ow, I was bound to write a novel. It seems
vain to ask why. Men are born with various manias: from my earliest
childhood, it was mine to make a plaything of imaginary series of
events; and as soon as I was able to write, I became a good friend to
the paper-makers. Reams upon reams must have gone to the making of
'Rathillet,' 'The Pentland Rising,'[I] 'The King's Pardon' (otherwise
'Park Whitehead'), 'Edward Daven,' 'A Country Dance,' and 'A Vendetta in
the West'; and it is consolatory to remember that these reams are now
all ashes, and have been received again into the soil. I have named but
a few of my ill-fated efforts, only such indeed as came to a fair bulk
ere they were desisted from; and even so they cover a long vista of
years. 'Rathillet' was attempted before fifteen, 'The Vendetta' at
twenty-nine, and the succession of defeats lasted unbroken till I was
thirty-one. By that time, I had written little books and little essays
and short stories; and had got patted on the back and paid for
them--though not enough to live upon. I had quite a reputation, I was
the successful man; I passed my days in toil, the futility of which
would sometimes make my cheek to burn--that I should spend a man's
energy upon this business, and yet could not earn a livelihood: and
still there shone ahead of me an unattained ideal: although I had
attempted the thing with vigour not less than ten or twelve times, I had
not yet written a novel. All--all my pretty ones--had gone for a little,
and then stopped inexorably like a schoolboy's watch. I might be
compared to a cricketer of many years' standing who should never have
made a run. Anybody can write a short story--a bad one, I mean--who has
industry and paper and time enough; but not everyone may hope to write
even a bad novel. It is the length that kills. The accepted novelist
may take his novel up and put it down, spend days upon it in vain,
and write not any more than he makes haste to blot. Not so the
beginner. Human nature has certain rights; instinct--the instinct of
self-preservation--forbids that any man (cheered and supported by the
consciousness of no previous victory) should endure the miseries of
unsuccessful literary toil beyond a period to be measured in weeks.
There must be something for hope to feed upon. The beginner must have a
slant of wind, a lucky vein must be running, he must be in one of those
hours when the words come and the phrases balance of themselves--_even
to