XIV

AUTHORSHIP


As to Hugh's books, I will here say a few words about them, because they
were a marked part of himself; he put much skill and care into making
them, and took fully as much rapture away. When he was writing a book,
he was like a man galloping across country in a fresh sunny morning, and
shouting aloud for joy. But I do not intend to make what is called an
appreciation of them, and indeed am little competent to do so. I do not
know the conventions of the art or the conditions of it. "Oh, I see,"
said a critical friend to me not long ago in much disgust, "you read a
novel for the ideas and the people and the story." "What do you read it
for?" I said. "Why, to see how it is done, of course," he replied.
Personally I have never read a book in my life to see how it is done,
and what interests me, apart from the book, is the person behind it--and
that is very elementary. Moreover, I have a particular dislike of all
historical novels. Fact is interesting and imagination is interesting;
but I do not care for webs of imagination hung on pegs of fact.
Historical novels ought to be like memoirs, and they are never in the
least like memoirs; in fact they are like nothing at all, except each
other.

_The Light Invisible_ always seemed to me a beautiful book. It was in
1902 that Hugh began to write it, at Mirfield. He says that a book of
stories of my own, _The Hill of Trouble_, put the idea into his