The Old Wives Tale | Page 2

Mrs. W. K. Clifford's most precious novel,
"Aunt Anne," but I wanted to see in the story of an old woman many

things that Mrs. W. K. Clifford had omitted from "Aunt Anne."
Moreover, I had always revolted against the absurd youthfulness, the
unfading youthfulness of the average heroine. And as a protest against
this fashion, I was already, in 1903, planning a novel ("Leonora") of
which the heroine was aged forty, and had daughters old enough to be
in love. The reviewers, by the way, were staggered by my hardihood in
offering a woman of forty as a subject of serious interest to the public.
But I meant to go much farther than forty! Finally as a supreme reason,
I had the example and the challenge of Guy de Maupassant's "Une
Vie." In the nineties we used to regard "Une Vie" with mute awe, as
being the summit of achievement in fiction. And I remember being
very cross with Mr. Bernard Shaw because, having read "Une Vie" at
the suggestion (I think) of Mr. William Archer, he failed to see in it
anything very remarkable. Here I must confess that, in 1908, I read
"Une Vie" again, and in spite of a natural anxiety to differ from Mr.
Bernard Shaw, I was gravely disappointed with it. It is a fine novel, but
decidedly inferior to "Pierre et Jean" or even "Fort Comme la Mort."
To return to the year 1903. "Une Vie" relates the entire life history of a
woman. I settled in the privacy of my own head that my book about the
development of a young girl into a stout old lady must be the English
"Une Vie." I have been accused of every fault except a lack of
self-confidence, and in a few weeks I settled a further point, namely,
that my book must "go one better" than "Une Vie," and that to this end
it must be the life-history of two women instead of only one. Hence,
"The Old Wives' Tale" has two heroines. Constance was the original;
Sophia was created out of bravado, just to indicate that I declined to
consider Guy de Maupassant as the last forerunner of the deluge. I was
intimidated by the audacity of my project, but I had sworn to carry it
out. For several years I looked it squarely in the face at intervals, and
then walked away to write novels of smaller scope, of which I produced
five or six. But I could not dally forever, and in the autumn of 1907 I
actually began to write it, in a village near Fontainebleau, where I
rented half a house from a retired railway servant. I calculated that it
would be 200,000 words long (which it exactly proved to be), and I had
a vague notion that no novel of such dimensions (except Richardson's)
had ever been written before. So I counted the words in several famous
Victorian novels, and discovered to my relief that the famous Victorian

novels average 400,000 words apiece. I wrote the first part of the novel
in six weeks. It was fairly easy to me, because, in the seventies, in the
first decade of my life, I had lived in the actual draper's shop of the
Baines's, and knew it as only a child could know it. Then I went to
London on a visit. I tried to continue the book in a London hotel, but
London was too distracting, and I put the thing away, and during
January and February of 1908, I wrote "Buried Alive," which was
published immediately, and was received with majestic indifference by
the English public, an indifference which has persisted to this day.
I then returned to the Fontainebleau region and gave "The Old Wives'
Tale" no rest till I finished it at the end of July, 1908. It was published
in the autumn of the same year, and for six weeks afterward the English
public steadily confirmed an opinion expressed by a certain person in
whose judgment I had confidence, to the effect that the work was
honest but dull, and that when it was not dull it had a regrettable
tendency to facetiousness. My publishers, though brave fellows, were
somewhat disheartened; however, the reception of the book gradually
became less and less frigid.
With regard to the French portion of the story, it was not until I had
written the first part that I saw from a study of my chronological basis
that the Siege of Paris might be brought into the tale. The idea was
seductive; but I hated, and still hate, the awful business of research; and
I only knew the Paris of the Twentieth Century. Now I was aware that
my railway servant and his wife had been living in Paris at the time