"THE NEW ZEALAND NOVELIST."

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 11986, 7 June 1902, Page 5 (Supplement)

"THE NEW ZEALAND NOVELIST."

A CHAT WITH "ALIEN." [FROM OCR OWN' CORRESPONDENT.]

London, April 25. Mrs. Baker, or " Alien," as she prefers to be designated, is at present in town,, or rather is paying a round of visits among friends in the Loudon suburbs. She called on me a few days ago, and I was pleased to see her looking much stronger and more cheerful than when I previously met tier at her Bournemouth home. "It is most kind of you to ask about my new book," she said. "I have missed the spring publication, and it will not appear till the autumn publishing season."' " Your new novel is to be called ' Not in Fellowship,' is it not? What is the purport of the title?" " Yes," said Mrs. Baker. " That will be the name. It was suggested to me some years ago by my seeing on entering a meet-ing-house an inscription or notice, 'Those Not in Fellowship Please Sit BeHind the Board.' "My heroine is 'behind the board.' The story hinges on the amended divorce law of New Zealand." " Ah ! then, you keep faithful to New Zealand as your scene of action?" Yes, indeed," replied " Alien," earnestly. "It has been very gratifying to me to have accomplished my aim of being acknowledged both in England and New Zealand as 'the New Zealand novelist,' and as it is other people, especially acknowledged critics, who apply that term to me. not I who claim it, I think I may feel that I have fairly won it. You see all my characters have grown, as it were, spontaneously and naturally out of New Zealand soil, or rather out of its scenery and special features. They belong essentially to New Zealand and to their environment. One critic remarked about the principal characters in 'The Untold Half that they so absolutely belonged to the locality that one could hardly imagine them with any other environment. And this is what I have always striven to carry out." \ , "Most successfully, too, as every New Zealauder will admit. But- do you not intend ever to try a broader field of action? Why not try an English scene for a future novel by way of a change? You have used English scenes and characters very effectively in some of your shorter stories." " True," she replied. " And I may tell you that I have just heard from the publishers that my story, called 'Dija's Difficulties,' which came out as a serial in the Girl's Realm, was so much liked and so well received that they are bringing it out in separate book form. That tale alone has made me many pleasant friends, and has brought me some charming letters of appreciation. Then . do you remember my Cornishwomau in 'Another Woman's Territory?'" " Of course I do !" Well, she has pleased Cornish readers so much that I have some delightful invitations to visit Cornwall expressly to study the people and their characters and the scenery and its local colour, the mines and mining population, and so oil, in order that 1 may do for that what I did for the New Zealand goldmines in some of my earlier books. That is to say, they want me to write a Cornish novel, using impressions formed on the spot." "Do you think you will do so?" "I am much tempted," said " Alien." " I may tell you that my publishers have pressed me very strongly to write an English novel for them, and I should greatly like to do so. But then I sometimes wonder whether I have not lived too much out of English life of late years in my quiet and retired home at Bournemouth. One seems to need to mix with the world and keep in constant touch with people to be able to reflect faithfully modern up-to-date ideas and ways of thinking and speaking and acting. As it is I have lived and written on my memories of the past—of New Zealand, that is to say. But I feel that now, after these nine years of absence, my New Zealand impressions may have lost something of their original vividness which I have always striven to convey to the readers of my books. If so, one would recognise the wisdom of providing a set of new impressions, and I should much enjoy the task."