The Warrington & Mid-Cheshire Examiner. — 1893-12-30 (Warrington, Cheshire, England)

TALK WITH MR. JEROME.  After a while I turned the conversation upon his own work in particular, asking him how it was he was able, out of his own inner consciousness as it were, to evolve so many curious specimens of humanity,and yet so true to life. " Well," be thoughtfully replied, "it is rather difficult to say off-band, because though lam always studying life in the rough, yet I rarely pick out solitary specimens of humans. Things sink in unconsciously, I suppose. I couldn't tell you what a man had on five minutes after he had left, me, but after a while,if I thought about him, he would all come back to me. As to what they say and think—the characters in my books —I always feel as if I knew wbat a man would say ; if I see his face I can always tell what h. is going to say,for words, modes of expression, are so much the part of a man. Take, for instance, that double character in my ,‘ Novel Notes,' where a man is a gentleman for one month and an East end blackguard the next month. Whenever I conjured up the two faces of that one man I knew exactly what each would say. Lavater says that you can alter your feelings by your facial muscles. Stick out the jaw,' he says, ' and you feel determined at once.' I often do that myself. The muscles have a distinct effect on the will power. It simply means that body and mind re-act on one another. Wag a dog's tail to make him good humoured. If you can make a man laugh against his will, his bad humour goes, dispersed by the, muscles of laughter. You notice this often in the House of Commons. I always enter int* my characters' thoughts and feelings: I can't help my' self. Mr. Solomon in painting my portrait the other day ' noticed that. I happened to think of a murder in my story ; the savageness of it came into my face, and he had to paint the expression over again when my thoughts were ot a more cheerful nature. I den't work from my ' head, but from my heart. For the time being lam the man lam describing. I could not possibly describe him and his doings in cold blood. Take Uncle Podger ' hanging the pictures in "Three Men in a Boat.' I actually was that man putting up the pictures, or rather, I was the people standing round him. Be was only reflective. I did not take him from his point of view. I was his disgusted wife looking on. I dare say he thought the onlookers a pack of fools. My characters really live while lam writing about them. Now they are like people gone abroad—they have dropped out of my life. It is not till I have got two-thirds through my book that I know my new characters. Many authors go back to their old characters. Bret Harte must have loved to go back to Bill." "And what class of people do you like best to describe ? ' "There again it is difficult to say definitely," replied my host, as he lit one of his neverfailing cigarettes. 'There is a keen study underneath ttre surface to be found in the quieter and better educated classes ; bizarre effects, in the eccentric strong characters ; but it is the totally uncultiVated who provide the strongest. My great point, I think, is in mak-ing people talk; but I don't think you can train yourself to it. If you have a strong sympathy,g,enerally you can at once get inside a man. You think with him, and express yourself with him. Each class has certain subtleties. The costermonger, the politician, the society *lncur ; imagine them gathered rdund one subject, and now differently each of them would view the same thing, each one from his own point of thought. There would be little turns of wording and expression—the reflex of the man's thought, and this, without taking into account accent or grammatical accuracy—merely the bent of the mind."—" Cassell's Family Magazine."