‘JACK.’

Tom the surgeon belongs to that very objectionable class of humanity, called, by ancient writers, wags: 

  ’MY DEAR DICK,

’I cannot help writing to thank you for the relief afforded to me by the perusal of your last volume.  I had been suffering from neuralgia, and every prescription in the Pharmacopaeia for producing sleep had failed until I tried that.  Dear Maggie [an odious woman, who calls novels “light literature,” and affects to be blue] read it to me herself, so it was given every chance; but I think you must acknowledge that it was a little spun out.  Maggie assures me—­I have not read them myself, for you know what little time I have for such things—­that the first two volumes, with the exception of the characters of the hero and heroine, which she pronounces to be rather feeble, are first-rate.  Why don’t you write two-volume novels?  There is always something in analogy:  reflect how seldom Nature herself produces three at a birth:  when she does, it is only two, at most, which survive.  We shall look forward to your next effort with much interest, but we hope you will give more time and pains to it.  Remember what Horace says upon this subject (He has no more knowledge of Horace than he has of Sanscrit, but he has read the quotation in that vile review in the Scourge.) Maggie thinks you live too luxuriously:  if your expenses were less you would not be compelled to write so much, and you would do it better.  Excuse this well-meant advice from an elder brother.

  ’Yours always,

  ‘Tom.’

‘One’s sisters, and one’s cousins, and one’s aunts’ also write in more or less the same style, though, to do their sex justice, less offensively.  ‘If you were to go abroad, my dear Dick,’ says one, ’it would expand your mind.  There is nothing to blame in your last production, which strikes me (what I could understand of it at least, for some of it is a little Bohemian) as very pleasing; but the fact is, that English subjects are quite used up.’  Others discover for themselves the originals of Dick’s characters in persons he has never dreamt of describing, and otherwise exhibit a most marvellous familiarity with his materials.  ’Hennie, who has just been here, is immensely delighted with your satirical sketch of her husband.  He, however, as you may suppose, is wild, and says you had better withdraw your name from the candidates’ book at his club.  I don’t know how many black balls exclude, but he has a good many friends there.’  Another writes:  ’Of course we all recognised Uncle George in your Mr. Flibbertigibbet; but we try not to laugh; indeed our sense of loss is too recent.  Seriously, I think you might have waited till the poor old man—­who was always kind to you, Dick—­was cold in his grave.’

Some of these excellent creatures send incidents of real life which they are sure will be useful to ‘dear Dick’ for his next book—­narratives of accidents in a hansom cab, of missing the train by the Underground, and of Mr. Jones being late for his own wedding, ’which, though nothing in themselves, actually did happen, you know, and which, properly dressed up, as you so well know how to do,’ will, they are sure, obtain for him a marked success.  ‘There is nothing like reality,’ they say, he may depend upon it, ‘for coming home to people.’