V. To One Beginning a Literary Career

ture, too, must have a focus. Your paper hasn't a focus: it is a yard of canvas painted beauti fully; but there is no reason why it should stop at a particular moment. The remedy for this is to shape an outline first.

Introduction.

Point I (bang), flowing out of this is Point II (bang), and thence follows Point III (BANG!)

with a kind of ripple flowing away into silence

(if it is of that kind).

" (3) You repeat yourself too much. For ex ample, you let your climax — Bethlehem and Calvary — peep out too noticeably, too soon. You must remember that a reader is thinking as he reads. When I read of the crucifix I saw your climax full-armed: you shouldn't have let me do that. You should have said that the screen was there with half-seen gigantic shapes... and then passed on like lightning to the altar and Bethlehem. Then you should have made me look up again and see for the first time the Cross and the Blood.

" (4) Touches of humour enliven a description, of course. But be fearfully careful. For example, the ' insecure ladder ' on which the novice is standing is literally irreverent. One sees in an instant a novice tumbling from it in a halo of white habit and green leaves — whereas your note there is peace and security!! So too in lesser degree with your muddy road in the valley. One isn't thinking of the muddy road at all, but of the peaceful valley.

" So too again two or three times you are too reflective in the wrong place. You are like a person who is pointing out a snow-peak and then says: ' Isn't it extraordinary to think that that beauty is caused by a mixture of H2O ' (or what ever it is) ' at a certain temperature? ' Do you see what I mean?

" Now of course I have exaggerated all those points violently — underlined them in red pencil. What I recommend is this. Put this MS. instantly into a drawer. Take paper and pencil and write down a skeleton on this subject, with points and sub-points: so that it makes a curve and ends inevitably. Then write a first para graph. Then take the MS. out of a drawer, take it to pieces, and fit it into the skeleton.

" I dare say lots of papers would take the MS. as it is; I dare say after correction they won't. But they would be entirely wrong in both cases; and you will be right. And that is what matters in a literary life.

" Now if I didn't think highly of your powers I wouldn't say all this. I would say instead, perfectly truthfully, that it is beautiful; that some paper certainly ought to take it, and that I congratulate you.

" The books I recommend first are:

Kidnapped. Master of Ballantrae. Across the Plains. (Stevenson.) Marius the Epicurean. (Pater.) The Apologia. (Newman.) Sesame and Lilies. (Ruskin.)

" Finally, do study alliteration, both of con sonants and vowels. It is a trick, of course, and becomes a vice if you aren't careful. But it adds extraordinary polish if used in moderation.

" No — don't be afraid of adjectives, so long as they are exactly right ones.

" God bless you always."

Six months later Father Benson wrote:

(iv) " I do not see why God has developed in you a desire to write, and has given you success, unless He means you to do something with it. Of course He may mean you to sacrifice it; but one has to have strong reasons for thinking that, and I don't see them."

(v) "A hundred congratulations. I am so glad. A Pen-Name is a hard thing to think of. I think - - is as good as anything. It is interesting, somehow."

(vi) " I think this is very touching and beautiful: the descriptions are exquisite, and gain enormously by being set into a shape.

" Two comments only:

" (i) I should say ' I ' instead of ' one ' as often as possible.

" (2) I should lay stress all through on your sense of leaving home and feeling strange: and on your perception that Catholics are at home everywhere. A sentence or two would do it.

" Such a hurry. God bless you."

The next letter is dated nearly a year later.

(vii) " An idea has come to me which I may as well suggest — about your writing.

" Mere scenic writing is not popular, though people love it if it is illustrative of a story. Now why don't you try a novel of which a large part is laid in? I don't mean that it is to be autobiographical, actually, but that it should follow the lines that you know.

" The first thing is to get the central character and the development.... The next thing is to plan the book. Take, for example, three ( parts.' Each part must have a theme, and must have a defined end — a step forward in character or circumstances.... Then you must take extra ordinary pains with the side-characters, and weave in small developments in them. They too must progress; not merely be straw-people who are moved about to bring out [the heroine].

" Or again, you might weave the whole thing on the frame of the World, the Flesh, and the Devil.

" But the important thing in a novel, as in a sermon, is to have an object so clear that it can be described in one sentence. It must be a ' curve,' not a strip. You will find this gives an extra ordinary vividness and significance to back grounds. You need not trouble about them; you will do them admirably without any trouble. What you will have to take extreme pains with is the ' curve ' and the characters. You must not, as all of us are tempted to do, label char acters, especially side-characters, as ' villain/ ' adventurer,' ' devot '... because all characters are mixed.

" If you do it you must first make your scheme — the three parts — the chapters. Each part ends with a moderate ' bang '; each chapter with a smaller ' bang '; each paragraph with a tiny ' spit '; the whole thing with a loud ' bang/

" Another thing you must guard against is too much pictorial religion. That is a temptation for all with liturgical minds. If you care to do this, and to send me the frame, I shall be charmed to criticise. I am quite sure you can write. I think this may be the solution. Authors have a real chance now [1907] if they happen to hit the target; and there is lots of money to be made."

To a suggestion I made regarding this advice, Father Benson replied:

(viii) " When you do your scheme, will you draw it out in printed handwriting — very terse, e.g.:

" Chapter I. Jane at home. General situation and characteristics.

" Chapter II. Jane meets John. John's characteristics.

" Chapter III. John's meditations. He goes for a walk....

" I don't like your end.... People will see it coming and will snort. Leave her in the country, with a garden: and him dead. (This is only the vaguest suggestion.) And leave her serene and supernatural. And please don't for an instant ever run Divine Love and human love into one. (Yes; there is a retort to that; and another to that.) But that is what I think."

(This letter, which goes on to deal with private matters, concludes: "I have written this be tween preaching and supper; hence its didactic and discontented tone/')

I have omitted all the finely-wrought details in the above scheme; for, as the novel in question, though written and rewritten, has not yet seen the light of day, it would be unfair to one self, as well as impossible for another obvious reason, to do otherwise. Publishers, unfortunately, were more difficult to convince of the merits of unknown writers than was this generous Master of his craft!

Some months earlier, when I was about to travel to places and among people of rather unusual interest, Father Benson had renewed his advice to me to keep a diary. It was to be written for a circle of friends, who had asked to see it; it was to be descriptive, and illustrated with sketches and photographs. Above all it was to be " the right shape. Not a flat exercise book," he begged; " they are so depressing." It was to be a thick, oblong volume. I found exactly the thing in a shop in Cambridge, and he gave the blank pages his Imprimatur f I was to send it first to him; and I mention this in order to explain the next letter.

(ix) " First I want to congratulate you more than I can say upon your diary. It is simply admirable. I read it straight through, absorbed:

I read extracts to Father, who roared with delight, aloud, again and again.

" Do you know I really think it would make a book very nearly as it stands? I am no longer in the least doubtful as to the one thing I did doubt about — viz. your delineation of character. But you have got it! even in your smallest touches. - and - - and are all alive.

" Now please consider this:

" Will you think over a slight story and then work it into the diary? I think it should be a trifle tragic, as a foil to the humour." (Here the plot — a delightful one — is outlined at some length.) " It will be a poignant book.

" You would have to write a careful preface and an epilogue, and edit the diary. But the mass of the book can stand as it is. If you agree, then please let me deal with a publisher for you. If you are in doubt, will you let me send a volume of the diary first to a publisher for his opinion — or better still, take it with me to-morrow week when I lunch with one?... It is really difficult for me to believe that your book won't be a success. Of course I may be wrong. Things are fearfully subtle on the pub lishing point. But that is my opinion. The sketches and photographs will have to come out."

no SPIRITUAL LETTERS TO A CONVERT

But again the publisher was hard-hearted! Father Benson, enclosing his letter, wrote:

(x) " Be prepared for a disappointment. Here is 's opinion. I told him what I thought, and asked for a perfectly candid judgment. It was silly of him to think that you meant to publish the diary practically as it stood. I was quite explicit with him.

" Now the question is, what do you think yourself? You have an expert's opinion. Do you think that a story on the lines I have suggested is in your power? The point, as I see, is Construction. All depends upon that. And I haven't the slightest idea whether you have that gift or not. Certainly you have the gifts of description and humour. But those, according to this opinion, are not sufficient.... You must decide.... I am overwhelmed with work. God bless you."

One thing will surely strike even the least sympathetic reader — the generous unselfishness shown by one of the busiest men in England as to the affairs of a perfectly insignificant person, whose name as a writer was practically unknown. Father Benson at that time was at Cambridge. Not only was he preaching regularly every Sun day — sometimes twice — to say nothing of his enormous correspondence, and the daily increasing number of personal calls upon his time, but he

BEGINNING A LITERARY CAREER in was writing one of his best-known books, Lord of the World. The mental and physical strain can be imagined. Yet he found time for every one who needed his help.

It was in the little room at the end of the passage, in the Catholic Rectory, Cambridge, that he gave me many an unforgettable lesson in style and construction. I was writing a book — not the novel — which appeared shortly after. As I wrote, he read the chapters, and criticised. Sunday night, after his sermon, between Bene diction and the Rectory supper-time, was the hour he usually spared me; and once, for some reason, supper was laid in the little room. " What," asked Father Benson, in the course of an instruction on the perfect selection of the adjective, "is, for instance, the difference be tween ' gleaming ' and ' glittering '? You've got both in this paragraph, and I want to know how you differentiate." The supper-table, hap pily for me, supplied half the answer. " Silver — polished silver — gleams, and diamonds glitter," I ventured, for this was a serious matter! " Right," he said; " I just wanted to see if you knew why you used them."

The greater part of the instructions Father Benson so generously gave me were viva voce, and I shall not, naturally, attempt to reproduce them here. But the fact accounts for certain lacuna in his letters upon this subject. One thing, however, I must say. With such a teacher it was a foregone conclusion that his pupil should be considered to have attempted to plagiarise him! If so, it was unconsciously. " What does it matter? " he asked. ' They say. What do they say? Let them say! '

H2 SPIRITUAL LETTERS TO A CONVERT

You and I both understand, and that is the only thing of importance. If the same words mean the same thing to both of us, it merely proves our minds are alike." He never seemed to understand or value his own generosity.

(xi) " If you get unpleasant letters," he wrote at this time, " I should burn them instantly, after one reading. I always do. It is the only way not to be distracted."

In the same letter he says:

" You must follow your own feelings through out, and not take advice unless you honestly and absolutely agree with it. Otherwise the book will be patchwork."

A year later Father Benson sketched the following notes, which form a useful guide to anyone undertaking biographical work.

(xii) " What you need is a journey to a library. Then look out (the name) in a ' Dictionary of National Biography.' Then read through the article to get the general proportions, and make notes. Then write down:

" (i) The names of all biographies of him published since 1870. " (2) The names of all big biographies (2 vols.

or more) ever published.

1 ' Then, if the books are in the library, take out as many as you can, and read them all, fast, making notes. Then map out your own, by chapters... allotting incidents and character istics to each chapter.

" Then begin to write, hard."

At the close of 1908 he wrote:

(xiii) " What is quite certain is that you are meant to write; and if that is incompatible with circumstances these must be changed.... I wonder what you will think of the Conven tionalists? Personally I like it, if I may say so! I actually don't want to rewrite it. But I shall in a year, I imagine. Just now I am at the dismal labour of rewriting a dreary book on Charles II, which I loathe. It is the sixth time."

This book, of course, is Oddsfish, of which Father Benson wrote to me from Rome in the spring of 1904 that he was working at a historical novel on Charles II, but had been " advised for the present to keep it back." He waited, as we know, just ten years! It is this wonderful patience — the " infinite capacity for taking pains," the long delays in order that work may ripen — which is so eminently characteristic of his genius. And though no living writer has produced so much work of the same kind and

H

H4 SPIRITUAL LETTERS TO A CONVERT quality in so short a time as he, his books never show signs of haste — a proof of supreme craftsmanship.

(xiv) " You will have to learn how to ' cut,' ' he wrote in 1909. " It is a literary equipment as much as anything can be. One can always reduce if necessary.... Please sign no agree ments without letting me see them."

Two other letters return once more to the novel, of which he never gave up hope. I think I may honestly say he was more interested in it than I, to whom it never seemed convincing.

(xv) "It is excellent.... The thing you will have to toil at is the framework and the story.

" My main criticism is that the personal element is not nearly strong enough.... I really think that a little hard, careful, absorbed work on this point might make the whole difference to the entire book. You have so much excellent stuff, skin and flesh and blood, that it is worth rebuilding the anatomy. At present it is evident that the love-interest is shoved in through the skin from outside. You must give the impression that the bones were built up first.

" You will have to cut — but never cut con versations. They are Heavenly! "

A year later he said, at the end of a letter full of advice on literary matters:

(xvi) " Yes: my new book's out. It's called None other Gods.... I think it's going to do well, but I haven't yet had time to look at it in its published form. And I began yet another two months ago; and haven't touched it for six weeks.

" Don't mind about your feelings. Go on

' doing the Pieces,' as Father said; and say,

' Lord, Thou knowest how exceedingly busy I must be (and how exceedingly fractious I feel!). If I forget Thee, do not Thou forget me! ' I say that CONTINUOUSLY, just now."

(xvii) " I daren't prophesy about [your novel]," he wrote some time later. " I am clear (a) that it is a good book... (b) that it is worth working at and publishing. But as to whether the B.P. will rally round it in their thousands I haven't an idea. I don't think you ought to incur any... expenses on its security. It would be a real gamble. Gambles sometimes succeed, but that doesn't justify them. That's what I think."

It is impossible to quote more of these de lightful letters. But enough has been said to show, in his own words, the sort of friend Father Benson was — even in temporal matters — to any n6 SPIRITUAL LETTERS TO A CONVERT one of his children who needed his help. No words of anyone else, however grateful, could have the same effect; just as no one else, how ever ready, could have helped in the same way. Yet, though one cannot take up a pen, much less begin to write, without remembering him — re membering his patience, his courage, his generosity to the correspondents, many of them strangers, who overwhelmed him with letters; remembering the long list of books he has left us, books at which, too often, he toiled with weary brain and wearier fingers; remembering, above all, his indomitable will, which carried him on to the very end: the infinite pathos of it all brings its own mystical consolation. No living writer has so given of himself in his books as Monsignor Benson: his learning and experience, his trained faculties of observation and description — himself — the very depths of his soul, the breadth of his mind, and the heights of his soaring spirit — he has given us all, and at what a cost? But his sacrifice is not in vain, for in the heritage he has left to us he, " being dead, yet speaketh."