Some discomfort

Wednesday, February 4th., Rue de Grenelle, Paris.

It seems that the Bookman magazine is preparing an article about me, to be written by Bettany. I have had a letter from them asking for an up-to-date photograph. I don't have such a thing. In fact I don't much like to be photographed, but I sent them a few things I have on hand, including a couple of Rickards' caricatures. They also asked about photographs of the Potteries. Why I should be a source of these I know not.

Interestingly they refer throughout the letter not to the Potteries, but to the Five Towns. Seemingly my invented name for the district has now become common usage. It is used as if it were the real name, even in the district itself, and also by other novelists sometimes. For example Wells, in "The New Machiavelli", lays a number of important scenes in the Potteries, which he calls the Five Towns. The town of Burslem he sometimes calls by its proper name and sometimes by my adaptation of it - Bursley. I suppose I should be flattered by this, and I am, but I know that there is a fair amount of ill-feeling about it in the Potteries. They are a proud people, and easily offended, especially about trivial matters.

I wonder if Hardy gets any trouble arising from his invention of Wessex? I have seen the term used as a description for the south-west in general in the press. But I have never seen Dorchester referred to as Casterbridge, or Weymouth as Budmouth, etc. And then there is Trollope. I don't think that his Barsetshire is in fact based on a particular locality, so it's not the same. Overall I am glad to have been sufficiently successful in my creation to have influenced popular perception. But I doubt if I shall ever be welcome in Fenton!

I am getting on well with "Hilda Lessways" (in Turnhill). Nearly 20,000 words in three weeks. But now and then I get an uncomfortable sensation all over the top of my head and I have to go out for a very quick sweating walk of half an hour to clear it off. Unfortunately concentrated effort like this leads to neuralgia of fatigue and insomnia and so on, and I have to build myself up again with foods.