Robert Barr

“ Physically, he is a tremendous man, and he makes even the most courageous editor thankful that he is of evidently peaceful disposition. Harold Frederic, who was nearly as big, told me once that when he put on a rough ulster that reached to his heels, drew a sinister fur cap down over his brows, and took his thick blackthorn stick in his hand, he could sell a short story at once to any editor in London. Without these terrifying accessories Gilbert Chesterton sold me six stories that were not yet written. ”

“ Superficial critics will perhaps see in
"The Diversions of a Princess"
some similarity to the lighter work of Anthony Hope, but the supposed similarity will prove more fancied than real. Miss Smedley's delightful stories are all her own (and mine by purchase) ; no one else could have written them.
In conversing with Miss Smedley I was somewhat shocked and suprised to learn that she imagined she could write "The Idlers' Club" better than I was doing it. I at once handed it over to her for three months. I am always willing to get out of a bus to oblige a lady. ”

“ I would have missed them if I had taken a bus, for the editor of the Quarterly Review arrived just too late on the blue Atlas. A penny saved is not always a penny gained.
Miss Constance Smedley
has written eight very unique stories, which are as light and airy as choice bits of literary lace. Only once before has such confectionery appeared in The Idler, and that was ten or more years ago when I went to a legally furnished room in the Temple overlooking Tom Pinch's fountain and persuaded Anthony Hope to write a dozen stories for this magazine. ”