Indeed, the practice of
authorship has run in my family to a quite extraordinary degree. In
four generations, I believe that some twenty of my blood-relations
have written and published books, from my cousin Adelaide Anne
Procter to my uncle Henry Sidgwick. When we were children we
produced little magazines of prose and poetry, and read them in the
family circle. I wrote poetry as a boy at Eton, and at Cambridge as
an undergraduate; and at the end of my time at Cambridge I produced
a novel, which I sent to Macmillan's Magazine, of which Lord Morley
was then editor, who sent it back to me with a kind letter to say
that it was sauce without meat, and that I should not be proud of
the book in later life if it were published.
Then as an undergraduate I began an odd little book called Memoirs
of Arthur Hamilton, a morbid affair, which was published
anonymously, and, though severely handled by reviewers, had a
certain measure of success. But then I became a busy schoolmaster,
and all I did was to write laboured little essays, which appeared
in various magazines, and were afterwards collected. Then I took up
poetry, and worked very hard at it indeed for some years, producing
five volumes, which very few people ever read. It was a great
delight, writing poetry, and I have masses of unpublished poems.
But I do not grudge the time spent on it, because I think it taught
me the use of words. Then came two volumes of stories, mostly told
or read to the boys in my house, with a medieval sort of flavour--
The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset.
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