Embedded Files
Annotated Bibliography of Grant Allen's MSS,
unpublished correspondence, etc.
Last revised: 19 July 2012
Aberystwyth
National Library of Wales.
TLS with autograph revisions to Mr Hartland, 1897. Department of Manuscripts and Records. NLW MS.5925D. Content unknown.
Austin, Texas
Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas
The Great Oriental Seer. Undated typescript with autograph corrections. In the Grant Allen collection.
[A fake psychic predicts an earthquake; a rational explanation is supplied. No publication known.]
A Modern Pygmalion. Undated typescript with autograph corrections. In the Grant Allen collection.
[A museum robbery is thwarted by a detective disguised as a statue. No publication known.]
TLS, 1892. Recipient unknown. Typescript. In the Grant Allen collection.
TLS to Henry Stephens Salt, 25 September 1895. In the Grant Allen collection.
TLS to [John] Lane, 17 July 1894. In the Grant Allen collection.
Sixteen ALS and TLS to John Lane and the company, 1895-1899. In the John Lane Company collection.
[Little of interest in this correspondence, which is mostly short business notes]
ALS and TLS to Grant Richards. Undated and 10 June 1898. In the Grant Richards collection.
ALS to Thomas Hardy, 10 May [1895]. In the Thomas Hardy collection.
Thanks for copy of Tess
ALS to Ernest Bramah Smith, 1897. In the Ernest Bramah Smith collection.
Two ALS and one TLS dated 20 July 1895, 14 August 1895 and 22 April 1897. Recipient[s?] unknown. In the Ernest Bramah Smith collection.
Two TLS to Richard Le Gallienne. Undated. In the Richard Le Gallienne collection.
There is not a great deal of interest in any of these HRC items
Bath
Bath Reference Library
Letter. Undated. Recipient unknown. A.L.1957. Content unknown.
Berkeley, California
University of California Library
ALS to ‘Dear Madam’. Addressed from Hind Head, Haslemere. Undated. In C.K. Ogden collection. BANC MSS 92/242 z.
ALS to ‘Gentlemen’. Addressed from Antibes, 25 January 1891. BANC MSS 92/725 z
ALS to ‘Gentlemen’. Addressed from Lyme, Dorset. Undated. In C.K. Ogden collection. BANC MSS 92/693 z
Birmingham
Birmingham Reference Library
Two ALS, one of them to Miss Morgan. Undated. In MS135.
University of Birmingham Library
ALS. Undated. L.Add.404.
King Edward’s School Archives
Records of GA’s attendance, prizes etc.
Bristol
Bristol Record Office
Letter to J. W. Arrowsmith, 1892. Autograph. 40145/P/11 (a-b).
Bolton
Bolton Central Library
Letter [to Messrs Tillotson and Son], 1891. Autograph. With a photocopy. Archives. ZBEN/4/1,98.
Buffalo
State University of New York Library
Letters from Andrew Lang to GA. None is fully dated, but internal references in some date them to the late-80s-mid-90s. Most of them deal with Lang’s sparring with Allen over anthropological questions and are of little interest.
ALS. ‘July 23’ [possibly 1886]. Dear Allen Have you a short story would suit Harper’s. If so, do let me have a squint at it, and I’ll try to get it in there. Not one that will puzzle them like John Creedy, and no more Herbert Spencer than is actually necessary for the love-interest. . . . It is not you who gives that ass with his Gipsies a good word in PMG?
ALS ‘Dec 8’ [1884]. Confirms the pay for Charles Darwin was 100 pounds.
ALS ‘Aug 5’ [1885]. Dear Allen, I have sent a heap of proofs to Spottiswoode’s with such alterations as I think would do no harm, and asked them to send my corrected sheets to you with your revises. I send to you sheets with my marks, from 161- to end.
Only in one or two I correct misprints but I point out some places where I think you might modify or suppress slaps at orthodoxy. Personally I don’t agree with the parson that there is no God, but, even if there is not, nor any miracles, there is no use in what you call ‘the orgies of the biological Thermidor’ in a little popular book. Only a few short paragraphs have this orgiastic character, don’t you think you could oblige me personally by modifying them? If people believed in a God and a soul, they could not be expected to receive without demur criticisms which they thought inconsistent with their hopes, and I don’t know that they need be thought wrong. Personally I don’t find it easier to believe in Darwinism than in Buddhism, and I don’t care a penny what conclusions physical science may come to. We are still as far as ever from knowing what matter and energy are, as far as ever from knowing anything worth mentioning, and some [things] always will be. But every reader is not likely to be of this mind, and many will be put off by one or two little verbal orgies so if you think you can alter them (the passages I have scribbled on, except where the scribble is chaff or purely private) I will be very glad, and I think it will be all the better for such a very clear and excellent account of Darwin’s work. See what a long letter I have written you with my own hand.
ALS ‘Nov 24’ [1892]. Dear Allen I have written a useless little notice of your book on trees [Attis], which comes to this, that it needs an encyclopaedic study of burial customs (many of which give vegetation no chance, as cave-burial) and of tree-worship, before one can accept the hypothesis. This is probably obvious. In one remark of Macdonald’s, he seems to make against your view; they do worship under a tree, if not, they erect a shade. That is, shade is what they want, in that climate, and a tree comes cheapest. By every old Border cottage, hall, or burial site, you’ll find an ash. Ancestral spirit? Not much; a Scots Act of Parliament ordered them to be planted for spear shafts. The various Greek gods’ ‘dendritis’ need looking up, I think. My own opinion is that trees were worshipped for all sorts of different reasons, yours among them very likely. . . . I hope the review is not Rude, like the fetich stone one of unseemly memory. . . .
ALS undated [1888; refers to This Mortal Coil]. Dear Mrs Allen, It is, usually, the wife of a Literary gentleman who suffers when the author’s mind is vexed with shallow wit, so I owe you an apology for inadvertently suggesting that I fancied Mr Massinger a caricature of me.
Alas – I never had that hero’s beauty, bravery, and luck at roulette: and I really never dreamed of anything but the most vacant chaff. Even if I had been conceited enough to fancy that there was any of me in Mr Massinger it would only have diverted me. The genus of poetarum minorum is not irritabilis as all that comes to. I am so sorry, sincerely, that I have made such a [?]: and I hope Mr Allen is convinced that nothing would ever cause me to suspect, or expect, anything but the greatest kindness from him, even if it comes to pitching sacred stones at each other….
ALS ‘Jun 29’ [1888] Dear Allen You must be very well if you can stand H.S. when he isn’t! However I hope you do him some good, or at least he/you do no harm. Your article I have not seen. I daresay the little folk of the day will make a hubbub about it, which it will divert you to observe. Very glad I am not in it: a fourth-rate Pendennis, who can’t write novels is my form.
My Myths book is being printed… Have you a very spare fiver? A poor cove called Cobban, a literary gent, has been in Hospital for months with stricture. I have advanced a variety of mites, but Henley and I thought a small assortment of fivers would keep his very frail barque afloat. I daresay yours are all engaged; don’t mind about it if they are. He does not know. I hate dunning people, but I suppose littery chaps must occasionally help the weak brethren. He has a kind of cleverness, a good deal of it, but gets no recognition, and, I presume, can’t write in his present state. Married, of course. Yours…
ALS undated [probably 1890]. Dear Allen I am making sumptuous hay of you. The beggars who have gravestones don’t worship them, the beggars who worship stones don’t bury under gravestones: see Hawaii. As for your Hebrew, having consulted Roberts and Smith, I have you on toast. . . .
ALS ‘Aug 8’ [1892]. Dear Allen I have noticed your complaint in the Athenaeum, July 30, without mentioning names, in ‘The Ship’. It is not chaff, but I seriously think that it is a mistake to make novels the vehicle of some special discussion – what you were discussing I have no guess, but probably it was something to do with the sexes. I hope you don’t mind, if so, glad if you can let me know, I’ll cut it out. I am very sorry you have had your work in vain, indeed I’ve had the same thing happen. I wrote a book on Hebrew History (?) and then perceived the folly of a man who did not know the language, and dropped it. I know another fellow who dropped a novel because when it was done he thought ill of it. But why don’t you say what you have to say in a not-novel, but straight-forward? My notion is that one can’t put what one really wants to say on a practical matter better than in a plain statement. That is all that I have said, but if you don’t want comment just say so – post card will suffice.
ALS ‘Feb 11.’ [1895? Probably reference to WWD.] Dear Allen Many thanks I hope you have got it off your mind, now! Personally I prefer opinions in Treatises, not in novels, and I would hear you gladly on cuckoos, rather than on cocks. . . .
Cambridge
Cambridge University Library
Many thanks to Barbara Arnett Melchiori for supplying some of these summaries.
Dictated LS to Longman dated ‘9 Sept.’ Longman seems to have requested Allen's opinion regarding the publication of a book by Kidd. “If you care for my verdict, in spite of these disadvantages, I should say a volume of such papers ought not to hurt. . . " "I should think it would probably be well for Mr. Kidd to let the world know that his social doctrines are founded on adequate biological data… I think the essays would be improved if a few of the more colloquial terms were removed and a little more elevation given in places to the style and language. If you wish it I would return the article with some such passages underlined as seem to me to call for correction." Add.8069/A20.
Correspondence between GA (seven letters) and Benjamin Kidd (copy of one letter), [1896 & undated]. In Add.8069/A14-23 & K31, as follows:
LS dictated. 20 Dec 1894. Thanking Kidd for gift of Social Evolution.
TLS. 26 Dec 1895. Thanks Kidd for offer to introduce MS of Evolution of God to Macmillan. "But I write now to say that if you really do negotiate this matter for me, I hope you will allow me to put it on a business footing."
TLS. 4 Jan 1896. Accepts Kidd's offer of mediation with Macmillan. "Pleasant, too, to recognise that the craft of literature is after all a fraternity".
TLS. 6 Mar 1896. "…am all but through now, and will send the manuscript in the course of the next week". Ends with thanks and invitation to visit Hind Head in the spring.
ALS (copy) from Kidd dated 31 March 1896. Writes of Evolution of the Idea of God : "I am utterly amazed that a Darwinite could have written it…Parts of the last chapters are certainly calculated to deeply offend without at the same time appearing (I say it with respect and subject to ??) to further the scientific purpose of the book."
"You will I am sure forgive these vigorous remarks and take them as a tribute to the impression the book has produced."
TLS from GA dated 11 December 1897. Apologizes because Kidd has not yet received a copy of "my Evolution" and explains that one had indeed been sent. "Meanwhile do not hesitate to say your say wherever you feel inclined. Honest criticism is always good for a subject; what we want if to thrash these things out from one man's point of view or another's, till we arrive at last at a tolerable understanding."
Letter from GA dated 26 Feb. [1895] to Kidd. Handwritten by Nellie Allen. Mainly concerned with discussion of sources of GA's article on fish. "I hope you will read The Woman Who Did and talk about it or write of it. It is a critical venture for me, and I don't want it to fall flat with the public. So you will be really obliging me even by differing from it". [implicit invitation to write a review]
TLS from GA to Kidd dated " Sept”. GA sends letter to Kidd to accompany corrections. Concludes: " What a brave man you are, to poach on my preserves, and then ask the original owner of the estate how you had better prepare your bag for market![Exclamation mark added by penstroke, probably not on one of the early typewriters]
TLS from GA to Kidd dated 26 Sept.?? Finds "The London Window" much better written than "The Eggs" so he must
Edinburgh
National Library of Scotland.
Six letters. Undated. Autograph. Recipients include: Mr Russell; William and Robert Chambers. One letter mutilated: signature cut off. Dep.341/100-101; 103; 107.
Chambers’s Journal published serials of In All Shades, This Mortal Coil, Dumaresq’s Daughter, Blood Royal and At Market Value. The letters are minor business notes relating certainly to the first two of these, and perhaps others. One letter gives a glimpse of GA’s writing method: “Some of the scenes are already in part on paper - I always work that way, doing the points of interest first, and afterwards dovetailing in the necessary connecting links. . . . When once I have got my plot and characters vividly present to my own mind, I write easily and rapidly. I need hardly say that apparent discrepancies or improbabilities in the plot will be worked out or explained away in practical detail.” Not known which serial this relates to.
Georgetown, Washington DC
Georgetown University Library.
Correspondence between GA, Jerrard Grant Allen and Grant Richards. Mostly about JGA’s business dealings well after his father’s death: he seemed to have various business interests and at one point was a theatrical manager. Later he fell into some financial difficulties and was threatened with bankruptcy during WW1. He was in America during the War apparently raising money for charity; later he was again associated with reviews and musicals as a manager, director or writer. He died in Florida.
Haslemere, Surrey
Museum
MS Winifred Storr Diary, 1898-9. The Storrs were family friends and Storr, aged 11/12 records the comings and goings between the two houses and her feelings at GA’s death.
Kingston, Ontario
Public Library
Uncataloged correspondence (124 letters) to Nellie Allen from family friends at the time of the death of GA and some minor miscellaneous items and offprints. Set of first editions and presentation copies of GA works.
Leeds
Brotherton Collection, Brotherton Library, University of Leeds.
Fifteen ALS, TLS and dictated LS (three of them incomplete) to Edward Clodd, [1885?-1899 & undated]. With a typescript copy of a letter from GA to Franklin Richards [187-?], which is printed in Clodd, Grant Allen, pp.40-43. In Clodd Correspondence. However, Clodd describes these letters as written to his (GA’s) mother-in-law, Mrs Jerrard.
Clodd Diary, 1876-1906. Originals and typewritten transcript.
TLS dated ‘Feb. 18’ [1893 added] is addressed from the Hotel du Cap, Antibes and mentions ‘if our house is finished next spring.’ ‘Even with the aid of my type-writer, I find it hard to get through all I have to do in the twenty-four hours. A man who would invent a day of forty-eight would be conferring a great benefit on suffering humanity. And yet, when one comes to think how tired one is at the end of the existing day, any addition to it would be rather terrible to contemplate.’
TLS incomplete dated ’December 29 [1892 added] is addressed from Antibes. GA is glad EC liked the Attis book.
ALS ‘November 14’ [1887 postmarked] is addressed from Villa du Palmier, Mustapha Superieur, Algers, Algeria. ‘The pension is delightful, so homelike and comfortable, on a high hill, 31/2 miles from the town. An old Moorish villa, modernized and improved. As you know Cairo, you know Algiers – Arabs, dirt, picturesqueness, and everything. Charming weather, and we are all much better: indeed, I am almost well. The air, though warm, is fresh, bright, and bracing; blows right off the Atlas, and is keen in the shade. We are delighted with everything, tho’ the scenery falls far short of my expectations. But it is a delicious place. We look forward to a pleasant winter. N. will write to Amy shortly. Love to all. I will write at greater length another time; & you will see us in the PMG.’
ALS November 7 [1888] mentions Force and Energy as newly published. ‘I’m afraid it’s flogging a dead horse. Now that the excitement of seeing it through the press has finally subsided I feel more hopeless than ever about my chance of converting anybody’. Addressed from Firenze, Italy and says it is his first visit there. Refers to a petition for ‘poor Mrs Proctor’ and the uselessness of appealing to Spencer, given his views on government aid for private purposes.
”February 18 1893” is addressed from Antibes.
TL (mutilated) dated ‘Sept. 14’ says that ‘we have to leave this house on the 28th.’
TLS dated ‘June 7, 94’ probably added by EC. ‘at present, every date is pawned for weeks. We must wait for leisure, if it still survives anywhere’.
ALS dated ‘Alwington Kingston Ont Canada. June 23’. ‘We now propose to sail from Quebec on or about Aug. 26th. ‘At Concord, we stopped with Lothrop (the publisher) in Hawthorne’s house, and visited Walden Pond, with many other haunts of Thoreau, Emerson and the other Concordians. That will by and by make a good article.’
LS dictated dated ‘March 17th’. ‘Longman writes me that “Force and Energy” is to be converted into wallpaper. This is enough to prevent one from ever trying to do any good work’.
Six letters from Nellie Allen to Edward Clodd. In Clodd Correspondence.
”April 9 [1900]. I have finished reading the Memoir and am delighted with it. It gives such a clear idea of my darling’s beautiful personal character, and of the hard struggles that he had to bear. . . . I have been wondering if it would have been better to omit the sad letter to Croom Robertson? It was, as you say, written in a depressed mood, and was really not his usual state of mind. He really had a much higher idea of his novels that many people had, and used to say how much thought and work he had put into his later ones. He believed this would be recognised some day.”
Letter dated ‘Aug 12’ [probably 1896] says that ‘Grantie spent Bank holiday here and left next day full of his new business scheme. I have little faith in it but as he doesn’t risk anything, I think it best not to interfere. I asked him to inquire of Grant Richards if it was to be … of a partnership with him and he said, he couldn’t quite say. He might find it undesirable to take a partner.’ [Grant Richards, Author Hunting, says that the young ‘Grantie’ joined him as a worker in his new publishing venture in Jan 1897]. ****
Two letters to Edmund Gosse, [1887?1894]. In Gosse Correspondence.
”February 3 [1887]”. Commiserates with Gosse during controversy over Gosse’s classical training.
”October 25 [1894]”. Has received copy of Russet and Silver.
Letter to Bram Stoker [postmarked 24 July 1894]. Returns book. In Stoker Correspondence.
Eight letters to Clement Shorter, [1896-1899 & undated]. In Shorter Correspondence.
”January 31…. Herewith I enclose two out of five short stories as per your esteemed order. These stories are warranted to be free from any opinions whatsoever -- political, religious, social, philosophical or literary. They would not raise a blush on the cheek of a babe unborn or shock the susceptibilities of a Cardinal Archbishop.”
Notes titled ‘Questions Answered’ from GA’s father, to whom EC must have applied. Some are illegible.
Point 9 says ‘From June 1861 to Feb 1862 when my son had a tutor from Yale College’.
Point 10 says ‘1862 – best for the education of children, simply.’
Annotated copy of Clodd’s Grant Allen: A Memoir with attached letters to Clodd about it.
ALS undated from ?Richard Pope who knew him at Oxford comments: “His conversation was of course brilliant, for he was undoubtedly one of the most brilliant undergraduates of his time. . . As a young man he had known a good deal of the troubles and anxieties of life and this made him … always older than his years and gave him perhaps, at times a touch of sadness. To some of his friends it came as a surprise that a man of such remarkable power did not take more than a Second Class at his degree, but the time which he allowed himself for the work was too short. The fact was that from a money point of view life at Oxford had always meant something of a struggle and he was anxious to do his best with as little delay as possible to find employment in the world”.
ALS from F. York Powell dated 1 Jan 1900: ‘You must not leave out the earlier marriage. It is not fair to GA. It is a high credit to him. He was a martyr for a year and he never let the poor girl see that he was suffering for her. He made the end of her life happy and peaceful by his self-sacrifice and if Xtianity were true which it isn’t GA would be safe for a good place in heaven “for inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these my brothers ye have done it unto me” . . . Fisher knows all about it, his strength and pains he went through. He knew him better than I did then for he would ask Fisher’s advice about things’ . [Walter William Fisher matriculated in 1867, aged 24 and was a postmaster at Merton from 1868. In 1873 he was Aldrichian demonstrator of chemistry, 1873 and author of an elementary textbook on chemistry. ]
ALS from Andrew Lang, dated ‘1900’ in another hand, probably EC. The opening refers to an essay by GA on his lack of fear of death due to an early experience of almost drowning. ‘Drole d’un cove, poor Allen. What he told me he felt was intense curiosity. Which did he really feel? And why, being scientific, did he not get up his facts in his book on Deity? And a Martyr and Rebel ought not to make these unparalleled concessions that he made. I liked him very much, and I dare say the celebrated ‘Celtic’ element would explain many things if I believed in a Celtic element. I rarely agreed with him about anything. I don’t think he ever seriously studied anything (outside “stinks” of which I know nothing) and I cannot persuade myself that he was really in earnest about anything – not that he was aware of the circumstance.
But his heart was in the right place: he was a gentleman and, sans le savoir, a Christian.
An interesting postscript to this letter: ‘I don’t know if you know about his first marriage. “A great ox hath trodden on my tongue”. Probably without knowing it you give the story of that first marriage away. Every Oxford man will see the point’. [This same letter is printed in censored form in Clodd, Memories, pp.29-30.]
ALS from Herbert Spencer dated June 11, 1900: ‘I was often surprised by his versatility, but now that the facts are brought together it is clear to me that I was not sufficiently surprised. One of the traits on which I should have myself commented had I written about him was his immense quickness of perception.’
Relevant entries on Grant Allen from the MS Clodd Diary.
Tue 30 May 1882. See Pall Mall 9 (or 8th) June An East Anglian River by Grant Allen.
Fri 25 Apr 1884. Took 4.37 train to Dorking, Grant Allen met me, and then after dinner had a good a profitable talk.
Sat 26 Apr 1884.Walked to the N[ ] for view of the town and then drove to Leith Hill, from the summit of which although the sky & distance clouded over, we had grand views and I was charmed never having seen the Surrey hills and dales till now! to my shame! Rain set in and we kept indoors the rest of the day, reading and chatting.
Sun 27 Apr 1884. Rained till after dinner: then Allen, his wife and boy walked to Ranmore Common, we had a grand view all round the very lovely country: the rain drove us home, and the evening went very pleasantly in general and confidential chat.
Sun 1 Jun 1884. Whit Sunday. ...the afternoon and evening were given to splendid talks ranging from M. Arnold’s poetry to Grant Allen’s exposition of his Cosmic System and Theories of the Origin of the Visible Universe.
Mon 9 Nov 1885. Allen told me (in confidence) that Herbert Spencer had told him he had left directions for all unpublished material and all the material for his Life to be placed in Allen’s hands.
Tue 26 Jan 1886. To Dorking to see Allen. Mem. Should he not survive, I am to get Romanes, Lang, Cotter Morison and Croom Robertson to apply for Civil List pension for Mrs A. There are enough short stories to make up the volume, and the [ ]
Fri 13 May 1887. Rode on Allen’s tandem tricycle to the station.
Tue 18 Oct 1887. Allen called to say goodbye on leaving for Algeria.
Tue 14 Aug 1888. Went to Dorking by 11.6 to Allen’s. Herbert Spencer, who is staying there, lunched with us; he didn’t talk much. Allen and I had a splendid two hours’ walk, I left by the 7.6 train; pleasant talk with a Japanese, who had called to see Spencer.
The following entries deal with the holiday tour GA and Clodd made to Egypt. How unfortunate that Clodd was no Boswell.
Mon 04 Nov 1889. Grant Allen and I left by 11 from Victoria; had a lovely passage. Tried to sleep in the train but slept very little. . . Reached Basle about 6.20am.
Wed 06 Nov 1889. Left Lucerne 10.20 and ...by the St Gothard to Milan: arrived 7 to Hotel Europa. Allen and I strolled in the Arcades.
Thu 07 Nov 1889. To Cathedral. . . Left Milan 1.30 weather fine and summer-like.: passed Verona with regret. Arrived Venice at 7.50. .. after dinner Allen and I strolled in Piazza s. Marco and by Riva.
Fri 08 Nov 1889. Embarked on Hydaepes at 12.30.
Sun 10 Nov 1889. Reached Brindisi about 8.
Thu 14 Nov 1889. Reached Alexandria. Met Arnold, Clodd’s son.
Sat 16 Nov 1889. Left at 9 to the Pyramids. All 3 climbed to the top of the Great Pyramid. Took tickets for Luxor.
Tue 19 Nov 1889. Allen and I left for Assiout.
Fri 22 Nov 1889. Arrived Luxor.
Sat 23 Nov 1889. Clodd noted that to explore the Valley of the Kings they hired a a donkey and guide: the donkey cost 8 piastres for the day; but the boy only 2 piastres; total, two shillings.
Fri 29 Nov 1889. After featureless trip back up the Nile arrived Cairo. ‘very glad to see Sheppards'.
Mon 2 Dec 1889. Said farewell to my dear boy and to Egypt.
Tue 10 Dec 1889. Back in England by then.
Wed 03 Jun 1891. Long chat re Allen’s paper in the Fortnightly. I contended that when he had saved £5000 he ought to express his views in the plainest way.
Sat 10 Sep 1892. Mention of ‘Allen’s indefensible grievance’.
Sat 9 Sep 1893. To Haslemere by 2.45, the Allens met me and we drove to Hindhead, the house is a gem of a place and the situation fine. . . animated talk on Allen’s paper on London.
Sat 24 Mar 1894. General talk, chiefly on Allen’s talk about The New Hedonism.
Sat 7 Apr 1894. To Haslemere. Allen agrees with me that Dr Weismann’s theory will have reaction, being based on a metaphysical concept.
Wed 13 Feb 1895. I finished The Woman Who Did. I fear GA will have disappointment at its reception, the book is inconclusive, most of it reads like a Fabian tract, and the diatribes re England as lie [ ] repel. Then what about the children?
Fri 10 Jan 1896. Allen called this morning and we had a good chat for half an hour. He is not very cheery: the ‘British Barbarians’ hasn’t sold and markets are ‘flat’. He thinks that Jude the Obscure is Hardy’s finest work: the two women are full-blooded.
Sun 22 Mar 1896. Talk fell on the Lanchester case : Allen quite surprised me by his hesitation to approve in the concrete what he preaches in the abstract.
Wed 25 Oct 1899. Telegram came at 3 o’clock telling us that dear old Grant Allen died.
Tue 21 Feb 1905. Clodd arrived at Kingston to visit his sons Arnold and Arthur, both banana planters.
Fri 24 Feb 1905. ‘then to Mr Guy of the Telegraph: told me of Harrington, reported son of Grant Allen by a black woman.’ Rest of entry illegible.
Liverpool
Liverpool City Libraries
Letter. Undated. Autograph. Recipient unknown. Hornby Library. In Hornby Autograph Letter Collection, B21.
Letter, 1879. Autograph. Recipient unknown. Hornby Library. In Picton Autograph Letter Collection.
London
National Archives. Kew
Third annual report of Queen's College, supplied to Grey by Mr. Grant Allen; announces and gives reasons for abandonment of college. Enclosed: report. Sir William Grey, Governor of Jamaica, Jamaica No.135, Folios 417-464. 24 August 1876. Item no. CO 137/481/37.
British Library. Department of Manuscripts
Two letters to E. B. Tylor. Undated. Autograph.. Add.MS.50254, ff.195-198.
One addressed from Dorking, “Aug. 26”. On Tylor’s view of the ghost theory of religion. GA says he will reprint his own theory in volume form, so clearly written before the publication of Evolution of the Idea of God in 1897.
One addressed from Summerfield, Bovey Tracey, Devon. “Aug. 22”. Tylor was an anthropologist and the letter concerns the symbolism of the mark of a cross in old deeds.
ALS to Thomas Hay Sweet Escott. Undated. Add.MS.58774, f.12.
Sixteen letters in the John Lane Archive. Undated. Microfilm copies. In RP3208.
These copies were made before Sotheby’s sold the letters to Texas, but the job was botched badly and most of them are virtually illegible. See under Austin, Texas.
Two letters to W. E. Gladstone, 1877?, 1895. Add.MS.44453, f.7 & 44520, f.71.
”Jan. 5 1877”. GA is collecting data for what became The Colour Sense, on which matter his views opposed Gladstone’s.
”March 9”. Thanks for a letter from Gladstone to whom GA had sent an unidentified book.
Letter to William Morris, [189-?]. Add.MS.45345, f.217.
”Between 1881 & 1892, period of his residence at Dorking” added in another hand. About a request to sign a petition; no other details.
Letter to H. J. Gladstone, 1892. Add.MS.44516, f.182.
Begs him to use his influence with his father to help secure a Civil List pension for William Watson. “I write as a matter of public duty. Watson is poor, very poor, and a great poet. He is the kind of poet who can’t earn his bread by common journalism. He is a divine singer and nothing else. In short, he is the sort of person for whom the Civil List exists.” GA charitably refrained from mentioning that he was also mentally unstable and a drunkard.
Letter to George Bernard Shaw, 1895. Signed typescript. Add.MS.50513, f.95.
Date added in pencil: “22 Aug 1895”. Thanks Shaw for comments on The Woman Who Did. “I felt I was making a new departure, and that the fresh subject-matter would involve for me the evolution of a corresponding technique. But I mean to go on, and say my say at last . . .”.
Letter to A.R. Wallace, 1897-1899. Add.MS.46441, ff.152 & 188.
Dated “May 4, 1897”. Thanks him for praise of “my paper” and for sending him a book. Dictated; in his wife’s hand.
University College Library
Five letters to George Croom Robertson. Undated. Autograph.. In MS.Add.88/12.
[Robertson (1842-1892) was editor of Mind and in 1878 a professor at University College London.]
First letter addressed from “Hotel des Hespérides, Hyères, Var. Oct 25 [“1879” added in another hand]. Account of the start of GA’s recuperative winter on the Riviera, paid-for by a loan from friends. (A note in another of these letters is dated 15 October 1879: “Received from G. Croom Robertson the sum of Eighty Five Pounds as first instalment of the Grant Allen Fund”.)
The other letters but one are addressed from 22 Cambridge Road Hastings.
”Oct 9, 1881”. A scrupulous, considered letter proposing to pay back a loan made by Robertson and other friends two years before. “We have both talked the matter over fully, and have come to the unanimous opinion, to a man, without one dissentient voice, that it would be better to return the money. I don’t think we are actuated by any false pride: when need was, we took it most gladly and thankfully. I never felt more relieved or more grateful in my life than on the night when you and Mrs Robertson came and first proposed your kind and thoughtful plan to us: it was a lifebuoy to a drowning man, and without it I don’t know where we should all have been my this time. But now, we hope and believe, the danger is over, and there are many reasons why we ought to repay it. Some of the subscribers are themselves literary working men, and they know that I am now making a good income. It would naturally seem strange to them that we should go on keeping money which was advanced under such different circumstances. There are some of them, no doubt, who have no need of any such return, and to whom I should not feel it so necessary; but I agree with you that whatever is done should be done towards all alike. I am half afraid that I seem to be acting contrary to your wish to some extent; yet I gathered when I saw you in London that on second thoughts you were half converted to my view. It is not that we want to shuffle out of our obligations – with many of you, such as you yourselves, Romanes, Lang, Leslie Stephen, the Hertzes, and so forth, that would be quite impossible, because this particular matter is only one among many other similar kindnesses which we can never repay – but we wish to avoid any appearance of having accepted this welcome assistance when we were in need of it, and then quietly stuck to it when we were in a position to help ourselves by our own exertions. So – to cut a long story short – our final decision is to send out the letters and cheques; and the sooner it can be done, without inconvenience to you, the better we shall be satisfied; because while it hangs fire the question rather unsettles one for regular work. I wish I could have seen you, to say all this, because the litera scripta often conveys a different impression from the viva vox; and I don’t like even to appear to oppose you in the matter: but I am sure from what you said to me in the Park that on the whole you largely agree with me, and therefore I don’t think you will misunderstand my meaning.”
”Nov 3 1881”. Reveals that the loan was to cover a visit to the south of France: “I have not the least doubt that it saved my life”. He encloses a cheque for 101l. -- half the sum collected by Romanes and Robertson. He encloses a circular in “multiscript ink” so that “you could take off the copies with your apparatus”, explaining his decision to the subscribers.
”The Nook, Horsham Road, Dorking. Feb 23 [188-?]. My dear Robertson, You spoke so kindly and so encouragingly to me yesterday morning that you revived for a moment hopes about my literary and scientific work which I have long myself laid aside. But on soberer second thoughts, I feel almost convinced it would be best for me not to try writing a really good novel, for I won’t succeed. I am content now to make a comfortable living for Nellie and the boy by hack work. Four or five years ago, I couldn’t do that: thanks to you and other kind friends, I can now do it easily. Would it not be a pity by pursuing a will-o’-the wisp of reputation to endanger my now fairly ensured position as a good round hack? The fact is, you think (in your goodness of heart) far better of me than I now think of myself. I ought to have told you yesterday that I am profoundly convinced I can never do any work above mediocrity, in the judgement of other people. Of course I like the work myself (I know I am a bad critic:) but it isn’t good enough to satisfy real judges.
Philistia is to me a great proof of this. I put my whole soul into it. Payn and others encouraged me to think I might write a novel. I fell to with the eager confidence that I was producing a really great work. That confidence and enthusiasm I can never again replace. When it was finished, I felt I had none my utmost. But Payne didn’t care for it, and what was more, even people sympathetic with myself and with the ideas it expressed weren’t taken by it. I have put into it my very best, and it’s quite clear that the best isn’t good enough. I didn’t write hastily; I satisfied utterly my own critical faculty: and I can’t do any better. Indeed, I can never again do so well.
Now, this hasn’t at all cast me down or disappointed me. I haven’t as much ambition for myself as you are kind enough to have for me. I never cared for the chance of literary reputation except as a means of making a livelihood for Nellie and the boy. I can now make a livelihood easily: and I ought to turn to whatever will make it best. I shall doubtless write lots more novels, many of which will hit the public taste better than Philistia, for I am learning to do the sensational things that please the editors. I am trying with each new novel to go a step lower to catch the market. Still, your evident seriousness yesterday has so far prevailed upon me that I think I will really try one novel, following the dictates of my own nature. But what I fear is that not only will it not please the public, but it won’t even please you, -- you who would be glad to be pleased if only it were possible. I half hesitate as to whether it is right to throw away upon such a forlorn hope time that might be spent on almost certain money-getting for the needs of the family.
Excuse this egotistical letter. Yours ever with no end of thoughts, G.A.
P.S. I have very little doubt that by carefully following the rules given me by Payn and others, and by feeling the public pulse, I shall in time succeed in being a fairly well-read average novelist, in something the same way as Payn himself, or Black, or Hardy, though not perhaps quite so successfully. I shall make novels pay: I’m almost sure I have ability enough to accommodate myself to the environment. And Payn, who is an excellent judge, thinks so too. All I mean is, this being so, oughtn’t I rather to follow the better chance than by overestimating my own powers (which I started more to do) throw away the substance in clutching at the shadow? In other words, I believe by carefully drilling myself (as I am now doing in the novels I have written since Philistia) I can succeed in getting a fair contemporary circulating-library reputation: I can’t succeed in writing anything that would finally live. Payn’s advice is just the opposite of yours. He says, “Never mind your own ideas and wishes: write strictly for the Cornhill public. I know what they want, and I can teach you how to supply them.” He finds me docile, and is pleased with me for it. Am I now to prove insubordinate, and go off trying to make myself, invita Minerva, into a genius? Isn’t his advice the soundest and most practical? I am so much exercised in mind about it, that I can’t help writing you this long rigmarole (as if you were the editor of the Family Herald). When you left this house yesterday, I was so far convinced by you (with too much partiality) said that I half made up my mind to try a novel all straight out of my own heart. Your advice coincides so exactly with the suggestion of one’s own personal vanity. But when I think it over, I ask myself, have I any right so to speculate -- mainly for the gratification of one’s own vanity -- with time which is really by contract Nellie’s and the boy’s? Oughtn’t I to be using it all to what I feel in my heart to be their best advantage? Ought I to go squandering it away on the remote chance of my own crude estimate of myself being the correct one? The more I rub against other men, the more do I feel that the opinion they form of me & of my work is very different from the opinion I was at first disposed to form myself.
I can’t tell you how much we both enjoyed your visit here. It was a real delight to us. I oughtn’t to repay it by boring you with this letter. -- Don’t answer it. -- I think after all I shall yield to vanity.
University of London Library, Senate House
Ten ALS to Herbert Spencer, 1874? [1881]. MS791.
[fol.102] Queen’s College, Spanish Town, Jamaica. Nov.10/74. Dear Sir, Though I know you only through the medium of your books, I venture to address to you the annexed copy of verses. I trust you will do me the favour of granting them a perusal. You will see from them that I agree in the main with your chief speculations, though, of course, in so large a body of propositions as your writings contain, some diversity of opinion must necessarily exist in almost any two minds.
My sole object is sending you these lines is that which I mention in the concluding stanza—to render you thanks for the personal assistance you have rendered me in interpreting the phenomena of the universe. Yours very sincerely, Grant Allen (Professor of Mental Philosophy in the Government College of Jamaica)
[Poem ‘To Herbert Spencer’ follows]
[fol.104] Queen’s College, Spanish Town, Jamaica. Feb. 9. 1875. Dear Sir, I hardly expected an answer or acknowledgement of the verses which I sent you but as you were kind enough to reply, and also to give them some praise, I venture to write again.
I have sent home by this mail a very short MS paper on ‘Idealism and Evolution.’ I am aware that you have already treated the subject yourself in the second volume of your Principles of Psychology: but I have tried to discuss the question on somewhat different grounds, starting from the standpoint of the Idealists themselves, and attempting out of their own mouths to convict them. I should feel greatly obliged if you could find time to glance over this paper (it is very legibly written) and to form some opinion of its merits. Should you think it of any worth, I venture to ask whether you could use your influence with the Editor of the Contemporary or the Fortnightly to get it published.
Of course I am aware that I am taking a great liberty in asking you, a perfect stranger, to do so much for me. Yet I trust a common interest in the highest subjects may form some link between us even though I am an unknown beginner, and you have already made your name known to all genuine// thinkers through the English speaking world at least. Besides, I doubt not there was once a time when you were in need of such literary aid yourself; so you may the more easily sympathise with me.
Should you feel unwilling or unable to do anything for my MS, or even to read it, I should be obliged if you would kindly return it to my wife, who is now in England, addressed, Mrs Grant Allen, Broad Street, Lyme Regis, Dorset.
May I add, that if any sociological fact about Jamaica could be of any use to you, I should be happy to supply you with them. The effects of intermixture of race and the attempt to press Christianity on the negroes (who accept it in a purely fetishistic sense) present some phenomena which might prove worth your notice.
As I am asking you a personal favour I shall mention, to prevent mistake, that I am a Canadian by birth, an Oxford man in 1st class Honours, and 26 years old. I have been in Jamaica two years, and hold a situation in the Govt. College. There is absolutely no literary or scientific society here, and I am quite shut out from intercourse with like-minded persons, which must be my excuse for appealing so boldly to you. Yours very faithfully, Grant Allen.
[fol. 108] Queen’s College, Spanish Town, Jamaica. May 23rd 1875.
Dear Sir, I have received your kind note, enclosing one from the editor of the Contemporary, and I have to thank you very deeply for your goodness in advocating my article. I have not yet heard the result, but of course, whether the paper is accepted or rejected, my obligation to you is equal, and so is my gratitude. You doubtless know yourself the difficulty which a young writer has in gaining the ear of the public, and so you can perhaps forgive my boldness in addressing myself to you. In any case, whatever may be the success of my present attempt, I think I owe it to your kindness to promise that I will not again trouble you with a similar request. With renewed thanks, I am, Yours very sincerely, Grant Allen.
[fol. 117] 10 Beaumont Street, Oxford. Feb 26. 1877. Dear Mr Spencer, I have now in the press a short work of ‘Physiological Aesthetics,’ which I hope to get out in six weeks or two months. I venture to ask your leave to dedicate it to you. I believe everything which I say in it is strictly in accordance with your views of psychological evolution, and I have endeavoured to the best of my ability to secure correctness in my facts by submitting the various chapters to specialists in their particular lines, whose assistance I have been able to obtain here. I think, therefore, that my book will not be one of which you need be ashamed to receive the dedication. As I know, however, that the favour which I ask is not one to be lightly granted, I enclose a short abstract of my argument, from which you will be able to judge of the general tenour and the extent of its accordance with your own views. I should be immensely obliged if you// could find time to glance through it.
I regret to learn from the papers that your health is not so good as all those interested in yourself and your work would wish. I hope your indisposition is not serious. I must congratulate you upon the issue—even in its present unfinished state—of your sixth volume. Its reception by the reviews, though of course not what one could desire, certainly shows the immense advance of the public mind in its appreciation of sociological enquiry.
My post in Jamaica has been abolished, and my intention at present is to remain in England. I shall be in town again in a few weeks, when I hope I shall be able to see you at the Athenaeum. Yours very sincerely, Grant Allen.
[fol. 118] 10 Beaumont Street, Oxford. March 1st 1877. Dear Mr Spencer, I must thank you most heartily for your very cordial letter of yesterday, as well as for your kind promise to accept the dedication of my book. I hope a perusal of the whole work will justify the good opinion which you have formed of it from the abstract I sent you.
I am also very much obliged to you for so kindly mentioning the mat//ter to Professor Youmans. I shall gladly avail myself of your introduction to write to him as you suggest. I have written to Kings, my publisher, on the subject of the proofs, and will forward them to you as soon as they are available. Any assistance which he could give me in disposing of copies would be most acceptable; for you know that it is both an expensive and a thankless task to bring out a first work on such a subject; and I am very much obliged indeed to you for saying a word in my favour.
With respect to the other matter which you mention—Prof. Goldwin Smith’s article—I should be most happy to undertake an answer to it, with your kind assistance. I fully coincide with your strictures upon it, and feel the advisability of a reply. The fact is, the theological party, feeling every day their growing weakness, are taking more and more to the forensic expedient of abusing the plaintiff’s attorney. I am not at all busy at present—I have quite completed my book, which is now in the Press, and I am only engaged in correcting the proofs and taking a few private pupils. I have abundant leisure for such an article as you propose, and should be very glad to try my hand at it. I shall be in town on Friday, March 16th, for a week, and could see you then on the subject: but if you think an earlier date would be more advisable, I will run up any day that would suit you and talk the matter over with you. Will you kindly let me know which you would prefer. Yours very sincerely, Grant Allen.
[fol. 123] Broad Street, Lyme Regis, Dorset. Aug 16. 77. Dear Mr Spencer, I had been lately reading the supplementary chapters of your Sociology, which you were kind enough to give me, and comparing them with certain quasi-prophetic passages in the Biology, Psychology, aand Social Statics: .whereupon the enclosed lines suggested themselves to my mind. As my metrical lucubrations are fated never to appear in print, I thought you might perhaps like to see them in MS. In sending them, I need hardly remind you that lyrical poetry, being essentially the crystallized form of a fleeting emo//tional state, is necessarily somewhat one-sided. Like the instantaneous photograph of a London street it fixes in factitious permanence the passing aspect of a changeful whole. The side I have shown here is the gloomy one: a different emotional moment would show it in brighter colours.
Pray don’t take the trouble to answer or acknowledge this note. I know the value of your time to humanity too well to wish any of it wasted on such personal trifles. Yours very sincerely, Grant Allen [‘Pisgah’ follows, as in The Lower Slopes].
[fol. 124] 9 Douglas Crescent, Edinburgh. Dec 5. 77. Dear Mr Spencer, It has once or twice happened that you have wanted my address when I have been out of town, but did not know where to find it. I now write to let you know my whereabouts for the next six months, in case any similar need should arise.
I heard from Prof Youmans about the Poetry of Evolution, and though I am sorry that you will not give the work the sanction of your name, I have written to him (in America) that I will gladly undertake my share of the editorial duties on the plan which he proposes. I have also seen Mr Kegan Paul on the subject, and he is now awaiting an answer from Prof Youmans before deciding upon the terms which he will grant the work. He is not hopeful of success, however, unless Appleton’s are prepared to undertake the printing and to send over duplicate plates.
I trust your health continues to improve and that we may expect the great work to proceed smoothly in future. Yours very sincerely. . . .
[fol. 126] 9 Douglas Crescent, Edinburgh. Dec. 23 [1877]. Dear Mr Spencer, May I trespass upon your over-taxed time for a few minutes? I have printed a circular letter with reference to the Colour Sense, of which I enclose a copy. I wish to send it (for answers) to a few Indian civilians who are working among the hill-tribes, some missionaries, American ethnologists etc. But this is essentially a matter where co-operation is indispensable; and it struck me that you might perhaps know the names and addresses of one or two people who could fur//nish the required information and would be likely to take the trouble. If you do know of any such, I should be immensely obliged if you would let your secretary send me a list of them. I think my aim is so far disinterestedly scientific as to justify my trespassing upon even your time in the matter.
I am still in correspondence with Professor Youmans about the Poetry of Evolution, but I am afraid the matter will fall through for want of encouragement from the publishers. I shall let you know as soon as anything is settled. Yours very sincerely, Grant Allen.
[fol. 134] 22 Bonchurch Rd North Kensington. June 22 1879. Dear Mr Spencer, Many thanks for your kind present of the Data of Ethics. I have been staying with some friends in the country, and have only just received it on my return, or I should have acknowledged it sooner. I shall prize the volume very much for the kind inscription which you have written in it. I have only yet had time to dip into it, but I need not say that I shall read it with the greatest interest. The world must congratulate you and itself that you have been en//abled to complete it so soon. When the programme of the Synthetic Philosophy first appeared, the scheme seemed as you said, almost too vast to hope for its completion, but as there now remains only a volume and a half of the Sociology, and the same amount of the Morality, I begin to believe that the fears you express in the preface to your new volume are perhaps less serious than we might have dreaded, and that your great work will yet be finished. The comparatively deductive nature of the Ethics also leads me to hope that it may be written with less preparation and less mental strain that the earlier volumes. Yours very sincerely, Grant Allen.
[fol. 154] The Nook Horsham Road Dorking Aug 15 [1881 added]. Dear Mr Spencer, Many thanks for your kind present of your pamphlet on Individualism. I have read it all through very carefully and I think I may say with almost unvarying assent to every proposition it contained. When I turn from the common political writing of the day to your reasoned sociological conclusions, I feel it is like turning from the medieval verbiage about lightning being due to a conglobulation of fulgureous exhalations by a circumfixed humour, to the definite results of modern physics. The only point where I do not find myself in complete accord (and that is perhaps more due to your comparative silence than to anything else) is that I attach relatively more importance to the initial injustice done by the permitted monopoly of raw material in a few hands. It seems to me that individualism, in order to be just, must strive hard for an equalization of original condition by the removal of all artificial advantages. The great reservoir of natural wealth that we sum up as land (including mines, etc) ought, it seems to me, to be nationalised, before we can say that the individual is allowed free play. While he is thwarted in obtaining his fair share of raw material, he is being put at a disadvantage by artificial laws. But I dare say if one sets together what you have said in Social Statics and in the Principles of Sociology on this matter, the apparent difference is really minimized. In all other respects, I think your book carries the profoundest conviction, and helps to keep one up against the advancing phalanx of meddlesomeness. Excuse my writing at such length: but I know you expect only to influence an individual citizen here and there, and // I believe you like to hear that a few such are actually helped on by what you have written.
You were kind enough to promise my wife one of your photographs, and she hopes you will not forget to send it to her.
Is it quite impossible that you might some day come down and see us here? We have got a little home of our own now, small but comfortable, and I believe if you would visit it we could really make your visit a pleasant one. Yours very sincerely, Grant Allen. [END]
Royal Institution Library
Letter to W. de la Rue, Honorary Secretary of the Royal Institution, 1879. Autograph. With a related letter. Royal Institution Library. R.I.CLB1, pp.121-123.
Letter as a sponsor to the Royal Literary Fund, 1891. Indexed. British Library. Department of Manuscripts. In Loan no. 96.
Los Angeles
The William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, UCLA
Ten letters to John Lane, 1890s, in Nellie Allen’s hand. Dictated. Shelfmark A425 L265.
Nov 19th [1893] My dear Lane, Two things. First, I haven’t yet got a proof of the dedication page to The Lower Slopes. I hope I am to have one, as any error to its [ ] could draw me to an early and [ ] grave. Second, when are going to let me know about The Woman Who Did. I am alarmed at leaving her so long away from home among complete strangers. In haste and by proxy, Yours very sincerely, Grant Allen.
Dec 29th [1893] My dear Lane, When will the Lower Slopes appear? We await it anxiously.
Now about The Woman Who Did. I don’t want to seem peremptory but I am very anxious to get something arranged about it as early as possible. Can you let me have an answer now? If not, I think I shall have to ask you to return me the MS, as I think it of great importance that it should be published early in the present season. I say this all the more because I feel you are going to ask me to make modifications, which I could not consent to do except as to the smallest details. I regard this book seriously in a conscientious light and would rather not publish it at all than mutilate its message. Do please give me a definite answer as early as possible.
Many thanks for the little Le Gallienne brochure, which I will duly preserve among my bibliographical treasures. In haste Yours very sincerely, Grant Allen.
Jan 3. 94. My dear Lane, I am so anxious to get something done shortly about The Woman Who Did that I don’t think I can wait any longer for your promised letter – the more so as I feel pretty well convinced it would contain suggestions with which I should be unable to fall in: I am therefore writing to Grant Richards to call at your office for the manuscript, and I shall be much obliged if you will kindly hand it over to him. I hope you won’t misunderstand my action in this matter. I should have liked to publish the book with your firm; but for many reasons I desire to get it arranged at once, and I think any longer delay would interfere with my plans for the season. In haste, Yours very sincerely, Grant Allen.
Jan 14th [1894]. My dear Lane, I have now gone carefully through The Woman Who Did and met many [ ] of your readers’ criticisms. I have entirely got rid of the melodramatic tone which some of them complained of. I have altered the banal expressions which vexed the righteous soul of George Moore. I have psychologised the interviews with the two fathers. I have prepared for, led up to and made comprehensible beforehand Dolly’s final movements. I have recast these parts more than I originally intended – and am not sure that the story altogether gains by it. However that may be, I think I will now rest on my oars. This is the sixth [revision?] which my manuscript has had: if I do any more to it, my work will all get frittered away with niggling touches. The truth is, if you try to please everybody you must get rid one by one of every point in your story. Mrs Meynell would be satisfied if Herminia got converted in the nick of time by Cardinal Manning, and spent the rest of her day in reconciling the Dean to the church of our fathers.
But what I write for now is to ask whether I may send you the MS to be type-written. I shall feel safer against the risk of fire when it is duplicated. I should like to have three copies taken – one for you, one for America, and one with the original MS to be returned to me as a safeguard against accident. Shall I send you the MS to Vigo Street or elsewhere? In haste, Sincerely yours, Grant Allen.
[From Nellie Allen.] Thurs 19 [Almost certainly Jan1894, although 19 Jan 1894 was a Friday]. Dear Mr Lane, Grant begs me to write and say that Mr Le Gallienne will bring up the MS of The Woman Who Did tomorrow. In haste and with very kind regards. Yours sincerely, Nellie Allen. Shelfmark A4251L L265
Jan 23rd [1894 – clearly refers to The Lower Slopes pub. early that year] My dear Lane, Grant Richards will be down here on Sunday and I will send up the MS by him to deliver to you personally. I don’t like to trust it to the tender mercies of the porter at the [ ].
Many thanks for your offer of copies with the old title page: but no thank you, I would prefer the new one. To tell you the truth, being an author, I prefer that my friends should have the title of the books in the way I intended it than have a mere rarity. I think, in addition to the stipulated twelve copies, I must ask you to reserve for me four others at market prices.
It was well sending a copy to Lang: but I don’t think he will like them. Neither as matter nor form are they much in his line of country. Sorry to hear your news of Watson. Something must be done for him. We might have another try for a Civil List pension. In haste, Sincerely yours, Grant Allen.
Feb 9th [1894] My dear Lane, I see by the notice in the Chronicle that The Lower Slopes is out: but my copies have not yet arrived. I hope they will come soon as there are certain [people?] whom I wish to have them as early as possible. Herewith Watson papers. In great haste, Sincerely yours, Grant Allen.
Sep 3. [1894?] My dear Lane, I am sending you herewith my article on Le Gallienne and Davidson. I has been refused by the Fortnightly, Nineteenth Century, Contemporary and New Review, but not, I think, on its merits. For Davidson’s sake, in particular, I am very anxious to get it printed somewhere, and I therefore send it to see what your kind offices can do for it with the Yellow Book. If it is printed there in the same number with the ballad about the [ ], I would insert a few lines of reference to that particular poem. In haste, Yours very sincerely Grant Allen. P.S. I saw lately some excellent verses by a young man named Burrow, a contributor to the Pall Mall and other papers. They seemed to me well worth publishing, and I told him I would say so to you. If they come your way, I hope you will give them a favourable consideration. [The first issue of the Yellow Book appeared 15 Apr 1894, so it must be dated after that. GA’s article did not appear in the Yellow Book.]
Repton[?] Hall Lythe. [Undated, probably late 1894]. My dear Lane, Thanks for yours received yesterday. I am sending herewith corrected type-written copy of The Woman Who Did for America. Please send this one there, and keep the copy you have for the English printer.
But may I remind you that so far we have no agreement? I like business done on a business basis; and I should be glad if you will draw one up for a first edition on the terms you [ ], and send it to me in duplicate for signature to [ ] where I arrive on Tuesday.
I have spoken to Le Gallienne in the [ ] you indicated, and I think he is doing his best to let you have the report on George Egerton by Monday. I am glad he has given you a letter on my manuscript. I wrote to Lady Battersea, and received a kindly and courteous but distinct refusal. However, I have other schemes on my mind which I will work as soon as I get to [ ] and my type-writer. What do you think of Lord Houghton?
In haste, and with very kind regards from us both. Sincerely yours, Grant Allen.
Sep 9 [1894?]. My dear Lane, I understood that you proposed to pay a royalty on The Woman Who Did: but that you would pay down the total royalty on the first edition on the day of publication. Will you let me know, before proceeding to agreement, whether this is so, and how many you mean the first edition to consist of? I shall be here till the 17th: on the 20th I shall be in town, and if you wish it will call and see you. In haste, Yours very sincerely, Grant Allen.
Wednesday. My dear Lane, Come by all means on Friday. Leave Waterloo, and book to Haslemere. Best train is the 11.30, arriving Haslemere 1.00. Then take a cab and drive up. In haste, Sincerely yours, Grant Allen. We will wait lunch for you.
New Haven, Connecticut
Beineke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University
ALS to Edward Clodd. Addressed from The Nook; undated. 641 F-1.
Two letters from J.M. Barrie to Ellen Jerrard Allen dated 7 November 1899 and 21 June 1927. Letter of condolence on death of GA; and declines to aid Mrs Allen in the Golden Valley appeal. Autograph, signed. J.M. Barrie collection (Correspondence, A3).
Six letters from Edmund Gosse to GA, 1887-1898. Autograph, signed. Edmund Gosse collection.
Two letters from Edmund Gosse to Ellen Jerrard Allen, 1884 and 1917. Autograph, signed. Edmund Gosse collection.
New York
The Berg Collection, New York Public Library
Under Sealed Orders. Holograph draft of the published novel. Undated. 334pp. Accompanied by a "Short summary of plot," 6pp.
"What care we at Whitsun, My Clodd" [a poem]. Manuscript in an unidentified hand, dated May 1896. Two leaves.
Letter to Theodore Watts-Dunton. Undated, from The Nook, Dorking. Autograph. Two leaves.
Letter dated June 18 [no year] from Lyme, Dorset. Recipient unknown. Autograph. Two leaves.
A. P. Watt papers. Letters from Watt to Grant Allen in indexed letter books as follows:
IX: July 1884 - April 1885104 126 327 340 353 403 426 545 555 569 634 865 952 977 989
19th May 5. Dear Sir It will give me great pleasure to endeavour to place your novel among newspapers, and I shall do my best to find you a constituency. Of course at first, a large sum is not likely to be got, but should this novel prove a newspaper success the remuneration would increase. Will you send me the MS? Thanking you for entrusting me with this negotiation… PS I presume Mr Payn has mentioned that my terms are 10% on the amount which I succeed in obtaining.
14th July 5. Dear Sir I have pleasure to inform you that I have disposed on the serial use of your novel In All Shades to the proprietors of Chambers Journal for the sum of two hundred guineas (£210). I tried several newspapers but I found most of the more important ones had already made their arrangements a considerable time in advance. Messrs Chambers cannot use the novel till ’87 but to this you will not object. Payment they offer to make in two instalments as follows: Half on your acquiescing in their offer, and half January 2/86, or sooner if you wish it. If you are agreeable to this arrangement kindly let us hear from you by return and I will write to Messrs Chambers and receive the first instalment of the purchase money.
I think you will be satisfied with this transaction and that I may have the pleasure of negotiating many more such on your behalf in future.
17th July 5. Dear Sir … I thank you for entrusting me with the sale of the American Australian and Book rights, and shall endeavour to obtain the best terms possible for you. [Watts commission on the first half of the payment was £10.10.00. ]
11th August 5. Dear Sir, A very influential northern newspaper has proposed to me that you should contribute to their Christmas number one of your short sensational stories, such as you have written from time to time for the Cornhill. The proprietors, I take it, are willing to purchase the story outright, in which case they might sell to other newspapers for simultaneous publication, or they would purchase the use for their own paper only.
Will you kindly let me know if you are willing to write the story & what your views as to remuneration are.
I think this offer – should you accept it – lead to a demand from newspapers for your contributions & probably to this same newspaper taking a long story by you at some future time. *
5th Sept 5. Dear Sir, I am in receipt of yours of yesterday, and I shall communicate its contents to the proprietors of The Sheffield Independent. Kindly send the MS through my hands. . .
2nd Oct 5. Dear Sir As you were good enough to entrust me with the disposal of the copyright of your novel In All Shades I have offered it – exclusive of its appearance serially in Chambers Journal and in America and Australia – to Mr Chatto. He is willing to pay the sum of £75, but before agreeing to this proposal I shall be glad to hear if it meets with your approval.*
5 Oct 5. Dear Sir … I have pleasure to enclose my cheque for £28.7.0 amount received from the Sheffield Independent for use of your story ‘The Beckoning Hand’ less our commission. They inform me they have sent you proofs. When they are corrected I shall get two copies for America and Australia where it is possible I shall be able to place this tale.
I think I could place among the newspapers other short stories similar to this one, and when you have another novel ready I should be glad to dispose of it for you.
8 Oct 5. Dear Sir … I shall be glad to have the short stories when you have time to write them, I think I can dispose of them. I have reason to know that the Graphic [ ] but their length will be about 25,000 words. If you … Thanks for your promise regarding the novel you are working on, which, should you entrust it to me, I shall do my best for. Probably, I should almost say certainly, you will get a larger sum for the copyright this time than for In All Shades.
May I take leave to mention that my business is not entirely devoted to the placing of fiction, and that I should therefore be glad to look after the negotiations for your scientific works. My connections with such houses as Macmillan’s Longman …
21 Oct 5. … I hope to dispose of ‘The Beckoning Hand’ in Australia & America and if possible get another £20 for you from this source, but for a short story such as this, I rather think the sum got – if this further amount be obtained – is a phenomenal one, but of course I shall try to get as much as possible for anything you may entrust me with.*
’Till my Wedding Day’ has not yet reached me.
28 Nov 5. Dear Mr Grant Allen Mr Comyns Carr has accepted your short story ‘Harry’s Inheritance’, but says he can only pay at the rate of 35/ a page of The English Illustrated Magazine. Are you willing to accept this honorarium? I shall now try the Graphic with the other. *
28 Dec 5. …I shall be glad if you will kindly send me the three sets of proofs of In All Shades, that I may try to do something with your story in America and Australia. I do not consider that Messrs Chambers have behaved well in announcing your story without giving me [ ] notice of their intention … promised to give me .. notice of its appearance.
The first intimation I had was seeing their [ ] in the December pages of their Journal and I immediately wrote to them pointing out that they had arranged [ ] not to publish till 1887, and to give me clear notice of the commencement. The only reply I have received is that they have set you four sets of proofs ‘we’ presumed for transmission abroad’. I am rather afraid they have spoilt the chance of disposing of the story in the colonies but I will try my best.
5 Jan 6. [He informs GA that ‘by commencing publication of your story In All Shades without informing me of their intention to do so, rendered it I fear impossible to get anything for it in Australia and America. I think they are fairly entitled to compensate you for their loss. I have therefore written to them asking that under the circumstances they should pay you a further sum of One hundred pounds a very moderate sum I think, for the rights in question.’
X: January - July 1886 25 152 441
11 Jan 6. Dear Mr Grant Allen, As I informed you, a few days ago I made a claim on Messrs Chambers for £100 because of their neglect to inform me that they were going to publish your story this month instead of in 1887. In common courtesy they were bound to give me timely notice of their intention.
As they have been troubling you with copies of their letters to me, I need not put you to further annoyances than ask you kindly to read the copy of letter enclosed which I have written today to Messrs Chambers, in reply to their of the 9th inst.
I should be glad to know that I have your approval in what I have done. *
30 Jan 6. Watt received 15 guineas from the EIM for the story ‘Harry’s Inheritance’ passed on less commission.
5 Apr 6. Dear Mr Grant Allen I am glad to hear that you are recovering from your serious illness, and I trust that the holiday you intend taking will set you up entirely again. Whenever you are ready with your novel I shall be glad to place it.
I am sorry I did not succeed in getting anything for ‘The Beckoning Hand’ either in the States or Australia . In the former I now know of a very good market. *
XIII: June - November 1887 274 441 475 497 552 608 611 668 699 714 768 785
2 Aug 7 I have pleasure to send you by parcel post today 3 copies of the original MS of the first 11 chapters of your novel This Mortal Coil. [GA sent ch.21-32 before 9 Sept. Watt then arranged to have this typewritten – this as early as 1887. GA sent the last section on 6 October].
20 Sep 7. …I shall supply the Australian paper with this portion [This Mortal Coil] … By the by, do you wish me to sell this book to Chatto, as I did your other?
I shall be glad to place another story for you should an opportunity occur. Perhaps if an application be made to you, you might refer it to me, when probably I could make better terms for you. I hope your health may be benefited by your visit to Algeria.*
15 Oct 7. …PS The other day when in Edinburgh I spoke to Mr Chambers regarding another story from your pen & it is not unlikely that by the time they get the whole of the copy of this one, they may decide to take another.
27 Oct 7 Watt received £300 from Chambers for This Mortal Coil plus another £70 for the Australian serial use *
XV: April - October 1888 70 94 131 284 333 943 967 983
11 May 8. … Might I take the liberty of asking you if you would kindly give a few lines which I could add to a future edition of my circular, that is to say, if I have done the work with which you have kindly entrusted me to your satisfaction. *
12 Jun 8 … I have seen Mr Chatto today about your book This Mortal Coil. He makes offer of £100 for all the remaining copyright which is an advance on what he gave for a former one. Are you willing that I should accept this sum?
XVI: October 1888 - January 1889 49 114 115
11 Oct 8 Dear Mr Grant Allen, I have pleasure to inform you that I have received today from Messrs Chambers their cheque for £300 for Dumaresq’s Daughter. In accordance with your instructions I have paid to your Bank £260.2.6 this being the balance after deducting enclosed for typewriting and my commission.
XVIII: May - August 1889 419 483 636 811 840 927? This vol. is the first to use the typewriter.
5 July 9 I have pleasure to inform you that I have disposed of the British serial rights of your new novel The Scallywag for the sum of four hundred pounds, reserving American and other rights for you. The MS to be delivered some time in August next and publication to commence anytime after the delivery. … The purchaser is Mr Edward Lloyd of Lloyd’s Weekly, but he does not wish it be known that he is contemplating the publication of fiction. Kindly let me know when you think you can deliver the MS.
24 July 9 Mr Lloyd would like to have a choice of titles for your story. Perhaps therefore you would kindly let us have one or two others.
I have sold the story to Australasia for £50. America I shall also try to arrange and perhaps there I should get it typewritten as you suggest.
27 July 9 … With you, I think The Scallywag a capital title & I shall try to induce Mr Lloyd to take this view.
XIX: August - November 1889 93 325 Walter Besant Christie Murray Rider Haggard Bret Harte his main clients of the 80s.
2 October 1889. W.E. Lloyd has been seriously [ ] and is only now recovering, but I am glad to say he is out of danger. Only today have I received his cheque for the use of your story The Scallywag, and I have pleasure therefore to [ ] for £351.8 the amount less my commission and the enclosed a/c for copying. I have not yet [ ]
XXV: March - June 1891. 19 28 227 230 254 329 622 865 923 961 971
Also galley proofs of twelve instalments of a series of short stories, including two sheets with short story "Old Margaret".
The Morgan Library
13 ALS from James Payn to GA and Nellie Allen. Accession no.1628.
Unfortunately Payn’s handwriting is so bad and faded that these letters are almost entirely indecipherable. (GA has added a few words above the line at various points, trying to make them out himself. George Gissing recorded in his Diary for 6 Aug 91: ‘An illegible letter from Payn… A day of dull misery, due to Payn’s damned communication. If only I could read what the man writes! His handwriting alone is an insult’.) They concern Payn’s advice, as editor of the Cornhill, about writing fiction.
’Oct 24. Dear Grant Allen If you will allow me to drop that prefix ‘Mr’ which Freeman Young ... ... ...). Your letter gave me much pleasure. ... those who follow the trade of literature, but in your case it is ... strong. If I venture to suggest anything in your fiction it is only because .... In compensation for my stupidity I will call upon him and say how much I admire it (which is true) but that we have requirements in Fiction ... (which is also true).
Oxford
Bodleian Library
Poems / by Grant Allen [1869 or 1870]. MS.Eng.poet.c.14, fols. 8-9 & 12.
Fol. 8 is a poem titled ‘1869’ probably in autograph of EWB Nicholson. This poem has never been published and date of composition is unknown, but its sinister tone and the date surely confirms the ‘we’ of the poem are GA and his first wife Caroline Bootheway Allen.
We stood upon the Westward-fronting cliff,
And gazed athwart the calm. The red sun dipped,
Purpling the blue. Between him and our eyes
Drave a black hull, black-sailed, that stood, and loomed
Huge, on the water’s edge. The red sun sank,
And all was dark, save where one silent light
Bore slowly westward: and we watched its course
Awhile in silence: then we turned and went.
And all the cliff was dark, and all the fields.
Fols. 9,10, 11 is a copy of ‘The return of Aphrodite’ and the paper is headed ‘Grant Allen, Broad Street, Lyme Regis, Dorset’. There is a note: “Eventually printed in Temple Bar and The Lower Slopes” probably in autograph of EWB Nicholson.
Fol. 12 is a copy of ‘Only an Insect’. With a note “Copied by EWBN from an autograph. Eventually printed in The Lower Slopes.”
Letter to Edith and Hubert Bland. MS.Eng.lett.e.120, fols. 30-31.
Addressed from The Nook, Dorking. “Aug 9. Dear Sir. . .You are quite right in supposing I have socialist sympathies. But I’m afraid I can’t join the Fabian Society. For one thing, I dislike organisation -- I’m too individualistic to work together with them. . . .As socialist as Marx, I am as individualistic as Herbert Spencer. I will do better work for our common cause -- so far as it is common -- by holding aloof from all societies and saying my say in my own way. But I hope little. I am a gloomy pessimist. . . .PS. I am an invalid and have enough to do to earn a livelihood for my wife and family.
Letter. Undated. Autograph. Recipient unknown. MS.Autogr.b.9, no.275.
Addressed from The Croft and dated “Nov 29th. Dear Sir, I enclose for your consideration a short story entitled “A study from the [?life]”. The Editor of the Speaker was afraid to publish it. Will you be, I wonder? [No such story known].
Letters to EWB Nicholson, 1869. MS.Top.Oxon.d.120.
These letters are all about the business of the Oxford University Magazine and Review, in which GA’s first work appeared. GA and Nicholson served as joint editors. Three are from GA, written at the close of 1869:
[fol. 65] 9 South Street Thurloe Square [London] Saturday. My dear Nicholson, …I am sorry that you must drop the Mag, very sorry. But still I think it on the whole the wisest thing for you. You are really too energetic a man to take up anything of the sort without detriment to your other engagements.
As to my taking the editorship on my own shoulders, I could only do that on the condition of no pecuniary share (if so even:) but it would be time to think of that after Feb. no. has come out, and I have returned to Oxford….
Your proposals for the Feb. I cordially agree to, as far as I understand them. I think it would be a pity not to publish one more no. as we have so much matter in hand or in prospective….
I can risk no money, but I am perfectly willing now and always to give my work for the Mag. editorially or otherwise….
I wish I could see you for a talk. How have we been selling? Has anybody been noticing us? Here in London one is out of the world.
Since you have tracked the lion to his den, you may as well address here for the future. Yours fraternally & sempiternally Grant Allen.
[fol. 68] Waterloo House Victoria Street Ventnor Monday [after 25 Dec 1869]. My dear Nicholson, How many apologies do I owe you for having been so remiss in answering your last? Yet I have a good many reasonable excuses to offer. In the first place I have been moving, as you will observe, and am now settled down for the winter in the Isle of Wight. Your letter came, just as I was on the point of departure. Then I have been a good deal careful and troubled about many things; very much troubled indeed, and by no means up to writing. But now that I have quite recovered from Christmas indigestion, I must try to answer your proposition.
My plans are just at present in such a very unsettled state that I should not like to make a definite promise of any sort about the Mag. for the time being. I think the simplest thing wd. Be to let the current no. edit herself as originally proposed—then, if I am in Oxford next term, I could see Shrimpton’s [the printer] in the flesh and be able veras audire reddire voces. I don’t think under any circumstances I cd. guarantee copy as that involves the possibility of having to write a whole number myself. Besides, I don’t like to seem mercenary, but the fact is, I could dispose of my labour to ten times better advantage elsewhere: and I doubt whether I can afford to lose so much time. You must remember, I have a still shorter time to prepare for Greats in than you. At all events, I shall leave the question in abeyance till next term; and if I come up then, I shall talk the matter over with you V. d’s.
I am sorry nobody noticed us. As to Longfellow, I doubt if he wd. Look at the Mag. Otherwise, I fear [name illegible] wd. seem as you say. It is my last in that line. Did you notice that the Oxford Paper mentioned only your name and mine? That looks like information.
…. As to the answer, I really think the paper too contemptible to be noticed. But I know you attach more importance than I do to the lower animals. A townsman is quite at liberty to say or think anything he likes of me. (N.B. Radical of the Period.)
Ever yours apologetically, Grant Allen
P.S. Isn’t it customary just now to wish people many happy returns of plum pudding?
[fol. 70] Waterloo House, etc. New Year’s Day [1870] My dear Nicholson, I drop a tear.
I had a deep affection for the dear departed, but I cannot take up much time in lamenting it; especially as it is apt to blur one’s writing.
The Undergraduate’s is, I fear, too deeply sunk in the mire to be ever recoverable. But the hint is worth acting upon. Something might be done with it.
My coming up to Oxford next term is not more doubtful than usual: that is to say the betting is not more than 10 to 1 against it. When a man has no money and can’t make any anyhow, he finds it difficult to make any very definite plan for the future. If I can find money to pay my railway fare, I always go up: if not, I borrow a penny stamp, and write for a grace-term.
As to my going in for Mods, you have misapprehended what I said. I did not mean that my last chance wd. be before yours, but only that I meant to go in before you. I am reading for next May. I shall not put off one day beyond my first chance so that I have only 5 months to read for greats. But I will have my [?shout] then or never. I am much too poor a man to waste any more time on an unproductive place like Oxford. If you are resolved, I am ten times more so. All I want is a degree. I go in for no fellowship. As soon as I get the two letters, and as good a class as I can manage, I shall get an easy mastership, where there is lots of work and very poor pay, and subside into obscurity.
The Island is, as you say, very pleasant, and more than that, the most perfect thing in scenery I have met with in England. This country has nothing grand in it, and when it tries a mountain or a waterfall it fails ignominiously: but it is very strong in pretty quiet country scenery, and the Isle of Wight aims at nothing higher, and so is suo genere perfect. When I go walks or drives here, I am positively entranced (I know no other word for it) by the delicate minute beauty of everything around. But I have fallen into an essay. I have not met any of your relatives; and as I am in no society anywhere, and know nobody in the world, I am not likely to. When I leave Ventnor, I shall probably not have spoken to a soul (except tradespeople) outside this house. Young Williams of Merton is at Sandown, and I have seen him once, but shall try to prevent a recurrence of the circumstance.
You will doubtless by this time have discovered that I am in a bad humour this evening. I have been reading Livy all evening, and as I have only the Oxford text and no dictionary I have scarcely done anything. I have to get through 5 books in a fortnight, so I am rather riled.
Reciprocating your wishes for the new year I must beg leave to sign myself,
Yours Davidically, Jonathically and Pythia-damonically, Grant Allen.
Letters to the Rev. Archibald Henry Sayce, [c1878]. MS.Eng.lett.d.70, fols.2-3.
Addressed from “2 St John St. Tuesday” and “Thursday”. Dated “c.1878” in another hand. GA refers to a “paper of questions which I have sent to a few selected missionaries.” They were about “native colour or applied pigments on ornaments, pottery, necklets, etc.” “I am anxious, if I undertake the work at all, to settle the question once for all whether the various races of men have or have not an essentially identical sense of colour.”
Two brief letters to E. W. B. Nicholson, [1881 & undated]. MS.Eng.lett.e.121, fols.91-94.
[fol.91] ‘22 Cambridge Rd Hastings. 25 Nov’ [1881 added in another hand]
GA offers EWBN the use of his name in a new magazine proposal. GA is planning a lecture at the London Institute. He asks how large the diagrams should be. He requests loans of books, presumably from the Bodleian.
[fol. 93] ‘Wednesday’ [?1872 added in another hand]
GA is engaged for the very day and hour ‘for which you invite us’. Invites EWBN to tea or in the evening.
Letter to Mr Turner, 1892. MS.Eng.lett.d.298, fol.23.
“Tuesday Aug 2nd /92” has been added in another hand. Refers to advice Turner [unidentified] had given him about disposition of an MS and continues “one of them [ie another letters offering advice] came from the Bodleian librarian at Oxford [ie Nicholson], asking me to deposit the MS in the library under a promise of secresy [sic] during my life time. I don’t think I will quite accept this offer. I’ll keep the MS while I live, and then leave it to my wife to dispose of in some way afterwards”. The MS in question is not named, but the letter obviously follows GA’s communication published as ‘The Worm Turns’, Athenaeum, (30 July 1892), 160 where Allen complains stridently about an editor’s reaction to a submitted MS. Clodd, 154 prints part of the response Allen made to his friend Nicholson’s suggestion of storing the MS, as alluded to above: “Thanks for your flattering suggestion. But on reflection I’ll adopt a middle course. I’ll keep the MS. during my lifetime, and ask my wife to pass it on to you after my departure from a planet which I shall have scanty cause to remember with gratitude.” Clodd does not date this letter extract, but he takes it for granted, surely correctly, that the MS in question is TWWD.
Letter to William Watson, 1898. MS.Walpole c.24, fol.22.
TLS dated “Dec 20, 1898”. Flowery tribute and praise for Watson’s Collected Poems, as sent to GA.
Philadelphia
University of Philadelphia Library
ALS and TLS from Jerrard Grant Allen to Theodore Dreiser. They are dated between Jan 1911, 1912, 1916 and 1917. All are from England except the last which is from South Norwalk, Conn, dated 13 July 1917. The English letters confirm JGA’s ups and downs as a theatrical manager/impresario, and repeatedly urge Dreiser to find him some work in America; getting there seemed to be his main ambition at the time.
Private Collections 1
MS of The Woman Who Did. Typescript with numerous corrections and revisions, 134pp.
MS reader's report (2pp) by Richard Le Gallienne dated 23 October 1893
“The whole story breathes an air of rare purity & high moral enthusiasm. . . . The book will, of course, create a considerable sensation & come in for fierce criticism – but the worst that can be said of it will be that it is mistaken. No one can say that it is evil. Would it would come like a breath of purity amid the many decadent publications of the Bodley Head (!!). . . It should make a good play”.
ALS (8pp) from George Moore to John Lane dated 4 November [1893]
Dear Lane, I have read Grant Allen’s book. There is absolutely no reason – no moral reason – why you should not publish it. It merely deals with the conscientious scruples of a woman regarding marriage, and England being a free country we are free to consider marriage as an evil or as a blessing.
There is little or no literary merit in the book. It is written in the style of the London Journal. Orbs for eyes, “she stood up in her [illegible] dignity” – “she sat down in attitudes that reminded one of the Greek statues” and so on. It is full of superficial reflections of all kinds. The cottages were so beautiful that they were works of art in themselves waiting for someone to sketch them. I quote from memory but I do not do Mr Grant Allen an injustice. There are many superficial reflections on Italian art. This book upholds the socialistic ideal and yet pessimism is exalted. Socialism and pessimism are irreconcilable I take it. The book is as superficial in thought as it is in style.
At the same time it cannot be denied that there is a certain amount of ‘go’ in the book and it was read with some interest. It carried one on like a newspaper article. As its superficialities in thought and style would not strike the ordinary reader I am inclined to think that it would be a success.
The book could be much improved, and, if you decide to publish it, you would do well to ask Mr Grant Allen to rewrite the last scene. The girl tells the mother that she can’t live with a disreputable woman any longer and is going to live with her grandfather. I do not say that the girl would not desert her mother but she would not desert her mother in the way Mr Grant Allen describes. Nature is more recondite, more subtle, more hypocritical. The pathos of the tragedy is entirely missed; it is impossible to imagine anything more blunt, more “outside” than this scene. It is like something Sims and Buchanan would do in an Adelphi melodrama – it is unrelieved by any psychology. The book is so unhuman, as un-psychological as any tract; with a little psychology run through it it would not be a bad book at all. But psychological in style is I am afraid beyond Mr Grant Allen; he would not have written his book as he has if this were not so. Still I think he might rewrite the last scene, it is too intolerably crude even for the general reader and if it be not mended it will, in my opinion, seriously prejudice the sale of the book. There is another scene of the same kind in the middle of the book – when the dead man’s father tries to turn the woman out of doors and cheats her out of her inheritance. The man might do all Grant Allen says he does but he would do it differently. The scene wants psychological insight; at present it is cardboard and not human flesh. the alteration of this scene is not so important as the alteration of the last scene.
You proposed to give me £2 for my opinion of this book. I have given it now send me the ₤2. Short accounts make long friends.
Yours sincerely, George Moore.
LS dictated. Feb 16th. To “My dear Noble” giving a testimonial for a job with a publisher.
Private Collections 2
Two letters from M.O.W. Oliphant to GA after the publication of her article 'The Anti-Marriage League'. Scans supplied courtesy of Joan Richardson.
3 Windsor Place/Dundee/7th January [1896]/Dear Sir/ I am much touched by your letter, and trust I have never wronged you personally in any way. I know that you did not carry out your principles into practice which (pardon me!) every freethinker is expected to do - I live at Windsor when I am at home, and in about a month I shall in all probability be there - and if then you care to come and see me, it will give me pleasure to receive you. At the same time I doubt if it will be of much use. I am an old woman, a woman of my day not of this, and the mother of men (though God has taken them from me) - therefore there are very few of the experiences of life with which I am not practically acquainted - judge then whether theories are likely to have much weight with me. I am quite willing to believe, since you say so, that you mean well when you attempt the overthrow of what seems to me the most sacred foundation of life, but it is evident we see this matter from the most absolutely different points of view and are not in the least likely to move each other from these./Truly yours/M.O.W. Oliphant.
3 Windsor Place/Dundee/7th January [1896]/Dear Sir/I am sorry to have addressed my answer to your letter to Hindhead, not remembering that you had given me another address - but probably it will be forwarded to you. It was to say that I live in Windsor and will be there in about a month, when if you care to come see me, I am always to be found: but that I did not think any such interview would be of much use./Truly yours/M.O.W. Oliphant.
Reading
University of Reading Library.
Publishers' archives (Chatto & Windus, Longman, and one file from John Lane) containing production details of about 26 of GA's books and some business correspondence between GA and these publishers. Also Chatto & Windus letterbooks, 1878- mostly outgoing letters but some GA letters tipped in. All letters from Chatto’s are autograph and signed by Andrew Chatto unless stated otherwise.
22 Oct 1880. Dear Sir We like the idea of republishing in a volume your papers from the St James’ Gazette under the title of The Evolutionist at Large and we think it would be quite in our line. We shall be willing to undertake the publication of it [ ] in an attractive form at our own risk, and to pay you a royalty of 15 per cent of the publishing price on every copy sold. Yours very faithfully, Chatto & Windus.
ALS. 12 Cambridge Road, Hastings. Nov 4 [1880]. Gentlemen, I should have written earlier with reference to my sketches, The Evolutionist at Large, but I have been waiting to get Mr Greenwood’s consent to the republication, about which there was at first some delay. The delay, however, was only owing to press of engagements, and I have now received his authority for the reprint. I shall be very glad to put them into your hands on the terms you propose – a royalty of 15 per cent on all copies sold: and I hope they will prove a success for us both. I will send you the slips by Monday next, as I want first to run them over and make a few corrections and alterations. I think of asking a friend of mine to design a fancy cover, and I will send you the design, and see whether you think it would be worthwhile to use it. My own impression is that the book, if prettily got up, ought to sell at railway stalls, etc. Yours very faithfully, Grant Allen.
20 June 1881. Dear Sir We beg to thank you for the article you have sent us for Belgravia & for the promise of one for the Gentleman’s. We are always pleased to receive your articles. . .
Yes the Evolutionist has been uniformly well spoken of: we have published but a few books that have been so favourably reviewed: nevertheless, we have so far sold only 416 copies – this after very extensive (much more extensive than usual) advertising. However, we will go on pushing it – for we like the book & must hope that it will in time [ ] way. Yours faithfully, Chatto & Windus.
ALS. 4 Robertson Terrace Hastings. Oct 12 [1881] Gentlemen, I enclose receipt, with thanks. I was at the Pall Mall office the other day, and they asked me whether I meant to republish the series of Vignettes from Nature which I have been contributing to their paper. This set me thinking about it, and so I write now to ask whether the Evolutionist was so far a failure as to indispose you to republish this series. I am afraid you will hardly like to undertake it, but at any rate I thought I ought to give you the ‘first refusal’. Many of my friends thought the title of the Evolutionist ill chosen: and it is just possible that the Vignettes might take better, and so might help to sell the previous volume. Has it been going off any better since I last heard? Yours very faithfully,
14 Oct 1881. Dear Sir We have the pleasure of sending an account of the sales of your Evolutionist at Large together with our cheque for the amount of the royalty due upon the copies sold at the rate of 15 per cent upon the publishing price. We had hoped that the sales would have been larger but as you say perhaps the title the Evolutionist has been against its popularity. We are still keeping it before the public and hope the demand for it may improve as it becomes better known. We have read with great interest many of your Vignettes from Nature in the Pall Mall Gazette and we shall be very pleased to reprint them in a series uniform with The Evolutionist upon the same terms as that volume, the sale of which we think may be benefited by the issue of a second and perhaps some popularisation. Perhaps you could include some of the [ ] of James Essays! unless you consider that the Pall Mall papers wd. be better by themselves? Yours faithfully. . . *
ALS. 4 Robertson Terrace Hastings. Oct 15 [1881] Gentlemen, I have to thank you very much for your letter of yesterday and the accompanying cheque, for which I enclose receipt. I am glad to learn that you don’t think so very badly of the prospects of the Evolutionist. I am inclined to think the whole edition may yet be sold out, especially with a second series to help it on.
Thanks, too, for the note about the Vignettes. I shall be very pleased to republish them with you on the terms you propose, and I have just written to the editor of the Pall Mall for his formal consent. I will revise the slips and send them on to you as early as possible. I am afraid there would be some difficulty about including the articles from the St James’s, as I imagine the diplomatic relations between the two evening papers are a trifle strained. But I could include one or two very similar articles from the Pall Mall itself, which did not appear under the title of Vignettes, and which would help to make up a volume the same size as the Evolutionist. Yours very faithfully, Grant Allen.
23 Dec 1881. Dear Sir We submitted the proof sheets of the Evolutionist at Large as well as Vignettes from Nature to [America] in the hope of their making an offer . . . for an edition for the American market but without success, probably on account of the ease with which so small a volume could be piratically reprinted in the States. We did not know however that this had been already done. We fear that there is no help for it. Theoretically we believe that the Canadian law forbids the importation into the Dominion of American reprints of English copyright books except upon payment of a royalty to the author, but in practice nothing seems to come of it. Yours faithfully, Chatto & Windus.*
18 May 1882. Dear Sir, We have the pleasure of enclosing you our cheque for £15.1.6 for royalties for Vignettes from Nature . . . .
5 Oct 1882. Dear Sir, We shall be pleased to publish your Colin Clout’s Calendar upon the same terms . . .
LS. 5 Johnstone [ ] Weymouth. Oct 10th [1882] Gentlemen, I shall be very glad to publish Colin Clout’s Calendar on the terms you mention . . . I can make it up to a bigger book than Vignettes – in fact as much bigger as you like. . . . Yours very faithfully, Grant Allen.
30 Mar 1883. ... We think you might fairly ask 10£ each for the German rights in the volumes (which would belong to yourself). We know that very small sums are paid for translations, but we consider that they help to advertise the original editions. Yours. . .
1 May 1883. Dear Sir We have much pleasure in enclosing you a cheque for £10.0 .0 the amount we have received from Messrs Funk Wagnells for royalties in account of Colin Clout’s Calendar. We also send you their letter from which you will see there is a probability of further remittances likely to come which shall be sent you immediately they reach us.
Although this American reprint has been made without authority (as of course they are at liberty to do) we in their remittance something like an awakening conscience. We have acknowledged the sum to help uphold [ ] Yours. . .
23 Oct 1883. Dear Sir We are very pleased to learn that you are engaged upon a three volume novel. We have often thought of suggesting that you ought to write one. We should like to have it for serial publication in the Gentleman’s Magazine to commence in January 1884. As we always desire in such cases that the republication of the Magazine novels in book form should continue in our own hands (in which shape we believe we are able to do them full justice) we trust that you may see your way to offer us the entire copyright of it. We remain dear sir. . .
25 Oct 1883. Dear Sir Mr James Payn has kindly sent us the MS of a new [ ] novel by you. Are we right in supposing that this is the story you refer to in your favour of yesterday’s date under the title ‘Born Out of Due Time’ which we are to take into consideration for The Gentleman’s Magazine? It would naturally aid our deliberations if you could give us some idea of the sum you would be willing to accept for the copyright. The Gentleman’s Magazine we regret to say can only at present afford, in consequence of the severe competition of the American and the 6d. magazines, a comparatively small scale of payment. Yours very faithfully. . .
29 Oct 1883. Dear Sir We have much pleasure in accepting your novel ‘Born Out of Due Time’ upon the terms you suggest – namely 250£ for serial rights and full copyrights, payable in 12 equal monthly payments of £20.16.8 commencing with the publication of the first instalment in the January no. of the Gentleman’s Magazine. We return as explained the MS by parcels post for the alterations you mention, and we shall be pleased to have back again at your earliest convenience, at least three or four monthly instalments.
We will keep very carefully the secret of the authorship; but we think you might select a better pseudonym that ‘Gertrude Beresford O’Sullivan’ which we fancy suggests the idea of a somewhat shabby aristocratic amateur author. Why not keep to ‘Arbuthnot Wilson’ who is already known to the public as a writer of short stories? We have a partiality for short pseudonyms like ‘Mark Twain’ ‘Currer Bell’ ‘George Eliot’ and if you have any objection to the idea of Arbuthnot Wilson we should be glad if you were to select another name on the model of the above. Yours. . .
1 Nov 1883. Dear Sir I am very sorry to have put you to the trouble of telegraphing about your MS. I have taken it home to read and was not able to finish it until this morning. I hope you will forgive me for suggesting that (as you contemplate altering the later chapters of the story) I think it would be made more attractive to the general reader if you did not kill off Ernest Le Breton. I also believe that most readers myself amongst them, would be pleased [to] have Lady [ ] to marry Berkeley, and Seelah, Ronald. Single word titles have many advantages over sentences like ‘Born out of Due Time’ – which perhaps also indicates too plainly a tragic ending – It has occurred to me that Philistia, like Vanity Fair is fairly descriptive of the scene and characters of your admirable story. Yours. . .
5 Nov 1883. My dear Sir I hope you will not think that I am rashly attempting to interfere with the operation of a universal survival law, in pleading for the life of Ernest Le Breton. I believe novel readers generally would not allow him to die without a protest. Besides you may want him again – you know how Anthony Trollope regretted killing Mrs Proudie on the impulse of the moment after overhearing the talk of two club loungers. You also have a higher purpose to serve by showing that even a person ‘born out of due time’ may ‘get on’ by steady perseverance in principles which at first may appear opposed to his own immediate interests. His journalistic experiences might enable him to start an advanced paper of his own which should rival in [ ] the Standard – a sort of Socialistic [ ]
Henry Power (there are about 80 Powers in the London directory) would be a better pseudonym than either Strong or Force – perhaps you will think of a more suitable forename than Cecil. Yours . . .
14 Aug 1884. Dear Sir We have read with great interest the MS of your new novel [Babylon], and shall have much pleasure in publishing it in Belgravia commencing in January and should you see your way to accepting 300£ for the entire copyright of it payable in [12? ] equal monthly instalments commencing on that date. It would have afforded us much pleasure to have been able to have offered you a more considerable advance above the price paid for Philistia but we regret to say that the small [enquiry?] for that story as well as the very depressed state of the market for fiction in consequence of the over supply does not permit us doing so. We hope however that we may be justified in making you a more encouraging proposal for your next, when the name Cecil Power shall not be so entirely unknown.
We think it will be advisable to keep to the name Cecil Power as the author, because it takes a very long time of the public to find a new writer. We think that ‘Art’ would be a very taking and descriptive title for it, unless you may [ ] already have chosen a better. Yours faithfully. . .
18 Aug 1884. Dear Sir We are very sorry to say that own experience of attempting the publication of a [ ] story in a country newspaper concurrently with Belgravia is so discouraging on account of the number of letters of complaint that we receive, that we have determined not to take the risk of interfering with the circulation of the magazine by [ ] upon the experiment again. Otherwise we should been pleased to adopt your suggestion concerning the Sheffield Independent. We hope however that you will see your way to giving Belgravia the preference, even perhaps at some pecuniary sacrifice. We fancy that the merits of a story are completely lost in a country newspaper. We agree with you in thinking ‘Babylon’ to be best of the titles. Many thanks for the promised Xmas story. Yours . .
17 Aug [?] 1884. Gentlemen, Very well then, we must forego the country newspapers and I will agree to accept the terms offered in your letter of Aug 14, namely, £300 for the entire copyright payable in monthly instalments from January next. Let the title be Babylon by all means. – I send herewith a story for Belgravia Annual. In haste, Yours very faithfully. . .
8 Sep 1884. Dear Sir We are much obliged by the receipt of the copy for your volume of reprinted stories to be entitled ‘Nightmares’. We are glad that you think of acknowledging the authorship of them; but we would advise a somewhat different preface. An indolent reviewer is very apt to take his [ ] from a preface and perhaps say that he knows all these stories from the various magazines. We think that it would be more politic to say a few early quotable words with [ ] about the new field of imaginative science presented to the reader in the volume, and also to omit too specific a reference to the magazines in which the stories first appeared. We hope that you will consider 100£ an equitable offer for us to make for the remaining copyright in the volume. We find that there is always a strong prejudice against collections of reprinted short stories, and only the most persistent and effective advertising will overcome it. Yours . . .
11 Sep [1884] 8 Lowden Road Cromer. Gentlemen, I am prepared to accept your offer of £100 for the remaining copyright of my volume of collected stories. As to the preface, I will write a new one (on my return home) in the sense you indicate. But unfortunately, so far as regards the four stories reprinted from the Cornhill, Messrs Smith & Elder made it a condition of republication that the source from which they were taken should be acknowledged. Can you suggest any less obtrusive way in which that could be done than by a statement in the preface? Meanwhile I suppose the printing can proceed, as the preface will not be wanted till the last thing. Yours very faithfully, Grant Allen.
15 Sep 1884. Dear Sir We thank you very much for acceding to our views respecting a new preface to ‘Nightmares’. We return the one you sent herewith, with the suggestion that if any acknowledgement is necessary to the proprietors of the Cornhill or the other magazines, a line two in the preface [ ] will not be very much noticed. We have sent the copy to the printers and will shortly furnish you with proofs. We have ventured to place ‘The Reverend Mr Creedy’ first, which we hope you will approve of. Yours . . .
19 Nov 1884. Dear Sir, We have the pleasure of enclosing you our cheque L100.0.0 for the copyright of your volume of stories entitled Strange Stories . . .
14 May 1885. Dear Sir We have to apologise for not sooner writing to you concerning the MS of your new novel entitled In All Shades to which we have given long and very careful consideration and perusal. It is with great reluctance that we feel compelled to say that the pleasure which we had promised ourselves of being able to offer you better terms for each succeeding novel of yours is not within our reach. I consequence of the dull state of the market for work of fiction which has prevented either Philistia or Strange Stories from answering our very modest expectations, together with the severe competition amongst the magazines allow us only to pay very low rates for serials we find that the utmost we can afford for the copyright of the present volume is £150. . .
26 May 1885. I have sent the MS of your novel In All Shades to Mr A.P. Watt and hope that he may be able to place if for serial publication for you. He is a very highly valued friend and we have on several occasions derived great benefit from his services in arranging the serial publication of copyright stories. I am very glad that you are willing to publish it under your own name or that of Arbuthnot Wilson and expect that this will enable him to dispose of it in such a manner as may induce you to continue writing more works of fiction. In any case I shall be glad to have it for 150£ although I very much regret [ ] my inability, in the very depressed state of the book market, to offer you the proper encouragement myself. Thanking you very much for the kind expressions contained in your letter I remain dear sir. . . .
7 July 1885. Dear Mr Grant Allen, I return my best thanks for your very kind suggestion concerning Messrs Appleton’s application to you for the [ ] sheets of Babylon, which I will send on to them . . . I am very hopeful that putting your name to this story will improve its chances of attracting the reading public when it is issued in library form. I believe that notwithstanding the general stagnation in the market for novels Philistia would not have done so badly if it had had your name. I hope, if you do not succeed in placing your new novel In All Shades to better advantage you will not forget that we shall be very pleased to have it. Yours very faithfully. . .
1 Sep 1885. Dear Sir, We should very much like to be favoured with the perusal of the MS of your new novel [FMS], which we think we could place in one of our magazines for next year; and we hope that we may be able to offer for the serial as well as the book rights (which we should like to be in our hands together with In All Shades) a sum that may be within your acceptance. Yours very faithfully. . . .
5 Oct 1885. My dear Grant Allen Allow me to congratulate you on the very powerful and startling story you have written in For Maimie’s Sake. I found the interest so absorbing that after once committing to read the MS you so kindly sent I could not lay it aside until I finished every line of it. It is so entirely different from the ordinary serial and three volume story that I am inclined to advise you to make the experiment of departing from these conventional methods of publication, and allow us to issue it at once in one volume complete at six shillings, we undertaking all costs of production and advertising and paying you a royalty of one shilling (13 copies as 12) on every copy sold. The copyright in this case remaining your own and the same reserved for translations, continental and American rights being paid to you less a commission of ten percent. Although this course necessitates your foregoing the amount you might receive for serial publication, it is a venture which I would recommend you to make for many reasons amongst which I may emphasise first that the character of the story may render it somewhat difficult to place it serially. Most periodicals desiring to [ ] their fiction in well-beaten paths. Both our own magazines are unfortunately engaged for serial stories for next year. Secondly, as perhaps you may have heard, the old-fashioned system of purchasing new novels in three volumes for the circulating libraries is now on its last legs, and it seems very probable that an author who would appeal at once to the purchasing public with a new and powerful story not before published might reach such a new market which would more than compensate for the sum received for first serial publication. With kindest regards . . .
9 Oct 1885.The Nook Dorking Dear Mr Chatto, Many thanks for your very kind and cordial letter. Yes, I believe in Maimie, myself, and what’s more, I’m prepared to back my belief in the way you suggest to me. Of course, I felt myself that her morals might stand in the way of her appearance in a magazine (though they’re really a thousand times better than those of many young women who do get the entree of the best magazine society:) and I’m not sorry to let her stand or fall, on her own merits, in the open market, at the low charge of five shillings. Of course it’s a risk; but if you’re prepared to risk it, so am I. I believe she will go: at any rate, we’ll do our best to launch her. Andrew Lang likes my stories in this stronger style: and I’ll get him to read an early copy, and try to induce him to push it for us. If he will take it up, I believe he can do more to make a boom for any book than any other man at this moment in England. He certainly made Vice Versa: and he can pull so many wires that he’s worth a great deal.
It is understood, then, that we arrange on the terms mentioned in your letter of yesterday. Publish as soon as you like – that is to say, as soon as you think desirable. You know best what interval had better elapse between this and Babylon. I shall be glad to see the book out, because I believe in it. I have only once before pleased myself so well, and that was in John Creedy. John Creedy was in its way a distinct success, though of course it hadn’t the chance that a big novel has; and I think that on the whole augurs well for the success of Maimie. Another thing that augurs well is this – I couldn’t sleep while I was writing all the last half, I so profoundly excited and interested in the actions of my marionettes. When that happens, I think it means that the thing is alive – that it is taking some of one’s own life out of one.
Am I to understand from the advertisement that Babylon went off at the first subscription better than you had anticipated? I hope so, for your sake as well as mine.
I shall be up in town on Monday, and should like to have a few minutes’ talk with you. If I call in at 11am could you manage to see me? Yours very sincerely, Grant Allen.
2 Nov 1885. I was very much surprised when [ ], who is printing For Maimie’s Sake called my attention to the passage marked on page 40 as being in his opinion unnecessarily ardent. It did not appear to me in this light when reading the MS, nor upon reading it again in type by the light of his sensitiveness do I see anything objectionable in the passage, or that is unnecessary in bringing out the character. I must say however that our [ ] whose judgement is very sound, thought that the paragraph would be improved by being a little toned down, but then he has not yet read the whole of the story. I therefore consider it better to let the proof go to you without any further comment beyond the printer’s query and to rely upon your own view after the points had been brought under your notice. I am indeed sorry to hear that you have been laid up in bed. I trust that excessive literary work (to which as a purchaser I feel implicated) may not be [ ]
10 Sep 1886. My dear Grant Allen, I rejoice to hear of your return to England much the better in health from your American trip, and I look forward to the pleasure of seeing you when in town. Mr Watt writes to say that Chambers have arranged to complete the serial publication of In All Shades in October and that they have agreed to our publication of it in a book form this September, and we there only wait now for the receipt of your corrected copy to be able to do so . . .
14 Sep 1886. My dear Grant Allen, I have the pleasure of enclosing an account of the sales of your books up to July last together with our cheque for the amount of the balance payable on a/c of royalties of £54.19.0. I am greatly disappointed that it is not for a larger amount but I hope that balance may improve and we may be able to make a more satisfactory return in the future. Yours very faithfully. . . .
19 Nov 1886. Dear Grant Allen, Many thanks for your kind favour enclosing the copy for your new volume of collected short stories to which we have added ‘The Professor’s Dilemma’. . . . It is a volume we should very much like to have as a companion to Strange Stories and we very much regret to say that the proceeds of that book will not allow of our making you a further offer than 75£ for the present collection. It is with great reluctance that we are compelled to make you any less offer than for Strange Stories as we still maintain our high opinion of the literary excellence of those stories; but we can only imagine that the public taste s somehow set against collections of stories. With kindest regards . . . .
22 Nov [1886]. My dear Chatto, I should prefer a hundred, but if seventy five is as much as the state of the market justifies, so be it. I hope you will be able to think of a title. I can’t, though I have racked my brains for it.
Would you kindly send me by post a copy of the three & sixpenny Philistia? I trust In All Shades is going decently. Yours ever, Grant Allen.
24 Nov 1886. My dear Grant Allen, It would have been much more gratifying to me to have been able to have said a hundred pounds for your new collection of short stories; but in the present state of the book market I see no prospect of affording more than 75£. As you so considerately accept the sum I will not ask you to take a bill in payment and enclose herewith our cheque for the amount.
I think The Beckoning Hand and Other Stories will do very well for a title; if you approve of it we will put this story first. I send a copy of the 3/6 ed of Philistia – I am hoping that the very good notices of In All Shades will soon be sending readers to the libraries for it. I’m sorry to say that only 220 have as yet. Yours faithfully. . . .
18 Nov 1887. My dear Grant Allen, I am indeed glad to hear that the climate of Algeria is already doing you good. Many thanks for the corrected slips of your novel The Devil’s Die which arrived safely together with a letter from Mr Clodd informing me of your departure.
I have all along been promising myself the pleasure of being able to offer you some substantial increase in the amount of our offer for a new novel by you; but the most sanguine interpretation of the results of In All Shades (which has something in common with The Devil’s Die, except that I think In All Shades is likely to please the more cultivated audience, and therefore to have better reviews) showing as they do only a scant return for the outlay on it, perforce limits the amount of the advance in the present case to 10£, making the amount of our offer for the remaining rights in The Devil’s Die £85. I hope that this slow progress will not be more disappointing to than it is to myself and that if you favour us with the publication of The Devil’s Die upon these terms it may afford a more satisfactory return for you next. . . Addressed to Pension du Palmier Mustapha Superieur.
28 Feb 1888. Dear Grant Allen, The enclosed open letter has been sent me by the editor of the Graphic to be forward to you which I do with much pleasure. The timely interest which I take in your success as a novelist must be my excuse for venturing to rejoice over this application to you. The Graphic does not pay high prices – about £400 or £450 I imagine is their maximum for the serial use of a three volume novel, but I consider that there is a compensating value in the prestige gained by the publication of a novel in their columns and of this the management are aware and do not fail to avail themselves. *
8 Aug 1888. ... It is too late in the season to think of bringing out ‘Maimie’ in paper covers until next Spring. The margin on these cheap editions is too small to allow of our publishing it in the royalty system but if you will accept £30 for the remaining rights in it (which I am sorry to say is the most I can offer) I shall be pleased to add it to our cheap series and will send you a cheque at once.
7 Sep 1888. . . . so as to get the ground cleared for the popular 2/- edition which I shall have ready in the spring . . . The Academy speaks of it [FMS] as an entirely new edition but you will se that it is only the old stock in a new cover. . . *
15 Nov 1888. . . . Hoping you are benefiting by your southward journey and with best regards .... Grant Allen Esq Hotel delle Allcanza Firenze Italy.
31 Jan 1889. The cheque for your article in the Belgravia Annual (which I regret the bad times with both magazines made so small, 2/2/0 only ) was sent . . [The Sheffield Telegraph] I should advise you to offer him the serial rights of your new story which be worth to him about £450.00
13 Feb 1889. Dear Mrs Grant Allen, I am afraid that your nephew would find the routine work of a publisher’s office very mechanical and uninteresting, without very much to look forward to. . . Very faithfully yours, Andrew Chatto. Addressed to Hotel de Geneve Mentone.
9 May 1889. I have the pleasure of enclosing a cheque for £120 for the remaining copyright of your novel now in course of serial issue in the Graphic . . . [Tents of Shem]. *
12 June [1889]. Dorking My dear Chatto, I was away when your letter arrived, or I would have answered it sooner. I now enclose the letters from the Graphic office which bear upon the question at issue. From the first of these (Mr Locker’s) you will see that I originally retained all book rights: but afterwards, in accordance with the request contained in the second (Mr Heaton’s) I modified the arrangement (already definitely concluded on both sides), as a concession to the Graphic, so far as to give them the right of book-publication “abroad”. As I understand that word, it means “in foreign countries” and therefore does not cover the colonies or British dependencies. If, however, I have unintentionally misled you in this matter, I shall of course be ready to make good any monetary loss which you think the ambiguity may have caused you. For myself, I can certainly say that I only intended to surrender foreign book rights: and as my doing even that was a pure concession, after the bargain was settled, I hope the Graphic people won’t insist upon it. Yours very sincerely, Grant Allen.
Pearson’s Magazine agreed to pay £35 for reprinting the short stories it used ‘equal to one vol. for £35’. *
30 Sep 1889. Dear Mrs Grant Allen .. my best thanks for the favour of the perusal of the MS of the short story ‘A Dark Stain’ you kindly brought under my notice. I am sorry to say however that it does not seem to me to be suited for separate publication in book form nor the Gentleman’s Magazine and unfortunately we are unable to take it into consideration for the Belgravia magazine as next month it passes into other hands . . .
15 May 1890. ... I am very pleased to be able to say that we shall be able to pay you for the remaining rights in the next novel after first serial publication an advance of 60£ upon the price paid for The Tents of Shem so that we shall be pleased to pay you at any time that suit your convenience £180 for the new story and we trust that we may be [able?] to make another advance in the price of the succeeding stories. Yours . . *
16 May 1890. Dorking. My dear Chatto, Very many thanks for your kind letter. I will certainly promise to let you have the first of my new three-volume novels for the price you mention (£180) as soon as it has run through its serial course: though which of my three is likely to be first published I can’t yet say, owing to shilly-shallying on the part of holders. As soon as I can, I will let you have the title. I will also certainly let you have the first refusal of the other two in due course. I was very glad to see you yesterday, and make that brief explanation, as I should be sorry you should think any interruption had occurred in our friendly relations. Don’t forget your promise to drive across and see us one day, and believe me ever, Yours very sincerely, Grant Allen. [Could this be a reference to Chatto’s estimate of The British Barbarians? No letter relates to that.]
16 June 1890. My dear Grant Allen, The market for collections of short stories is not an improving one, and I would therefore advise you to let your new tale ‘A Cannibal God’ reappear in book form by itself. I shall be glad to make the venture with in a popular form and will give £80 for the remaining rights, which is more than I could see my way to give for a collection of short stories even (paradoxical as it may appear) were this story to form one of them. ...
16 Oct 1890. .. I am indeed sorry to learn that you have been ill and that your sky had been otherwise clouded. I sincerely trust that health and a bright horizon is now in your view.
15 Dec [1890]. Grand Hotel du Cap Antibes Alpes Maritimes France. My dear Chatto, Many thanks for your kind congratulations. I would very much like to give you my Tit-Bits story for publication in book form, but unfortunately the decision doesn’t rest with me. By the terms of the competition, Newnes was to have book rights and everything: and I suppose he will want to publish it direct from his own office. However, it would be so obviously advantageous for all parties to let it lie in the hands of the publishers of my other stories that you might perhaps approach him on he subject, and see whether he would like you to undertake it for him. In any case, I think it a good advertisement, which ought to run up the value of your existing copyrights.
By the way, will you kindly let me know whether you or I hold the Tauschnitz and translation rights of my previous novels? I have had an application about a German version from Tillotsons, but don’t know whether I have any rights to dispose of or not. Yours very sincerely, . . .
30 Dec 1890. . . . I am glad to see that Chambers’ Journal commences your new novel Dumaresq’s Daughter. I suppose this is the one that we have arranged with you for?
3 Sep 1891. My dear Grant Allen I have much pleasure in enclosing our cheque for £180 for the remaining rights in Dumaresq’s Daughter, which is now all in type. . . .
7 Sep 1891. My dear Grant Allen I have the pleasure of enclosing with best thanks for your kindness in accepting this mode and time of payment, our draft on the City Bank at 4 months date for £800 for the copyright of your novel Under Sealed Orders . . . .
28 Sep 1891. My dear Grant Allen . . . I should like to do something with it in America before it is completed in The People, when it will be seized upon by the Pirates . . . [ie D. of P].
10 Dec 1891. .. I am pleased to say that the reviews of the novel (DD) have been generally favourable (I enclose the Times notice) and the whole of the full edition [ ] , although perhaps this is not quite so favourable as it may seem because, with a caution born of the coldness of the circulating libraries often to sex-novels of late, we printed 100 less than the usual number. Still although we shall not be able to float a second edition for the libraries I am hoping that the cheap edition, will find a good sale. We are preparing for the publication of The Duchess of Powysland about the middle of February, when I hope to be able to make an advance on the agreed sum (£180) that we are to pay you for the remaining rights in it.
* I have been working very hard to obtain an ‘opening’ for the serial issue of Under Sealed Orders, but have not succeeded in placing it yet. There may be a better chance now that the serial story in The Pictorial World is out of the way. ..
22 Feb 1892. ... I enclose cheque for £190 for the remaining rights in The Duchess of Powysland which I am sorry to say I have been able to make only £10 more that for Dumaresq’s Daughter. I had set my hopes on being able to make a more appreciable advance but Mudie which have not been popular as of late – nor have I found an opening yet for Under Sealed Orders.
Ah yes last [ ]! When we felt young and hopeful we talked of the possibility and happiness of a spring holiday and a meeting with you abroad. It was a very pleasant daydream to think so while it lasted, but we are awakening now to the reality that it is impossible for one to leave the business . . .
24 Aug 1892. ... We shall be pleased to pay £60 for the remaining rights in your short story of about 45,000 words running in Chambers’ Journal, you retaining the right of future serial publication and the American rights. I wish I could have made a higher offer but so short a story will require a good deal of management to make a marketable book. . . . Yours. .
ALS. Aug 25 [1892]. My dear Chatto, I am prepared to accept your offer of £60 for the book rights of my story Blood Royal now running in Chambers Journal, I retaining serial rights and American copyright. I think the story will be free for publication about Christmas. Would you prefer to publish a few short stories with it, or do you think it would run better alone? In haste . . .
25 Jan 1893. . . . I wish I could have made some advance on our offer over the price paid for The Beckoning Hand, but I am sorry to say that it is becoming more and more difficult to find a market for collections of reprinted short stories, and I am reluctantly compelled to limit our offer it to £75. [for IGM]. I am afraid it would be injurious to let this follow Blood Royal in March – with The Scallywag to appear in June it would give all the books a better chance if this volume of short stories was to appear in the autumn. Or possibly it might be still better to keep back The Scallywag till the autumn and bring the volume out in June.
Hoping that you are enjoying perpetual summer best regards . . .
31 Jan 1893. .. Hoping that you and Mrs Allen may have a very pleasant time at Rome . .
23 Feb 1893 . . . I think the title Ivan Greet’s Masterpiece and other Stories is preferable to Very Select Stories . . .
25 July 1893. . . . Trusting you will soon get over the exhaustion of moving . . .
15 Jan 1894. My dear Grant Allen, We shall be pleased to undertake the republication in book form of your Post-prandial Philosophy on the basis of a royalty 15 per cent on every copy sold as in the case of your other three volumes of Essays into which category this seems to come; or if you would prefer I should be pleased to give £50 for the remaining book rights. I am sorry that philosophy is not at a better quotation.
Mr Watt has still Under Sealed Orders in hand I regret that he has not yet been able to find another opening for the serial use of it since the arrangement, which will remember, he made its appearance in the new serial The Home Magazine in December 1893 fell through in consequence of funds not being forthcoming to start the proposed magazine. I shall be pleased to secure the remaining rights of your serial publication in Chambers Journal of your new three volume story At Market Value on terms as [ ] that is £150.
23 Jan [1894] My dear Chatto, Kindly excuse delay in answering your letter of the 15th [Jan 1894]. . . I am prepared to accept your offer of £150 for the book rights of At Market Value. With regard to Post Prandial Philosophy, I am still in an attitude of suspended judgement, and will write again as soon as the last paper of the series has been published in the Westminster and I have collected and revised them all for presentation in a volume.
I am sorry to hear Under Sealed Orders is still on your hands. I did not know your arrangement for it had broken down. Yours. . .
22 Aug 1894. My dear Grant Allen I have the pleasure of enclosing our cheque for £12.10.0 being the moiety of the honorarium received for the serial use in Great Thoughts of your tale Blood Royal. .. We have fixed the 18th of September for the publication in book form of At Market Value . . .
15 Feb 1894. ... I believe you have done right in deciding in favour of the sum down [for PPP], as this leaves me with a free hand to issue it at a popular price. I have pleasure of enclosing cheque for £50 . . .
5 June 1894. We have the pleasure of enclosing you a cheque for £150 for the remaining copyright of At Market Value . . .
5 July 5 1894. ... a statement of the sales of your Evolutionist at Large and Colin Clout’s Calendar for the last two years, together with our cheque for £3.19.4d that being the amount due to you after deducting various small charges . .
20 Sep 1894. To Grant Allen Esq. Dear Sir I agree to publish your volume, of which the type-written copy is now in my hands, entitled ‘The Woman Who Did’, in my ‘Keynotes’ series, at 3/6 net. I undertake all risks including paper, printing, binding, advertising and distributing, and agree to pay you a royalty of ninepence per copy on all copies sold. The royalty on the first 2500 copies to be payable on the day of publication and subsequent payments [ ] with account of sales. The copyright of the book remains your own property , but the control of the book with me, insofar as related to the maintenance of the original published price or its reduction of it should seem expedient, in which case a proportionate reduction of the royalty would be arranged. As to American rights I will pay you one half of all sums received from America on account of the book This agreement to be binding for a period of five years. Yours faithfully, John Lane.*
1 Oct 1894. ... in a volume to be called Moorland Idylls , on the same royalty of 1/- [?] on all copies sold at the published price of 6/- as we pay on your Evolutionist volumes, unless you would prefer to take £50 down for the copyright as with Post Prandial Philosophy – not that that experiment has been altogether successful as yet; still I should like to make another venture with the illustrations you suggest from the English Illustrated Magazine.’
TLS. The Croft, Hind Head, Haslemere.
25 Oct [1894]. My dear Chatto, Would you kindly ask your people to paste enclosed slip into a copy of Post-prandial Philosophy, send it to Dr Georg Gronau, 21 Clifton Gardens, Maida Vale, and debit me with it?
As to the articles in the English Illustrated and Illustrated London News, I think I will accept your offer of £50 for full copyright; and you can arrange about the cuts as soon as you think convenient. In haste, yours very sincerely, Grant Allen.
30 April 1895. Letter turning down ‘Mr Shaw’s’ Mrs Maybourne’s Nephews’ as offered by GA.
12 Dec 1895. I have received from the printers the [ ] of your Moorland Idylls which they say will make in this form about 180 pages. As this seems to me to be rather short, I shall be glad to avail myself of the kind offer you made to supply a little more copy for the book if reprinted. I hope that this will not give you any trouble, and that you may have by you some other articles already published that may find an appropriate place in the volume.
25 Feb 1896. My dear Grant Allen Mr Grant Richards kindly left with me on Thursday the typewritten copy of your new novel The Finger Post which I have now read with great care and interest. It is with the utmost diffidence and hesitance that, in compliance with your request to let you know without reserve how the story appears to me, I am constrained to say that I am unable to agree with the teaching of the story either as regards its pervading pessimistic view of life or of its contention that marriage is a curse, and that prostitution is a necessary concomitant evil with marriage. Holding as I personally do the opinion that the main purpose of fiction is to give pleasure to the reader, who I think ought to be able to retain a balance of encouraging remembrances after the perusal of any book, read as fiction is read, for relaxation or recreation, and that the record and discussion of displeasing facts should be reserved for a branch of literature in which sentiment and emotion have a secondary place, I feel that I should not be doing justice to you or to your work were I to avail myself of the opportunity, which your friendship for me has prompted you to make, of the offer of the publication of the novel. I [ ] return the MS by post, again thanking you for the favour of the perusal of it and lamenting my inability to see the question [ ] from your standpoint.
I hope in spite of what I have now ventured to tell you of my views, that I may be privileged to make an offer for any other novel you may write of a less controversial nature and more on the lines of say The Tents of Shem and At Market Value, which are stories I think that have certainly added to the brightness and happiness of life. . . . Ever faithfully yours . . .
23 Nov 1896. . . .the enclosed cutting from last week’s Nature . . . It bears upon your own subject of Force and Energy and mentions some of the views which I had the pleasure of [ ] to you at symposia . .
12 July 1897. Mr Andrew Wilson writes desiring me to point out to you that the title Glimpses of Nature belongs to a volume by him which he published in 1891. . . he asked for a new title to be used.
14 July 1897. Forwards a cheque for 12s2d, for the Evolutionist at Large from 1 July 1896 ie one year.
11 Oct 1898. My dear Chatto, My nephew, Grant Richards, is anxious to publish a sort of edition de luxe in one volume of the best of my short stories, published or unpublished: and he wants to include in the book some five or six of those in Strange Stories and Ivan Greet’s Masterpiece. They would be accompanied by an equal number of stories the copyright of which belongs to myself. He proposes to pay me a royalty of twenty per cent on all copies sold. Would you be prepared to give your consent to such selection and republication if I paid you half the total royalties received? I do not think such republication would in the least hurt your copyrights: on the contrary, I believe it might stimulate demand, as the source of each story would be acknowledged. I have no doubt, also, that Grant Richards would allow an advertisement of your other books by me to appear in the volume. Perhaps the easiest way would be for you to talk the matter over with him, if you are inclined to entertain the proposal. Yours. . .
13 Oct 1898. My dear Grant Allen I have much pleasure in agreeing to the proposal, contained in yours of Oct 11th that Mr Grant Richards should [ ] in to one volume de luxe edition of your best short stories , five or six of them in Strange Stories and Ivan Greet’s Masterpiece, you dividing with firm the royalties secured. I have seen your son, in the absence of Mr Grant Richards, and have told him of the arrangement and have left with him copies of the above named two volumes and also a copy of A Beckoning Hand from which perhaps you might like to select a short story to make up the six.
Hoping that some day when you are in town you may favour us with your company at our office luncheon for a ‘symposium’ on the impact of the ether as the mechanical cause of [gravity?], and with kindest regards . . .
10 Nov 1915. Dear Mr Spalding, My son tells me of his [ ] to you and of the generous way in which you propose to treat the question of any profits that may come from the cinematograph production of any of my husband’s works of which you hold the copyright. I thought I would like to write and say how much I appreciate your attitude. . . . Yours sincerely, Nellie Grant Allen.
Richmond Upon Thames
Local Studies Library
Letters to Douglas Sladen. Letters (all but one from Hindhead) from GA dated 'Nov 30' mentioning the Lord Roberts Vagabond dinner which he cannot attend; 'Mar 5 '97' about Sladen's notice of a guide-book in the Queen; from 'The Cottage, Riverdene, Cookhan' dated July 25, '97 thanking for a review of An African Millionaire; dated 'Nov 25 '97 saying he cannot come to London since 'they began reviewing my poor innocent God book'. Would like to discuss the 'Rome' book. Finally one dated 'May 16' thanking Sladen for trying to get Black (the publisher) interested in 'the Guide Books', that is, in getting up a series to be edited by GA.
Also a brief note dated 'May 4' (in wife's hand) to 'My dear Burgin'.
State College, Pennsylvania
Rare Books and Manuscripts, the Pennsylvania State University Special Collections Library.
This is the largest single holding of GA material. The Register of the Grant Allen Literary Manuscripts and Correspondence 1872-1937. Accession no. 1989-0059R is available at http://www.libraries.psu.edu/speccolls/FindingAids/grantallen.html
Spanish Town July 5th/73. Dearest Mother, I am going in this letter to give you some idea our household arrangements, as I am sure you will be interested to learn all about it! I leave Nellie to tell you the general news this week.
First then, I have made a little plan of the ground floor of the King’s House in which we are living. I have marked round our rooms, which occupy the left wing of the building, with a deep black line. If you keep the plan before you as you read you will understand better what I have to tell you.
In front of the building is a large Portico with white Pillars, and beneath it is the principal entrance. You enter by a very large Hall, and turning to the right come to our suite of rooms. Chadwick’s are just above them, on the first floor, while the rooms on the left are reserved for Franklin and Emily, when they come out for the next professorship.
The first of our rooms that you enter is a large Drawing room, 36 feet by 24, and eighteen feet high. It has 2 windows, opening on to the square in front, with green venetian blinds, which we keep shut all day on account of the sun. There is only a small carpet in the middle of the room, and the rest of the floor is polished, according to the custom of the country. None of the other rooms have any carpet at all, but simply polished floors, to prevent ants and other insects which nevertheless appear in swarms, and even walk about the dinner table at mealtimes. The floors are polished afresh every second day. Well, to return to the Drawing room: it is furnished thus. On the carpet in the middle is a good mahogany round table, on which are arranged our vases and show books. Opposite it, also on the carpet, is a round ottoman, big enough to hold about eight people. Between the windows is a chiffonier of polished green wood, with book-case on top. To the right is a little side table of light polished wood; on which Nellie’s desk and work box stand, with a vase between them. On the other side of the door is another chiffonier, of polished wood, on which stands Nellie’s sewing machine. To the left stands a sofa. Besides this there are 2 armchairs, leather covered, and 12 rosewood chairs. These, with the ottoman and curtain valance, are covered with crimson and white Tabouret. Against the wall are 2 candle-stands of brass work. The doors and mouldings are painted white, with gilt panellings, a little faded. We have had all the things re-covered with a pretty new chinty, and new leather put on the arm chairs. I give a little separate plan of the Drawing room.
Though there is so much furniture yet the room is so big that it is quite open and roomy not withstanding. It can seat 24 people, and would hold a great many more if necessary. Though we both like little rooms in England in this country the more air one can get the nicer, and so big rooms look most comfortable and cosy here, odd as it sounds to say so. A little room looks stifling.
Going straight on, you come next to our bedroom (see plan.) It is the same size as the drawing-room, & is furnished thus. An iron bedstead, with covering and mosquito curtains. These are of large white net, fringed with red and white ball trimming, and when festooned up, as they are during the day, look very pretty and effective. At night however they are dropped round so as to enclose the whole bed in a sort of pyramid. Then there is a nice double wash-hand-stand, fitted up with pretty bedroom sets the uncle gave us. Next come two very handsome toilet tables, one for each, with looking-glasses. Covered with clean toilet-cloths, and decorated with dressing-cases, glove-box &c, they look quite the real [jam?] Besides this there are two large wardrobes, 7 chairs, towel horse &c. In spite of all this furniture, however, the room is so large that there is space enough in the middle for five sets of lancers to dance easily. I hope at some time to get a round table to fill it in a little, for at present it looks quite bare.
Behind this comes another bed-room, only fitted up with bedstead and a few other things, which we at present use as a bath room, and keep our boxes in it.
Back of the drawing-room and bed-room lies our dining-room. It was originally one long room of 70 feet with 7 windows, but we have off about 25 feet and 3 windows to make a little study for me. It communicates by doors with the entrance hall, drawing-room, bedroom and study, and all the windows open down to the ground and lead into the piazza and garden: they have Venetians, wh. we keep open all day, except when the sun shines in. In the centre is a dining table, big enough to seat eight people, or with leaves, sixteen. At one end is a solid and handsome mahogany sideboard. At the side is a side table, and opposite it a plate-stand. Item, six chairs, and two arm chairs for top and bottom. This is the coolest room in the house, being protected from the sun by the covered and trellised piazza.
The study is not yet fitted up, but when complete it will have a round centre table, square side table, two rocking chairs, two plain chairs, and a hammock, slung from side to side. By the help of these pieces of furniture I hope to study very hard indeed. Rocking-chairs, Nellie begs me to add, are found in every house here.
The kitchens, pantries, servants’ rooms and so forth, lie, as you will see from my plan, behind the house, separated from it by a garden, but connected by an open shed or passage. This is to prevent the heat and smell of cooking from reaching the house.
On the opposite side of the house (right wing) is an immense ball-room, to hold five hundred people, well fitted up and less racketty than the rest of the house. We intend to use it for grand ceremonies only, such as openings, breaking ups, recitations, &c. Consequently, this house will only be used for Chadwick, Franklin and ourselves. The lecture rooms and dormitories for the boys will be in another building on the opposite side of the square.
When we last wrote I gave an account of the buildings which is still substantially true. Yet we are getting accustomed to being a little tumble-down, and have this comfort, that we are much less tumble-down than anybody else in Spanish town. And our additional furniture improves the rooms greatly. We said last time that we had asked for several things and were awaiting the decision of the government. We have been allowed nearly everything we have asked for but about this I have written more fully in my letter to Fisher, wh. I have asked him to forward to you.
I think I will now give you a sketch of how we generally spend our day. At about six o’clock our black housemaid, Rose, knocks at our door with tea. I jump up, push aside the mosquito curtains, and unlock the door. Rose comes in, smiling broadly, and showing her white teeth against the black skin. The tea is laid by the bedside, and Rose retires, after saying, “Morning Massa; Morning, Misses; hope you sleep well.” We drink our tea, with a biscuit and then turn over for an hour’s sleep. About eight we rise, tub, and dress slowly. By a little after nine we are ready for breakfast, which consists of (say) fish, meat, biscuit & jam and fruit. The last article is very cheap here, and forms part of every meal. We get enough bananas for three ha’pence to last us 3 days. After breakfast we work at some household affairs or other till lunch, or go out on business – always in a “Buss”, for it is quite impossible to walk here between sunrise and sunset. At one we lunch, and after lunch lie down for a short nap. At four visitors begin to arrive, or else we dress and go out to pay visits ourselves. We are getting quite accustomed now to find civilized and fairly educated people living in moderate comfort in the broken and shabby cottages of Spanish town. Everybody in the town – that is, all the whites, about 20 families – have called upon us now; and some people elsewhere have called or sent cards by post. They seem anxious to be friendly. At 7 or 1/2 past 7 we dine, and at nine have cup of tea in the drawing–room. Shortly after which we retire to get as much sleep as the mosquitoes will permit us. In the evenings, we see a good deal of some large bats, about the size of a respectable pigeon, who have an unpleasant habit of flapping straight past the face of the unoffending stranger as he walks about the house. They live in the ball-room, and regard us as unauthorised intruders.
I must finish now, I fear; love & kisses to all. Nellie say I mustn’t finish up so, but I always do. Your affectionate son Grant.
Toronto
Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto.
The Tents of Shem. Holograph draft of novel. 327 leaves. Uncatalogued minor letters.
Wolff Collection
As transcribed as Item [129] in Wolff, Nineteenth-Century Fiction, vol 1 (Garland, 1981).
ALS. “The Nook, Horsham Road, Dorking, Aug 10 [1888]. My dear Chatto, I’m sorry to let poor Maimie go upon the street so cheap – for I really loved her – but if £30 is the highest price you can afford to pay for her, take her by all means. Only don’t let Stead get hold of this shocking bargain, or he’ll placard all London with our gross immorality.
I sent Mrs Meade [a periodical editor] a Christmas story for Atalanta a short time since, which didn’t suit her, because it was too murderous. But perhaps you might find a place for it in the Belgravia Annual. I shall ask her to send it on to you. Yours very sincerely, Grant Allen.
As Wolff says, the joke about Stead alludes to his child prostitution campaign in the PMG of a few years earlier.
A reprint of For Maimie’s Sake around 1888 (the year of the letter is confirmed by Chatto’s own notation) is not known. The Chatto & Windus ‘new edition’ was not published until 1894.
Was the “murderous” story perhaps ‘My Christmas Eve at Marzin’ in the Belgravia Christmas Annual (1888)?
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