AFRICAN NIGHTS' ENTERTAINMENT.
[TO THE EDITOR OP THE "SPECTATOR."]
Sin,—Regarding the otherwise fair and courteous enough review of my "African Nights' Entertainment" which appeared in your issue of July 21st, my complaint is not the usual literary one, but something a deal more urgent. The misapprehension under which your reviewer writes is one calculated to involve me in a very unpleasant and wholly un- deserved personal difficulty; and I must earnestly beg that you will give my disclaimer the same publicity which, un- fortunately, its cause has found. Your reviewer says :—" It is really not fair to take the -actual title of a living English lady," &c. I cannot too emphatically state that I never have and never shall be guilty of any such offence, in whatever fiction I may write. Unfortunately, your reviewer's com- ments leave no room in the mind of one who knows Morocco for doubt as to the identity of the English lady whom he connects, so very wrongly, with a character in one of my stories. There is no question that he refers to a lady resident in Tangier whom I have the honour and pleasure of knowing, and whom I look forward to meeting again many times. In the "African Nights' " I wrote, and not flatteringly, of a Shareefa of Ain Araish. Conceive my distress at seeing this mythical lady of my imagination publicly identified with a very real lady with whom I was conversing in a friend's house less than three months ago. There are thousands of Shareefas in Morocco. The lady of my story is not in the least degree akin to the other living personage with whom your reviewer connects her. Further, you have my word for it that I had not the remotest idea of writing a portrait. "Whose very title, we must repeat, he has taken." Pray permit me to repeat that I have done nothing of the sort, but have used a purely imaginary title. There, very possibly, may be a living Shareefa of Ain Araish ; but if so, she is one whom no European has ever heard of or met. Thanking you in advance for righting me, as far as may be, with those who may have been misled by this unfortunate misstatement. —I am, Sir, &c., [Surely "The Shareefa" is a title, and it is a title borne by an English lady in Morocco at this moment. There may be thousands of Shareefas in Morocco, but there is only one who is an Englishwoman. We are of course quite sure that Mr. Dawson did not mean to write in a way which would be disagreeable to the lady in question, but our reviewer was quite right to protest strongly against the practice, now far too common, of taking picturesque incidents in the careers of living people, and then giving them a fictitious setting. The public does not distinguish the different portions of the blend, and so a confusion arises, often very unfair to the real person, though in fact that person has, as in the present case, only suggested a single episode in a story which is otherwise pure fiction.—En. Spectator.]
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