Well, I fancy you’re tired of this—so I’ll let you off. One intended criticism in an otherwise favourable review tickled me immensely. “This is a very charming story but the author has missed an opportunity in her setting. Although this is Prince Edward Island which is virgin ground for a story writer, there is nothing in the book distinctive of the place. The scene might as well be laid in any New England village.”
The italics are mine. I suppose the critic imagines that I am some American who laid the scene of her story in P.E. Island by way of getting something new in geography but who has no real knowledge of the weird and uncanny lives led by the inhabitants thereof! Another review said, “What most impresses an American is how these people of Canada resemble ourselves.”
What did that poor man suppose we were like down here???
Now, I’ll take your letter and answer your questions just as they come. You say you warrant I had to do a “great deal of inventing.” Verily, yes. And not only inventing but combining and harmonizing and shading, etc., etc., etc. You can’t describe people exactly as they are. The details would be true, the tout ensemble utterly false. I have been told my characters are marvellously “true to life”—nay, Cavendish readers have got them all fitted to real Cavendish people. Yet there isn’t a portrait in the book. They are all “composites.”
Yes, Anne’s success at school is too good for literary art. But the book was written for girls and must please them to be a financial success. They would insist on some such development and I can’t afford—yet, at least—to defy too openly the standards of my public. Some day I shall try to write a book that satisfies me wholly. In a book for the young it wouldn’t do to have the hero “fail tremendously,” as you say. They couldn’t understand or sympathize with that. It would take older people. I do not think I’ll ever be able to write stories for mature people. My gift such as it is seems to lie along literature for the young.
Yes, I took a great deal of pains with my style. I revised and re-wrote and altered words until I nearly bewildered myself.
In regard to the illustration. I thought the second one the best in the book—the one where she arrives at Green Gables. In it she looks almost exactly as I imagined her looking. However, I suppose the illustrations, lacking as they are in many respects, are about as good as most of those in present day fiction. The one I resented most is the bridge scene. Although in the chapter Anne is distinctly described as having “short rings of hair” she is depicted with streaming tresses!
I don’t know the number of copies in an edition. That will come in the financial settling up at the end of the year. The first one would probably be small, the others larger. The publishers write me that orders have been held up for weeks waiting for the fourth edition, so that it would probably be quite a large one.
Yes, the publishers seem to be pushing the advertising well. They turn everything to account. In July a big party of Orangemen were going on a picnic. At the Boston North St. station, they saw a copy of Anne of Green Gables bound in green on a newsstand. They took, or pretended to take—they were likely half drunk—the title as a personal insult, marched across to the Page building, the band playing horrible dirges, and nearly mobbed the place. One of the editors came out and told them that although the title might be offensive “the heroine, Anne, had hair of a distinct orange hue.” Thereupon they “adopted” Anne as their mascot, gave her three cheers and went on their way rejoicing.
The Page Co. published an account of this incident in a dozen different papers from Boston to California. They have also set out posters and booklets galore. I am well satisfied with my publishers as far as everything has gone so far.
I pay $5 for 100 clippings to the bureau, and have found them very satisfactory.
I don’t like my new Anne book as well as the first but that may be, as you say, because I’m so soaked and sated with her. I can see no freshness or interest in it. But, I suppose if I took the greatest masterpiece in fiction and read it over, say, a hundred times, one after the other with no interval between, I wouldn’t find much of either in it also. I felt the same, though not so strongly, when I finished Anne. But I am really convinced that it is not so good from an artistic standpoint, though it may prove popular and interesting enough. I had to write it too hurriedly—and the freshness of the idea was gone. It didn’t grow as the first book did. I simply built it. Anne, grown-up, couldn’t be made as quaint and unexpected as the child Anne. The book deals with her experiences while teaching for two years in Avonlea school. The publishers wanted this—and I’m awfully afraid if the thing takes, they’ll want me to write her through college. The idea makes me sick. I feel like the magician in the Eastern story who became the slave of the “jinn” he had conjured out of a bottle. If I’m to be dragged at Anne’s chariot wheels the rest of my life I’ll bitterly repent having “created” her.
As for Miriam—no, don’t mention my book to her—unless she asks you what I’m doing. In which case you may tell her the simple facts. If she ever refers to it let me know, for curiosity’s sake, what she says.
I have received a lot of nice letters from people about Anne. The editor of the Montreal Herald wrote me such a kind and encouraging letter, as did also the Globe (Toronto) Editor. I’ve been pestered with letters from “tourists” who “want to meet me.” I’ve snubbed all these latter politely, because I don’t want to be met. I had a letter from a lunatic in New York yesterday. You may remember a very minor character in Anne is called Priscilla Grant. Well, it seems his great-great-grandmother was called Priscilla Grant and he wants me to write a book about the girl in my story and call it “Priscilla Grant.” And if I do, he’ll “do all he can to push it.” (He’s a book seller.)
Well, there has been a great deal of pleasure in all this! But it has its seamy side as well. I won’t say much of it as I don’t want to think of it. I’ll only say this. If you want to find out just how much envy and petty spite and meanness exists in people, even people who call themselves your friends, just write a successful book or do something they can’t do, and you’ll find out! Sometimes I feel sick at heart. But not all are such, thank God. I have many true friends who rejoice at my success, such as it is. But most of them are outside my clan connections.
But I’m not well. It was no joke, what I said at the start about feeling played out. I feel so utterly. I’m tired—deadly tired—all the time—just as tired when I wake in the morning as when I go to bed at night—tired body, soul and spirit. I have constant head-aches and no appetite. It’s not all due to literary work, although I suppose that helped it on. We had a houseful of guests all summer, the weather was fearfully hot and I was very much worried in one way or another almost constantly. When I get the book done (by the way, I can’t settle on a name for it and think I’ll leave it to the publishers to christen) I’m going to take a good rest and not write a word for two months. I wish I could get away for a trip and change but that is impossible as I can’t leave grandma.
I’ve been feeling rather worse since a shock I got three weeks ago. One very hot windy day our kitchen roof took fire. There was nobody here but grandma and myself. I dragged a ladder from the barn, hoisted it against the roof (at an ordinary time I couldn’t have lifted it from the ground) went up with a pail of water and succeeded in putting the fire out. Then I collapsed and had to go to bed. My nerves have been in rags ever since and I can’t hear a door slam without jumping and screaming. Nice state to be in! Well, I’m taking a “tonic” and hope it will do half it claims on the label.
I’m through. This is the most appallingly egotistical letter I ever wrote. It’s all about myself and my wretched book. But if I hadn’t written about that I’d have simply nothing else to write about except social gossip that would be Greek to you.
Perhaps some day I’ll be rested and leisurely and able to “imagine” something worth writing you a letter about. Oh, that reminds