DOI article:
A Birthday Letter
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.26392#0026
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A Birthday Letter
whose contributions to your seventh volume no pressman noticed
and no reader skipped; those exquisitely humorous renderings
of an Italian peasant’s saint-lore, which read almost as if
they had been taken down verbatim from an Italian peasant’s
lips. Cultivate Mrs. (or Miss?) Mary Howarth, whose Nor-
wegian story The Deacon many of us thought the most
notable thing in your Volume VIII. Cultivate Mr. Stanley
Makower; and the cc C.S.” and the cc O.” whom you have
cultivated too little of late—cultivate them. Cultivate Mr.
Marriott Watson (despite his tendency to stand on tip-toe and
grope for rare words in the upper ether); cultivate Mr. Kenneth
Grahame ; and if I do not say cultivate Mr. Henry Harland, it’s
because I rejoice to see that you’ve never shown the faintest
disposition to neglect him. And drop, drop—ah, how I should
like to tell you whom to drop ; but you wouldn’t print it.
One word more, and I’ll have done. Don’t make your volumes
too thick. Your last ran to upwards of four hundred pages ; it’s
too much ; it discourages people ; stop at three hundred, or at two
hundred and fifty. And, if you want to be really kind, reduce
your price. Five shillings a quarter for mere Literature is more
than flesh and blood can bear. Reduce your price to three-and
sixpence or half-a-crown. Five shillings ? Lord-a-mercy, sir, do
you think we are made of money ?
Your obedient servant,
The Yellow Dwarf.
P. S.—And—abolish your “ Art Department.” What on
earth can any one want with pictures in a Literary Magazine ?
Believe me, they only interrupt. It ain’t the place for them.
They don’t hang sonnets and stories between the paintings at the
Royal Academy.
A Birthday Letter
whose contributions to your seventh volume no pressman noticed
and no reader skipped; those exquisitely humorous renderings
of an Italian peasant’s saint-lore, which read almost as if
they had been taken down verbatim from an Italian peasant’s
lips. Cultivate Mrs. (or Miss?) Mary Howarth, whose Nor-
wegian story The Deacon many of us thought the most
notable thing in your Volume VIII. Cultivate Mr. Stanley
Makower; and the cc C.S.” and the cc O.” whom you have
cultivated too little of late—cultivate them. Cultivate Mr.
Marriott Watson (despite his tendency to stand on tip-toe and
grope for rare words in the upper ether); cultivate Mr. Kenneth
Grahame ; and if I do not say cultivate Mr. Henry Harland, it’s
because I rejoice to see that you’ve never shown the faintest
disposition to neglect him. And drop, drop—ah, how I should
like to tell you whom to drop ; but you wouldn’t print it.
One word more, and I’ll have done. Don’t make your volumes
too thick. Your last ran to upwards of four hundred pages ; it’s
too much ; it discourages people ; stop at three hundred, or at two
hundred and fifty. And, if you want to be really kind, reduce
your price. Five shillings a quarter for mere Literature is more
than flesh and blood can bear. Reduce your price to three-and
sixpence or half-a-crown. Five shillings ? Lord-a-mercy, sir, do
you think we are made of money ?
Your obedient servant,
The Yellow Dwarf.
P. S.—And—abolish your “ Art Department.” What on
earth can any one want with pictures in a Literary Magazine ?
Believe me, they only interrupt. It ain’t the place for them.
They don’t hang sonnets and stories between the paintings at the
Royal Academy.