But I found
that it was not possible to work more than a few hours a day at the
task of selection, because one's judgment got fatigued and blurred.
The sudden cessation of heavy professional work made itself felt in
an extreme zest and lightness of spirit. It was a very happy and
delightful time. I was living among friends who were all very hard
at work, and the very contrast of my freedom with their servitude
was enlivening. I was able, too, to think over my schoolmastering
experience; and the result was The Upton Letters, an inconsequent
but I think lively book, also published anonymously and rather
disregarded by reviewers. But the book was talked about and read;
and for the next year or two I worked with indefatigable zest at
writing. I brought out monographs on Edward FitzGerald and Walter
Pater; I wrote The Thread of Gold, which also succeeded; and in the
next year I settled at Cambridge, and wrote From a College Window
as a serial in the Cornhill, and The Gate of Death, both
anonymously; and in the following year Beside Still Waters and The
Altar Fire. All this time the Queen's letters were going quietly on
in the background.
I have written half-a-dozen books since then. But that is how I
began my work; and the one point which is worth noticing is that
the four books which have sold most widely, The House of Quiet, The
Upton Letters, The Thread of Gold, and the College Window, were all
of them issued anonymously, and the authorship was for a
considerable time undetected.
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