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From
A Writer's Recollections
CHAPTER XII
THE PUBLICATION OF 'ROBERT ELSMERE'
It was in 1885, after the completion of the Amiel translation, that I began 'Robert Elsmere,' drawing the opening scenes from that expedition to Long Sleddale in the spring of that year which I have already mentioned. The book took me three years -- nearly -- to write. Again and again I found myself dreaming that the end was near, and publication only a month or two away; only to sink back on the dismal conviction that the second, or the first, or the third volume -- or some portion of each -- must be rewritten, if I was to satisfy myself at all. I actually wrote the last words of the last chapter in March 1887, and came out afterwards, from my tiny writing-room at the end of the drawing-room, shaken with tears, and wondering as I sat alone on the floor, by the fire, in the front room, what life would be like now that the book was done! But it was nearly a year after that before it came out, a year of incessant hard work, of endless re-writing, and much nervous exhaustion. For all the work was saddened and made difficult by the fact that my mother's long illness was nearing its end, and that I was torn incessantly between the claim of the book, and the desire to be with her whenever I could possibly be spared from my home and children. Whenever there was a temporary improvement in her state, I would go down-to Borough alone to work feverishly at revision, only to be drawn back to her side before long by worse news. And all the time London life went on as usual, and the strain at times was great.
The difficulty of finishing the book arose first of all from its length. I well remember the depressed countenance of Mr. George Smith -- who was to be to me through fourteen years afterwards the kindest of publishers and friends -- when I called one day in Waterloo Place, bearing a basketful of type-written sheets. 'I am afraid you have brought us a perfectly unmanageable book!' he said; and I could oftly mournfully agree that so it was. It was far too long, and my heart sank at the thought of all there was still to do. But how patient Mr. Smith was over it! -- and how generous in the matter of unlimited fresh proofs and endless corrections. I am certain that he had no belief in the book's success; and yet on the ground of his interest in 'Miss Bretherton' he had made liberal terms with me, and all through the long incubation he was always indulgent and sympathetic.
The root difficulty was of course the dealing with such a subject in a novel at all. Yet I was determined to deal with it so, in order to reach the public. There were great precedents -- Froude's 'Nemesis of Faith,' Newman's 'Loss and Gain,' Kingsley's 'Alton Locke,' -- for the novel of religious or social propaganda. And it seemed to me that the novel was capable of holding and shaping real experience of any kind, as it affects the lives of men and women. It is the most elastic, the most adaptable of forms. No one has a right to set limits to its range. There is only one final test. Does it interest? -- does it appeal? Personally, I should add another. Does it make in the long run for beauty? Beauty, taken in the largest and most generous sense, and especially as including discord, the harsh and jangled notes which enrich the rest -- but still Beauty -- as Tolstoy was a master of it.
But at any rate, no one will deny that interest is the crucial matter.
There are five and twenty ways Of constructing tribal lays -- And every single one of them is right!
-- always supposing that the way chosen quickens the breath and stirs the heart of those who listen. But when the subject chosen has two aspects, the one intellectual and logical, the other poetic and emotional, the difficulty of holding the balance between them so that neither overpowers the other, and interest is maintained, is admittedly great.
I wanted to show how a man of sensitive and noble character, born for religion, comes to throw off the orthodoxies of his day and moment, and to go out into the wilderness where all is experiment, and spiritual life begins again. And with him I wished to contrast a type no less fine of the traditional and guided mind -- and to imagine the clash of two such tendencies of thought, as it might affect all practical life, and especially the life of two people who loved each other.
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