A Writers Recollections, vol 2 | Page 6

precious bundle of his letters shows, he became
the friend of all of us--myself, my husband, and the children; though
with an increased intimacy from the 'nineties onward. In a subsequent
chapter I will try and summarize the general mark left on me by his
fruitful and stainless life. His letter to me about Miss Bretherton is
dated December 9, 1884. He had already come to see me about it, and
there was never any critical discussion like his, for its suggestion of a
hundred points of view, its flashing of unexpected lights, its witness to
the depth and richness of his own artistic knowledge.
The whole thing is delicate and distinguished [he wrote me] and the
reader has the pleasure and security of feeling that he is with a woman
(distinctly a woman!) who knows how (rare bird!) to write. I think your
idea, your situation, interesting in a high degree--But [and then come a
series of most convincing "buts"! He objects strongly to the happy
ending]. I wish that your actress had been carried away from Kendal
[her critical lover, who worships herself, but despises her art] altogether,
carried away by the current of her artistic life, the sudden growth of her
power, and the excitement, the ferocity and egotism (those of the artist
realizing success, I mean; I allude merely to the normal dose of those
elements) which the effort to create, to "arrive" (once she had had a

glimpse of her possible successes) would have brought with it. (Excuse
that abominable sentence.) Isabel, the Isabel you describe, has too
much to spare for Kendal--Kendal being what he is; and one doesn't
feel her, see her, enough, as the pushing actress, the _cabotine_! She
lapses toward him as if she were a failure, whereas you make her out a
great success. No!--she wouldn't have thought so much of him at such a
time as that--though very possibly she would have come back to him
later.
The whole letter, indeed, is full of admirable criticism, sprung from a
knowledge of life, which seemed to me, his junior by twelve years,
unapproachably rich and full. But how grateful I was to him for the
criticism!--how gracious and chivalrous was his whole attitude toward
the writer and the book! Indeed, as I look over the bundle of letters
which concern this first novel of mine, I am struck by the good fortune
which brought me such mingled chastening and praise, in such long
letters, from judges so generous and competent. Henry James, Walter
Pater, John Morley, "Mr. Creighton" (then Emmanuel Professor at
Cambridge), Cotter Morrison, Sir Henry Taylor, Edmond Scherer--they
are all there. Besides the renewal of the old throb of pleasure as one
reads them, one feels a sort of belated remorse that so much trouble
was taken for so slight a cause! Are there similar friends nowadays to
help the first steps of a writer? Or is there no leisure left in this choked
life of ours?
The decisive criticism, perhaps, of all, is that of Mr. Creighton: "I find
myself carried away by the delicate feeling with which the
development of character is traced." But--"You wrote this book as a
critic not as a creator. It is a sketch of the possible worth of criticism in
an unregenerate world. This was worth doing once; but if you are going
on with novels you must throw criticism overboard and let yourself go,
as a partner of common joys, common sorrows, and common
perplexities. There--I have told you what I think, just as I think it."
* * * * *
Miss Bretherton was a trial trip, and it taught me a good deal. When it
came out I had nearly finished the translation of Amiel, which appeared

in 1885, and in March of that year some old friends drove me up the
remote Westmorland valley of Long Sleddale, at a moment when the
blackthorn made lines of white along the lanes; and from that day
onward the early chapters of Robert Elsmere began to shape themselves
in my mind. All the main ideas of the novel were already there.
Elsmere was to be the exponent of a freer faith; Catharine had been
suggested by an old friend of my youth; while Langham was the fruit
of my long communing with the philosophic charm and the tragic
impotence of Amiel. I began the book in the early summer of 1885, and
thenceforward it absorbed me until its appearance in 1888.
The year 1885, indeed, was one of expanding horizons, of many new
friends, of quickened pulses generally. The vastness of London and its
myriad interests seemed to be invading our life more and more. I can
recall one summer afternoon, in particular, when, as I was in a hansom
driving idly