TO MR. JOHN Blackwood.
Birkenhead,
4th February.
I am conscious that there is rather too much Scotch in particularly the first chapters of ‘Katie Stewart’; but considering the time and the rank of the characters, I think any alteration in this point would make the book less true. I think I mentioned before that there is no fiction in the history, except indeed in the introduction of some of the subordinate characters; the incidents — all of them — are simply and strictly true: this, however, I am aware is quite a doubtful advantage, since it is somewhat difficult to be at once true in fact and true to nature — but Katie Stewart and Lady Anne Erskine were both of them real existences.
Birkenhead, 25th March.
Since you are so good as to repeat your offer for ‘Katie Stewart,’ I shall merely accept it with thanks, trusting that your liberality will be justified by the success of the little book.
Birkenhead,
26fh April.
This is the last week I shall spend in this place, and there are now very few days to spare. Do you still intend that the first number of my story should appear in the Magazine for May?
This is the last letter signed M. O. Wilson. The proofs of ‘Katie Stewart’ were delivered to Mrs. Oliphant on her wedding-day.
Harrington Square, London,
29th March.
I am sorry that the proof of ‘Katie Stewart’ should have been so long detained, and also that your remittance was not, I believe, properly acknowledged. It did not arrive until after I had left Birkenhead at a time when there was much commotion and business in the household, and I trust you will excuse the omission on these grounds. I think I have done as much to prune the Scotch as was practicable without a complete change in many of the earlier scenes. I am, like my heroine, not much of a Jacobite; and as I do not wish to claim loftier sentiments than she possessed for Katie Stewart, I must, I think, suffer her opinion of the Chevalier to remain as it is. I think it accords better with the character than anything of that imaginative poetic loyalty which seems to have belonged by some strange right of inheritance to those unhappy Stuarts. As to the Chevalier himself, my opinion of his face is formed from a youthful portrait taken before the vices of his later life could at all affect him. It may be that I judge wrongly of its expression — still I do judge so; it is an honest opinion, and this also I think must stand as it is....I am obliged by your kind interest in Lady Anne, and should willingly give up the thin shoulders and the long arms; but then these are fully balanced by good qualities which Katie Stewart does not profess to possess, and for the sake of contrast I must be content to do the good Lady Anne even a little injustice. She is loftier in many respects than her humble companion, and for the sake of due individuality Lady Anne must preserve her angles.
The following letter, written by Mrs. Wilson, Mrs. Oliphant’s much-beloved mother, to her brother, is interesting as showing how that vivacious old lady flung herself into her daughter’s interests and enjoyed her successes: —
August 22, 1852.
‘Katie Stewart’ seems to have made a great sensation. Maggie has had two letters lately from Mr. Blackwood, both of them exceedingly kind; the first saying that he had not said to any person who the author was, but that Sir Ralph Anstruther had written asking if he might know, whereat I was very proud, as it was a testimony to the truthfulness of my memory, his own grandmother being the Lady Janet. The reason Mr. Blackwood gave for not saying who the author was, was that it might be good for her to have an anonymous reputation, — honest man, he little knew of ‘John Drayton’ and his neighbour,1 — and that the other contributors were Professor Wilson, Sir A. Alison, Sir E. Bulwer, and Samuel Warren, and he hopes she is pleased with her company. His next is still more gratifying: he says Fife is in a ferment, — that is, not our Fife but literary Fife, — and the authorship is divided between Sir Ralph Anstruther and Lord Lindsay.
The letters of 1853 are again missing, but from the beginning of 1854 the supply is continuous.