MB. BESANT'S CHRISTMAS BOOK.
TO THE EDITOR OP THE " SPECTATOR." J
SIR, I read in the Spectator of January 3rd an attack—and the second attack of the Spectator—on a recent story of mine. Your writer says : "Ho takes as a Christmas subject a fancy as hideous as a nightmare." Very well : my nightmare is a great, an ever-present, and a well-known danger,—one of the many terrible dangers which beset a man on his pilgrimage. My demoniac is one of a multitude. The possession is not my fancy : it is a real disease. I have not invented anything. I have, according to modern fashion, presented an example.
In doing this, I have been guided by the advice and the -experience of a physician. He has read my proofs, and prevented me from going wrong scientifically. I have had many letters from medical men and others confirming the reality of the case in every detail. Only the other day, a .message was brought to me from one of our foremost physicians saying that he corroborated every single thing in the story except one detail, and this I had received from -another quarter. I cannot, therefore, without protest suffer myself to be accused of "hideous and nightmare-like" in- vention.
As regards the fitness of the subject for artistic treatment, that is another question, on which your reviewer may hold -one view and I another. As regards its appearance in a so- called Christmas story, I may say that I have written a so-called Christmas story for fifteen years. They appear -about October, and they have no more to do with the Feast of Christmas than with the Feast of Lanterns. Again your reviewer is quite entitled to his opinion of what a so-called -Christmas book ought to be.—I am, Sir, &c., WALTER BESANT. 8 Pierrepont Street, Bath, January 4th.
[Many true stories might be said, and indeed have been said, to be "hideous as nightmares." But if Mr. Besant thinks himself aggrieved by our applying the term " invention " to a work of fiction, we withdraw ft.—ED. Spectator.]
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