In defence of writing Romance
The Dedication to Crockett's 1897 work 'Lad's Love' offers some insight into depth of meaning in Crockett's work.
TO MY UNANSWERED CORRESPONDENTS.
Dear Correspondents,
Free and Unsolicited,
I send you at once my apology and epistle general in the form of a Dedication to this little book.
For years it has been your habit to write me, sometimes to praise, oftener to blame. You have informed me that your great-aunts cannot be expected to approve of certain passages in my works. This has indeed grieved me, but not so much as when you patriotically send me the postage stamps of your native countries—which (I tell it you once for all, and in the name of all my fellow-craftsmen who share with me your favours) do not frank letters of reply from our land to yours, owing to some unfeeling prejudice on the part of our British Post-office. Worst of all is it when you send me the small coinage of your realms and republics, not as tribute, but as prepayment of autographs. These the alert Postmaster-General can feel between finger and thumb as the covering letters pass through his hands. Then forthwith he sends his satraps to charge me such sums for excess and non-registration of coin as are fitted to shake the foundations of any literary finance whatsoever. This, however, be it remembered, does not apply to cheques or bank-notes.
Then, having as it were paid your footing, with a faithfulness which does you infinite credit, you proceed to inform me that I am not doing the things I ought—but, in fact, quite otherwise. Furthermore, I am leaving undone my manifest duty, and refusing to fulfil my appointed destiny, humble as you correctly point out that destiny to be.
I take a letter in my hand. In it I am assured that in time I might become even a reputable writer of fiction, if only I would consent to abjure love-making, landscape, and low society, and live cleanly in a land of pure romance.
The next I open implores me not to imperil a considerable future by inserting descriptions of killings and miscellaneous bloodsheds; but, on the contrary, to confine myself to the characterisation of the domestic affection between the sexes, and the influence of vegetarian tracts on the elevation of the masses.
I am obliged, touched—grateful even; but I cannot avoid being somewhat confused.
I am reminded of my old master in the Mathematics at Edinburgh, Professor Kelland (of whose ‘kindly spectacle’ Mr. Stevenson has written so charmingly). When Kelland sat in the seat of judgment upon our examination papers he leaned ever to the side of mercy. To his fellow-examiner he would say, touching the paper gently with his fingers, as if he would feel the beating heart that waited anxiously outside for the verdict: ‘We'll let the laddie through this time; he's done his best. It’s true his best is not very good!’
So with a like kindly charity, dear distant mentors, think of me. It is not given me always to write what you would—only what I can. To write that which is in one's heart at the moment is the only rule. And the seasons change with me, and my wayward likings with them. In summer I can write with anyone of lasses and lads, and the long courtships between the gloaming and the mirk; but as soon as winter bites snell and grim, I must needs buckle on steel-cap and leathern jack and ride forth a-foraying on the English border.
Be content, therefore, with lowlier things if the knightly quest prove too high for me. After all, if the matter like you not, there is no compulsion to read—not even if, as I hope, you have gone to them that sell, and bought my merry lads in Lincoln green.
For—be it known to you—I love to write for the work's own sake, and write I must till the night cometh, whether any read me or no. If, indeed, you love that which I indite, I rejoice like a mother whose bairns are praised. But if you like my scribings not—well, pass; at least I was entirely happy when I wrote them. I did my best with every page, slaving late and early like a man diligent at a beloved handicraft even if, in the words of the kindly mathematician, ‘my best is not very good.’
And last of all, I can always have the comfort of saying, cheerily as may be, ‘We shall do better next time,’ even as Braddock did when they were carrying him, dying after defeat, from the banks of the fatal Monongahela.
S. R. Crockett.
NOTE.
The somewhat peculiar and composite flavour of this little book has resulted from an attempt to epitomise the various humours, Idylls, loves, and tragedies of moorland life in Scotland well-nigh half a century ago. The places are real, and the local colour exact; but the characters are wholly ideal, and cannot be identified with any actual men and women, alive or dead. I have taken the title, ‘ Lad's Love,’ from the old name for the Scented Wormwood, or Southern-wood, a sprig of which wooers used to wear when they went courting, and our grandmothers to carry with them in their Bibles to church.
S. R.C