Author: Lucille Papin Borden
Born: 30 Mar 1873
Died: 07 Dec 1962
Bio: Lucille Papin Borden is considered one of the most important  writers of her time period. 
Borden is listed in:
  American Authors and Books. 1640 to the present day. 
  The Book of Catholic Authors.
  Catholic Authors. Contemporary biographical sketches.
  Index to Women of the World from Ancient to Modern Times. Biographies and portraits. 
  Who Was Who Among North American Authors, 1921-1939.  Gale Composite Biographical Dictionary Series, 
  Who's Who of American Women. Second edition, 1961-1962. 
 
Lucille wrote an autobiography that begins with this paragraph. "Half French, half British by descent, my forbears came to this country from Brittany and Cornwall in the early 1600's. A Crusader ancestor, Sir John Trenowyth, lies buried in Falmouth's little church of Saint Michael Penkivil, across the river Fal from the beautiful Cornish city. My paternal great-great-grandfather was the Marquis Pierre Liguest de Laclede, commissioned by Louis XV to come to America and found a city to be named for the King. This he did, but he named it for another King Louis of France, Louis IX, and called it Saint Louis. It was there that I was born, and for the most part educated at the Sacred Heart Convent, Maryville, now a college affiliated with the Saint Louis University, which, a few years ago, gave me the degree of Bachelor of Literature."


My husband was created Private Chamberlain of Cape and Sword, by his Holiness, Pope Pius X. Through his services, we grew to know the Pope better than most, and loved him devotedly. He gave me his own little silver pencil, one he had used for many years. I have always felt it to be a great help in the writing I have done. All the books I have written up to 1938 are in the Vatican Library. Once Pope Pius XI said to me, apropos of my books: "sempre meglio-toujours mieux-always better." And he added: "You must continue the Apostolate." Later on, when the present Holy Father was Cardinal Secretary of State, myself and my husband, who had been made a Knight of Malta, were dining at a lovely Roman villa, on the eightieth birthday of Cardinal Gasparri, former Secretary of State. Obviously Papal timbre, Cardinal Pacelli was interesting, and interested, delighted, like all the rest at sight of the beautiful picture made by the old Cardinal bending over the big solitary candle on the first American birthday cake he had ever seen.

A few years later, Cardinal Pacelli, who had become Pius XII, sent me the Pontifical decoration "Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice."

My first three attempts at being the literary lion I had been led to believe I might be, were dismal failures. The first had to do with the Mississippi River. My father, a writer of great ability, had presented me with a diary in the hope something worthwhile might be evolved, between Saint Louis and New Orleans. 
et, I have been curiously allergic to the keeping of a diary. I do it, even now, but it is the only writing I find forced and a task. And yet-with every day of living and everything that happens absorbingly interesting, I would not give it up. But the book turned out to be a hopeless botch. My father said nothing, made no comment.

 Years later, long years, after I had married, and after the publication of my first two romances, my mother said one day: "When you came back after your first trip to New Orleans and gave your father the diary, he read it, sighed, and told me it was a great disappointment: She will never be a writer."

When I wrote The Gates of Olivet it was refused. "Too much war." "Oh, that's simple enough," answered the writer of this first book, "I'll change it." So the actual destruction of a French hospital in 1914 was changed to an airplane accident along the perilous Cotes de Saufterre, where my husband and I with the friend whose plane it was, were wrecked the Spring before on our way down to the Eucharistic Congress in Lourdes. The book was returned to Macmillan, published, and has had reprintings almost every year since it appeared in 1920.

While running a club for soldiers and sailors, working on a plan given me by Major General Leonard Wood for activities in the camps, I wrote "The Road to Christmas Night." It was returned with thanks. Whereupon I changed the name and sent it hurtling back to the magazine that had refused it. It was accepted at once published, and copied in a number of smaller publications as the years rolled by. It was starred by O'Brien in the Best Short Stories of that year. A Boston publisher seeing it, wrote asking if I had an available novel ready. I had never thought of writing a novel, but answered that the book would be in shape in about six months.

It took a little longer than that, the company failed and closed its doors. At the advice of an old friend, Winston Churchill, whose books Macmillan had always published, I took The Gates of Olivet to them. They have remained my only publishers through all the years.

As possible suggestions to young Catholic writers, there might be about three. Study the best authors. My closest friends in my youth were Charles Dickens, Louisa Alcott, William Makepeace Thackeray, Agnes Repplier. The last especially for perfect English. A little later, there were Father Robert Hugh Benson's wonderful Catholic books. A second suggestion is-and it is more than a suggestion-never write a word that could injure an immortal soul. Remember the "millstone." Then-write, write, write. And keep your sense of humor vitally alive in your own heart and before your public. If you like fantasies, and fairies, read Enid Dinnis.