Frenzied Fiction, Stephen Leacock [books to read in a lifetime txt] 📗

Edwin and Ethelinda Afterthought—Husband and Wife—In their Delightful Home Life.

It was at their beautiful country place on the Woonagansett that we had the pleasure of interviewing the Afterthoughts. At their own cordial invitation, we had walked over from the nearest railway station, a distance of some fourteen miles. Indeed, as soon as they heard of our intention they invited us to walk. “We are so sorry not to bring you in the motor,” they wrote, “but the roads are so frightfully dusty that we might get dust on our chauffeur.” This little touch of thoughtfulness is the keynote of their character.

The house itself is a delightful old mansion giving on a wide garden, which gives in turn on a broad terrace giving on the river.

The Eminent Novelist met us at the gate. We had expected to find the author of Angela Rivers and The Garden of Desire a pale aesthetic type (we have a way of expecting the wrong thing in our interviews). We could not resist a shock of surprise (indeed we seldom do) at finding him a burly out-of-door man weighting, as he himself told us, a hundred stone in his stockinged feet (we think he said stone).

He shook hands cordially.

“Come and see my pigs,” he said.

“We wanted to ask you,” we began, as we went down the walk, “something about your books.”

“Let’s look at the pigs first,” he said. “Are you anything of a pig man?”

We are always anxious in our interviews to be all things to all men. But we were compelled to admit that we were not much of a pig man.

“Ah,” said the Great Novelist, “perhaps you are more of a dog man?”

“Not altogether a dog man,” we answered.

“Anything of a bee man?” he asked.

“Something,” we said (we were once stung by a bee).

“Ah,” he said, “you shall have a go at the beehives, then, right away?”

We assured him that we were willing to postpone a go at the beehives till later.

“Come along, then, to the styes,” said the Great Novelist, and he added, “Perhaps you’re not much of a breeder.”

We blushed. We thought of the five little faces around the table for which we provide food by writing our interviews.

“No,” we said, “we were not much of a breeder.”

“Now then,” said the Great Novelist as we reached our goal, “how do you like this stye?”

“Very much indeed,” we said.

“I’ve put in a new tile draining—my own plan. You notice how sweet it keeps the stye.”

We had not noticed this.

“I am afraid,” said the Novelist, “that the pigs are all asleep inside.”

We begged him on no account to waken them. He offered to open the little door at the side and let us crawl in. We insisted that we could not think of intruding.

“What we would like,” we said, “is to hear something of your methods of work in novel writing.” We said this with very peculiar conviction. Quite apart from the immediate purposes of our interview, we have always been most anxious to know by what process novels are written. If we could get to know this, we would write one ourselves.

“Come and see my bulls first,” said the Novelist. “I’ve got a couple of young bulls here in the paddock that will interest you.”

We felt sure that they would.

He led us to a little green fence. Inside it were two ferocious looking animals, eating grain. They rolled their eyes upwards at us as they ate.

“How do those strike you?” he asked.

We assured him that they struck us as our beau ideal of bulls.

“Like to walk in beside them?” said the Novelist, opening a little gate.

We drew back. Was it fair to disturb these bulls?

The Great Novelist noticed our hesitation.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said. “They’re not likely to harm you. I send my hired man right in beside them every morning, without the slightest hesitation.”

We looked at the Eminent Novelist with admiration. We realized that like so many of our writers, actors, and even our thinkers, of to-day, he was an open-air man in every sense of the word.

But we shook our heads.

Bulls, we explained, were not a department of research for which we were equipped. What we wanted, we said, was to learn something of his methods of work.

“My methods of work?” he answered, as we turned up the path again. “Well, really, I hardly know that I have any.”

“What is your plan or method,” we asked, getting out our notebook and pencil, “of laying the beginning of a new novel?”

“My usual plan,” said the Novelist, “is to come out here and sit in the stye till I get my characters.”

“Does it take long?” we questioned.

“Not very. I generally find that a quiet half-hour spent among the hogs will give me at least my leading character.”

“And what do you do next?”

“Oh, after that I generally light a pipe and go and sit among the beehives looking for an incident.”

“Do you get it?” we asked.

“Invariably. After that I make a few notes, then go off for a ten mile tramp with my esquimaux dogs, and get back in time to have a go through the cattle sheds and take a romp with the young bulls.”

We sighed. We couldn’t help it. Novel writing seemed further away than ever.

“Have you also a goat on the premises?” we asked.

“Oh, certainly. A ripping old fellow—come along and see him.”

We shook our heads. No doubt our