A STRANGE LITERARY PARTNERSHIP.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XIII, Issue 262, 12 November 1878, Page 4

A STRANGE LITERARY PARTNERSHIP.

The literary partnership of Erek-mann-Cbatrian has not been carried to its present prosperity without many disappointments and discouragements, and any quantity of dogged perseverance. Their example should encourage young men who are anxious to be authors, and who delude themselves with the notion that they can be nothing else. Both born in what i 3 now the German District of Elsas-Lotheringon, but was then Alsace and Lorraine, the former, son of a bookseller, went to Paris, to study law, and ths latter, belonging to a ruined family of glassmakers, began as tutor at the College of Phalsbourg. There they met, when Erckmaun was 25 and Chatrian 21, and decided to write together. They both went to the French capital, and eet to work resolutely. Their first manuscript was refused by ali the newspapers. Then they wrote novels and plays, and got some of them before the public, but had so little success — indeed they ceuld not earn enough to live iv the most frugal fashion— that they relinquished literature, Erckmann going back to law and Chatrian getting a place iv the Eastern Eailway. The elder friend was 37 and the younger 33 when they published L'lllustre Docteur Matheus and made a hit by it. Other novels followed, and soon brought them into prominence and what was better, rendered them independent. The secret of their reputation is that they have described what they have seen and what they know. Le Canscrit and Waterloo, two of their best books, are largely laid among scenes they have been personally familiar with, and the characters are studies from life. Their stories are not brilliant, nor picturesque, nor poetic, but they are true to nature, and full of details of common life which always has a charm if it be faithfully portrayed. They had written fifteen years before their readers knew that they were two men. The double name had been supposed to be the name of a single author. The loss of Alsace and Lorraine was, and is still, a great blow to them — naturally enough, for there were their homes, their early friends, their youthful associations. They have not yet been able to forgive the Germans, and they hope to live to see the ravished provinces once more in possession of France, notwithstanding one is now 56 and the other 52.

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