The autobiographical story (especially when the writer is a mere
convenient supernumerary, designed, like the uncle from America in the
old-fashioned melodrama, to straighten out the tangled skein), is apt to
involve other difficulties than the mere embarrassment of having to
distrust the author's assertion, or censure his indiscretions. The
illusion is utterly spoiled by that haunting _arriere pensee_ that this
or that writer, whom you know perhaps at first or second-hand, or whose
features, at all events, are familiar to you from pictures, never could
or would have played the more or less heroic _role_ with which he here
delights to impose upon you.
Altogether the best book which Bergsoee has written is the
autobiographical romance "From the Old Factory," the scene of which is
laid in Denmark. This book evidently contains a great deal of genuine
reminiscence, and is therefore devoid of that air of laborious
contrivance and artificial intrigue which brings the foregoing novels
into such unpleasant relationship with Wilkie Collins and his _genre_.
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