Sabine Baring-Gould

“ Joseph walked after him.
“Sir,” said the grocer, shutting the glass door, “you have done me a prodigious wrong. You have deprived me of what I would not have lost for a thousand pounds. You have put me into your book. How my business will get on without me—I mean my intellect, my powers of organisation, my trade instincts, in a word, myself—I do not know. You have taken them from me and put them into your book. I am consigned to a novel, when I want all my powers behind the counter. ”

“ Joseph knew no stockbroker—had only heard of them by rumour. He, therefore, was a creation.
“Well, my children, not of my loins, but of my brain,” said the author. “What do you all want?”
“Bodies,” they replied with one voice.
“Bodies!” gasped Joseph, stepping backwards. “Why, what possesses you all? You can't expect me to furnish you with them.”
“But, indeed, we do, old chap,” said Poppy.
“Niece!” said Lady Mabel, turning about in her chair, “address your creator with more respect.”
“Stay, my lady,” said the parson. “Allow me to explain matters to Mr. Leveridge. ”

“ An honest man is worth his weight in gold, and is as scarce as the precious metal.”
Then, with dignity, Mr. Stork withdrew, and passed Mr. Box, the grocer, mounting the stairs.
“Well, Mr. Box,” said Leveridge, “how wags the world with you?”
“Badly, sir, badly since you booked me. I mentioned to you, sir, that I trusted my little business would for a while go on by its own momentum. It has, sir, it has, but the momentum has been downhill. I can't control it. I have not the personality to do so, to serve as a drag, to urge it upwards. I am in daily expectation, sir, of a regular smash up.” ”

“ Miss Vincent, at all times you have seemed to me the ideal of womanhood. I have worshipped the very ground you have trod upon.”
“Fiddlesticks.”
He looked at her. For the moment he was bewildered, oblivious that the old personality of Asphodel had passed into his book and that the new personality of Poppy had invaded Asphodel.
“Well,” said she, “is that all you have to say to me?”
“All?—oh, no. I could say a great deal—I have ordered my supper for nine o'clock.”
“Oh, how obtuse you men are! Come—is this leap year?” ”

“ When she stood over against him, Joseph Leveridge rose and removed his hat. “An early promenade, Miss Vincent,” he said.
“Oh!” she said, “I am glad to meet you here where we cannot be overheard. I have something about which I must speak to you, to complain of a great injury done to me.”
“You do me a high honour,” exclaimed Joseph. “If I can do anything to alleviate your distress and to redress the wrong, command me.”
“You can do nothing. It is impossible to undo what has already been done. You put me into your book.”
“Miss Vincent,” protested Leveridge with vehemence, “if I have, what then? ”

“ Happily a remedy is at hand. I have here—” he waved to the parson of his creation, “I have here an individuality I can give to you, and henceforth, if you will not be precisely yourself again, you will be a personality in your parish and the diocese.” He waved his hand. “Presto!” In the twinkling of an eye all was changed in the Vicar of Swanton. He straightened himself. His expression altered to what it never had been before. The cheeks became firm, and lines formed about the mouth indicative of force of character and of self-restraint. ”

“ But it was not for some days that he confided to her so much as this: “Oh, mother, I have written a novel, and have put into it the people of Swanton—and so have had to leave.”
“My dear Joe,” said the old lady, “you have done wrong and made a great mistake. You never should introduce actual living personages into a work of fiction. You should pulp them first, and then run out your characters fresh from the pulp.”
“I was so afraid of using my imagination,” explained Joe. Some months elapsed, and Leveridge could not resolve on an employment that would suit him and at the same time maintain him. ”

“ He is young and an inexperienced writer of fiction, and is therefore unaware of the exigencies of his profession. You must know, dear author of our being, that every author of a work of imagination, such as you have been, lays himself under a moral and an inexorable obligation to find bodies for all those whom he has called into existence through his fertile brain. ”

“ On reaching his lodgings he found Major Dolgelly Jones in his sitting-room, sitting on the edge of his table tossing up a tennis-ball. In the armchair, invisible to the major, reclined Lady Mabel.
“I am so sorry to be late,” apologised Joseph. “How are you, sir?”
“Below par. I have been so ever since you put me into your book. I have no appetite for golf. I can do nothing to pass the weary hours but toss up and down a tennis-ball.”
“I hope——” began Joseph; and then a horror seized on him. He had no personality of his creation left but that of Lady Mabel. ”

“ Baker, if there be a landlady in this novel of which you complain—”
“There is, and it is me.”
“But it is a mere work of fiction.”
“It is not a work of fiction, it is a work of fact, and that a cruel fact. What has a poor lorn widow like me got to boast of but her character? I'm sure I've done well by you, and never boiled your eggs hard—and to use me like this.” ”

“ Leveridge had never known a person of title in his life, so that Lady Mabel was a pure creation; so also, brought up, as he had been, by a Calvinistic mother, and afterwards thrown under the ministry of the Vicar of Swanton, he had not once come across a Ritualist. Consequently his parson, in this instance, was also a pure creation. A young gentleman, the hero of the novel, a bright intelligent fellow, full of vigour and good sense, and highly cultured, sat next to Lady Mabel. Joseph had never been thrown into association with men of quite this type. ”

“ Leveridge has not mixed in the literary world. He does not belong to the Society of Authors. He is— he will excuse the expression—raw in his profession. It is a well-known law among novelists that they must furnish bodies for such as they have called into existence out of their pure imagination. For this reason they invariably call their observation to their assistance, and they balance in their books the creations with the transcripts from life. ”

“ You go away; I want you no more at the office. Whenever you revisit Swanton you will see only the ruins of the respected firm of Stork. It cannot go on when I am not in it, but in your book.”
The last to arrive was Mr. Wotherspoon. He was in a most depressed condition. “There was not much in me,” said he, “not at any time. You might have spared such a trifle as me, and not put me also into your book and used me up. Oh, dear, dear! what will my poor mother do! And how Sarah and Jane will bully me.”
That same day Mr. Leveridge packed up his traps and departed from Swanton for his mother's house. ”

“ Leveridge was in a solicitor's office at Swanton. Mr. Leveridge had been brought up well by a sensible father and an excellent mother. His principles left nothing to be desired. His father was now dead, and his mother did not reside at Swanton, but near her own relations in another part of England. Joseph Leveridge was a mild, inoffensive man, with fair hair and a full head. He was so shy that he did not move in Society as he might have done had he been self-assertive. ”

“ When they saw him they rose to their feet.
“I know, I know what you have to say,” gasped Joseph. “In pity do not attack me all together. One at a time. With your leave, Mr. Vicar, will you step up first into my bumble little sanctum, and I will receive the others later. I believe that the smell of bacon and eggs is gone from the room. I left the window open.”
“I will most certainly follow you,” said the Vicar of Swanton. “This is a most serious matter.”
“Excuse me, will you take a chair?”
“No, thank you; I can speak best when on my legs. I lose impressiveness when seated. But I fear, alas! ”

“ But one may have too much even of a good thing, and there are moments when I could dispense with your presence.”
“I know, when you want to carry on with the widow. She is always casting sheep's eyes at you.”
“But, Poppy, you forget my hero, whom I created on purpose for you.”
“All my attention is now engrossed in you, and will be till you provide me with a body.” When Leveridge was in his room reading, if he raised his eyes from his book they met the stare of one of his characters. If he went up to his bedroom, he was followed. If be sat with his mother, one kept guard. ”

“ It is no longer on the Alp where it bloomed.”
“But—” urged Joseph. “No,” she interrupted, “you cannot undeceive me. No one can be in two places at the same time. If I am in your book, I cannot be here—except so far as goes my animal nature and frame. You have subjected me, Mr. Leveridge, to the greatest humiliation. I am by you reduced to the level of a score of girls that I know, with no pursuits, no fixed principles, no opinions of their own, no ideas. They are swayed by every fashion, they are moulded by their surroundings ”

“ There could be no mistake about the vicar; he wore a chimney-pot hat of silk, that had begun to curl at the brim, anticipatory of being adapted as that of an archdeacon. Moreover, he wore
extensive, well-cultivated grey whiskers on each cheek. If we were inclined to adopt the modern careless usage, we might say that he grew whiskers on either cheek. But in strict accuracy that would mean that the whiskers grew indifferently, or alternatively, intermittently on one cheek or the other. This, however, was not the case, consequently we say on each cheek. ”

“ Then the landlady went on: “And it's not me only as has to complain. There are three gentlemen outside sitting on the doorstep, awaiting of you. And they say that there they will remain, till you go out to your office. And they intend to have it out with you.”
Joseph started from the chair he had taken, and went to the window, and threw up the sash. Leaning out, he saw three hats below. It was as Mrs. Baker had intimated. Three gentlemen were seated on the doorstep. One was the vicar, another his “boss” Mr. Stork, and the third was Mr. Wotherspoon. ”

“ I am convinced, creator dear, that there is a vein of wickedness in your composition, or you would never have imagined such a minx, good and amiable and butter-won't-melt-in-your-mouth though you may look. ”

“ His characters should be the reverse of those in the first novel. For his heroine he imagined a girl of boisterous spirits, straight-forward, true, but somewhat unconventional, and given to use slang expressions. He had never met with such a girl, so that she would be a pure creation of his brain, and he made up his mind to call her Poppy. Then he would avoid drawing the portrait of an Evangelical parson, and introduce one decidedly High Church; he would have no heavy, narrow tradesman like Box, but a man full of venture and speculative push. ”

“ Impressed as he had been in early youth by the admonitions of his mother, and the applications of the hairbrush by his father, that the imagination was a dangerous and delusive gift, to be restrained, not indulged, he resolved that he would create no characters for his story, but make direct studies from life. ”

“ We watch you, sir,” said the stockbroker, “in our own interest. We cannot suffer you to give us the slip. We are all expectant and impatient for the completion of what you have begun.”
Then the parson undertook to administer a lecture on Duty, on responsibilities contracted to those called into partial existence by a writer of fiction. He cannot be allowed to half do his work. His creations must be realised, and can only be realised by being given a material existence. ”

“ Place aux dames.”
“But,” protested Lady Mabel, “you made me a member of a very ancient titled house that came over with the Conqueror.”
“The personality I offer you,” said I to the major, “though female is noble; the family is named in the roll of Battle Abbey.”
“Oh!” said Dolgelly Jones, “I descend from one of the royal families of Powys, lineally from Caswallon Llanhir and Maelgwn Gwynedd, long before the Conqueror was thought of.”
“Well, then,” said Leveridge, and waved his hand.
In Swanton it is known that the major now never plays golf; he keeps rabbits. ”

“ Henceforth, to use a vulgarism, since I have let the cat out of the bag, they will know that such persons have been used up by novel writers that have known them, and who have replaced the stolen individualities with others freshly created. ”

“ The fifty pounds he had earned would not last long. He began to be sensible of the impulse to be again writing. He resisted it for a while, but when he got a letter from his publisher, saying that the novel had sold well, far better than had been expected, and that he would be pleased to consider another from Mr. Leveridge's pen, and could promise him for it more liberal terms, then Joseph's scruples vanished. But on one thing he was resolved. He would now create his characters. They should not be taken from observation. ”

“ Stork; he wore a stiff felt hat, his fiery hair showed beneath it, behind, and in front; when he lifted his head, the end of his pointed nose showed distinctly to Joseph Leveridge who looked down from above. The third, Mr. Wotherspoon, had a crushed brown cap on; he sat with his hands between his knees, dejected, and looking on the ground.
Mr. Wotherspoon lived in Swanton with his mother and three sisters. The mother was the widow of an officer, not well off. He was an agreeable man, an excellent player at lawn-tennis, croquet, golf, rackets, billiards, and cards. ”