‘Only donkeys would write for anything but money’

Miss Buncle’s Book by DE Stevenson tells the story of Barbara Buncle. Times are harsh, and Barbara’s bank account has seen better days. Maybe she could sell a novel... if she knew any stories. Stumped for ideas, Barbara draws inspiration from her fellow residents of Silverstream, the little village she knows inside and out. To her surprise, the novel is a smash. It is a good thing she wrote under a pseudonym, because the good folks of Silverstream are in uproar.

Meeting Miss Buncle in the street, Mr Abbott (who was rather a connoisseur of feminine charms) would not have looked twice at her: a thin, dowdy woman of 40 – he would have said (erring on the unkind side in the matter of her age) and passed on to pastures new. But here, in his sanctum, with the knowledge that she had written an amusing novel, he looked at her with different eyes.

“Well,” he said, smiling at her in a friendly manner, “I”ve read your novel and I like it.”

She clasped her hands together and her eyes shone.

This made him add – quite against his principles – “I like it very much indeed.”

“Oh!” she exclaimed ecstatically. “Oh!”

“Tell me all about it,” Mr Abbott said. This interview was proceeding on quite different lines from what he had imagined, arranged, and decided; quite differently, in fact, from any other interview between and author and a publisher in which Mr Abbott had ever participated.

“All about it!” echoed Miss Buncle helplessly.

“Why did you write it? How did you feel when you were writing it? Have you ever written anything before?” he explained.

“I wanted money,” said Miss Buncle simply.

Mr Abbott chuckled. This was a new kind of author. Of course they all wanted money, everybody did. Johnson’s dictum that nobody but a donkey wrote for anything except money was as true today as it had ever been and always would be, but few authors owned to the fact so simply! They either told you that something stronger than themselves compelled them to write, or else that they felt they had a message to give the world.