My tale was a youthful blunder. It was not really a tale. I introduced, in order to provide interest, all sorts of accessories—aunts, parsons, gamekeepers, nurses, a fire and some hairbreadth escapes, but they were none of them essential and they were all manufactured. The only parts not worthless were those which were autobiographical.
One of them I remember very well, although my MS. was burnt long ago. I believed then that Nature is not merely beautiful, but that she can speak words which we can hear if we listen devoutly, and that if personality has any meaning she is personal,
‘The guide, the guardian of the heart and soul.’
Towards the end of an autumn afternoon I had rambled up to the pillar which was a landmark to seven counties. It was wet during the morning, but at five o’clock the rain ceased and a long, irregular line of ragged cloud, dripping here and there, stretched itself above the opposite hills from east to west. Underneath it was a border of pale-golden, open sky, and below was the sea. The hills hid it, but I knew it was there. I was hushed and reassured. When I got home I transferred my emotion to my deserted heroine, and tears blotted the paper. But it was a mere episode, without connection and, in fact, an obstruction.
I sent my manuscript to a publisher and need hardly say that it was returned as unsuitable. I tried two others, but with no success. The third enclosed a copy of his reader’s opinion. Here it is:—
‘ . . . is obviously a first attempt. It evinces some power in passages, but the characters lack distinction and are limited by ordinary conventional rules. I cannot recommend it to you for its own sake, and there is no prospect in it of anything better. The author might be capable of short stories for a religious magazine. It is singular that Miss C.’s _Mariana_, which you also sent me, should be on somewhat the same lines, but Mariana, his first love, is seduced by the man who forsakes her and, in the end, marries her as his second wife. During his first marriage his intimacy with Mariana continues and Miss C. thereby has an opportunity, which she used with much power, for realistic scenes, that I believe will prove attractive. I had no hesitation therefore in advising you to purchase _Mariana_, although the plot is crude.’ I could not take the publisher’s hint. I put my papers back into my box and obtained another situation. In about a twelvemonth, notwithstanding my disappointment, I was unable to restrain myself from trying again. I fancied that I might be able to project myself into actual history and appropriate it. I had been much attracted to Mary Tudor, and I had studied everything about her on which I could lay my hands. I did not love her, but I pitied her profoundly, and the Holbein portrait of her seemed to me to indicate a terrible and pathetic secret. I cannot, however, give a complete explanation of her fascination for me. It is impossible to account for the resistless magnetism with which one human being draws another. The elements are too various and are compounded with too much subtlety. Bitter Roman Catholic as Mary was, I wished I could have been one of the ladies of her court, that I might have offered my heart to her and might have wept with her in her sorrow. But my intense feeling for a picture of the Queen was no qualification to paint the original, and although I strove to keep close to facts she insensibly became myself. I was altogether stopped when I happened to meet with Aubrey de Vere’s _Mary Tudor_ and Tennyson’s _Queen Mary_.