MISS BRADDON AT HOME,

Otago Witness, Issue 1874, 21 October 1887, Page 31

MISS BRADDON AT HOME,

A Novelist's Jubilee -A Day at Lichfield t House-Personal Detailo-An Old English House—" The Woman in White " Inspired— r " Lady Audley "-Method-How Mrs Henry Wood Designed a Novel-Skeleton Plots— i The Beginning of " Ishmael" — Style — i Jeremy Taylor and Macaulay—" And so We 5 Parted." I The curious in literary matters are re- ' minded, remarks a daily paper, that the ) novel " Like and Unlike," is Miss Braddon's 3 fiftieth story of the ordinary three volume i size, As Miss Braddon is exactly 50 years } of age, this would give her a novel a year I from the date of her birth. Her ferr tility is extraordinary. There may be c differences of opinion as to the position which Miss Braddon is, or will be, entitled f to occupy at a future date in literature, ; There can be, however, no dispute whatever i- as to her remarkable facility and astonishing • capacity for hard work. She must have been - pouring out steadily for a long time at least J three novels a year, and the well is far from > dry as yet. Miss Braddon still goes on as » vigorously as ever, showing no decrease of mental vitality, s A pleasant matron - like woman, Miss i Braddon (Mrs John Maxwell), above the • medium height ; fair, with a complexion that suggests more of horse exercise and the open air generally, than pens and ink, and hard work in a library. Her eyes are small, and look a trifle tired ; her mouth large and characteristic, firm lips, a strong chin. The expression of her face suggests an amiable temperament and a kindly nature ; and like all authors who are at work on an engrossing book, there is in her eyes an occasional vacancy of expression, which means that their owner for a moment is thinking of her work, taxed unexpectedly with a sudden idea, or worried with one of the vagaries of one of the fictitious characters she has created and cannot altogether control. Miss Braddon's husband is bale, hearty, breezy, in spite of his GO years. A keen business man, newspaper proprietor,, publisher, printer, he has been everything in connection with the journalistic history of Fleet street ; had a hand in starting the Standard, and was for years the proprietor of the ' " Belgravia Magazine " ; he is known as well for his generous hospitality as for his smart, ! clever business operations. Lichfield House, where the family reside, was originally built for the first Earl of Aber- J gavenny. It afterwards became the palace J of the Bishop of Lichfield, and hence its name, one of the bishops using it as his episcopal residence. The drawing room has a curious history. Having been used for ecclesiastical examinations and for consecrating serious students to the service of the Church, it passed into the hands of Katalani, the famous vocalist, who, at the height of her popularity, gave receptions here. The house is in the style of Queen Anne. Sala says Sir Christopher Wren must have built it. The drawing room is a picture gallery, and indeed the house is decorated throughout with many fine examples of the best English masters. In the breakfast room, among other curiosities, is the little table used by the Duke of Wellington during the Peninsular war, and on which he wrote the dispatch that recounted the victory of Waterloo, ft is a curious table, so constructed that it is either a dispatch box, a card table, a chess table, a dining table, or a writing desk. My host directed my attention to a magnificent bookcase, of English marqueterie work. Opening it, there was displayed a collection of large volumes handsomely bound in red morocco. " The Braddon novels," my host exclaimed, with undisguised pride. "The original manuscripts. It might be said one day that no one pen could have written so much and so well. Here is the answer." "Show me the manuscript of 'Lady Audley's Secret,' " I said. "The only one I do not possess; it was burnt in a fire at the publisher's office." " And the truth is," said the author, who joined us at this moment, " Max did not think so much of my manuscripts in those days ; I am sure it never occurred to me to take the trouble of preserving them; and luncheon is ready." The Interview. " Now tell me," I say, as I sit down by the fire, " something about your working day." ' My idea of a perfect and pleasant day," she says, "is to devote the whole of it to writing and reading ; when I say the whole of it, I mean from breakfast at 10 say, until dinner at 7, with intervals of strong tea, and sometimes a little luncheon. I can do this four days during the week and enjoy it, and get through a lot of work, if I have the other two for riding, and more especially for hunting." " And your reading 1 Who are your favourite authors, as the new inquisitorial autograph books put it ? " "Well, I must confess that I have read very few of my contemporary novelists; I think I have read more French stories than English. I have read and am fond of George Eliot, Rhoda Broughton, Wilkie Collins, of course; and I know my Thackeray, my Dickens, and my Scott. I always say that I owe ' Lady Audley's Secret ' to ' The Woman |in White.*' Wilkie Collins is assuredly my literary father. My admiration for ' The j Woman in White ' inspired me with the idea of ' Lady Audley ' as a novel of construction and character. 'Previously my efforts had been in the didactic direction of Bulwer, long conversations, a great deal of sentiment, you know what I mean. I suppose evory young writer starts with an ideal author; Bulwer was mine, and the late Lord Lytton took great interest in my work. He undertook to correct and criticise my first story, and both he and his son, the present Lord Lytton, have written me very many charming and valuable letters. The late Earl wrote me long criticisms of almost every book I wrote, not mere complimentary letters, but fault finding letters, pointing out where he thought I was wrong, and being very generous, of course, touching what he thought were good points in my work. I dedicated ' Lady Audley ' to him. He was the first author of note to give me any real encouragement. I think I have no hesitation in saying that, all round, Dickens has given

1 me more pleasure than any other -writer. ! Charles Reade I admire greatly, both as a ' I man and as an author I think he was one of 1 the most powerful of our English writers ; and what a world of tenderness of thought he brought into his work !" Her face becomes as animated when talking of Reada as when previously she was talking of hunting. " I read a great deal at our house in the Forest. Charles Lamb is one of my great favourities, Steel another, and I never tire of De Quincy, or to go in quite another direction, of Daudet, Balzac, and Victor Hugo." " I see you have Nana among your French books. What do you think of Zola ?" " That he is very clever, not immoral, as some people think, but that he is horrible and maudlin in his new departure of socalled realism. It cannot be regarded as immoral when the vices of humanity are exposed in their most revolting details, neither is it art, I think, and it certainly is most unpleasant reading/ " Now, let us talk about your method of story telling. I remember many years ago discussing this subject with Mrs Henry Wood. She told me that her system of beginning and working out a story was of the most methodical character. First she sketched her plot, then she elaborated it and set forth her characters, then she divided it into three parts for three volumes ; then she divided up her volumes into chapters and allotted each chapter its incidents ; so that finally she sat down to work knowing exactly what she had to do, how much for each chapter, and so on without any particular mental strain. I thiDk Trollope worked very much in the same way. Now } how do you begin and how do you finish I—tell1 — tell me as if I were that same interviewer under editorial instructions of whom we talked at the outset." " Very well then," she said, clasping her hands and looking into the fire. "I am not as systematic as Mrs. Wood, nor can I write exactly to measure as Trollope did. Sometimes when I get. a special order, as I do now and then from the newspapers or a magazine, I find myself literally without an idea in my head. My mind is a blank, quite empty, as one may say. Then all of a sudden and unexpectedly an idea comes, the germ of a story. For example, ♦ Henry Dunbar ' — I thought of that story as I was driving into the city one day to meet my husband, thought of it in the street in a cab ; but the germ of it had been probably already in my mind, suggested by a police case I had read in the meruiors of a French detective. Have you read "Carpenter's Physiology?" Well, ho explains how the brain works on its own account; how it has a sort of double action, and will, as it were, debate and work out a theme while we are unconscious, so to speak, of its operations. I am sure I have had many experiences of the truth of this theory. When I nave got my germ, and it has developed into anything like shape, I make a skeleton plot, describe the characters, note the incidents, and sketch out the general idea. That done, I begin my copy for the printer, and work at it straight to the finish. Of course new developments occur as I go along, changes sometimes of incident and motives, but so long as I adhere to the general plan I accept these changes and find that the whole scheme works out correctly. " Will you show me a skeleton ? " She goes to her desk and hands me a small memorandum book. " There is ' Ishmael,' my last novel ; the skeleton occupies seven pages." They were closely-written pages and had been marked through, bit by bit, as a reporter marks his note-book after transcription. " May I copy half of the first page ?" " If you care to take the trouble." I did care, and here it is — the first half page of the skelton of Miss Braddon's latest, I and not the least popular, of her novels : — " Ishmael." ! A man of 40 years in Paris — rich, cultivated, handsome, of powerful frame, extraordinary energy, courage, and audacity. No one knows who he is, but — supported by his large wealth, he reaches a great success in society. A woman — lovely, impassioned, but past the bloom of girlhood, — patrician, &c, &c. — falls madly in love wii h him — for a time he avoids her, even to discourteousness — at last, in a passionate sceno, he reveals his love. She is happy — he not — he plans to take her to South America, or some French colony. She is willing to resign Paris, friends, country, for his sake. On the weddii'g morning he is wounded — or before wedding. " I wrote • Lady Audley's Secret' without a skeleton plot, without a single note," continues my hostess, when I hand back to h'>r the plot of " Ishmael." "I read the 'Woman in White,' and it so excited me that I fc It my mind at work in a new direction. I wrote ' Lady Audley ' as a novel of construction. Then I had to divide it into as mai:y stages as was necessary for three volumes. By the way, we were speaking of Trollopo. Well, he took great pains to find out the rare at which he wrote on an average — how mai y [ words an hour. My curiosity was thy& [ aroused as to how much I did, and I found ! that when I am at work I write quite as fa.-t as Trollope. That is a very trivial matter, but it will interest some people." Then we drifted into that kind of general conversation which does not belong to tbe strict domain of interviewing, and presently I was prowling among the books of reference, and talking all the time of the authors w e both liked, of the successes that amazed us, and the failures we could not understand. During this final ramble round the room we passed in ruview "The Spectator," "The Tatler," "Chambers' Miscellaney," "Southey's Common-Place Book," "Buckle's Common - Place Book," Beaumont ard Fletcher, and Jeremy Taylor. The latti-r author, my hostess pronounced "capital reading for style," and I felt constrained t o confeis that I prefer the more modem style of Macaulay. And so we parted with just sufficient difference of opinion to relieve our conversation from monotony, and to set up in t! c reader's mind a point for debate and development. Stylo is a great matter ; some peop'e think matter is far more important th::n style. It is a fine thing when the two ate combined as in— well, you can discuss tie

author among yourselves. If you enjoy % stirrup cup, don't forget, should you evei visit Lichfield House," that that the "Maxwelton tap" is as bonnie as the famoiS ♦' Maxwelton braes." There is much virtue in old whisky taken in healthy moderation— as a stirrup cup, for example.