LITERARY GHOSTS

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 59, Issue 4185, 13 September 1939, Page 9

LITERARY GHOSTS

SOME CLEVER CONCEPTIONS. In the course of a recent speech at Washington, Senator Henry Fountain Ashurst, one of the members for the State of Arizona, referred to the antiquity of the practice of employing “ghosts” to write speeches, articles and books. “Ghost writing has been practised for many centuries,” he said. It seems to he definitely established that the speeches delivered by the Roman Emperor Nero, were written by his Prime Minister, Seneca. Press despatches have announced the discovery of the tomb of Great Caeser’s ghost writer, one Aulus Hirtius. It is more than probable that Hirtius wrote some portion of Caesar’s “Commentaries,” dividing with Oppius, another ghost writer of that day, the credit for authorship of the eighth book of the “Gallic Wars.”

Dr Samuel Johnson contributed nine lines to Oliver Goldsmith’s poem The Traveller, and four lines to The Deserted Village. Senator Arthur H, Vandenberg, an authentic historian, is of opinion that Alexander Hamilton wrote all but four lines of General Washington’s Farewell Address. One of the most tragic episodes occurred when a ghost writer who was employed to write a farewell address for John White, Speaker of the House of Representatives in the 27th Congress, copied copiously from the farewell address delivered by Viee-Presi-dent Aaron Burr. Mr White, being unable to laugh at the comic position in which the ghost writer had placed him, was so overcome, with mortification and disgust that he committed suicide. “WRITTEN BY HIMSELF.” Mr H. M. Pauli, in his book “Literary Ethics,” devotes a chapter to ghost writers, in the course of which he states: —“William Coombe, the author of “The Tours of Dr Syntax,” seems to have had no objection to acting as a ghost. In 1801 was published ‘The Life of Col. Geo. Hanger, Written by Himself.’ The colonel was one of the ‘bucks’ of the Regency, and presumably doubted his own literary powers; at any rate it was Coombe who was the real author of this supposed autobiography.” Across the Channel the ghost was equally active. Of E. Dumont, Sir Samuel Romilly writes, “He has seen his compositions universally extolled as masterpieces of eloquence, and all of them ascribed to persons Who had not written a single word of them.” Mirabeau was one of those who benefited by Dumont’s labours; in fact, he freely availed himself of the services of others. An eight-volume work on Prussia, ascribed to him was practically the work of a Prussian officer. Other cases might be added, but the most unpardonable was the use he made of other authors in his love letters to Madame Monnier. The law reports furnish further proof of the prevalence of the practice. Many readers will recollect a book, “How I Lost £250,000 in Two Years,” by Ernest Benzon (known as “The Jubilee Juggins”). The entire work was written by Vere Shaw, as came out in an action brought by him against the publishers. Isaac Disraeli in his “Curiosities of Literature” refers to the case of Sir John Hill, a contemporary of Henry Fielding, who “contracted to translate Swammerdam’s work on insects for 50 guineas. But he knew no Dutch, so he gave 25 guineas to another translator. But this one was equally ignorant, so he passed it on to a competent man for 12 guineas.” SHAKESPEARE’S GHOSTS. Nearly 1000 books have been written to prove that Francis Bacon was the ghost who wrote the Shakespearian plays. Miss Delia Bacon, an American, who died in 1850, is generally regarded as the source of the Baconian theory of the authorship of the plays, but this belief is not strictly in accord with the facts. Her book “The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakespeare Unfolded by Delia Bacon” was published in Boston (U.S.A.) in 1857. Sir Sidney Lee, in his “Life of William Shakespeare” states that Delia Bacon “was the first to spread abroad a spirit of'scepticism respecting the established facts of Shakespeare’s career.” The view she expressed was that the plays were the work of a school or group, at the head of which was Sir Walter Raleigh, other members being Lord Buckhurst, Lord Paget and the Earl of Oxford, the philosopher of the group being Francis Bacon.

As her book was mainly devoted to showing the similarity between the philosophy of the plays and the philosophy of Francis Bacon, as given in his “Advancement of Learning,” “Novum Organum” and other works, it is not surprising that her group theory has been lost sight of, and that she should come to be regarded as the first of the advocates of the Baconian authorship of Shakespeare’s plays. But Sir Sidney Lee credited William Henry Smith, a resident of London, as the 'first person to suggest the Baconian hypothesis, in a letter to Lord Ellesmere, entitled “Was Lord Bacon the Author of Shakespeare’s Plays?” This letter was published in 1856, and was republished in the following year as “Bacon and Shakespeare.” The Baconian Society was founded in London in 1885, and it started a

magazine called “The Baconian” to promulgate the theory that Bacon wrote the Shakespearian plays. For about 60 years Francis Bacon was the only person put forward by the anti-Stratfordians, i.e., those students of the plays who believe that William Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon was quite incapable of writing them; but since then numerous other - candidates have been put forward, the chief of them being Francis Manners, sixth Earl of Rutland; William Stanley, sixth Earl of Derby, and Edward de Vere, seventeenth Earl of Oxford.

DUMAS’ DECEPTION. The most famous case in literature of- an author giving his name to the work of ghosts is that of Alexandre Dumas pere. How many ghosts he employed in the course of his career is not known, but he allowed his name to appear as the author of more than 1000 volumes romances, dramas, books of travel, compilations on art, crime and cookery. The first of his ghosts was August Marquet, who collaborated with him in writing 18 novels, including such favourites as “The Three Musketeers,” “The Count of Monte Cristo,” “Twenty Years After,” “The Daughter of Regent” and “Queen Margot.” It is generallyaccepted that Dumas was the master mind in this collaboration, but it is indisputable that Marquet did most of the work, ,and that his name as collaborator never appeared on the title page of any of these. 18 novels. As a result of the widespread popularity of “The Three Musketeers” when it appeared as a serial in “The Journal des Debats,” editors of other periodicals and newspapers besieged Dumas for serials and they became more importunate when “The Count of Monte Cristo” appeared. “Editors clamored for the work of Dumas and offered him his own terms,” writes Mr G. R. Pearce in his brief biography of Dumas. “He signed contracts—not altogether blindly, for he was careful to get good payment, without considering how the books he undertook to supply could be written. He bound himself to furnish serials for years ahead, and carelessly spent the advances upon which he insisted. Dumas knew only vaguely what he had promised to write. He and Marquet worked for fourteen hours a day, and turned out immense masses of material, and yet they were always behind. Editors flourished contracts signed by Dumas and demanded that more and still more stories be produced. Messengers waited in an outer room while Dumas wrote furiously in his study. As he finished an instalment for one paper he turned to an instalment for another. At one time six serials were running in Parisian newspapers. Despite the superhuman efforts of the two of them, the promised work could not tie delivered. “Dumas realised at length that he must either surrender some of his contracts or find a means of increasing production. The former course was impossible, for he had spent the large advances made to him and he never had any ready money. There was only one other alternative. He employed assistants and called them secretaries. Marquet was the most faithful and most important of these collaborators, but some of the others whom Dumas engaged were also men of talent.

“In the early days he had revised most of drafts written by Marquet, and he had meant to polish all the

work turned out by the band of secretaries. But it proved impracticable for one man to revise more than a trifle of the stream of material that flowed from those industrious hands. As far as some of the novels were, concerned, the work of Dumas consisted merely in signing his name. And the editors asked nothing further. The public wanted Dumas, and the newspapers were satisfied if they could publish a serial or a story as by Alex. Dumas.” A GHOST EXPOSED. The first Earl Birkenhead, who died on September 30, 1930, after a distinguished career at the English bar and in the House of Commons, had a very unpleasant experience as the result of employing a literary ghost. The, matter is referred to in his biography written by his son, the present EarlJi When the post-war Coalition Government under Mr Lloyd George resigned office in 1922 as a result of a revolt in the ranks of the Conservative party, Lord Birkenhead, who had been Lord Chancellor in the Cabinet, found his income reduced from £lO,OOO a year to a pension of £5OOO, which is attached to the office of Lord Chancellor. He therefore turned his attention to litrature in order to earn money. In his legal practice he had long been accustomed to employ a “devil” to do the spade work, and he continued that practice in connection with the books which were published with his name on the title pages as the author. •

In 1930 there appeared a book entitled “The World in 2030,” in which he portrayed the changes that were supposed to have taken place in the course of a hundred years. In the preface to this book Lord Birkenhead admitted that he had “followed in the footsteps of Jules Verne, Bellamy, Wells and Haldane.” Professor J. B. S. Haldane, of Cambridge, who had recently published a little book, “Daedaus, or Science and the Future,” drew attention in a London literary paper to the fact that a number of passages and ideas in his book had been transferred without acknowledgement into Lord Birkenhead’s. In connection with Lord Birkenhead’s acknowledgement in the preface of his book that he had “followed in the footsteps of Jules Verne, Bellamy, Wells and Haldane,” the latter said in his exposure of wholesale plagiarism: “I have no objection to anybody treading in my footsteps. I object to them stealing my boots to do so, and I am amused when they do not know how to put the boots on.” “Lord Birkenhead was clearly in a very difficult position,” writes the present Lord Birkenhead of his father. ‘There is no doubt that he had borrowed freely from ‘Daedalus’ with only the most perfunctory acknowledgement. He was on this occasion the victim of his own carelessness. For the past year he had been dele-

gating more and more the preparation of his literary works to ghosts. In this book the passages complained of were not written by him, but by a criminally careless understudy. The practice itself was indefensible, and this was the first and last time it occurred. After this episode, although ‘devils’ still prepared his material, no word appeared over his signature which he had not dictated himself.”