“Have you read So-and-So’s latest book? If not, don’t!” Whereupon Jones murmurs: “Really! So bad as all that! Have _you_ read it?” To which Smith rejoins rudely: “No! And don’t intend! I’ve _heard_ all about it!” And Jones, acquiescing feebly, decides that he must “taboo” that book, also its author, lest perhaps Mrs. Jones’ virtue be put to the blush at the mention of either. Now if Smith dared to condemn a tradesman in this way, and depreciated his goods to Jones in such wise that the latter should be led to avoid him altogether, that tradesman could claim damages for injuring his character and depriving him of custom. Should not the same rule apply to authors when they are condemned on mere hearsay? Or when their work is wilfully misrepresented and misquoted in the press?
It may not, perhaps, be considered out of place here to recall a “personal reminiscence” of the wilful misrepresentation made to a certain section of the public of a novel of mine entitled “Temporal Power.” That book had scarcely left the printer’s hands when W. T. Stead, of the _Review of Reviews_, wrote me a most cordial letter, congratulating me on the work, and averring that it was “the best” of all I had done. But in his letter he set forth the startling proposition that I “must have meant” King Edward, our own gracious Sovereign, for my “fictional” King, Queen Alexandra for the Queen, the Prince of Wales for my “Prince Humphry,” and Mr. Chamberlain for the defaulting Secretary of State, who figures in the story as “Carl Perousse.” I was so amazed at this curious free translation of my ideas, that at first I thought it was “Julia” who had thus persuaded Mr. Stead to see things upside down. But as his criticism of the book had not yet appeared in the _Review of Reviews_, I wrote to him at once, and earnestly assured him of the complete misapprehension he had made of my whole scope and intention. Despite this explanation on my part, however, Mr. Stead wrote and published a review of the book maintaining his own fabricated “case” against me, notwithstanding the fact that he held my denial of his assertions in his possession _before_ the publication of his criticism! And though a dealer in meat, groceries, and other food stuffs may obtain compensation if his wares are wilfully misrepresented to the buying public, the purveyor of thoughts or ideas has no remedy when such thoughts or ideas are deliberately and purposefully falsified to the world through the press. Yet the damage is surely as great,--and the injury done to one’s honest intention quite as gratuitous. From this little incident occurring to myself, I venture to say in reference to the assertion that people do not know how to read, that if those who “rushed” through the misleading criticism of “Temporal Power” had honestly read the book so criticized for themselves, they would have seen at once how distorted was Mr. Stead’s view of the whole story. But,--while many who had read the book and _not_ the review, laughed at the bare notion of there being any resemblance between my fictional hero-king of romance and the Sovereign of the British Empire, others, reading the review only, foolishly decided that I must have written some “travesty” upon English royalty, and condemned the book _without reading it_. This is what all authors have a right to complain of,--the condemnation or censure of their books by persons who have not read them. For though there never was so much reading matter put before the public, there was never less actual “reading” in the truest and highest sense of the term than there is at present.