Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Girl | Page 5

my family off in one of
her books. It is such an easy thing to do. You only have to find out a
person's peculiarities--and everyone has a peculiarity!--and overdraw
them a little. My sisters and I, I remember, figured as three brainless,
fast girls, which would only have amused us had she left the rest of the
family alone. It is a foolish thing to do, for besides nearly always

giving offence it is not by any means an evidence of good taste.
It is much more difficult to write a tale than some people think; you get
in such hopeless tangles sometimes. People you kill off in the first
chapter, you sadly need in the last. Then, when you are finishing up,
there are so many people to get rid of, that you are obliged to dispatch
them in a bunch with an explosion, or something equally
probable--three or four strangers as a rule, who have never seen each
other before, but who considerately assemble in one place to meet their
doom. Then the last pages will never fit in with the first. Your meek but
lovely heroine at the beginning has been transformed into a beautiful
vixen as you near the end, and is quite unrecognizable. The worst parts
of all are the sensational ones. You think you have worked your hero
up to a pitch of fiery eloquence, while his _fiancée_ is dying in agony
close by, and when you complacently turn to read over the passage, you
find his words imply no more sorrow than they would at the death of a
relative from whom he had expectations, or--a mother-in-law!
It is rather a difficult matter in a large family to keep your actions a
secret. Obtuse as most men are, with things going on right under their
eyes, it is not easy to baffle them when once their curiosity is roused.
And yet curiosity is always imputed exclusively to women! Though
Eve was the first to taste the apple, Adam had no intention of being
behindhand. I know a man who always manages to get down to
breakfast five minutes before the rest of his family, for the purpose of
examining the correspondence all round.
Fortunately I managed to escape from these inquisitive eyes, for I met
the postman myself when he brought back my first tale. It was returned
with the Editor's "compliments and thanks," coupled with the regret
that he could not make use of my contribution.
I don't know that I ever felt such keen disappointment as when that tale
came back from its first visit. I had hoped so much from it, and had
been so confident of its success. It depressed me for some time, and it
was long before I ventured upon anything in the literary way again. But
habit is second nature, they say, so after that and other tales had been
the round of all the magazines and returned to their ancestral home,

decidedly the worse for their outings (change of air evidently does not
agree with MSS.), they affected me no more than the receipt of a
tradesman's circular. In fact I grew quite to welcome them as old
friends, and no one would have been more astonished than I had they
been converted into £ s. d.
Apparently I am not cut out for literary work. I have not sufficient
imagination, nor am I sceptical enough for this fanciful and scientific
age. The world only cares for impossible adventures and magic stories,
or stories which undermine their religion or upset it altogether, and I
am not clever enough for this.
Of course, in my pecuniary need I did not neglect to employ a
"chancellor of the exchequer," as Miss. Mathers calls her; a "wardrobe
keeper," as she terms herself. Indeed, I employed two or three, and so
had plenty of opportunities of observing the type.
These women certainly vary in the way they carry on business, but very
rarely do they vary in appearance. For the fattest, ugliest, oiliest old
creatures to be found anywhere, commend me to a Chancellor! I pause
in astonishment sometimes, and wonder how they have the strength to
carry so much flesh about with them.
The first one I engaged possessed a complexion of a glowing yellow,
like unto the petals of an alamander. She carried on the business in a
too independent way altogether. She would take up my garments, look
them over with a contemptuous sniff (what eloquence there is in a
sniff!), and then begin to talk of the "ilegant costoomes she 'ad 'ad
lately of Lady ----, of the 'ansome silks and furs purchased from the
Countess of ----," &c. It was cunningly and knowingly done.
Immediately, as was intended, my productions began to lose value in