I ENLIST A MINION'S SERVICES
X
It would be interesting to know to what extent the work of authors is
influenced by their private affairs. If life is flowing smoothly for
them, are the novels they write in that period of content colored with
optimism? And if things are running crosswise, do they work off the
resultant gloom on their faithful public? If, for instance, Mr. W. W.
Jacobs had toothache, would he write like Mr. Hall Caine? If Maxim
Gorky were invited to lunch by the Czar, would he sit down and dash
off a trifle in the vein of Mr. Dooley? Probably great authors have
the power of detaching their writing self from their living, workaday
self. For my own part, the frame of mind in which I now found myself
completely altered the scheme of my novel. I had designed it as a
light-comedy effort. Here and there a page or two to steady the
reader, and show him what I could do in the way of pathos if I cared
to try; but in the main a thing of sunshine and laughter. But now
great slabs of gloom began to work themselves into the scheme of it.
Characters whom I had hitherto looked upon as altogether robust
developed fatal illnesses. A magnificent despondency became the
keynote of the book. Instead of marrying, my hero and heroine had a
big scene in the last chapter, at the end of which she informed him
that she was already secretly wedded to another, a man with whom she
had not even a sporting chance of being happy. I could see myself
correcting proofs made pulpy by the tears of emotional printers.
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