There was once a singular institution called, somewhat grandiloquently, the London School of Journalism. I gather from the public press that schools purporting to teach the art of writing, journalistic or other, flourish even in the present day: there may even, by now, be another bearing the same title. They arise, and fade, and rise again. And there is, I suppose, a certain part of the journalistic trade that can actually be taught—given a teacher who knows his business. At the worst the anxious beginner can be cautioned against certain offences—against the unblushing use of outworn cliches, or of the split infinitive. But why you should have frequented the school in question I cannot say. Possibly you thought, in those early days, that there really was a Mystery of Journalism to which the initiated might provide a key. Possibly it was already clear to you that the school itself might be productive, in the future, of good copy. Or it may be that parental foresight insisted upon this ante-chamber to Bohemia, to make sure that your character should not be ruined by a too early and facile success. In any case you became a pupil, together with at least one other writer of reputation, Mr. Francis Gribble. Genius, we know, will out: it is as difficult to conceal as murder: as hard to eradicate as hereditary gout. Probably the easy methods of the ingenious gentleman who ran the establishment did little either to improve or impair the style of these eminent authors.

The curious may find this same School of Journalism portrayed, with little more than a touch of caricature, in the pages of Felix, a novel in which there is more autobiography than we are accustomed to find in your works. Perhaps for this reason, I have always regarded it as one of your best books. It came at a fortunate period, when you had already written enough to gain command of your material, and before you had acquired the verbosity that distinguished some of your later novels.

You are one of the few literary men who know something about music. Many authors have dabbled in painting: not many have been attracted by the mysteries of harmony and counterpoint. Samuel Butler, it is true, advanced some way up both avenues; but at the moment I can recall no other name to brigade with yours. For it was your earliest ambition to become a musical composer, and you actually went through a course of study for that purpose at Bristol and in London. If, at the ripe age of thirty, you had not made a hit with The Green Carnation, it is possible that you might have achieved fame by another route. But The Green Carnation set people talking. It was a clever book, of a kind that often attains success through curiosity. Several well-known persons, Oscar Wilde among the number, were understood to be discoverable in its pages, under a thin disguise. The roman d clef has often proved the propriety of its name by unlocking the gates of Fame's forecourt.

Perhaps it dates you a little to say that the book was published in 1894. We were both young then, and the literary world had its fashions no less than it has now. Men, and women, now dead or forgotten, were in the forefront of the new movement: magazines and reviews sprang up like mushrooms in the night: little poets produced slim books of verse, even as they do now; and brilliant young writers coruscated in somewhat artificial prose under the fostering wing of the late W. E. Henley, then editor of the National Observer. There followed, during the next three years, An Imaginative Man, The Folly of Eustace, Flames, and The Londoners. I have often wondered, especially now that you have attained to a certain success in the theatrical world, why this last book has never been adapted for the stage. The earlier part of it is admirable farce, carried on with immense spirit. Towards the end, it is true, it degenerates into a sort of knockabout humour. But it possesses a charming young American lady masquerading in man's clothes who should make the fortune of any play.

With added years came a sort of seriousness. Did you despise the precious gift of humour; or did it merely fade away, as such gifts will? The faculty for writing farce seemed to have been lost when, in 1901, you published that melancholy attempt at boisterous fun, The Prophet of Berkeley Square. It seems almost incredible that this book could have been written by the same hand that produced The Londoners. Some of the critics began to express doubts as to your future. Would you prove yet one more of that band of young writers who were destined not to redeem their early promise? However, you pulled yourself together and gave them Felix, which was much better stuff. I do not say that it is a great novel, but it will bear reading more than once—which is more than can be said of most novels in these degenerate days. It has characterization: there is pathos to be found in it as well as humour. The critics revised their opinion, and agreed that you might still go far.

In a sense, I suppose, you have, though it must be confessed that your more recent books have not shown an improvement commensurate with your increased years. You have "arrived," it is true. Just twenty years ago you brought out The Garden of Allah, and your name was made. Incidentally you discovered a formula—always a dangerous discovery for an artist to make. Put in a few words, that formula may be stated as The Importance of the Elderly Woman. Before your happy arrival she had been neglected by the novelist: her fading charms were treated with levity or, even worse, with an exaggerated sympathy. And yet the lady of forty to fifty years felt within herself that she still had the capacity for adventure: she saw no reason why she should retire so early into the background and be content to watch her younger rivals taking all the prominent parts. Women were beginning to emancipate themselves: year by year they were growing determinedly younger, especially if they chanced to be unmarried. Yet it was undeniable that the dreaded borderland of Middle Age was near at hand: they snatched, with a courage born of despair, at the chance of one real adventure before quitting the arena. It was Hichens who had the wit to perceive this cardinal fact, and to turn it to his own advantage. While your comrades blindly concentrated their energies on the young and unformed heroine you struck out boldly into the Saharan desert and showed how Algeria still held possibilities for the courageous woman who had lost her first youth, but retained the primitive instincts of her sex. It was said—I know not with how much truth—that The Garden of Allah and Barbary Sheep were responsible for a vast number of adventurous tourists (a large proportion of them ladies of a certain age) taking tickets to Biskra and the borders of the Sahara.

From the selling point of view, I take it that you found your formula useful enough. It must be remembered that women have always been the great novel-reading section of the community, and, which is even more important, the great distributors of fame. Rumour, with her thousand tongues, was justly painted as of the female sex. And the woman of forty-odd has ever been wont to find solace for her fading charms in the imaginary love-affairs of others. She, above all others, is the great dispenser of fortune to the struggling novelist; and the man who can touch her heart most nearly, who can persuade her that the dangerous fascination of some women really increases rather than deteriorates with advancing years, is assured of success. The only trouble attendant on his good fortune lies in the fact that publishers have an unpleasant knack of demanding that a good formula, once found, shall be worked for something more than it is worth. It is difficult to persuade these unimaginative gentlemen that an artist cannot walk contentedly for ever round the same circular track. To put Pegasus in harness is bad enough, but it is too much to try and turn him into a mill-horse.

The heroine of The Call of the Blood was also a lady whose adventures began (somewhat to her discomfiture) rather late in life. I suppose this book and its sequel, A Spirit in Prison, may be said to have secured your position as a serious novelist—one of those who can be trusted to deal with a psychological problem with that detail and exhaustiveness that the British public demand from a clever writer before they consent to prepare his pedestal. It was in these two books that I first noticed a tendency on your part towards a distressing verbosity. The Call of the Blood was kept alive by the strength of the plot, the Sicilian setting, and the admirable character sketch of Gaspare: in the sequel there was less material but even more fluency.

Some of us began to fear that you had fallen in love with mere length for its own sake, and that your future novels might outrival in size some of the mammoths of antiquity. In common with Mr. Eden Philpotts, a novelist of about your own standing, both as regards age and general reputation, you have been apt to take your relaxation, after writing one of your more important books, in the composition of something trifling on a smaller scale. Thus, after The Garden of Allah you published The Black Spaniel, which is more like an anti-vivisection tract than a novel: after A Spirit in Prison came a book on Egypt and its monuments and Barbary Sheep: between Bella Donna and The Fruitful Vine you brought out a book on the Holy Land and a psychological story called The Dweller on the Threshold. These intercalary works may not have always displayed you at your best, but they possess at least the negative merit of conciseness. We had begun to predict for you a distinct future in the literary world. You could write: you had abundance of ingenuity, and an eye for a dramatic situation. Indeed, that eye may have been too good. Bela Donns was dramatized—with a success that may prove to have been her author's ruin.

I have been re-reading during the last few days some of your earlier works, for I always like to refresh my memory on these points before I definitely commit my opinion of any author to the printed page. I read Felix once again, and my good opinion of the book was confirmed: I read also The Londoners and wondered what subtle quality in it that made me laugh so consumedly in 1897 had evaporated after seven-and-twenty years. I remember distinctly the first time I read that story, for it was in a club library, and on the mantelpiece of the palatial room was displayed a placard with the word SILENCE inscribed thereon in big letters. Perhaps it was just that placard that made me choke and gurgle with dissimulated laughter, as one laughs hysterically at church or during a funeral. But no it certainly was funny: it was screamingly funny in parts. And yet now I can read it soberly enough, without more than an occasional quiet chuckle. The fact is, that farce has to be very good indeed if it is to live. There was a time when Jerome's Idle Thoughts laid the foundation stone of a new school of British humour: you are more likely to yawn over it now than to laugh. And yet Pickwick survives. To preserve it from decay farcical writing needs an especially large infusion of humanity.