DOI article:
A Birthday Letter
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.26392#0018
14 A Birthday Letter
English novel, which perchance sells it five or ten thousand
copies, and mercifully stops at that ?
Oh, Trilby is slipshod, vulgar, and silly enough, in all conscience.
The question I propound is exclusively a question of excess.
Trilby is slipshod, vulgar, and silly ; and Trilby is exquisitely
tiresome and irritating, into the bargain. I have read it. Yes,
though loth to appear boastful, yet with a natural pride in my
perseverance, I may pledge you my word that I have read it.
Laboriously, patiently, doggedly, I have plodded through its four
hundred and forty-seven mortal pages—four hundred and forty-
seven ! I have learned in suffering what I am fain to teach. It
is true, from his title-page, the humane and complimentary
author warned me of what I must expect:
“Aux nouvelles que j’apporte
Vos beaux yeux vont pleurer.”
But I was foolhardy, and pressed on. My “beaux yeux” did
indeed weep much and often, for sheer weariness, for sheer
exasperation, for sheer disgust sometimes, before I had reached the
last of his “nouvelles.” The very first of them was rather a
staggerer. Fancy a fellow-man, at this hour of the afternoon, as
the very first of his “nouvelles,” informing you that “goods
trains in France are called la Petite Vitesse.” But if we once
begin to cry “Fancy” over Trilby, we shall never have done.
The book fairly bristles with solecisms and ineptitudes. Fancy
any gent but a commercial gent blithely writing of “ Botticelli,
Mantegna, and Co.” Fancy any scholar but a board-school
scholar writing, “Not but what little Billee had his faults.”
Fancy any author but an author of the rank of Mr. Jerome
Jerome writing, “ It was the fashion to do so ”—that is, to wear
long side-whiskers—“ it was the fashion to do so, then, for such of
our
English novel, which perchance sells it five or ten thousand
copies, and mercifully stops at that ?
Oh, Trilby is slipshod, vulgar, and silly enough, in all conscience.
The question I propound is exclusively a question of excess.
Trilby is slipshod, vulgar, and silly ; and Trilby is exquisitely
tiresome and irritating, into the bargain. I have read it. Yes,
though loth to appear boastful, yet with a natural pride in my
perseverance, I may pledge you my word that I have read it.
Laboriously, patiently, doggedly, I have plodded through its four
hundred and forty-seven mortal pages—four hundred and forty-
seven ! I have learned in suffering what I am fain to teach. It
is true, from his title-page, the humane and complimentary
author warned me of what I must expect:
“Aux nouvelles que j’apporte
Vos beaux yeux vont pleurer.”
But I was foolhardy, and pressed on. My “beaux yeux” did
indeed weep much and often, for sheer weariness, for sheer
exasperation, for sheer disgust sometimes, before I had reached the
last of his “nouvelles.” The very first of them was rather a
staggerer. Fancy a fellow-man, at this hour of the afternoon, as
the very first of his “nouvelles,” informing you that “goods
trains in France are called la Petite Vitesse.” But if we once
begin to cry “Fancy” over Trilby, we shall never have done.
The book fairly bristles with solecisms and ineptitudes. Fancy
any gent but a commercial gent blithely writing of “ Botticelli,
Mantegna, and Co.” Fancy any scholar but a board-school
scholar writing, “Not but what little Billee had his faults.”
Fancy any author but an author of the rank of Mr. Jerome
Jerome writing, “ It was the fashion to do so ”—that is, to wear
long side-whiskers—“ it was the fashion to do so, then, for such of
our