AUTOBIOGRAPHIES AND REMINISCENCES

The best writers of memoirs have been the French, and it is through those memoirs that we know so well and so intimately the reigns of Louis XIV., Louis XV., and Napoleon I., as well as the history of the Revolution, the Restoration, and the Second Empire.

Courtiers, diplomatists, statesmen, and women of the Court, by their memoirs and letters, have made us acquainted not only with the public life of Sovereigns, but with all the details of their private life, with all the Court gossip.

The French, however, care little or nothing for memoirs that do not make clear to them some chapter of history.

The English, on the contrary, have practically no memoirs of that sort.  The only interesting ones that I know are those of Greville.  On the other hand, almost every man of note, literary man, journalist, artist, actor, publishes his autobiography or his reminiscences.

While the French only care for the work that a man before the public has produced, the English like to know how he lived, how he worked, whom he met, whom he knew, and his appreciation of the character of his more or less famous friends and acquaintances.

Why, even the music-hall star publishes his reminiscences in England.  The fact is that, if a man keeps his diary regularly, and knows how to tell an anecdote well, he can always write a readable book of reminiscences.

Among the best books of this sort that I know I would mention those of the late Edmund Yates and George Augustus Sala; but the best of all is the one which I do hope will make its appearance one day (although I am not aware that it is being prepared), and will be signed by the wittiest raconteur and causeur of England, Mr. Henry Labouchere.

Try to get Mr. Labouchere in one corner of the smoke-room in the House of Commons, give him a cup of coffee and some good cigarettes, and just turn him on; there is no better treat, no more intellectual feast of mirth and humour and wit in store for you.  His style is the very one suited for a crisp, gossipy, brilliant book of reminiscences.

Among possible writers of interesting and piquant memoirs or reminiscences I ought to mention Lady Dorothy Nevil and Lady Jeune.  Both ladies have known in intimacy every celebrity you wish to name-Kings, Queens, statesmen, generals, prelates, judges, politicians, literary men, artists, lawyers, actors; there is not a man or woman of fame who has not supplied an impression or an incident to them.

And they are the very women to write memoirs, both possessed of keen judgment and insight in human nature, and of great literary ability, both delightful conversationalists, always capable of drawing you out and enabling you to do your best, and thus supplying them with materials for notes and observations.

I am not announcing any book, for neither of these two ladies ever mentioned to me that she was preparing a book of memoirs, but I wish they would, and I have simply named them as being both capable of writing books of unsurpassed interest.

In order to write a good and trustworthy book of reminiscences, you must, above all, be an observer and a listener, besides a good story-teller.  You must be modest enough to know how to efface yourself, remain hidden behind the scenes, and put all your personages on the stage without hardly appearing yourself.

You must be satisfied with sharing the honours of the book with all your dramatis personae, and not cause the printing of the volume to be stopped for want of a sufficient supply of ‘I’s’ and ‘me’s.’

I knew a famous actor whose reminiscences were published some years ago by a literary man.  Once I congratulated that actor on the success of the book.

‘Yes,’ he said, ’the book has done me good, because X., you know, mentions my name once or twice in that book.’

And many books of reminiscences that I know are full of the sayings and doings of the author, with an occasional mention of people of whom we should like to hear a great deal.

I have met these men in private, and sometimes found them clever, and invariably fatiguing bores, and their books are not more entertaining than their conversation.  Many of them reminded me of the first visit that Diderot paid to Voltaire, on which occasion he talked the great French wit deaf and dumb.

‘What do you think of Diderot?’ asked a friend of Voltaire a few days after that visit.

‘Well,’ replied Voltaire, ’Diderot is a clever fellow, but he has no talent for dialogue.’