At twelve or thereabout I put the literary calling to bed for a
time, having gone to a school where cricket and football were more
esteemed, but during the year before I went to the university, it
woke up and I wrote great part of a three-volume novel. The
publisher replied that the sum for which he would print it was a
hundred and - however, that was not the important point (I had
sixpence): where he stabbed us both was in writing that he
considered me a 'clever lady.' I replied stiffly that I was a
gentleman, and since then I have kept that manuscript concealed. I
looked through it lately, and, oh, but it is dull! I defy any one
to read it.
The malignancy of publishers, however, could not turn me back.
From the day on which I first tasted blood in the garret my mind
was made up; there could be no hum-dreadful-drum profession for me;
literature was my game. It was not highly thought of by those who
wished me well. I remember being asked by two maiden ladies, about
the time I left the university, what I was to be, and when I
replied brazenly, 'An author,' they flung up their hands, and one
exclaimed reproachfully, 'And you an M.A.!' My mother's views at
first were not dissimilar; for long she took mine jestingly as
something I would grow out of, and afterwards they hurt her so that
I tried to give them up. To be a minister - that she thought was
among the fairest prospects, but she was a very ambitious woman,
and sometimes she would add, half scared at her appetite, that
there were ministers who had become professors, 'but it was not
canny to think of such things.
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