STEVENSON'S LETTER TO BARRIE ABOUT "THE LITTLE MINISTER."
The following is from "The Letters of Roberr Louis Srevenson," which appear in the November Scribner's : — Ycut description of your dealings with Lord Rintoul are frightfully uneonscientious. You should never write about anybody until you persuade yourself at least for the moment that you love him, above all anybody on whom your plot revolves. It will always make a cole in the book; and if he has anything to do with the mechanism, prove a stick in your machinery. But you know all this better than I do, and it is one of -your most promising- traits that you do not take your powers too seriously. The ."Little Minister" ough. to imve ended badly ; we all know it did; and we are infinitely grateful to you for the grace 'and good' feeling with which you lied about it. If you bad told the truth, I for one could never have forgiven you. As you had conceived, and written the . earlier paxta, the truth about the end. though indisputably 'true to fact, would bave been a lie, or what is worse, a discojjd' in art. If you are going to make a book end badly, it must end badly from the beginning.. Now your book began- to end well. You- let yourself fall in lovo with, and fondle, and smile at your puppets. Once you had done that your honour was committed — at the cost of trujii to life yo»
were bound to save them: . It' is' tbe-WNfl on "Richard Feverel," for. instance, th»t "it begins to end well and then- tricks jou and ends ill. But in that case fcbero is worse behind, for the ili ending docs not inherently issue from-, the plot — the story had, in fact, ended -well and the 'gtie&t last interview, between Richard- and "Lucy—and the blind, illogical builet. which smashes ah has no more to do bfetwee-n the beards than a fly has to do with the .room into whoso open window it comes -bussing. It might have so happened; it 'jpeded not; and unless needs must, we hat • .no tight to pain our leaders.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/OW19060627.2.254
Bibliographic details
Otago Witness, Issue 2728, 27 June 1906, Page 80
Word Count
359STEVENSON'S LETTER TO BARRIE ABOUT "THE LITTLE MINISTER." Otago Witness, Issue 2728, 27 June 1906, Page 80
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