AN AUSTRALIAN NOVELIST.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1160, 25 May 1894, Page 31

AN AUSTRALIAN NOVELIST.

From Our Special Correspondent. London, March 30. Both Ireland and Australia seem anxious to claim the author of “ A Yellow Astor,” who was born in Tipperary, but had lived most of her life in Melbourne and Sydney. During tho last 10 days Mrs Caffyn has undergone all the distracting but naturally not unpleasant experiences of tho nobody suddenly become somebody. Interviewers, photographers, artists and lion-hunters have descended on tho quiet homo in West Kensington, and Dr Caffyn’s patients have suddenly become legion. A Chronicle interviewer extracted from “the now novelist” that “A Yellow Aster” was written in Australia, “but,” said Mrs Caffyn, “it was not completed until we camo back to England last summer. In the quiet of the Australian bush I worked for three months on the book; I continued my work in a bustling seaside hotel near Melbourne, and I did the last chapters in London. A good deal of it I wrote more than once, and then in dictating it to a typewriter for the final form, I cut out about 00,000 words.”

*• Was tho story so much too long, then?” “I thought it much too long. I cut out whole scenes, a good deal of what I cut having to do with the development of tho principal character. Before the cutting tho novel was much moro harmonious; it was a study, while now it is an impression. I think I was right in shortening the book, but on the other hand I also think that I did the cutting badly—as clumsily as could be.”

“Well, 'A Yellow Aster/ minus 60,000 words, being typed, what happened ?” “ It was sent to one publishing firm and favourably thought of, I believe, but not published, as you say in to-day’s Chronicle, because the firm hardly thought it in their line. Next it went to Messrs Hutchinson, and they published it.” “ Now, to go back, what is tho idea of the novel, for the reviewers seem to have different interpretations ?”

“ I dislike stories with a purpose, and in such a sot and hard-and-fast sense, it has no purpose. The story grew as it was written, blit certainly grew from a welldefined basis. I’ll tell you what that basis was, and in doing so best indicate what I meant the meaning of the book to bo. In Melbourne I had a lady friend who was as clever as charming, and we used to make a regular trade of “ swopping ” good ideas with each other. If she gave me a good idea I was to pay her half-a-crown, and if I gave her one she was to pay me the same, but I doubt if we always did pay the half-crowns. No matter, she on ono occasion told me of the case of a professor and his wife, both very learned, both entirely wrapped up in their studies. Further, their affection for each other was only more wonderful than their neglect of their children. They wero two intellectual rainda utterly wrapped up in study and in themselves, and their children got no thought. What the consequencos may have been to the children in this particular case need not concern you, but this was the thing out of which my idea for the novel grew.”

“ It’s a bold question, but what do you think of the book yourself ?” “ Frankly, I can’t say I like it partieub'r’y, that is, the workmanship, and I’m cerium it does not deserve all the praise it has got from reviewers. I have had a number of letters direct from readers, and they say they like it because it is fresh and now, which probably is an explanation of its success.”

“Iota” told me as I was leaving that she has another novel in contemplation. An excellent portrait of Mrs Caffyn appears in Sketch for February 28.