The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1893-02-05

RESTORATION PERIOD, primarily WICKED
interval IN the social history of England,
which, after the lapse of thirty years,
am still as bent upon taking for the back
ground of love story as / was when /
began ssMaster Anthony's Record in
Esmondese, and made my girlish ac-
qua1ntance with the reading room of the
British museum, where / went in quest OF
local color, and where much kindness was
shown to my youth and inexperience of
the book world. Poring over folio edi-
ton of the state trials at my uncle's quiet
rectory in sleepy Sandwich, 1 had dis
covered the passionate romantic story of
Lord Grey's elopement with his sister-in
law, next in sequence to the trial OF Law
renee Braddon and Hugh Spoke for con-
spiracy. At the risk of seeming disloyal
to my own race. l must add that it
seemed to me very tinpot order of plot
to which these two learned entlemen
bent their legal minds, and which cost
the Braddon family heavy fine in land
near Camelford = confiscation which L
have heard my father complain of as
especially unfair = Lawrence being
younger son. The romantic story of Lord
Grey was to be the subject of ssMaster
Anthony's Record but Master An
thony' sentimental autobiography went
the way of all my earlier efforts. 1t was
but year or SO after the collapse of
prising printer of Beverly, who had seen
my poor little verses in the Bev-
erly Recorder, made me the spirited
offer of SO for q serial story, to be set up
and printed at Beverly. and published on
commission by London. firm in Warwick
Lane. cannot picture to myself, in my
after-knowledge OF the bookselling trade,
any enterprise more futile in its inception
or more feeble in its execution; but to nv
youthful am bition the actual commission
to write novel, with an advance pay
ment OF 90 shillings to show good faith on
the part OF my Yorkshire Spectator,
seemed like the opening of that pen hand
ink paradise which had sighed for ever
since could hold pen. had, previously,
to this date, found a maecenas in Beverly,
in the person of q learned gentleman
who volunteered to foster my love of the
MUSES. by buying the copyright of vol
his own expense-which he did, poor
man, without stint, and by which noble
patronage of poets corner verse, he must
have lost money. He had, however, the
privilege of debating the subject of the
principal poem, which was to sing
however feebly-Garibaldi' SiciIian cam
paign.
The Beverley printer suggested that my
Warwick Lane serial should com bine, as
terest and genial humor of Dickens With
the plot weaving of g. W. r. Reynolds;
and, furnished with these broad instruc-
tions, filled my ink bottle, spread out
my foolscap, and, on a hopelessly wet at
ternoon, began my first novel-now
known as ''The Trail of the Serpent''-
but published in Warwick Lane, and
later in the stirring High street of Bever-
ly, as s-Three Times Dead.' In s'Three
u in, neodI orov va loose To all INV Lean
ings in melodrama. Death stalked in
ghastliest form across my pages, and will
Amy reigned triumphant until the Mem
esis OF the last chapter l wrote with all
the freedom of one who feared not the
face of critic; and, indeed, thanks to the
obscurity OF its original production, and
its reissue as the ordinary two-shilllng
railway novel, this first novel of mine has
almost entirely escaped the critical lash,
and has pursued its way as a chartered
libertine. People buy it and read it,
and its faults and follies are forgiven as
the exuberances of a pen unchastened by
experiences: but faster and more facAe at
that initial stage than it ever became af-
ter long practice.
The weekly number of s'Three Times
Dead'' was ''thrown OFF, at brief inter
walls of rest from my naGgnuna opus, and it
was an infinite relief to turn from Carl
baldi and his brothers in arms to the an
gels and the monsters which my own
brain had engendered, and which to me
seemed more alive than the good great
man whose arms 1 SO laboriously sang.
My rustic pipe far better loved to sing of
melodramatic prisoners and ubiquitous
detectives; of fine houses in the west OF
London, and dark dens in the east. So
the weekly chapter OF my first novel ran
merrily off my pen while the printers
boy waited in the farm house kitchen.
Happy, happy days, SO near to memory,
and yet SO far. In that peaceful summer
l finished my first novel, knocked Carl
baldi on the head with closing rhapsody,
saw the York spring and summer races in
wet weather, learnt to love the
Yorkshire people, and left Yorkshire al
most broken heartedly on a dull, gray
October morning, to travel Londonwards
through landscape that was mostly I'M
der water.
And, behold since that October morning
l have written So novels; l have lost dear
old friends and found new friends, who
are also dear, but have never looked on
Yorkshire landscape since turned my re-
luctant eyes from those level meadows
and green lanes where the old chestnut
mare used to carry me ploddingly to and