TER XIX

ROBERT W. CHAMBERS AND THE WHOLE TRUTH

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Once a man came to Robert W. Chambers and said words to this effect:

"You had a great gift as a literary artist and you spoiled it. For some
reason or other, I don't know what, but I suppose there was more money in
the other thing, you wrote down to a big audience. Don't you think,
yourself, that your earlier work--those stories of Paris and those novels
of the American revolution--had something that you have sacrificed in your
novels of our modern day?"

Mr. Chambers listened politely and attentively. When the man had finished,
Chambers said to him words to this effect:

"You are mistaken. I have heard such talk. I am not to blame if some
people entertain a false impression. I have sacrificed nothing, neither
for money nor popularity nor anything else.

"Sir, I am a story-teller. I have no other gift. Those who imagine that
they have seen in my earlier work some quality of literary distinction or
some unrealised possibility as an artist missing from my later work, are
wrong.

"They have read into those stories their own satisfaction in them and
their first delight. I was new, then. In their pleasure, such as it was,
they imagined the arrival of someone whom they styled a great literary
artist. They imagined it all; it was not I.

"A story-teller I began, and a story-teller I remain. I do pride myself on
being a good story-teller; if the verdict were overwhelmingly against me
as a good story-teller that would cast me down. I have no reason to
believe that the verdict is against me.

"And that is the ground I myself have stood upon. I am not responsible for
the delusion of those who put me on some other, unearthly pinnacle, only
to realise, as the years went by, that I was not there at all. But they
can find me now where they first found me--where I rather suspect they
found me first with unalloyed delight."

This does not pretend to be an actual transcription of the conversation
between Mr. Chambers and his visitor. I asked Mr. Chambers recently if he
recalled this interview. He said at this date he did not distinctly
recollect it and he added:

"Probably I said what is true, that I write the sort of stories which at
the moment it amuses me to write; I trust to luck that it may also amuse
the public.

"If a writer makes a hit with a story the public wants him to continue
that sort of story. It does not like to follow the moods of a writer from
gay