Calligraphically decent

Friday, January 14th., Cadogan Square, London.

I read a lot of Villard's book on great American journalists. It is not very well done, and the editor of the N.Y. Notes ought to be able to write better than he does. I expected more from this book and feel disappointed.

I have had my first sight of the luxury facsimile edition of "The Old Wives' Tale". It is marvellous. Exceeded my expectations. I hope it will sell. It is easier to read than I expected and interesting to see the changes I made as I went along. Twenty years ago now and in some ways it doesn't seem like something I wrote; I wonder if I could produce something as good now?

At the time I was looking for some sort of outlet as I had no relaxations. I thought to try calligraphy and took to it quite well. I made a number of experiments with the object of forming a 'hand' suitable to myself. The result was discouraging at first, though I tried hard to imitate the finest models. In the end I reached a compromise which was really not cursive enough, but I decided to write a whole book in it. Ambitious, because I already knew that the book would amount to about 200,000 words.

So the manuscript reproduced in this edition is, as stated on the title page, the first and last writing of "the Old Wives' Tale". I have never had the courage, except on one minor occasion, to write a novel, or any part of a novel, twice over. I say to myself: "What you have written you have written, and there it is, for better or worse." Of course, if your manuscript is to have even the most modest pretensions to calligraphic decency, you must know all the time exactly what you are about to do; otherwise a regular mess will ensue. And some pages in this manuscript are a bit of a mess, but the readers will know that they are as close as they can be to a genuine act of creativity.

The 'hand' I adopted can be written as fast as any ordinary hand, or at least any that is legible, and far faster than my thoughts will flow. So that the adoption of it led to no delays. The actual writing occupied less than eight months (averaging 1,000 words a day) but the composition was spread over a longer period being interrupted by other work, including another novel, which I began and finished between two parts of "O.W.T".