I am an
excellent adviser, something like Moliere's servant; I pull back
and I cut down; and I dress the whole in the best words and
sentences that I can find and make; I hold the pen, too; and I do
the sitting at the table, which is about the worst of it; and when
all is done, I make up the manuscript and pay for the registration;
so that, on the whole, I have some claim to share, though not so
largely as I do, in the profits of our common enterprise.
I can but give an instance or so of what part is done sleeping and
what part awake, and leave the reader to share what laurels there
are, at his own nod, between myself and my collaborators; and to do
this I will first take a book that a number of persons have been
polite enough to read, the STRANGE CASE OF DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE.
I had long been trying to write a story on this subject, to find a
body, a vehicle, for that strong sense of man's double being which
must at times come in upon and overwhelm the mind of every thinking
creature. I had even written one, THE TRAVELLING COMPANION, which
was returned by an editor on the plea that it was a work of genius
and indecent, and which I burned the other day on the ground that
it was not a work of genius, and that JEKYLL had supplanted it.
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