‘his career. He could have a dark girl for the first, a light girl for the second, picture you a merry, little wench for the third and draw you something stately for the- fourth. Nowadays, when a man turns out a novel and six short stories once a year, description has to be vague. It is not the fault of the author. There is not enough variety in the sex. We e RS ) FASHION - IN - LITERATURE . nose!” AL ased to introduce her thus: “Ima"gine t0.yourself, dear reader, an exquisite and gracious creature of five-foot-three. Her golden hair of that peculiar shade—" Here would follow directions enabling the reader to work it out for himseli. He was to pour out a glass of some particular wine into sonie particular sort of glass and wave it about before some particular sort of a light. Or he was to get up at 5 o'clock on a March morning and go out into a wood. 1y In this way he could satisfy himself as to the particplar shade of gold the heroine’s hair might happen to be. Or if he were a careless sort of reader he 'could save himself time and trouble by taking ‘the author’s word for ‘it. - Many of them did. “Her cyes—" They were invariably deép ard liquid. They had ta be pretty deep to hold all the odds and énds that were hidden in them ; sunlight and shadow, mischief, unsuspected’ pdssibilities, complicated emotions, strange, wild yearning. Anything we didn’t know where else ‘to put we said.was hidden in Her eyes. “Her ¢ you could have made it for yourself out of a pen'orth of putty after reading our description—it was so detailed. “Her forehead”: it was always “low.and broad.” .1 don’t know why it was always low. Maybe because the intellectual Heroing was not then popular. For the matter of that T doubt if she be really popular now. The brainless doll, one fears, ‘will cgntinue for many years to.come to be man’s ideal woman; and weoman's ideal of herself for precisely the same peridd, one may bg sure. 1 * * * F :The second chapter, it appeared, transported us te Yorkshire, where “Basil' Longleat, a typical young Epglishman, lately re- turned from, college, resides with his v wed mother and two sisters. They are. a delightful family.” What a world of trouble to both writer and reader is heré saved. “A typical young Eng- Kishman.” The author probably wrote five pages elaborating that youth. The . sub-editor with five words presents ‘him jto me clearer. I see him positively glistening from the effécts of soap and water. I see his clear, blue eye; his fair, ¢risp locks, the natural curliness of which annoys him personally, though alluring to everybody else; his frank, winning, boyish smile. He has “lately returned from college.” That tells me that he is a first- class ‘crickcter and a first-class rower. It doesn’t tell me much about his brain power, I confess. The description of him as a “typical young Englishman” suggests more information in this particular pdint. One assuimeés that the American girl, with the “elusive cxpression,” is going to have sufficient for both. “They are a delightful family.” The sub-editor does not say so, hut I the imagine two sisters are likewise typical young English- women. They ride and shoot, and cook and make. their own dresses. The third chapter is “taken up with the humors of a lTocal cricket match.” 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 pilace in Yorkshire. She meets Basil by accident one morning while riding alone. That is the advantage of having an Amcrican girl for your heroine. Like the British army: it ‘goes anywhere and does anything. In' chapter five Basil and Ursula meet again, this time at'a pichic. The sub- editor ;docs not wish to repeat himself, otherwise he probably would 'have summed up chapter five by saying it was “Taken up with the Humors of the usual picnic.” In chapter six some- thing happens: ‘Basil, retumning late one day, comes across Ur- sula Bart in a lonely part of the moor, talking earnestly to a rough-looking stranger. His approach acress the soft turf being unnoticed, he cannot help overhearing Ursula’s parting words: “I must see you again.. To-morrow night at half-past nime. In the gateway of the ruined abbey.” Who is he? And why must Ur- sula see him again at such an hour? In such a spot? * * * AP So, here, at the cost. of reading twenty lines, I am.landed, so to speak, at the beginning of the seventh chapter. But for tak- ing the trouble to read it through for myself, my kindly guide, the sub-editor, has spoiled me. “Youread it,” I want to say to him “Tell me what's it all ab to-morrow. Who was this bounder? Why did she want to sce him again? Why choose a draughty place? Why half-past nine o’clock at night, which must have been an awkward time for both of them—likely to lead to talk? Why should I wade through three columns and a half? It's your work. What are you paid for?” My fear is that this sort of thing will lead to a demand on the part of the public for con- densed novels. What busy man is going to spend a week of evenings reading a book when a nice, young sub-editor is will- ing in five minutes to tell him the whole history. Then, there will come a day—I feel it—when the businesslike editor will say to himself: ‘“What in thunder is the sense of my paying one man to write a story of sixty thousand words and another man to read it and tell it again in.sixteen hundred. We shail be expected to write our novels in chapters not* exceedilg twenty words. Our short stories will be reduced to the formula: - “Little boy. Pair of Skates. Broken Ice. Heaven 'gates.”' Formerly an author commissioned to supply a child’s tragedy of this kind.for, say a Christmas number, would have“spun it out into five thousand words. Personally, I should have commenced -the previous spring, given the reader the summer and the autumn to get accustomed to the boy.” He would have been a good boy ; the sort of boy that makes a bee-line for the thinnest ice. He would have lived in a cottage. I could have spread that cottage over two pages; the things that grew in the garden; the view from the front door. You would have known that boy before I had done with him—felt you had known him all your life; his quaint . sayings; his childish thoughts; his great-longings, would have been ‘impressed upon you. The father might have had a dash &f humor in him. The mother’s early girlhood might have lent itself to pretty -writing. For the ice we would have had a ‘mysterious lake in- a wood— said to be haunted. The boy would have loved o’ twilights to stand on its fargin. He would have heard stringe voices’call- ing to him. You would have felt the thing ;was coming. 'So much might have been done. When I think of that plot ‘wasted’ in nine words it makes me positively angry. .And what is to become of us writers if this is to be the new fashion in literature? We are paid by the length of our manuscript .at rates from half a crown a thousand words and upward. In the case of fellows like Doyle and Kipling I am told it runs into pounds. How are ‘we to live on novels, the serial rights of which to most of.us will work out at four and sixpence? It can’t be dome.’ It is no good telling me you can see no reason why we should live. That’s no answer. = That's-silly. - Pm-talking plain business, and what about book-wrights?2 “Who is going tdbuy. novels of three pages? They will have to be printed as leaflefs-and sold at a penny-a-dozen. This thing is worrying me. 2 7 Copyright, 1904, by Central News and Press Exchange.