My First Book
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Title: My First Book
Author: Various
Release date: July 13, 2010 [eBook #33148]
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MY FIRST BOOK ***
Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was
produced from scanned images of public domain material
from the Internet Archive.)
[Illustration: book's cover]
MY FIRST BOOK
PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
LONDON
[Illustration: signed: Yours sincerely,
Jerome K. Jerome]
MY FIRST BOOK
THE EXPERIENCES OF
WALTER BESANT
JAMES PAYN
W. CLARK RUSSELL
GRANT ALLEN
HALL CAINE
GEORGE R. SIMS
RUDYARD KIPLING
A. CONAN DOYLE
M. E. BRADDON
F. W. ROBINSON
H. RIDER HAGGARD
R. M. BALLANTYNE
I. ZANGWILL
MORLEY ROBERTS
DAVID CHRISTIE MURRAY
MARIE CORELLI
JEROME K. JEROME
JOHN STRANGE WINTER
BRET HARTE
'Q.'
ROBERT BUCHANAN
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
JEROME K. JEROME
_AND 185 ILLUSTRATIONS_
London
CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY
1894
INTRODUCTION
By JEROME K. JEROME
'Please, sir,' he said, 'could you tell me the right time?'
'Twenty minutes to eight,' I replied, looking at my watch.
'Oh,' he remarked. Then added for my information after a pause: 'I
haven't got to be in till half-past eight.'
After that we fell back into our former silence, and sat watching the
murky twilight, he at his end of the park seat, I at mine.
'And do you live far away?' I asked, lest, he having miscalculated, the
short legs might be hard put to it.
'Oh no, only over there,' he answered, indicating with a sweep of his
arm the northern half of London where it lay darkening behind the
chimney-fringed horizon; 'I often come and sit here.'
It seemed an odd pastime for so very small a citizen. 'And what makes
you like to come and sit here?' I said.
'Oh, I don't know,' he replied, 'I think.'
'And what do you think about?'
'Oh--oh, lots of things.'
He inspected me shyly out of the corner of his eye, but, satisfied
apparently by the scrutiny, he sidled up a little nearer.
'Mama does not like this evening time,' he confided to me; 'it always
makes her cry. But then,' he went on to explain, 'Mama has had a lot of
trouble, and that makes anyone feel different about things, you know.'
I agreed that this was so. 'And do you like this evening time?' I
enquired.
'Yes,' he answered; 'don't you?'
'Yes, I like it too,' I admitted. 'But tell me why you like it, then I
will tell you why I like it.'
'Oh,' he replied, 'things come to you.'
'What things?' I asked.
Again his critical eye passed over me, and it raised me in my own
conceit to find that again the inspection contented him, he evidently
feeling satisfied that here was a man to whom another gentleman might
speak openly and without reserve.
He wriggled sideways, slipping his hands beneath him and sitting on
them.
'Oh, fancies,' he explained; 'I'm going to be an author when I grow up,
and write books.'
Then I knew why it was that the sight of his little figure had drawn me
out of my path to sit beside him, and why the little serious face had
seemed so familiar to me, as of some one I had once known long ago.
So we talked of books and bookmen. He told me how, having been born on
the fourteenth of February, his name had come to be Valentine, though
privileged parties, as for example Aunt Emma, and Mr. Dawson, and Cousin
Naomi, had shortened it to Val, and Mama would sometimes call him
Pickaniny, but that was only when they were quite alone. In return I
confided to him my name, and discovered that he had never heard it,
which pained me for the moment, until I found that of all my confrères,
excepting only Mr. Stevenson, he was equally ignorant, he having lived
with the heroes and the heroines of the past, the new man and the new
woman, the new pathos and the new humour being alike unknown to him.
Scott and Dumas and Victor Hugo were his favourites. 'Gulliver's
Travels,' 'Robinson Crusoe,' 'Don Quixote,' and the 'Arabian Nights,' he
knew almost by heart, and these we discussed, exchanging many pleasant
and profitable ideas upon the same. But the psychological novel, I
gathered, was not to his taste. He liked '_real_ stories,' he told me,
naïvely unconscious of the satire, 'where people did things.'
'I used to read silly stuff once,' he confessed humbly, 'Indian tales
and that sort of thing, you know, but Mama said I'd never be able to
write if I read that rubbish.'
'So you gave it up,' I concluded for him.
'Yes,' he answered. But a little sigh of regret, I thought, escaped him
at the same time.
'And what do you read now?' I asked.
'I'm reading Marlowe's plays and De Quincey's Confessions (he called him
Quinsy) just now,' was his reply.
'And do you understand them?' I queried.
'Fairly well,' he answered. Then added more hopefully, 'Mama says I'll
get to like them better as I go on.'
'I want to learn to write very, very well indeed,' he suddenly added
after a long pause, his little earnest face growing still more serious,
'then I'll be able to earn heaps of money.'
It rose to my lips to answer him that it was not always the books
written very, very well that brought in the biggest heaps of money; that
if heaps of money were his chiefest hope he would be better advised to
devote his energies to the glorious art of self-advertisement and the
gentle craft of making friends upon the Press. But something about the
almost baby face beside me, fringed by the gathering shadows, silenced
my middle-aged cynicism. Involuntarily my gaze followed his across the
strip of foot-worn grass, across the dismal-looking patch of ornamental
water, beyond the haze of tangled trees, beyond the distant row of
stuccoed houses, and, arrived there with him, I noticed many men and
women clothed in the garments of all ages and all lands, men and women
who had written very, very well indeed and who notwithstanding had
earned heaps of money, the hire worthy of the labourer, and who were not
ashamed; men and women who had written true words which the common
people had read gladly; men and women who had been raised to lasting
fame upon the plaudits of their day; and before the silent faces of
these, made beautiful by Time, the little bitter sneers I had counted
truth rang foolish in my heart, so that I returned with my young friend
to our green seat beside the foot-worn grass, feeling by no means so
sure as when I had started which of us twain were the better fitted to
teach wisdom to the other.
'And what would you do, Valentine, with heaps of money?' I asked.
Again for a moment his old shyness of me returned. Perhaps it was not
quite a legitimate question from a friend of such recent standing. But
his frankness wrestled with his reserve and once more conquered.
'Mama need not do any work then,' he answered. 'She isn't really strong
enough for it, you know,' he explained, 'and I'd buy back the big house
where she used to live when she was a little girl, and take her back to
live in the country--the country air is so much better for her, you
know--and Aunt Emma, too.'
But I confess that as regards Aunt Emma his tone was not enthusiastic.
I spoke to him--less dogmatically than I might have done a few minutes
previously, and I trust not discouragingly--of the trials and troubles
of the literary career, and of the difficulties and disappointments
awaiting the literary aspirant, but my croakings terrified him not.
'Mama says that every work worth doing is difficult,' he replied, 'and
that it doesn't matter what career we choose there are difficulties and
disappointments to be overcome, and that I must work very hard and say
to myself "I _will_ succeed," and then in the end, you know, I shall.'
'Though of course it may be a long time,' he added cheerfully.
Only one thing in the slightest daunted him, and that was the weakness
of his spelling.
'And I suppose,' he asked, 'you must spell very well indeed to be an
author.'
I explained to him, however, that this failing was generally met by a
little judicious indistinctness of caligraphy, and all obstacles thus
removed, the business of a literary gent seemed to him an exceptionally
pleasant and joyous one.
'Mama says it is a noble calling,' he confided to me, 'and that anyone
ought to be very proud and glad to be able to write books, because they
give people happiness and make them forget things, and that one ought to
be awfully good if one's going to be an author, so as to be worthy to
help and teach others.'
'And do you try to be awfully good, Valentine?' I enquired.
'Yes,' he answered; 'but it's awfully hard, you know. I don't think
anybody could ever be _quite_ good--until,' he corrected himself, 'they
were grown up.'
'I suppose,' he added with a little sigh, 'it's easy for grown-up people
to be good.'
It was my turn to glance suspiciously at him, this time wondering if the
seeds of satire could have taken root already in that tiny brain. But
his eyes met mine without flinching, and I was not loath to drift away
from the point.
'And what else does your Mama say about literature, Valentine?' I asked.
For the strangeness of it was that, though I kept repeating under my
breath 'Copy-book maxims, copy-book maxims,' hoping by such shibboleth
to protect myself from their influence, the words yet stirred within me
old childish thoughts and sentiments that I, in my cleverness, had long
since learnt to laugh at, and had thought forgotten. I, with my years of
knowledge and experience behind me, seemed for the nonce to be sitting
with Valentine at the feet of this unseen lady, listening, as I again
told myself, to 'copy-book maxims' and finding in them in spite of
myself a certain element of truth, a certain amount of helpfulness, an
unpleasant suggestion of reproach.
He tucked his hands underneath him, as before, and sat swinging his
short legs.
'Oh--oh lots of things,' he answered vaguely.
'Yes?' I persisted.
'Oh, that--' he repeated it slowly, recalling it word for word as he
went on, 'that he who can write a great book is greater than a king;
that a good book is better than a good sermon; that the gift of being
able to write is given to anybody in trust, and that an author should
never forget that he is God's servant.'
I thought of the chatter of the clubs, and could not avoid a smile. But
the next moment something moved me to take his hand in mine, and,
turning his little solemn face towards mine, to say:
'If ever there comes a time, little man, when you are tempted to laugh
at your mother's old-fashioned notions--and such a time may
come--remember that an older man than you once told you he would that he
had always kept them in his heart, he would have done better work.'
Then growing frightened at my own earnestness, as we men do, deeming it,
God knows why, something to be ashamed of, I laughed away his answering
questions, and led the conversation back to himself.
'And have you ever tried writing anything?' I asked him.
Of course he had, what need to question! And it was, strange to say, a
story about a little boy who lived with his mother and aunt, and who
went to school.
'It is sort of,' he explained, 'sort of auto--bio--graphical, you know.'
'And what does Mama think of it?' was my next question, after we had
discussed the advantages of drawing upon one's own personal experiences
for one's material.
'Mama thinks it is very clever--in parts,' he told me.
'You read it to her?' I suggested.
'Yes,' he acknowledged, 'in the evening, when she's working, and Aunt
Emma isn't there.'
The room rose up before me, I could see the sweet-faced lady in her
chair beside the fire, her white hands moving to and from the pile of
sewing by her side, the little flushed face of the lad bending over his
pages written in sprawling schoolboy hand. I saw the love light in her
eyes as every now and then she stole a covert glance across at him, I
heard his childish treble rising and falling, as his small finger moved
slowly down the sheet.
Suddenly it said, a little more distinctly:
'Please, sir, could you tell me the time?'
'Just over the quarter, Valentine,' I answered, waking up and looking at
my watch.
He rose and held out his hand.
'I didn't know it was so late,' he said, 'I must go now.'
But as our hands met another question occurred to him.
'Oh,' he exclaimed, 'you said you'd tell me why you liked to come and
sit here of an evening, like I do. Why?'
'So I did, Valentine,' I replied, 'but I've changed my mind. When you
are a big man, as old as I am, you come and sit here and you'll know.
But it isn't so pleasant a reason as yours, Valentine, and you wouldn't
understand it. Good-night.'
He raised his cap with an old-fashioned courtesy and trotted off,
looking however a little puzzled. Some distance down the path, he turned
and waved his hand to me, and I watched him disappear into the twilight.
I sat on for a while, thinking many thoughts, until across the rising
mist there rang a hoarse, harsh cry, 'All out, All out,' and slowly I
moved homeward.
CONTENTS
PAGE
READY-MONEY MORTIBOY. BY WALTER BESANT 3
THE FAMILY SCAPEGRACE. BY JAMES PAYN 15
THE WRECK OF THE 'GROSVENOR.' BY W. CLARK
RUSSELL 29
PHYSIOLOGICAL ÆSTHETICS AND PHILISTIA. BY GRANT
ALLEN 43
THE SHADOW OF A CRIME. BY HALL CAINE 53
THE SOCIAL KALEIDOSCOPE. BY GEORGE R. SIMS 75
DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES. BY RUDYARD KIPLING 91
JUVENILIA. BY A. CONAN DOYLE 99
THE TRAIL OF THE SERPENT. BY M. E. BRADDON 109
THE HOUSE OF ELMORE. BY F. W. ROBINSON 123
DAWN. BY H. RIDER HAGGARD 135
HUDSON'S BAY. BY R. M. BALLANTYNE 151
THE PREMIER AND THE PAINTER. BY I. ZANGWILL 163
THE WESTERN AVERNUS. BY MORLEY ROBERTS 181
A LIFE'S ATONEMENT. BY DAVID CHRISTIE MURRAY 193
A ROMANCE OF TWO WORLDS. BY MARIE CORELLI 206
ON THE STAGE AND OFF. BY JEROME K. JEROME 221
CAVALRY LIFE. By 'JOHN STRANGE WINTER' (MRS. ARTHUR
STANNARD) 239
CALIFORNIAN VERSE. BY BRET HARTE 257
DEAD MAN'S ROCK. BY 'Q.' 269
UNDERTONES AND IDYLS AND LEGENDS OF INVERBURN.
BY ROBERT BUCHANAN 283
TREASURE ISLAND. BY ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 297
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
JEROME K. JEROME _Frontispiece_
WALTER BESANT 2
JAMES RICE 5
JULIA 7
MR. BESANT'S STUDY 9
THE OYSTER SHOP 12
A BOOK PLATE 13
A WICKED SISTER 16
JAMES PAYN 17
IT 'TOOK OFF' FROM HIS SHOULDER 18
MR. PAYN'S STUDY 19
COUNT GOTSUCHAKOFF 21
'WOULD YOU MIND JUST READING A BIT OF IT?' 22
THE SERVANT CAME TO PUT COALS ON THE FIRE 23
MR. PAYN'S OFFICE AT WATERLOO PLACE 24
KILLED BY LIONS 25
CLARK RUSSELL 28
CLARK RUSSELL AS A MIDSHIPMAN OF SEVENTEEN 29
I WAS A CHILD OF THIRTEEN 30
NEATBY 31
ANCHORED IN THE DOWNS 32
SOME OF THE CREW 33
THE MAGISTRATES 34
THE WRECK OF THE 'GROSVENOR' 35
MRS. CLARK RUSSELL 37
THE BOATSWAIN OF THE 'GROSVENOR' 38
THE 'HOUGOUMONT' 39
POOR JACK! 40
GRANT ALLEN 42
FICTION 44
SCIENCE 45
ANDREW CHATTO 49
A SHELF IN THE STUDY 50
'THANK YOU, SIR' 51
I LEFT IT 54
HALL CAINE 55
MY MS. WENT SPRAWLING OVER THE TABLE 56
DERWENTWATER 57
STY HEAD PASS 58
WASTWATER FROM STY HEAD PASS 59
THE HORSE BROKE AWAY 60
SOMETHING STRAPPED ON ITS BACK 61
THE CASTLE ROCK, ST. JOHN'S VALE 62
THIRLMERE 63
ROSSETTI WALKING TO AND FRO 64
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI 65
MR. HALL CAINE IN HIS STUDY 68
MRS. HALL CAINE 69
COMING UP IN THE TRAIN 71
12 CLARENCE TERRACE 75
THE HALL 76
GEORGE R. SIMS 77
GEORGE R. SIMS 78
THE 'SOCIAL KALEIDOSCOPE' 79
THE SNUGGERY 80
MR. SIMS'S 'LITTLE DAWG' 81
THE DINING-ROOM 82
THE LIBRARY 83
'SIR HUGO' 84
THE BALCONY 85
'BEAUTY,' AN OLD FAVOURITE, TWENTY YEARS OLD 86
THE DRAWING-ROOM 87
'FAUST UP TO DATE' 88
MR. SIMS'S DINNER PARTY 89
THE NEWSPAPER FILES 91
'YOUR POTERY VERY GOOD, SIR; JUST COMING PROPER LENGTH TO-DAY.' 92
RUDYARD KIPLING 93
SUNG TO THE BANJOES ROUND CAMP FIRES 96
DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES 97
A. CONAN DOYLE 98
I WAS SIX 99
ON THE PRAIRIES AND THE OCEANS 100
MY DÉBUT AS A STORY-TELLER 101
'WITH THE EDITOR'S COMPLIMENTS' 102
'HAVE YOU SEEN WHAT THEY SAY ABOUT YOU?' 103
'MRS. THURSTON'S LITTLE BOY WANTS TO SEE YOU, DOCTOR' 105
MR. ANDREW LANG 107
LICHFIELD HOUSE, RICHMOND 110
THE HALL 111
THE DINING-ROOM 112
THE DRAWING-ROOM 113
THE EVENING-ROOM 115
THE SMOKING-ROOM 116
THE LIBRARY 117
MISS BRADDON'S FAVOURITE MARE 119
THE ORANGERY 120
MISS BRADDON'S COTTAGE AT LYNDHURST 121
MISS BRADDON'S INKSTAND 122
AT TWENTY 124
F. W. ROBINSON 125
ELMORE HOUSE 126
AT THIRTY 127
MR. ROBINSON'S LIBRARY 128
THE GARDEN 129
THE DRAWING-ROOM 130
AT FORTY 131
MR. ROBINSON AT WORK 132
H. RIDER HAGGARD 134
THE FRONT GARDEN 135
MR. RIDER HAGGARD AND HIS DAUGHTERS 137
THE HALL 139
MR. RIDER HAGGARD'S STUDY 141
SOME CURIOS 143
A STUDY CORNER 145
MR. RIDER HAGGARD 147
THE FARM 149
WHERE I WROTE MY FIRST BOOK 151
R. M. BALLANTYNE 153
MR. BALLANTYNE'S HOUSE AT HARROW 155
TROPHIES FROM MR. BALLANTYNE'S TRAVELS 157
THE STUDY 159
MR. R. M. BALLANTYNE 161
LOOKING FOR TOOLE 164
I. ZANGWILL 165
I SAT DOWN AND WROTE SOMETHING 166
ARTHUR GODDARD 167
IT WAS HAWKED ABOUT THE STREETS 168
A POLICEMAN TOLD HIM TO GET DOWN 169
SUCH STUFF AS LITTLE BOYS SCRIBBLE UPON WALLS 171
LIFE IN BETHNAL GREEN 173
WE SENT IT ROUND 175
MR. ZANGWILL AT WORK 177
EDITING A COMIC PAPER 178
A FAME LESS WIDESPREAD THAN A PRIZEFIGHTER'S 179
MR. MORLEY ROBERTS 180
BEFORE THE MAST 181
I MARRIED THEM ALL OFF AT THE END 182
AN AMERICAN SAW-MILL WHERE MR. ROBERTS WORKED 183
DEFYING THE UNIVERSE 185
COWBOY ROBERTS 186
THE VERY PRAIRIE DOGS TAUGHT ME 187
THE CALIFORNIA COAST RANGE 189
BY THE CAMP FIRE 190
D. CHRISTIE MURRAY 192
I HANDED HIM TWO CHAPTERS 194
I SENT ALL MY PEOPLE INTO A COAL-MINE 195
THEY INVESTED HIM WITH THE MEDAL 197
CONSULTING OLD ALMANACS 199
SHE DREW FROM IT A BROWN-PAPER PARCEL 201
IF THERE HAD BEEN NO 'DAVID COPPERFIELD' 202
THE STOCK WAS TRANSFERRED 203
SOME NOVELS 204
THE DRAWING-ROOM 209
THE LIBRARY 211
THE STUDY 213
FACSIMILE OF MARIE CORELLI'S MS. AS PREPARED FOR THE PRESS 217
MY FIRST-BORN 222
JEROME K. JEROME 223
'HE AND YOU HAD TO CARRY LISA WEBER ACROSS THE STAGE' 226
THAT BRILLIANT IDEA 227
I HATED THE DISMAL LITTLE 'SLAVEY' 230
THE STUDY 231
I AM REMEMBERING 234
MR. JEROME K. JEROME 237
THREE SOLDIERS AND A PIG 239
JOHN STRANGE WINTER 241
MR. ARTHUR STANNARD 243
'THE FIRM' CONSIDERING 246
HE SQUINTED! 247
MISS STANNARD 248
'THE TWINS'--BOOTLES AND BETTY 249
LONG-LEGGED SOLDIERS 251
CAVALRY LIFE 253
I TOOK UP THE 'SATURDAY REVIEW' 255
BRET HARTE 256
WE SETTLED TO OUR WORK 258
A CIRCULATION IT HAD NEVER KNOWN BEFORE 259
'CONSIDER THEM AT YOUR SERVICE' 261
I WAS INWARDLY RELIEVED 263
THE BOOK SOLD TREMENDOUSLY 265
A. T. QUILLER COUCH 268
'Q.' JUNIOR 269
'THE HAVEN,' FOWEY 273
MR. AND MRS. QUILLER COUCH 275
FOWEY GRAMMAR SCHOOL CREW AND MR. QUILLER COUCH 277
THE OLD STUDY 279
MR. AND MRS. QUILLER COUCH IN A CANADIAN CANOE 281
ROBERT BUCHANAN 285
MR. BUCHANAN'S HOUSE 287
THE STUDY 291
MR. ROBERT BUCHANAN AND HIS FAVOURITE DOG 295
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 299
MR. STEVENSON'S HOUSE IN SAMOA 301
MRS. R. L. STEVENSON 305
STEVENSON TELLING 'YARNS' 307
[Illustration: drawing, signed: Walter Besant]
MY FIRST BOOK
'_READY MONEY MORTIBOY_'
BY WALTER BESANT
[Illustration]
Not the very first. That, after causing its writer labour infinite, hope
exaggerated, and disappointment dire, was consigned, while still in
manuscript, to the flames. My little experience, however, with this work
of Art, which never saw the light, may help others to believe, what is
so constantly denied, that publishers _do_ consider MSS. sent to them.
My MS. was sent anonymously, without any introduction, through a friend.
It was not only read--and refused--but it was read very conscientiously
and right through. So much was proved by the reader's opinion, which not
only showed the reasons--good and sufficient reasons--why he could not
recommend the manuscript to be published, but also contained,
indirectly, certain hints and suggestions, which opened up new ideas as
to the Art of Fiction, and helped to put a strayed sheep in the right
way. Now it is quite obvious that what was done for me must be
constantly and consistently done for others. My very first novel,
therefore, was read and refused. Would that candidates for literary
honours could be made to understand that refusal is too often the very
best thing that can happen to them! But the gods sometimes punish man by
granting his prayers. How heavy may be the burden laid upon the writer
by his first work! If anyone, for instance, should light upon the first
novels written by Richard Jefferies, he will understand the weight of
that burden.
My first MS., therefore, was destined to get burned or somehow
destroyed. For some years it lay in a corner--say, sprawled in a
corner--occupying much space. At dusk I used to see a strange, wobbling,
amorphous creature in that corner among those papers. His body seemed
not made for his limbs, nor did these agree with each other, and his
head was out of proportion to the rest of him. He sat upon the pile of
papers, and he wept, wringing his hands. 'Alas!' he said: 'Not another
like me. Don't make another like me. I could not endure another like
myself.' Finally, the creature's reproaches grew intolerable; so I threw
the bundle of papers behind the fire, and he vanished. One had
discovered by this time that for the making even of a tolerable novel it
is necessary to leave off copying other people, to observe on your own
account, to study realities, to get out of the conventional groove, to
rely upon one or other of the great emotions of human nature, and to try
to hold the reader by dramatic presentation rather than by talk. I do
not say that this discovery came all at once, but it came gradually, and
it proved valuable.
[Illustration: drawing signed: Yours faithfully James Rice]
One more point. A second assertion is continually being heard concerning
editors. It is said that they do not read contributions offered to them.
When editors publicly advertise that they do not invite contributions,
or that they will not return contributions, it is reasonable to suppose
that they do not read them. Well, you have heard my first experience
with a publisher. Hear next an experience with editors. It is, first, to
the fact that contributions _are_ read by editors that I owe my
introduction to James Rice and my subsequent collaboration with him. It
was, next, to an unsolicited contribution that I owed a connection of
many years with a certain monthly magazine. It was, lastly, through an
unsolicited contribution that I became and continued for some time a
writer of leading articles for a great London daily. Therefore, when I
hear that editors will not read contributions, I ask if things have
changed in twenty years--and why?
I sent a paper, then, unasked, and without introduction, to the editor
of _Once a Week_. The editor read it, accepted it, and sent it to the
press. Immediately afterwards he left the journal because it was sold to
Rice, then a young man, not long from Cambridge, and just called to the
Bar. He became editor as well as proprietor. The former editor forgot to
tell his successor anything about my article. Rice, finding it in type,
and not knowing who had written it, inserted it shortly after he took
over the journal, so that the first notice that I received that the
paper was accepted was when I saw it in the magazine, bristling with
printer's errors. Of course I wrote indignantly to the editor. I
received a courteous reply begging me to call. I did so, and the matter
was explained. Then for a year or two I continued to send things to
_Once a Week_. But the paper was anything but prosperous. Indeed, I
believe there was never any time during its existence of twenty years
when it could be called prosperous. After three years of gallant
struggle, Rice concluded to give it up. He sold the paper. He would
never confess how much he lost over it; but the ambition to become
proprietor and editor of a popular weekly existed no longer in his
bosom, and he was wont to grow thoughtful in after years when this
episode was recalled to his memory. During this period, however, I saw a
great deal of the management, and was admitted behind the scenes, and
saw several remarkable and interesting people. For instance, there was a
certain literary hack, a pure and simple hack, who was engaged at a
salary to furnish so many columns a week to order. He was clever,
something of a scholar, something of a poet, and could write a very
readable paper on almost any subject. In fact, he was not in the least
proud, and would undertake anything that was proposed. It was not his
duty to suggest, nor did he show the least interest in his work, nor had
he the least desire to advance himself. In most cases, I believe, he
simply 'conveyed' the matter; and if the thing was found out, he would
be the first to deplore that he had 'forgotten the quotes.' He was a
thirsty soul; he had no enthusiasm except for drink; he lived, in fact,
only for drink; in order to get more money for drink he lived in one
squalid room, and went in rags. One day he dismissed himself after an
incident over which we may drop a veil. Some time after it was reported
that he was attempting the stage as a pantomime super. But fate fell
upon him; he became ill; he was carried to a hospital; and pneumonia
opened for him the gates of the other world. He was made for better
things.
[Illustration: JULIA]
Again, it was in the editor's small back room that I made the
acquaintance of a young lady named Julia, whose biography I afterwards
related. She was a bookbinder's accountant all the day, and in the
evening she was a _figurante_ at one of the theatres. I think she was
not a very pretty girl, but she had good eyes--of the soft, sad kind,
which seem to belong to those destined to die young; and in the evening,
when she was dressed, she looked very well indeed, and was placed in the
front.
To the editor's office came in multitudes seedy and poverty-stricken
literary men; there were not, twenty-four years ago, so many literary
women as at present, but there were many more seedy literary men,
because in those days the great doors of journalism were neither so wide
nor so wide open as they are now. Every one, I remember, wanted to write
a series of articles. Each in turn proposed a series as if it was a new
and striking idea. A certain airy, rollicking, red-nosed person, who had
once walked the hospitals, proposed, I remember, to 'catch science on
the Wing--on the Wing, sir'--in a series of articles; a heavy,
conscientious person, also red-nosed, proposed, in a series of articles,
to set the world right in Economics; an irresponsible, fluttering,
elderly gentleman, with a white waistcoat and a red nose, thought that a
series of articles on--say the Vestries of our Native Land, would prove
enormously popular; if not the Vestries, then the Question of Education,
or of Emigration, or--or--something else. The main point with all was
not the subject, but the series. As it happened, nobody ever was allowed
to contribute a series at all. Then there were the people who sent up
articles, and especially the poor ladies who were on the point of
starving. Would the editor only--only take their article? Heavens! what
has become of all these ladies? It was twenty-four years ago; these
particular ladies must have perished long since; but there are more--and
more--and more--still starving, as every editor knows full well.
[Illustration: MR. BESANT'S STUDY]
Sometimes, sitting in that sanctum, I looked through their MSS. for
them. Sometimes the writers called in person, and the editor had to see
them, and if they were women, they went away crying, though he was
always as kind as possible. Poor things! Yet what could one do? Their
stuff was too--too terrible.
Another word as to the contributions. In most cases a glance at the
first page was sufficient. The MS. was self-condemned. 'Oh!' says the
contributor; 'if the editor would only tell me what is wrong, I would
alter it.' Dear contributor, no editor has time for teaching. You must
send him the paper complete, finished, and ready for press; else it
either goes back or lies on the shelf. When Rice handed over the paper
to his successor, there were piles of MSS. lying on all the shelves.
Where are those MSS. now? To be sure, I do not believe there was one
among them all worth having.
Rice wrote a novel by himself, for his own paper. It was a work which he
did not reproduce, because there were certain chapters which he wished
to re-write. He was always going to re-write these chapters, but never
did, and the work remains still in the columns of _Once a Week_, where
it may be hunted out by those who are curious. One day, when he was
lamenting the haste with which he had been compelled to send off a
certain instalment, he told me that he had an idea of another novel,
which seemed to him not only possible, but hopeful. He proposed that we
should take up this idea together, work it out, if it approved itself to
me as it did to him, and write a novel upon it together.
His idea, in the first crude form, was simple--so simple that I wonder
it had never occurred to anybody before. The prodigal son was to come
home again--apparently repentant--really with the single intention of
feigning repentance and getting what he could out of the old man and
then going back to his old companions. That was the first germ.
When we came to hammer this out together, a great many modifications
became necessary. The profligate, stained with vice, the companion of
scoundrels, his conscience hardened and battered and reckless, had yet
left, hitherto undiscovered, some human weakness. By this weakness he
had to be led back to the better life. Perhaps you have read the story,
dear reader. One may say without boasting that it attracted some
attention from the outset I even believe that it gave an upward turn--a
last gasp--to the circulation of the dying paper.
When--to anticipate a little--the time came for publishing it, we were
faced with the fact that a new and anonymous novel is naturally regarded
with doubt by publishers. Nothing seems more risky than such a venture.
On the other hand, we were perfectly satisfied that there was no risk in
our novel at all. This, of course, we had found out, not only from the
assurances of Vanity, but also from the reception the work had met with
during its progress through the magazine. Therefore, we had it printed
and bound at our own expense, and we placed the book, ready for
publication, in the hands of Mr. William Tinsley. We so arranged the
business that the printer's bill was not due till the first returns came
from the publisher. By this artful plan we avoided paying anything at
all. We had only printed a modest edition of 600, and these all went
off, leaving, of course, a very encouraging margin. The cheap edition
was sold to Henry S. King & Co. for a period of five years. Then the
novel was purchased outright by Chatto & Windus, who still continue to
publish it--and, I believe, to sell it. As things go, a novelist has
reason to be satisfied with an immortality which stretches beyond the
twenty-first year.
In another place I am continually exhorting young writers never to pay
for production. It may be said that I broke my own rule.
But it will be observed that this case was not one in which production
was 'paid for,' in the ordinary sense of the term--it was one of
publication on commission of a book concerning which, we were quite
certain, there was neither doubt nor risk. And this is a very good way
indeed to publish, provided you have such a book, and provided your
publisher will push the book with as much vigour as his own.
Now, since the origin of the story cannot be claimed as my own, I may be
allowed to express an opinion upon it.
[Illustration: THE OYSTER SHOP]
[Illustration: A BOOK PLATE]
The profligate, with his dreadful past behind him, dragging him down;
the low woman whom he has married; the gambler, his associate; the
memory of robbery and of prison; and with the new influences around
him--the girl he loves, pure and sweet, and innocent; the boy whom he
picks out of the gutter; the wreck of his old father--form together a
group which I have always thought to be commanding, strong, attractive,
interesting, much beyond any in the ordinary run of fiction. The central
figure, which, I repeat, is not my own, but my partner's initial
conception, has been imitated since--in fiction and on the stage--which
shows how strong he is. I do not venture to give an opinion upon the
actual presentment or working out of that story. No doubt it might have
been better told. But I wish I was five-and-twenty years younger,
sitting once more in that dingy little office where we wrangled over
this headstrong hero of ours, and had to suppress so many--oh! so very
many--of the rows and troubles and fights into which he fell even after
he became respectable. The office was handy for Rule's and oysters. We
would adjourn for the 'delicious mollusc,' and then go back again to the
editor's room to resume the wrangle. Here we would be interrupted by
Julia, who brought the bookbinder's account; or by the interesting but
thirsty hack, who brought his copy, and with it an aroma of rum; or by
the airy gentleman who wanted to catch science on the Wing, sir--on the
Wing; or by the Economic man; or by the irresponsible man, ready for
anything. In the evening we would dine together, or go to a theatre, or
sit in my chambers and play cards before resuming the wrangle--we used
to take an hour of Vingt-un, by way of relaxation. And always during
that period, whatever we did, wherever we went, Dick Mortiboy sat
between us. Dear old Dick grew quiet towards the end. The wrangling was
finished. The inevitable was before him; he must pay for the past. Love
could not be his, nor honour, such as comes to most men, nor the quiet
_vie de famille_, which is all that life really has to give worth
having. His cousin Frank might have love and honour. For him--Dick's
brave eyes looked straight before--he had no illusions; for him, the end
that belongs to the nineteenth-century ruffler, the man of the West, the
sportsman and the gambler, the only end--the bullet from the revolver of
his accomplice, was certain and inevitable. So it ended. Dick died. The
novel was finished.
Dick died; our friend died; he had his faults--but he was Dick; and he
died. And alas! his history was all told and done with; the manuscript
finished; the last wrangle over; the fatal word, the melancholy word,
_Finis_, written below the last line.
'_THE FAMILY SCAPEGRACE_'
BY JAMES PAYN
[Illustration]
I had written a great many short stories and articles in all sorts of
publications, from _Eliza Cook's Journal_ to the _Westminster Review_,
before I ventured upon writing a novel; and the appearance of them I
have since had cause to regret. Not at all because they were 'immature,'
and still less because I am ashamed of them--on the contrary, I still
think them rather good--but because the majority of them were not made
the most of from a literary point of view, and also went very cheap. As
a friend observed to me, who was much my senior, and whose advice was
therefore treated with contempt, 'You are like an extravagant cook, who
wastes too much material on a single dish.' The _entrées_ of the
story-teller--his early and tentative essays in Fiction--if he has
really any turn for his calling, are generally open to this criticism.
Later on, he becomes more economical (sometimes, indeed, a good deal too
much so, because, alas! there is so little in the cupboard), and has a
much finer sense of proportion.
I don't know how many years I went on writing narratives of school and
college life, and spinning short stories, like a literary spider, out of
my own interior, but I don't remember that it was ever borne in upon me
that the reservoir could hardly hold out for ever, and that it was time
to be doing something on a more permanent and extended scale. The cause
of that act of prudence and sagacity was owing mainly to a travelling
menagerie. I had had in my mind, for some time, to write a sort of
autobiography (of which character first novels almost always consist, or
at least partake), but had in truth abstained from doing so on the not
unreasonable ground that my life had been wholly destitute of incidents
of public interest. True, I had mended that matter by the wholly
gratuitous invention of a cheerless home and a wicked sister, but I had
hitherto found nothing more attractive to descant upon than my own
domestic wrongs. Even if they had existed, it was doubtful whether they
would have aroused public indignation, and I mistrusted my powers of
making them exist. What I wanted was a dramatic situation or two (a
'plot,' the evolution of which by no means comes by nature, though the
germ is often an inspiration, was at that time beyond me), and
especially the opportunity of observation.
[Illustration: A WICKED SISTER]
[Illustration: signed drawing: James Payne]
My own slender experiences were used up, and imagination had no material
to work upon; one can't blow even glass out of nothing at all. Just in
the nick of time arrived in Edinburgh, where I was then editing
_Chambers's Journal_, Tickeracandua, 'the African Lion Tamer.' At that
time (though I have seen a great deal of them since) lions were entirely
out of my line, and also tamers; but this gentleman was a most
attractive specimen of his class. Handsome, frank, and intelligent, he
took my fancy from the first, and we became great friends. 'His actual
height,' says my notebook, 'could scarcely have been less than six feet
two, while it was artificially increased by a circlet of cock's feathers
set in a coronet, which the majority of enraptured beholders believed to
be of virgin gold. A leopard skin, worn after the fashion of a Scotch
plaid, set off a jerkin of green leather, while his legs were encased in
huge jack boots.' This, of course, was his performing dress, and I used
to wonder how the leopards (with whom he had a great deal to do) liked
his wearing their relative's cast-off clothing. In the 'leopard-hunt'
(twice a day) these animals raced over him as he stood erect, and each,
as it 'took off' from his shoulder, left its mark there with its claws.
He was so good as to show me his shoulder, which looked as if he had
been profusely vaccinated in the wrong place. A much more dangerous, if
less painful, experience was his daily (and nightly) doings with the
lions. There were two of them, with a lioness of an uncertain temper,
who jumped through hoops at his imperious bidding with many a growl and
snarl of remonstrance.
[Illustration: IT 'TOOK OFF' FROM HIS SHOULDER]
'Are you never afraid?' I once asked him tentatively.
'If I was,' he answered, quietly, but not contemptuously, 'I might count
myself from that moment a dead man. Then, you see, I have my whip.' It
was a carter's whip, good to keep off a dog, but scarcely a lion. 'The
handle is loaded,' he explained, 'and I know exactly where to hit 'em
with it, if the worst comes to the worst.' If I remember right, it was
the tip of the nose.
[Illustration: MR. PAYN'S STUDY]
His conversation was delightful, and he often honoured me with his
company at supper, when the toils and perils of the day were o'er. Upon
the whole, though I have since known many other eminent persons, he has
left a more marked impression on me than any of them, and it is no
wonder that in those youthful days he influenced my imagination. His
autobiography, without his having the least suspicion of the
appropriation, became in fact _my_ autobiography, as may be read (if
there is anybody who has not enjoyed that treat) in 'The Family
Scapegrace.' But, as my predecessors in the field of Fiction were wont
to exclaim, 'I am anticipating.'
Another official connected with the menagerie gave daily lectures upon
the animals, so curiously dry and grave that they filled me with
admiration; he was like an embodiment of the answers to 'Mangnall's
Questions.' Whatever suspicions Tickeracandua may have subsequently
entertained of me, I am quite sure that 'Mr. Mopes' would no more have
seen himself in the portrait I drew of him than would the animals under
his charge, if their attention had been drawn to them, have recognised
their counterfeit presentments outside the show. I also became
acquainted with the Earthman and Earthwoman, the slaughterman of the
establishment, Mr. and Mrs. Tredgold (its proprietors), and other
individuals seldom met with in ordinary society.
The adventures of 'Richard Arbour' were, therefore, cut out for me in a
most convenient and unexpected fashion, but I had the intelligence to
perceive that though the interest they might excite would be dramatic
enough, they would be in danger of dealing too much with the animal
world to interest adult readers; nor would the narrative have made an
attractive book for boys, since I felt it would be too full of fun (for
my spirits were very high in those days) to suit juvenile tastes. I knew
little of the world, but had seen much of boys (though I had never
belonged to the species), and was well aware that, except as regards
practical jokes, the boy is not gifted with humour. I accordingly looked
about me for some dramatic material of a wholly different kind, and
eventually found it in the person of Count Gotsuchakoff.
It was a mistake to call such a sombre and serious individual by so
ludicrous a name, but it was a characteristic one. My disposition was at
that time lively (not to say frivolous), and the atmosphere I usually
lived in was one of mirth, but, as often happens, it had another side to
it, which was melancholy almost to melodrama. In after years I found
this to be the case in an infinitely greater story-teller, who, while he
delighted all the world with humour and pathos, in reality nourished a
taste for the weird and terrible, which, though its ghastly face but
very rarely showed itself in his writings, was the favourite topic of
his familiar and confidential talk. Tickeracandua himself was not dearer
to me than the Count, who was almost entirely the offspring of my own
invention; and though I have since seen in Nihilist novels a good many
gentlemen of the same type, I venture to think that, slightly as he is
sketched, he will bear comparison with the best of them. The conception
of his long years of enforced silence, and even of the terrible moment
in which he forgot that he was dumb, owed its origin, if I remember
right, to a child's game that was popular in our nursery. It consisted
in resisting the temptation to laugh, and the resolution to reply in
tones of gravity when such questions as 'Have you heard the Emperor of
Morocco is dead?' were put. The adaptation of it, in the substitution of
speech for laughter, suddenly suggested itself, like any other happy
thought.
[Illustration: COUNT GOTSUCHAKOFF]
Instead of writing straight ahead, as the fancy prompted, which, in my
less ambitious attempts at Fiction (like all young writers) I had
hitherto done, I had all these materials pretty well arranged in my mind
before sitting down to write my first book. It was, after all, only a
string of adventures, but it is still, and I think deservedly, a
popular book. The question with its author, however, was how, when it
was finished, he was to get it published. I took it to my friend, Robert
Chambers, and asked for his opinion about it. He looked at the
manuscript, which was certainly not in such good handwriting as his own,
and observed slyly--
'Would you mind just reading a bit of it?'
[Illustration: 'WOULD YOU MIND JUST READING A BIT OF IT?']
I had never done such a thing before, nor have I since, and the proposal
was a little staggering, not to my _amour propre,_ but to my natural
modesty. Moreover, I mistrusted my ability to do justice to it,
remembering what the poet has said about reading one's own productions:
The chariot wheels jar in the gates through which we drive them forth.
However, I started with it, and notwithstanding that we were subjected
to 'jars' (one by the servant, who came to put coals on the fire, just
at a crisis, and made me at heart a murderer), the specimen was
pronounced satisfactory.
'I think it will suit nicely for the _Journal_,' said my friend, which I
think were the pleasantest words I ever heard from the mouth of man. I
might have taken them, indeed, as a good omen; for though I have since
written more novels than I can count, I have never failed to secure
serial publication for every one of them. 'This gentleman's novels are
suitable enough for serial publication,' once wrote a critic of them,
intending to be very particularly disagreeable, but it aroused no
emotion in my breast warmer than gratitude.
[Illustration: THE SERVANT CAME TO PUT COALS ON THE FIRE]
So 'The Family Scapegrace' came out in _Chambers's Journal_. I do not
remember whether it had any effect upon its circulation, but it was well
spoken of, and there was at least one person in the world who thought it
a masterpiece. The difficulty, which no one but a young and unknown
writer can estimate, was to get a publisher to share in this belief. For
many years afterwards I published my books anonymously (_i.e._, 'by the
author' of so and so), and many a humorous interview I had with various
denizens of Paternoster Row, to whom I (very strongly) recommended them,
by proxy. 'If I were speaking to the author,' they said, 'it would be
unpleasant to say this (that, and the other of a deprecatory character),
but with _you_ we can be quite frank.' And they were sometimes very
frank; and, though I didn't much like it at the time, their candour
(when I had sold the book tolerably well) tickled me afterwards
immensely. For persons who have enjoyed this experience, mere literary
criticism has henceforth no terrors.
[Illustration: MR. PAYN'S OFFICE AT WATERLOO PLACE]
'The Family Scapegrace,' however, had appeared under my own name, so
that concealment was out of the question; it was in one volume, a form
of publication which, at that time at all events (though I see they now
affirm the contrary), was unpopular with the libraries, and I was quite
an unknown novelist. Under these circumstances, I have never forgotten
the kindness of Mr. Douglas (of the firm of Edmonston & Douglas), who
gave me fifty pounds for the first edition of the book--by which
enterprise he lost his money. There were many reasons for it, no doubt,
though the story has since done well enough, but I think the chief of
them was the alteration of the title to 'Richard Arbour,' which,
contrary to the wishes both of myself and my publisher, was insisted
upon by a leading librarian. It is difficult, nowadays, to guess his
reason, but people were more 'square-toed' in those times, and I fancy
he thought his highly respectable customers would scent something
Bohemian, if not absolutely scampish, in a Scapegrace. A mere name is
not an attractive title for a book; though many books so called--such as
'Martin Chuzzlewit' and 'Robinson Crusoe'--have become immensely
popular, they owed nothing to their baptism; and certainly 'Richard
Arbour' prospered better when he got rid of his rather commonplace name.
[Illustration: KILLED BY LIONS]
A rather curious incident took place with respect to this book, which
annoyed me greatly at the time, because I was quite unacquainted with
the queer crotchets and imaginary grievances that would-be literary
persons often take into their heads. Somebody wrote to complain that he
had written (not published) a story upon the same lines, and even
incidents, as 'The Family Scapegrace,' just before its appearance in the
columns of _Chambers's Journal_, and the delicate inference he drew was
that, whether in my capacity of editor or otherwise, I must have somehow
got hold of it. He gave the exact date of the conclusion of his own
composition, which was prior to the commencement of my story in the
_Journal_.
Conscious of innocence, but troubled by so disagreeable an imputation, I
laid the matter before Robert Chambers.
'You are not so versed in the ways of this class of person as I am,' he
said, smiling; 'but since he has been so injudicious as to give a date,
I think we can put him out of court. I am one of those methodical
individuals who keep a diary.' And on reference to it, he found that I
had read him my story long before that of my traducer, according to his
own account, had left his hands.
It was a small matter, but proved a useful lesson to me, for there is a
great deal of imposture of this kind going on in the literary world;
sometimes, as perhaps in this case, the result of mere egotistic fancy,
but also sometimes begotten by the desire to levy blackmail.
The above, so far as I can remember them, are the circumstances under
which I published my first novel. I am sorry to add that poor
Tickeracandua, to whom it owed so much, subsequently met the very fate
in reality which I had assigned to him in fiction; though as good a
fellow as many I have met _out_ of a show, he came to the same end as
'Don't Care' did in the nursery story, and was 'eaten (or at all events
killed) by lions.'
[Illustration: signed drawing: W. Clark Russell]
'_THE WRECK OF THE "GROSVENOR"_'
BY W. CLARK RUSSELL
[Illustration: CLARK RUSSELL AS A MIDSHIPMAN OF SEVENTEEN]
I am complimented by an invitation to tell what I can recollect of the
writing, publication, and reception of the earliest of my sea books,
'The Wreck of the "Grosvenor."' I approach the subject with diffidence,
and ask the reader to forgive me if he thinks or finds me unduly
egotistical. 'John Holdsworth: Chief Mate,' preceded 'The Wreck of the
"Grosvenor."' I do not regard that story as a novel of the sea. I was
reluctant and timid in dealing with ocean topics when the scheme of that
tale came into my head; I contented myself with pulling off my shoes and
socks and walking about ankle deep into the ripples. But in the
'Grosvenor' I went to sea like a man; I signed articles aboard her as
second mate; I had ruffians for shipmates, and the stench of the
harness-cask was the animating influence of the narrative. It is the
first sea book I ever wrote, in the sense, I mean, that its successors
are sea books: what I have to say, therefore, agreeably to the plan of
these personal contributions, will refer to it.
[Illustration: I WAS A CHILD OF THIRTEEN]
And first, I must write a few words about my own experience as a sailor.
I went to sea in the year 1858, when I was a child of thirteen years and
a few months old. My first ship was a well-known Australian liner, the
'Duncan Dunbar,' commanded by an old salt, named Neatby, who will always
be memorable to me for his habit of wearing the tall chimney-pot hat of
the London streets in all weathers and parallels, whether in the
roasting calms of the Equator, or in the snow-darkened hurricanes of the
Horn. I went to sea as a 'midshipman' as it is termed, though I never
could persuade myself that a lad in the Merchant Service, no matter how
heavy might be the premium his friends paid for him, has a right to a
title of grade or rating that belongs essentially and peculiarly to the
Royal Navy. I signed for a shilling a month, and with the rest of us
(there were ten) was called 'young gentleman'; but we were put to work
which an able seaman would have been within his rights in refusing, as
being what is called 'boys'' duty. I need not be particular. Enough that
the discipline was as rough as though we had been lads in the
forecastle, with a huge boatswain and brutal boatswain's mates to look
after us. We paid ten guineas each as a contribution to some imagination
of a stock of eatables for the midshipmen's berth; but my memory
carries no more than a few tins of preserved potatoes, a great number of
bottles of pickles, and a cask of exceedingly moist sugar. Therefore, we
were thrown upon the ship's provisions, and I very soon became
intimately acquainted with the quality and nature of the stores served
out to forecastle hands.
[Illustration: NEATBY]
I made, but not after the manner of Gulliver, several voyages into
remote nations of the world, and in the eight years I was at sea I
picked up enough knowledge to qualify me to give the public a few new
ideas about the ocean life. Yet when the scribbling mania possessed me
it was long before I could summon courage to write about the sea and
sailors. I asked myself, Who is interested in the Merchant Service? What
public shall I find to listen to me? Those who read novels want stories
about love and elopements, abductions, and the several violations of the
sanctities of domestic life. The great mass of readers--those who
support the circulating libraries--are ladies. Will it be possible to
interest ladies in forecastle life and in the prosaics of the cabin?
[Illustration: ANCHORED IN THE DOWNS]
Then, again, I was frightened by the Writer for Boys. _He_ was very much
at sea. I never picked up a book of his without lighting upon some
hideous act of piracy, some astounding and unparalleled shipwreck, some
marvellous island of treasure. This writer, of a clan numerous as
Wordsworth's 'little lot of stars,' warned me off and affrighted me. His
paper ship had so long and successfully filled the public eye that I
shrank from launching anything real, anything with strakes and
treenails, anything with running rigging so leading that a sailor would
exactly know what to let go when the order was given. In plain English,
I judged that the sea story had been irremediably depressed, and
rendered wholly ridiculous by the strenuous periodic and Christmas
labours of the Writer for Boys. Had he not sunk even Marryat and Michael
Scott, who, because they wrote about the sea, were compelled in due
course by the publishers to address themselves exclusively to boys! The
late George Cupples--a man of fine genius--in the course of a letter to
me, complained warmly of being made to figure as 'Captain' George
Cupples upon the title-page of his admirable work, 'The Green Hand.' He
assured me that he was no captain, and that his name thus written was
merely a bookseller's dodge to recommend his story to boys.
And, still, I would sometimes think that if I would but take heart and
go afloat in imagination, under the old red flag, I should find within
the circle of the horizon such materials for a book as might recommend
it, at all events on the score of freshness. Only two writers had dealt
with the mercantile side of the ocean life--Dana, the author of 'Two
Years before the Mast,' and Herman Melville, both of them, it is
needless to say, Americans. I could not recollect a book, written by an
Englishman, relating, as a work of fiction, to shipboard life on the
high seas under the flag of the Merchant Service. I excluded the Writer
for Boys. I could recall no author who, himself a practical seaman, one
who had slept with sailors, eaten with them, gone aloft with them, and
suffered with them, had produced a book, a novel--call it what you
will--wholly based on what I may term the inner life of the forecastle
and the cabin.
[Illustration: SOME OF THE CREW]
[Illustration: THE MAGISTRATES]
It chanced one day that a big ship, with a mastheaded colour, telling
of trouble on board, let go her anchor in the Downs. I then lived in a
town which overlooks those waters. The crew of the ship had mutinied:
they had carried the vessel halfway down Channel, when, discovering by
that time what sort of provisions had been shipped for them, they forced
the master to shift his helm for the inwards course. The crew of
thirteen or fourteen hairy, queerly attired fellows, in Scotch caps,
divers-coloured shirts, dungaree breeches stuffed into half wellingtons,
were brought before the magistrates. The bench consisted of an old sea
captain, who had lost a ship in his day through the ill conduct of his
crew, and whose hatred of the forecastle hand was strong and peculiar; a
parson, who knew about as much of the sea as his wife; a medical
practitioner, and a schoolmaster. I was present, and listened to the
men's evidence, and I also heard the captain's story. Samples of the
food were produced. A person with whom I had some acquaintance found me
an opportunity to examine and taste samples of the forecastle provisions
of the ship whose crew had mutinied. Nothing more atrociously nasty
could be found amongst the neglected putrid sweepings of a butcher's
back premises. Nothing viler in the shape of food ever set a famished
mongrel hiccoughing. Nevertheless, this crew of thirteen or fourteen
men, for refusing to sail in the vessel unless fresh forecastle stores
were shipped, were sent to gaol for terms ranging from three to six
weeks.
[Illustration: THE WRECK OF THE 'GROSVENOR']
Some time earlier than this there had been legislation helpful to the
seaman through the humane and impassioned struggles of Mr. Samuel
Plimsoll. The crazy, rotten old coaster had been knocked into staves.
The avaricious owner had been compelled to load with some regard to the
safety of sailors. But I could not help thinking that the shore-going
menace of the sailor's life did not lie merely in overloaded ships, and
in crazy, porous hulls. Mutinies were incessantly happening in
consequence of the loathsome food shipped for sailors' use, and many
disasters attended these outbreaks. When I came away from the
magistrates' court, after hearing the men sentenced, I found my mind
full of that crew's grievance. I reflected upon what Mr. Plimsoll had
done, and how much of the hidden parts of the sea life remained to be
exposed to the public eye, to the advantage of the sailor, providing the
subject should be dealt with by one who had himself suffered, and very
well understood what he sat down to write about. This put into my head
the idea of the tale which I afterwards called 'The Wreck of the
"Grosvenor."' I said to myself, I'll found a story on a mutiny at sea,
occasioned entirely by the shipment of bad provisions for the crew. No
writer has as yet touched this ugly feature of the life. Dana is silent.
Herman Melville merely drops a joke or two as he rolls out of the
caboose with a cube of salt horse in his hand. It has never been made a
serious canvas of. And yet deeper tragedies lie in the stinking
harness-cask than in the started butt. There are wilder and bloodier
possibilities in a barrel of rotten pork, and in a cask of worm-riddled
ship's bread, than in a whole passage of shifting cargoes, and in a long
round voyage of deadweight that sinks to the wash-streak.
But if I was to find a public I must make my book a romance. I must
import the machinery of the petticoat. The pannikin of rum I proposed to
offer must be palatable enough to tempt the lips of the ladies to sip
it. My publisher would want a market, and if Messrs. Mudie and Smith
would have none of me I should write in vain; for assuredly I was not
going to find a public among sailors. Sailors don't read: a good many of
them _can't_ read. Those who can have little leisure, and they do not
care to fill up their spare hours with yarns of a calling which eighty
out of every hundred of them loathe. So I schemed out a nautical romance
and went to work, and in two months and a week I finished the story of
'The Wreck of the "Grosvenor."'
[Illustration: MRS. CLARK RUSSELL]
Whilst I was writing it an eminent publisher, a gentleman whose
friendship I had been happy in possessing for many years, asked me to
let him have a sea story. I think he had been looking into 'John
Houldsworth: Chief Mate', which some months before this time had been
received with much kindness by the reviewers. I sent him the manuscript
of 'The Wreck of the "Grosvenor."' One of his readers was a lady, and
to this lady my friend the publisher forwarded the manuscript, with a
request for a report on its merits. Now to send the manuscript of a sea
book to a woman! To submit a narrative abounding in marine terms,
thunder-charged with the bully-in-our-alley passions of the forecastle,
throbbing with suppressed oaths, clamorous with rolling oceans, the like
of which no female would ever dream of leaving her bunk to behold--to
submit all this, and how much more, to a lady for an opinion on its
merits! Of course, the poor woman barely understood a third of what she
looked at, and as, obviously she couldn't quite collect the meaning of
the remainder, she pronounced against the whole. She called it a
'catalogue of ship's furniture,' and the manuscript came back to me. I
never regret this. I do not believe that this sea book would have cut a
figure in my old esteemed friend's list. Publishers are well known by
the public for the sort of intellectual fare they deal in. If I desired
a charming story about flirtation, divorce, inconvenient husbands, the
state of the soul when it has flown out of the body, the passions of the
female heart whilst it still beats hot in the breast, I should turn to
my friend's list, well assured of handsome satisfaction. But I don't
think I could read a sea book published by him. I should suspect the
marine qualities of a Jack who had run foul of, and got smothered up in,
a whole wardrobe of female apparel, grinning with a scarcely sunburnt
face through the horse-collar of a crinoline, the deep sea roll of his
gait hampered and destroyed by the clinging folds of a flannel
petticoat.
[Illustration: THE BOATSWAIN OF THE 'GROSVENOR']
Be this as it may, I sent the manuscript of 'The Wreck of the
"Grosvenor"' to my old friend Edward Marston, of the firm of Sampson Low
& Co. The firm offered me fifty pounds for it; I took the money and
signed the agreement, in which I disposed of all rights. Do I murmur
over the recollection of this fifty pounds which, with another ten
pounds kindly sent to me by Mr. Marston as the whole of, or a part of, a
cheque received from Messrs. Harper & Brothers, was all I ever got for
this sea book? Certainly not. The transaction was absolutely fair, and
what leaning there was was in my favour. The book was an experiment; it
was published anonymously; it might have fallen dead. Happily for
publisher and author, the book made its way. I believe it was
immediately successful in America, and that its reception there somewhat
influenced inquiry here. American critics who try to vex me say that my
books never would have been read in this country but for what was said
of them in the States, and for the publicity provided for them there by
the twenty-cent editions. How far this is true I don't know; but
certainly the Yankees are handsomer and prompter in their recognition of
what pleases them than we are on our side. What they like they raise a
great cry over, and the note of so mighty a concourse, I don't doubt,
fetches an echo out of distances below the horizon.
[Illustration: THE 'HOUGOUMONT'[A]]
[Illustration: POOR JACK!]
It is many years now since 'The Wreck of the "Grosvenor"' was written,
and I do not very clearly recollect its reception in this country. I
believe it speedily went into a second edition. But before we talk of an
edition seriously we must first learn the number of copies which make
it. Since this was written, my friend, Mr. R. B. Marston, of the firm of
Sampson Low & Co., has been good enough to look into the sales of 'The
Wreck of the "Grosvenor,"' and he informs me that down to 1891 there had
been sold 34,950 copies. One of the most cordial welcomes the story
received was from _Vanity Fair_. I supposed that the review was written
by the editor, Mr. Thomas Gibson Bowles, until I learnt that the late
Mr. James Runciman was the author. The critics on the whole were
generous. They thought the book fresh. They judged that it was an
original piece of work wrought largely out of the personal experiences
of the writer. One gentleman, indeed, said that he had crossed the
Channel on several occasions between Boulogne and Folkestone, but had
never witnessed such seas as I described; and another that he had
frequently travelled to Plymouth on the Great Western Railway in company
with sailors, but had never met such seamen as the forecastle hands I
depicted. The book is considered my best--this, perhaps, because it was
my first, and its reputation lies in the memory and impression of its
freshness. It is far from being my best. Were it my property I would
re-write it. I had quitted the sea some years when I wrote the story,
and here and there my memory played me false; that is to say, in the
direction of certain minute technicalities and in accounts of the
internal discipline of the ship. Yet, on the whole, the blunders are
few considering how very complicated a fabric a vessel is, and how
ceaselessly one needs to go on living the life of the sea to hold all
parts of it clear to the sight of the mind. Professionally, the
influence of the book has been small. I have heard that it made one
ship-owner sorry and rather virtuous, and that for some time his
harness-casks went their voyages fairly sweet. He is, however, but a
solitary figure, the lonesome Crusoe of my little principality of fancy.
As a piece of literature, 'The Wreck of the "Grosvenor"' has been
occasionally imitated. Mr. Plimsoll, I understand, has lately been
dealing with the subject of sailors' food. I heartily wish success to
his efforts.
[Illustration: drawing by Geo. Hutchinson
signed: Yours very sincerely,
Grant Allen.]
_'PHYSIOLOGICAL ÆSTHETICS' AND 'PHILISTIA'_
BY GRANT ALLEN
The story of my first book is a good deal mixed, and, like many other
stories, cannot be fully understood without some previous allusion to
what historians call 'the causes which led to it.' For my first book was
not my first novel, and it is the latter, I take it, not the former,
that an expectant world, as represented by the readers of this volume,
is anxious to hear about. I first blossomed into print with
'Physiological Æsthetics' in 1877--the title alone will be enough for
most people--and it was not till seven years later that I wrote and
published my earliest long work of fiction, which I called 'Philistia.'
I wasn't born a novelist, I was only made one. Philosophy and science
were the first loves of my youth. I dropped into romance as many men
drop into drink, or opium-eating, or other bad practices, not of native
perversity, but by pure force of circumstances. And this is how fate (or
an enterprising publisher) turned me from an innocent and impecunious
naturalist into a devotee of the muse of shilling shockers.
When I left Oxford in 1870, with a decent degree and nothing much else
in particular to brag about, I took perforce to that refuge of the
destitute, the trade of schoolmaster. To teach Latin and Greek verse at
Brighton College, Cheltenham College, Reading Grammar School,
successively, was the extremely uncongenial task imposed upon me by the
chances of the universe. But in 1873, Providence, disguised as the
Colonial Office, sent me out in charge of a new Government College at
Spanish Town, Jamaica. I had always been psychological, and in the space
and leisure of the lazy Tropics I began to excogitate by slow degrees
various expansive works on the science of mind, the greater number of
which still remain unwritten. Returning to England in '76 I found myself
out of work, and so committed to paper some of my views on the origin of
the higher pleasure we derive from natural or artistic products; and I
called my book 'Physiological Æsthetics.' It was not my very first
attempt at literature; already I had produced about a hundred or more
magazine articles on various philosophical and scientific subjects,
every one of which I sent to the editors of leading reviews, and every
one of which was punctually 'Declined with thanks,' or committed without
even that polite formality to the editorial waste paper basket. Nothing
daunted by failure, however, I wrote on and on, and made up my mind, in
my interval of forced idleness, to print a book of my own at all
hazards.
[Illustration: FICTION]
I wrote 'Physiological Æsthetics' in lodgings at Oxford. When it was
finished and carefully revised, I offered it to Messrs. Henry S. King &
Co., who were then leading publishers of philosophical literature. Mr.
Kegan Paul, their reader, reported doubtfully of the work. It was not
likely to pay, he said, but it contained good matter, and the firm
would print it for me on the usual commission. I was by no means
rich--for fear of exaggeration I am stating the case mildly--but I
believed somehow in 'Physiological Æsthetics.' I was young then, and I
hope the court of public opinion will extend to me, on that ground, the
indulgence usually shown to juvenile offenders. But I happened to
possess a little money just at that moment, granted me as compensation
for the abolition of my office in Jamaica. Messrs. King reported that
the cost of production (that mysterious entity so obnoxious to the soul
of the Society of Authors) would amount to about a hundred guineas. A
hundred guineas was a lot of money then; but, being young, I risked it.
It was better than if I had taken it to Monte Carlo, anyway. So I wrote
to Mr. Paul with heedless haste to publish away right off, and he
published away right off accordingly. When the bill came in, it was, if
I recollect aright, somewhere about 120_l._ I paid it without a murmur;
I got my money's worth. The book appeared in a stately green cover, with
my name in front, and looked very philosophical, and learned, and
psychological.
[Illustration: SCIENCE]
Poor 'Physiological Æsthetics' had a very hard fate. When I come to look
back upon the circumstances calmly and dispassionately now, I'm not
entirely surprised at its unhappy end. It was a good book in its way, to
be sure, though it's me that says it as oughtn't to say it, and it
pleased the few who cared to read it; but it wasn't the sort of
literature the public wanted. The public, you know, doesn't hanker
after philosophy. Darwin, and Herbert Spencer, and the Editor of
_Mind_, and people of that sort, tried my work and liked it; in point of
fact, my poor little venture gained me at once, an unknown man, the
friendship of not a few whose friendship was worth having. But
financially, 'Physiological Æsthetics' was a dead failure; it wasn't the
sort of work to sell briskly at the bookstalls. Mr. Smith would have
none of it. The reviews, indeed, were, almost without exception,
favourable; the volume went off well for a treatise of its kind--that is
to say, we got rid of nearly 300 copies; but even so, it left a deficit
of some forty or fifty pounds to the bad against me. Finally, the
remaining stock fell a victim to the flames in Mr. Kegan Paul's
historical fire, when many another stout volume perished: and that was
the end of my _magnum opus_. Peace to its ashes! Mr. Paul gave me 15_l._
as compensation for loss sustained, and I believe I came out some 30_l._
a loser by this, my first serious literary venture. In all these
matters, however, I speak from memory alone, and it is possible I may be
slightly wrong in my figures.
But though 'Physiological Æsthetics' was a financial failure, it paid me
in the end, both scientifically and commercially. Not only did it bring
me into immediate contact with several among the leaders of thought in
London, but it also made my name known in a very modest way, and induced
editors--those arbiters of literary fate--to give a second glance at my
unfortunate manuscripts. Almost immediately after its appearance, Leslie
Stephen (I omit the Mr., _honoris causa_) accepted two papers of mine
for publication in the _Cornhill_. 'Carving a Cocoanut' was the first,
and it brought me in twelve guineas. That was the very first money I
earned in literature. I had been out of work for months, the abolition
of my post in Jamaica having thrown me on my beam-ends, and I was
overjoyed at so much wealth poured suddenly in upon me. Other magazine
articles followed in due course, and before long I was earning a
modest--a very modest--and precarious income, yet enough to support
myself and my family. Moreover, Sir William Hunter, who was then engaged
on his gigantic 'Gazetteer of India,' gave me steady employment in his
office at Edinburgh, and I wrote with my own hand the greater part of
the articles on the North-West Provinces, the Punjaub, and Sind, in
those twelve big volumes.
Meanwhile, I was hard at work in my leisure moments (for I have
sometimes some moments which I regard as leisure) on another ambitious
scientific work, which I called 'The Colour-Sense.' This book I
published on the half-profits system with Trübner. Compared with my
first unhappy venture, 'The Colour-Sense' might be counted a distinct
success. It brought me in, during the course of about ten years,
something like 25_l._ or 30_l._ As it only took me eighteen months to
write, and involved little more than five or six thousand references,
this result may be regarded as very fair pay for an educated man's time
and labour. I have sometimes been reproached by thoughtless critics for
deserting the noble pursuit of science in favour of fiction and filthy
lucre. If those critics think twenty pounds a year a sufficient income
for a scientific writer to support himself and a growing family
upon--well, they are perfectly at liberty to devote their own pens to
the instruction of their kind without the slightest remonstrance or
interference on my part.
I won't detail in full the history of my various intermediate books,
most of which were published first as newspaper articles, and afterwards
collected and put forth on a small royalty. Time is short, and art is
long, so I'll get on at once to my first novel. I drifted into fiction
by the sheerest accident. My friend, Mr. Chatto, most generous of men,
was one of my earliest and staunchest literary supporters. From the
outset of my journalistic days, he printed my articles in _Belgravia_
and the _Gentleman's Magazine_ with touching fidelity; and I take this
opportunity of saying in public that to his kindness and sympathy I owe
as much as to anyone in England. Some people will have it there is no
such thing as 'generosity' in publishers. I beg leave to differ from
them. I know the commercial value of literary work as well as any man,
and I venture to say that both from Mr. Chatto and from Mr. Arrowsmith,
of Bristol, I have met, time and again, with what I cannot help
describing as most generous treatment. One day it happened that I wanted
to write a scientific article on the impossibility of knowing one had
seen a ghost, even if one saw one. For convenience sake, and to make the
moral clearer, I threw the argument into narrative form, but without the
slightest intention of writing a story. It was published in _Belgravia_
under the title of 'Our Scientific Observations on a Ghost,' and was
reprinted later in my little volume of 'Strange Stories.' A little while
after, to my immense surprise, Mr. Chatto wrote to ask me whether I
could supply him with another story, like the last I had written, for
the _Belgravia Annual_. I was rather taken aback at this singular
request, as I hadn't the slightest idea I could do anything at all in
the way of fiction. Still, like a good journalist, I never refuse an
order of any sort; so I sat down at once and wrote a tale about a mummy
on the ghastliest and most approved Christmas number pattern. Strange to
say, Mr. Chatto again printed it, and, what was still more remarkable,
asked for more of the same description. From that time forth, I went on
producing short stories for _Belgravia_; but I hardly took them
seriously, being immersed at the time in biological study. I looked upon
my own pretensions in the way of fiction as an amiable fad of my kind
friend Chatto; and not to prejudice any little scientific reputation I
might happen to have earned, I published them all under the carefully
veiled pseudonym of 'J. Arbuthnot Wilson.'
I would probably never have gone any further on my downward path had it
not been for the accidental intervention of another believer in my
powers as a story-writer. I had sent to _Belgravia_ a little tale about
a Chinaman, entitled 'Mr. Chung,' and written perhaps rather more
seriously and carefully than my previous efforts. This happened to
attract the attention of Mr. James Payn, who had then just succeeded to
the editorship of the _Cornhill_. I had been a constant contributor to
the _Cornhill_ under Leslie Stephen's management, and by a singular
coincidence I received almost at the same time two letters from Mr.
Payn, one of them addressed to me in my own name, and regretting that he
would probably be unable to insert my scientific papers in his magazine
in future; the other, sent through Chatto & Windus to the imaginary J.
Arbuthnot Wilson, and asking for a short story somewhat in the style of
my 'admirable Mr. Chung.'
[Illustration]
Encouraged by the discovery that so good a judge of fiction thought well
of my humble efforts at story-writing, I sat down at once and produced
two pieces for the _Cornhill_. One was 'The Reverend John Creedy'--a
tale of a black parson who reverted to savagery--which has perhaps
attracted more attention than any other of my short stories. The other,
which I myself immensely prefer, was 'The Curate of Churnside.' Both
were so well noticed that I began to think seriously of fiction as an
alternative subject. In the course of the next year I wrote several more
sketches of the same sort, which were published, either anonymously or
still under the pseudonym, in the _Cornhill_, _Longmans'_, _The
Gentleman's_, and _Belgravia_. If I recollect aright, the first
suggestion to collect and reprint them all in a single volume came from
Mr. Chatto. They were published as 'Strange Stories,' under my own name,
and I thus, for the first time, acknowledged my desertion of my earliest
loves--science and philosophy--for the less profound but more lucrative
pursuit of literature.
[Illustration: A SHELF IN THE STUDY]
'Strange Stories' was well received and well reviewed. Its reception
gave me confidence for future ventures. Acting upon James Payn's advice,
I set to work seriously upon a three-volume novel. My first idea was to
call it 'Born out of Due Time,' as it narrated the struggles of a
Socialist thinker a century in front of his generation; but, at Mr.
Chatto's suggestion, the title was afterwards changed to 'Philistia.' I
desired, if possible, to run it through the _Cornhill_, and Mr. Payn
promised to take it into his most favourable consideration for that
purpose. However, when the unfinished manuscript was submitted in due
time to his editorial eye, he rightly objected that it was far too
socialistic for the tastes of his public. He said it would rather repel
than attract readers. I was disappointed at the time. I see now that, as
an editor, he was perfectly right; I was giving the public what I felt
and thought and believed myself, not what the public felt and thought
and wanted. The education of an English novelist consists entirely in
learning to subordinate all his own ideas and tastes and opinions to the
wishes and beliefs of the inexorable British matron.
[Illustration: 'THANK YOU, SIR']
Mr. Chatto, however, was prepared to accept the undoubted risk of
publishing 'Philistia.' Only, to meet his views, the _dénoûment_ was
altered. In the original version, the hero came to a bad end, as a hero
in real life who is in advance of his age, and consistent and honest,
must always do. But the British matron, it seems, likes her novels to
'end well'; so I married him off instead, and made him live happily ever
afterward. Mr. Chatto gave me a lump sum down for serial rights and
copyright, and ran 'Philistia' through the pages of _The Gentleman's_.
When it finally appeared in book form, it obtained on the whole more
praise than blame, and, as it paid a great deal better than scientific
journalism, it decided me that my _rôle_ in life henceforth must be that
of a novelist. And a novelist I now am, good, bad, or indifferent.
If anybody gathers, however, from this simple narrative, that my upward
path from obscurity to a very modest modicum of popularity and success
was a smooth and easy one, he is immensely mistaken. I had a ten years'
hard struggle for bread, into the details of which I don't care to
enter. It left me broken in health and spirit, with all the vitality and
vivacity crushed out of me. I suppose the object of this series of
papers is to warn off ingenuous and aspiring youth from the hardest
worked and worst paid of the professions. If so, I would say earnestly
to the ingenuous and aspiring--'Brain for brain, in no market can you
sell your abilities to such poor advantage. Don't take to literature if
you've capital enough in hand to buy a good broom, and energy enough to
annex a vacant crossing.'
_'THE SHADOW OF A CRIME'_
BY HALL CAINE
I cannot follow Mr. Besant with any pitiful story of rejection at the
hands of publishers. If refusal is quite the best thing that can happen
to the candidate for literary honours, my fate has not been favourable.
No tale of mine has yet passed from publishing house to publishing
house. Except the first of the series, my stories have been accepted
before they have been read. In two or three instances they have been
bought before they have been written. It has occurred to me, as to
others, to have two or three publishers offering terms for the same
book. I have even been offered half payment in hand on account of a book
which I could not hope to write for years, and might never write at all.
Thus the most helpful confession which the more or less successful man
of letters can make for the comfort and cheer of his younger and less
fortunate brethren, it is out of my power to offer.
But I reflect that this is true of my literary experiences in the
character of a novelist only. I had an earlier and semi-subterranean
career that was very different. At eighteen I wrote a poem of a mystical
sort, which was printed (not at my own risk) and published under a
pseudonym. Happily, no man will ever identify me behind the romantic
name wherein I hid my own. Only one literary man knew my secret. That
was George Gilfillan, and he is dead. Then at twenty I wrote an
autobiography for another person, and was paid ten pounds for it. These
were really my first books, and I grow quite hot when I think of them.
At five-and-twenty I came up to London with the manuscript of a critical
work, which I had written while at Liverpool. Somebody had recommended
that I should submit it to a certain great publishing house, and I took
it in person. At the door of the office I was told to write my own name,
and the name of the person whom I wished to see, and to state the nature
of my business. I did so, and the boy who took my message brought back
word that I might leave my manuscript for consideration. It seemed to me
that somebody might have seen me for a minute, but I had expected too
much. The manuscript was carefully tied up in brown paper, and so I left
it.
[Illustration: I LEFT IT]
After waiting three torturing weeks for the decision of the publishers,
I made bold to call again. At the same little box at the door of the
office I had once more to fill up the same little document. The boy took
it in, and I was left to sit on his table, to look at the desk which he
had been whittling away with his penknife, to wait and to tremble. After
a time I heard a footstep returning. I thought it might be the publisher
or the editor of the house. It was the boy back again. He had a pile of
loose sheets of white paper in his hands. They were the sheets of my
book. 'The editor's compliments, sir, and--thank you,' said the boy, and
my manuscript went sprawling over the table. I gathered it up, tucked it
as deep as possible into the darkness, under the wings of my Inverness
cape, and went downstairs ashamed, humiliated, crushed, and
broken-spirited. Not quite that, either, for I remember that, as I got
to the fresh air at the door, my gorge rose within me, and I cried in my
heart, 'By God! you shall---- ' and something proud and vain.
[Illustration: drawing by Geo. Hutchinson
signed: with Kindest regards,
Hall Caine]
I dare say it was all right and proper and in good order. The book was
afterwards published, and I think it sold well. I hardly know whether I
ought to say that the editor should have shown me more courtesy. It was
all a part of the anarchy of things which Mr. Hardy considers the rule
of life. But the sequel is worth telling. That editor became my personal
friend. He is dead, and he was a good and able man. Of course he
remembered nothing of this incident, and I never poisoned one hour of
our intercourse by telling him how, when I was young and a word of cheer
would have buoyed me up, he made me drink the waters of Marah. And three
times since that day the publishing house I speak of has come to me with
the request that I should write a book for them. I have never been able
to do so, but I have outgrown my bitterness, and, of course, I show no
malice. Indeed, I have now the best reasons for wishing the great
enterprise well. But if literary confessions are worth anything, this
one may perhaps be a seed that will somewhere find grateful soil. Keep a
good heart, even if you have to knock in vain at many doors, and kick
about the backstairs of the house of letters. There is room enough
inside.
[Illustration: MY MS. WENT SPRAWLING OVER THE TABLE.]
[Illustration: DERWENTWATER]
I wrote and edited sundry things during my first years in London, but
not until I had published a story did I feel that I had so much as
touched the consciousness of the public.
Hence, my first novel may very properly be regarded as my first book,
and if I have no tale to tell of heart-broken impediments in getting it
published, I have something to say of the difficulty of getting it
written. The novel is called 'The Shadow of a Crime,' but title it had
none until it was finished, and a friend christened it. I cannot
remember when the story was begun, because I cannot recall a time when
the idea of it did not exist in my mind. Something of the same kind is
true of every tale I have ever written or shall ever write. I think it
must be in the nature of imagination that an imaginative idea does not
spring into being, that it has no spontaneous generation, but, as a
germinating conception, a shadow of a vision, always comes floating from
somewhere out of the back chambers of memory. You are waiting for the
central thought that shall link together incidents that you have gleaned
from among the stubble of many fields, for the _motif_ that shall put
life and meaning into the characters that you have gathered and grouped,
and one morning, as you awake, just at that moment when you are between
the land of light and the mists of sleep, and as your mind is grappling
back for the vanishing form of some delicious dream, a dim but familiar
ghost of an idea comes up unbidden for the hundredth time, and you say
to yourself, with surprise at your own stupidity, 'That's it!'
[Illustration: STY HEAD PASS]
The idea of my first novel moved about me in this way for many years
before I recognised it. As usually happens, it came in the shape of a
story. I think it was, in actual fact, first of all, a tale of a
grandfather. My mother's father was a Cumberland man, and he was full of
the lore of the hills and dales. One of the oldest legends of the Lake
mountains tells of the time of the plague. The people were afraid to go
to market, afraid to meet at church, and afraid to pass on the highway.
When any lonely body was ill, the nearest neighbour left meat and drink
at the door of the afflicted house, and knocked and ran away. In these
days, a widow with two sons lived in one of the darkest of the valleys.
The younger son died, and the body had to be carried over the mountains
to be buried. Its course lay across Sty Head Pass, a bleak and 'brant'
place, where the winds are often high. The eldest son, a strong-hearted
lad, undertook the duty. He strapped the coffin on to the back of a
young horse, and they started away. The day was wild, and on the top of
the pass, where the path dips into Wastdale, between the breast of Great
Gable and the heights of Scawfell, the wind rose to a gale. The horse
was terrified. It broke away and galloped over the fells, carrying its
burden with it. The lad followed and searched for it, but in vain, and
he had to go home at last, unsatisfied.
[Illustration: WASTWATER FROM STY HEAD PASS]
[Illustration: THE HORSE BROKE AWAY]
[Illustration: SOMETHING STRAPPED ON ITS BACK]
This was in the spring, and nearly all the summer through the surviving
son of the widow was out on the mountains, trying to recover the runaway
horse, but never once did he catch sight of it, though sometimes, as he
turned homeward at night, he thought he heard, in the gathering
darkness, above the sough of the wind, the horse's neigh. Then winter
came, and the mother died. Once more the dead body had to be carried
over the fells for burial, and once again the coffin was strapped on the
back of a horse. It was an old mare that was chosen this time, the
mother of the young one that had been lost. The snow lay deep on the
pass, and from the cliffs of the Scawfell pikes it hung in great
toppling masses. All went well with the little funeral party until they
came to the top of the pass, and though the day was dead calm the son
held the rein with a hand that was like a vice. But just as the mare
reached the spot where the wind had frightened the young horse, there
was a terrific noise. An immense body of the snow had parted at that
instant from the beetling heights overhead, and rushed down into the
valley with the movement as of a mighty earthquake, and the deafening
sound as of a peal of thunder. The dale echoed and re-echoed from side
to side, and from height to height. The old mare was affrighted; she
reared, leapt, flung her master away, and galloped off. When they had
recovered from their consternation, the funeral party gave chase, and at
length, down in a hollow place, they thought they saw what they were in
search of. It was a horse with something strapped on its back. When they
came up with it they found it was the _young_ horse, with the coffin of
the younger son. They led it away and buried the body that it had
carried so long, but the old mare they never recovered, and the body of
the mother never found sepulchre.
[Illustration: THE CASTLE ROCK, ST. JOHN'S VALE]
Such was the legend, sufficiently terrible, and even ghastly, which was
the germ of my first novel. Its fascination for me lay in its shadow and
suggestion of the supernatural. I thought it had all the grip of a ghost
story without ever passing out of the world of reality. Imagination
played about the position of that elder son, and ingenuity puzzled
itself for the sequel to his story. What did he think? What did he feel?
What were his superstitions? What became of him? Did he die mad, or was
he a MAN, and did he rise out of all doubt and terror? I cannot say how
many years this ghost of a conception (with various brothers and sisters
of a similar complexion) haunted my mind before I recognised it as the
central incident of a story, the faggot for a fire from which other
incidents might radiate and imaginary characters take life. When I began
to think of it in this practical way I was about six-and-twenty, and was
lodging in a lonely farmhouse in the Vale of St. John.
[Illustration: THIRLMERE]
[Illustration: ROSSETTI WALKING TO AND FRO]
Rossetti was with me, for I had been up to London at his request, and
had brought him down to my retreat. The story of that sojourn among the
mountains I have told elsewhere. It lives in my memory as a very sweet
and sad experience. The poet was a dying man. He spent a few hours of
every day in painful efforts to paint a picture. His nights were long,
for sleep never came to him until the small hours of the morning; his
sight was troublesome, and he could not read with ease; he was in that
condition of ill-health when he could not bear to be alone, and thus he
and I were much together. I was just then looking vaguely to the career
of a public lecturer, and was delivering a long course of lectures at
Liverpool. The subject was prose fiction, and to fortify myself for the
work I was reading the masterpieces over again. Seeing this, Rossetti
suggested that I should read aloud, and I did so. Many an evening we
passed in this way. The farmhouse stood at the foot of a fell by the
side of the lowest pool of a ghyll, Fishers' Ghyll, and the roar of
falling waters could be heard from within. On the farther side of the
vale there were black crags where ravens lived, and in the unseen bed of
the dale between lay the dark waters of Thirlmere. The surroundings were
striking to the eye and ear in the daylight, but when night came, and
the lamp was lit, and the curtains were drawn, and darkness covered
everything outside, they were yet more impressive to the imagination. I
remember those evenings with gratitude and some pain. The little oblong
room, the dull thud of the ghyll like faint thunder overhead, the
crackle of the wood fire, myself reading aloud, and Rossetti in a long
sack painting coat, his hands thrust into its upright pockets, walking
with his heavy and uncertain step to and fro, to and fro, laughing
sometimes his big deep laugh, and sometimes sitting down to wipe his
moist spectacles and clear his dim eyes. The autumn was far spent, and
the nights were long. Not rarely the dead white gleams of the early dawn
before the coming of the sun met the yellow light of our candles as we
passed on the staircase going to bed a little window that looked up to
the mountains, and over them to the east.
[Illustration: DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI]
Perhaps it was not all pleasure, so far as I was concerned, but
certainly it was all profit. The novels we read were 'Tom Jones,' in
four volumes, and 'Clarissa,' in its original eight, one or two of
Smollett's, and some of Scott's. Rossetti had not, I think, been a great
reader of fiction, but his critical judgment was in some respects the
surest and soundest I have known. He was one of the only two men I have
ever met with who have given me in personal intercourse a sense of the
presence of a gift that is above and apart from talent--in a word, of
genius. Nothing escaped him. His alert mind seized upon everything. He
had never before, I think, given any thought to fiction as an art, but
his intellect played over it like a bright light. It amazes me now,
after ten years' close study of the methods of story-telling, to recall
the general principles which he seemed to formulate out of the back of
his head for the defence of his swift verdicts. 'Now why?' I would say,
when the art of the novelist seemed to me to fail, or when the poet's
condemnation appeared extreme. 'Because so-and-so _must_ happen,' he
would answer. He was always right. He grasped with masterly strength the
operation of the two fundamental factors in the novelist's art--the
sympathy and the 'tragic mischief.' If these were not working well, he
knew by the end of the first chapters that, however fine in observation,
or racy in humour, or true in pathos, the work as an organism must fail.
It was an education in literary art to sharpen one's wits on such a
grindstone, to clarify one's thought in such a stream, to strengthen
one's imagination by contact with a mind that was 'of imagination all
compact.'
Now, down to that time, though I had often aspired to the writing of
plays, it had never occurred to me that I might write a novel. But I
began to think of it then as a remote possibility, and the immediate
surroundings of our daily life brought back recollection of the old
Cumberland legend. I told the story to Rossetti, and he was impressed by
it, but he strongly advised me not to tackle it. The incident did not
repel him by its ghastliness, but he saw no way of getting sympathy into
it on any side. His judgment disheartened me, and I let the idea go back
to the dark chambers of memory. He urged me to try my hand at a Manx
story. '"The Bard of Manxland"--it's worth while to be that,' he
said--he did not know the author of 'Foc's'le Yarns.' I thought so, too,
but the Cumbrian 'statesman' had begun to lay hold of my imagination. I
had been reviving my recollection and sharpening my practice of the
Cumbrian dialect which had been familiar to my ear, and even to my
tongue, in childhood, and so my Manx ambitions had to wait.
Two years passed, the poet died, I had spent eighteen months in daily
journalism in London, and was then settled in a little bungalow of three
rooms in a garden near the beach at Sandown in the Isle of Wight. And
there, at length, I began to write my first novel. I had grown impatient
of critical work, had persuaded myself (no doubt wrongly) that nobody
would go on writing about other people's writing who could do original
writing himself, and was resolved to live on little and earn nothing,
and never go back to London until I had written something of some sort.
As nearly as I can remember, I had enough to keep things going for four
months, and if, at the end of that time, nothing had got itself done, I
must go back bankrupt.
Something did get done, but at a heavy price of labour and
heart-burning. When I began to think of a theme, I found four or five
subjects clamouring for acceptance. There was the story of the Prodigal
Son, which afterwards became 'The Deemster'; the story of Jacob and
Esau, which in the same way turned into 'The Bondman'; the story of
Samuel and Eli, which, after a fashion, moulded itself ultimately into
'The Scapegoat'; and half-a-dozen other stories, chiefly Biblical, which
are still on the forehead of my time to come. But the Cumbrian legend
was first favourite, and to that I addressed myself. I thought I had
seen a way to meet Rossetti's objection. The sympathy was to be got out
of the elder son. He was to think God's hand was upon him. But whom
God's hand rested on had God at his right hand; so the elder son was to
be a splendid fellow--brave, strong, calm, patient, long-suffering, a
victim of unrequited love, a man standing square on his legs against all
weathers. It is said that the young novelist usually begins with a
glorified version of his own character; but it must interest my friends
to see how every quality of my first hero was a rebuke to my own
peculiar infirmities.
[Illustration: MR. HALL CAINE IN HIS STUDY
(_From a photograph by A. M. Pettit_)]
Above this central figure and legendary incident I grouped a family of
characters. They were heroic and eccentric, good and bad, but they all
operated upon the hero. Then I began to write.
[Illustration: MRS. HALL CAINE
(_From a photograph by A. M. Pettit_)]
Shall I ever forget the agony of the first efforts? There was the ground
to clear with necessary explanations. This I did in the way of Scott in
a long prefatory chapter. Having written it I read it aloud, and found
it unutterably slow and dead. Twenty pages were gone, and the interest
was not touched. Throwing the chapter aside I began with an alehouse
scene, intending to work back to the history in a piece of retrospective
writing. The alehouse was better, but to try its quality I read it
aloud, after the 'Rainbow' scene in 'Silas Marner,' and then cast it
aside in despair. A third time I began, and when the alehouse looked
tolerable the retrospective chapter that followed it seemed flat and
poor. How to begin by gripping the interest, how to tell all and yet
never stop the action--these were agonising difficulties.
It took me nearly a fortnight to start that novel, sweating drops as of
blood at every fresh attempt. I must have written the first half volume
four times at the least. After that I saw the way clearer, and got on
faster. At the end of three months I had written nearly two volumes, and
then in good spirits I went up to London.
My first visit was to J. S. Cotton, an old friend, and to him I detailed
the lines of my story. His rapid mind saw a new opportunity. 'You want
_peine forte et dure_,' he said. 'What's that?' I said. 'An old
punishment--a beautiful thing,' he answered. 'Where's my dear old
Blackstone?' and the statute concerning the punishment for standing mute
was read to me. It was just the thing I wanted for my hero, and I was in
rapture, but I was also in despair. To work this fresh interest into my
theme, half of what I had written would need to be destroyed!
It _was_ destroyed, the interesting piece of ancient jurisprudence took
a leading place in my scheme, and after two months more I got well into
the third volume. Then I took my work down to Liverpool, and showed it
to my friend, the late John Lovell, a most able man, first manager of
the Press Association, but then editing the local _Mercury_. After he
had read it he said, 'I suppose you want my _candid_ opinion?' 'Well,
ye--s,' I said. 'It's crude,' he said. 'But it only wants sub-editing.'
Sub-editing!
I took it back to London, began again at the first line, and wrote every
page over again. At the end of another month the story had been
reconstructed, and was shorter by some fifty pages of manuscript. It had
drawn my heart's blood to cut out my pet passages, but they were gone,
and I knew the book was better. After that I went on to the end and
finished with a tragedy. Then the story was sent back to Lovell, and I
waited for his verdict.
My home (or what served for it) was now on the fourth floor of New
Court, in Lincoln's Inn, and one morning Lovell came purring and blowing
and steaming (the good fellow was a twenty-stone man) into my lofty
nest. He had re-read my novel coming up in the train. 'Well?' I asked,
nervously. 'It's magnificent,' he said. That was all the favourable
criticism he offered. All save one practical and tangible bit. 'We'll
give you 100_l._ for the serial right of the story for the _Weekly_'.
[Illustration: COMING UP IN THE TRAIN]
He offered one unfavourable criticism. 'The death of your hero will
never do,' he said. 'If you kill that man Ralph, you'll kill your book.
What's the good? Take no more than the public will give you to begin
with, and by-and-by they'll take what _you_ give _them_.' It was
practical advice, but it went sorely against my grain. The death of the
hero was the natural sequel to the story; the only end that gave
meaning, and intention, and logic to its _motif_. I had a strong
predisposition towards a tragic climax to a serious story. To close a
narrative of disastrous events with a happy ending it always seemed
necessary to turn every incident into accident. That was like laughing
at the reader. Comedy was comedy, but comedy and tragedy together was
farce. Then a solemn close was so much more impressive. A happy end
nearly always frayed off into rags and nothingness, but a sad one closed
and clasped a story as with a clasp. Besides, a tragic end might be a
glorious and satisfying one, and need by no means be squalid and
miserable. But all these arguments went down before my friend's
practical assurance: 'Kill that man, and you kill your book.'
With much diffidence I altered the catastrophe and made my hero happy.
Then, thinking my work complete, I asked Mr. Theodore Watts (a friend to
whose wise counsel I owed much in those days) to read some 'galley'
slips of it. He thought the rustic scenes good, but advised me to
moderate the dialect, and he propounded to me his well-known views on
the use of _patois_ in fiction. 'It gives a sense of reality,' he said,
'and often has the effect of wit, but it must not stand in the way.' The
advice was sound. A man may know over much of his subject to write on it
properly. I had studied Cumbrian to too much purpose, and did not
realise that some of my scenes were like sealed books to the general
reader. So once again I ran over my story, taking out some of the
'nobbuts' and the 'dustas' and the 'wiltas.'
My first novel was now written, but I had still to get it published. In
my early days in London, while trying to live in the outer court of a
calling wherein the struggle for existence is keenest and bitterest and
cruellest, I conceived one day the idea of offering myself as a reader
to the publishers. With this view I called on several of that ilk, who
have perhaps no recollection of my early application. I recall my
interview with one of them. He was sitting at a table when I was taken
into his room, and he never once raised his head from his papers to look
at me. I just remember that he had a neck like a three-decker, and a
voice like a peahen's. 'Well, sir?' he said. I mentioned the object of
my visit. 'What can you read?' 'Novels and poems,' I answered. 'Don't
publish either--good day,' he said, and I went out.
But one of the very best, and quite, I think, the very oldest of
publishers now living, received me differently. 'Come into my own
room,' he said. It was a lovely little place, full of an atmosphere that
recalled the publishing house of the old days, half office, half study;
a workshop where books might be made, not turned out by machinery. I
read many manuscripts for that publisher, and must have learned much by
the experience. And now that my novel was finished I took it to him
first. He offered to publish it the following year. That did not suit
me, and I took my book elsewhere. Next day I was offered 50_l._ for my
copyright. That was wages at the rate of about four shillings a day for
the time I had been actually engaged upon the work, sweating brain and
heart and every faculty. Nevertheless, one of my friends urged me to
accept it. 'Why?' I asked. 'Because it is a story of the past, and
therefore not one publisher in ten will look at it.' I used strong
language, and then took my novel to Chatto & Windus. Within a few hours
Mr. Chatto made me an offer which I accepted. The book is now, I think,
in its fifteenth edition.
The story I have told of many breakdowns in the attempt to write my
first novel may suggest the idea that I was merely serving my
apprenticeship to fiction. It is true that I was, but it would be wrong
to conclude that the writing of a novel has been plain sailing with me
ever since. Let me 'throw a crust to my critics,' and confess that I am
serving my apprenticeship still. Every book that I have written since
has offered yet greater difficulties. Not one of the little series but
has at some moment been a despair to me. There has always been a point
of the story at which I have felt confident that it must kill me. I have
written six novels (that is to say, about sixteen), and sworn as many
oaths that I would never begin another. Three times I have thrown up
commissions in sheer terror of the work ahead of one. Yet here I am at
this moment (like half-a-dozen of my fellow-craftsmen), with contracts
in hand which I cannot get through for three years. The public expects a
novel to be light reading. It may revenge itself for occasional
disappointments by remembering that a novel is not always light writing.
Let me conclude with a few words that may be timely. Of all the literary
cants that I despise and hate, the one I hate and despise the most is
that which would have the world believe that greatly gifted men who have
become distinguished in literature and are earning thousands a year by
it, and have no public existence and no apology apart from it, hold it
in pity as a profession and in contempt as an art. For my own part, I
have found the profession of letters a serious pursuit, of which in no
company and in no country have I had need to be ashamed. It has demanded
all my powers, fired all my enthusiasm, developed my sympathies,
enlarged my friendships, touched, amused, soothed, and comforted me. If
it has been hard work, it has also been a constant inspiration, and I
would not change it for all the glory and more than all the emoluments
of the best-paid and the most illustrious profession in the world.
'_THE SOCIAL KALEIDOSCOPE_'
BY GEORGE R. SIMS
My first book hardly deserved the title. I have only a dim remembrance
of it now, because it is one of those things which I have studiously set
myself to forget. I was very proud of it before I saw it. After I had
seen it, I realised in one swift moment's anguish the concentrated truth
of the word vanity as applied to human wishes. Hidden away in the bottom
corner of an old box, which is not to be opened until after I am dead,
that first book lies at the present moment; that is to say, unless the
process of decay, which had already set in upon the paper on which it
was printed, has gone on to the bitter end, and the book has disappeared
entirely of its own accord.
[Illustration: 12 CLARENCE TERRACE]
Before that book was published, I used to lie awake at night and fancy
how great and how grand a thing it would be for me to see a book with
my name on the cover lying on Smith's bookstalls, and staring me in the
face from the booksellers' windows. After it was published, I felt that
I owed Messrs. Smith & Sons a deep debt of gratitude for refusing to
take it, and my heart rejoiced within me greatly that the only
booksellers who exhibited it lived principally in old back streets and
half-finished suburban thoroughfares.
[Illustration: THE HALL]
Stay--I will go upstairs to my lumber room, I will open that box, I will
dig deep down among the buried memories of the past, and I will find
that book, and I will summon up my courage and ask the publishers of
this volume to kindly allow the cover of that book to be reproduced
here. It is only by looking at it as I looked at it that you will
thoroughly appreciate my feelings on the subject.
I have found the box, but my heart sinks within me as I try to open the
lid. All my lost youth lies there. The key is rusty and will hardly turn
in the lock.
[Illustration: drawing by Geo. Hutchinson
signed: Very sincerely yours,
George R. Sims]
So--so--so, at last! Ghosts of the long ago, come forth from your
resting-places and haunt me once again.
Dear me! dear me! how musty everything smells; how old, and worn, and
time-stained everything is. A folded poster:
'GRECIAN THEATRE
'Mr. G. R. Sims will positively _not_ appear
this evening at the entertainment held in the
Hall.'
Yes, I remember. I had been announced, entirely without my consent or
knowledge, to appear at a hall attached to the Grecian Theatre with Mrs.
Georgina Weldon, and take part in an entertainment. This notice was
stuck about outside the theatre in consequence of my indignant
remonstrance. My old friend Mr. George Conquest had, I need hardly say,
nothing to do with that bill. Some one had taken the hall for a special
occasion. I think it was something remotely connected with lunatics.
[Illustration: GEORGE R. SIMS]
My first play! Poor little play--a burlesque written for my brothers and
sisters, and played by us in the Theatre Royal Day Nursery. There were
some really brilliant lines in it, I remember. They were taken bodily
from a burlesque of H. J. Byron's, which I purchased at Lacy & Son's
(now French's) in the Strand--'a new and original burlesque by Master G.
R. Sims.' My misguided parents actually had the playbill printed and
invited friends to witness the performance. They little knew what they
were doing by pandering to my boyish vanity in such a way. But for that
printed playbill, and that public performance in my nursery, I might
never have taken to the stage, and inflicted upon a long-suffering
public Adelphi melodrama and Gaiety burlesque, farcical comedy and comic
opera; I might have remained all my life an honest, hard-working City
man, relieving my feelings occasionally by joining in the autumn
discussions in the _Daily Telegraph_. I was still in the City when my
first book was published. I used, in those days, to get to the City at
nine and leave it at six, but I had a dinner hour, and in that dinner
hour I wrote short stories and little things that I fancied were funny,
and I used to put them in big envelopes and send them to the different
magazines. I sent about twenty out in that way. I never had one
accepted, but several returned.
[Illustration: Photo of title page of "The Social Kaleidoscope."]
I wrote my first book in my dinner hour, in a City office. I have just
found it. Here is the cover. You will observe that it has my portrait on
it. I look very ill and thin and haggard. That was, perhaps, the result
of going without my dinner in order to devote myself to 'literature.'
If you could look inside that book, if you could see the paper on which
it is printed, you would understand the shock it was to me when they
laid it in my arms and said: 'Behold your firstborn.'
All the vanity in me (and they tell me that I have a good deal) rose up
as I gazed at the battered wreck upon the cover--the man with the face
that suggested a prompt subscription to a burial club.
But I shouldn't have minded that so much if the people who bought my
book hadn't written to me personally to complain. One gentleman sent me
a postcard to say that his volume fell to pieces while he was carrying
it home. Another assured me that he had picked enough pieces of straw
out of the leaves to make a bed for his horse with, and a third returned
a copy to me without paying the postage, and asked me kindly to put it
in _my_ dustbin, because his cook was rather proud of the one he had in
his back garden.
Still the book sold (the sketches had all previously appeared in the
_Weekly Dispatch_), and when the first edition was exhausted, a new and
better one was prepared (without that haggard face upon the cover), and
I was happy.
The sale ran into thirty thousand the first year of publication, and as
I was fortunate enough to have published it on a royalty, I am glad to
say it is still selling.
[Illustration: THE SNUGGERY]
'The Social Kaleidoscope' was my first book. With it I made my actual
_début_ between covers.
I hadn't done very well before then; since then I have, from a worldly
point of view, done remarkably well--far better than I deserved to do,
my good-natured friends assure me, and I cordially agree with them.
But I had made a good fight for it, and I had suffered years of
disappointment and rebuff. I began to send contributions to periodicals
when I was fourteen years old, and a boy at Hanwell College. _Fun_ was
the first journal I favoured with my effusions, and week after week I
had a sinking at the heart as I bought that popular periodical and
searched in vain for my comic verses, my humorous sketches, and my smart
paragraphs.
It took me thirteen years to get something printed and paid for, but I
succeeded at last, and it was _Fun_, my early love, that first took me
by the hand. When I was on the staff of _Fun_, and its columns were open
to me for all I cared to write, I used often to look over the batch of
boyish efforts that littered the editor's desk, and let my heart go out
to the writers who were suffering the pangs that I had known so well.
[Illustration: MR. SIMS'S 'LITTLE DAWG']
I had had effusions of mine printed before that, but I didn't get any
money for them. I had the pleasure of seeing my signature more than once
in the columns of certain theatrical journals, in the days when I was a
constant first-nighter, and a determined upholder of the privileges of
the pit. And I even had some of my poetry printed. In the old box to
which I have gone in search of the first edition of my first book, there
are two papers carefully preserved, because they were once my pride and
glory. One is a copy of the _Halfpenny Journal_, and the other is a copy
of the _Halfpenny Welcome Guest_. On the back page of the correspondence
column of the former there is a poem signed 'G. R. S.,' addressed to a
young lady's initials in affectionately complimentary terms. Alas! I
don't know what has become of that young lady. Probably she is married,
and is the mother of a fine family of boys and girls, and has forgotten
that I ever wrote verses in her honour. I think I sent her a copy of the
_Halfpenny Journal_, but a few weeks after a coldness sprang up between
us. She was behind the counter of a confectioner's shop in Camden Town,
and I found her one afternoon giggling at a young friend of mine who
used to buy his butterscotch there. My friend and I had words, but
between myself and that fair confectioner 'the rest was silence.'
[Illustration: THE DINING-ROOM]
I was really very much distressed that my pride compelled me never again
to cross the threshold of that establishment. There wasn't a
confectioner's in all Camden Town that could come within measurable
distance of it for strawberry ices.
In the correspondence column of the _Halfpenny Welcome Guest_, which is
among my buried treasures, there is an 'answer' instead of the poem
which I had fondly hoped to see inserted in its glorious pages. And
this is the answer: 'G. R. S.--Your poem is not quite up to our
standard, but it gives decided promise of better things. We should
advise you to persevere.'
I am quoting from memory, for after turning that box upside down, I
can't lay my hand on this particular _Welcome Guest_, though I know that
it is there. I don't know who the editor was who gave me that kindly pat
on the head, but whoever he was he earned my undying gratitude. At the
time I felt I should have liked him better had he printed my poem. I was
no more fortunate with my prose than I was with my poetry. I began to
tell stories at a very early age, but it was not until after I had
succeeded in getting a poem printed among the 'Answers to
Correspondents' that I took seriously to prose with a view of
publication. I was encouraged to try my hand at writing stories by the
remembrance of the success which had attended my efforts at romantic
narrative when I was a school-boy.
[Illustration: THE LIBRARY]
There were eight other boys in the dormitory I slept in at Hanwell (the
College, not the Asylum), and they used to make me tell them stories
every night until they fell asleep, and woe betide me if I cut my
narrative short while one of them remained awake. I wasn't much of a boy
with a bolster or a boot, but they were all champions, and many a time
when I had married the hero and heroine and wound up my story did I have
to start a fresh complication in a hurry to save myself from
chastisement. I remember on one occasion, when I was dreadfully sleepy,
and I had got into a fearful fog as to who committed the murder, I made
a wild plunge at a ghost to get me out of the difficulty, and the whole
dormitory rose to a boy and set about me with bolsters in their
indignation at such a lame and impotent conclusion.
Night after night did those maddening words, 'Tell us a story,' salute
my ears as I laid my weary little head upon the pillow, and I had to
tell one or run the gauntlet of eight bolsters and sixteen slippers, to
say nothing of the biggest boy of all, who kept a reserve pair of boots
hidden away under his bed for purposes not altogether unconnected with
midnight excursions to a neighbouring orchard.
[Illustration: 'SIR HUGO']
It was the remembrance of my early story-telling days that prompted me,
when poetry seemed a drug in the market, to try my hand at what is now,
I believe, called 'The Complete Novelette.'
I set myself seriously to work, laid in a large stock of apples and
jumbles, and spent several consecutive afternoons in completing a story
which I called 'A Pleasant Evening.' After I had written it I copied it
out in my best hand, and then, with fear and trembling, I sent it to
the _Family Herald_.
I sent it to the _Family Herald_ because I had heard a lady who visited
at our house say that she knew a lady who knew a lady who had sent a
story to the _Family Herald_, never having written anything before in
her life, and the story had been accepted, and the writer had received
five pounds for it by return of post.
[Illustration: THE BALCONY]
I didn't receive anything by return of post, but in about a fortnight my
manuscript came back to me. Nothing daunted, I carefully cut off the
corner on which 'Declined with thanks' had been written, and I sent the
story to _Chamber's Journal_. Here it met with a similar fate, but I
fancy it took a little longer to come back, and it bore signs of wear
and tear. I knew, or I had read, that it was not wise to let your
manuscript have the appearance of being rejected, so I spent several
unpleasant evenings in writing 'A Pleasant Evening' out again, and I
sent it to _All the Year Round_.
It came back! This time I didn't take the trouble to open it I knew it
directly I saw it, and as it reached me so I flung it in my desk and bit
my lips, and made up my mind that after all it was better to be accepted
as a poet in the 'Answers to Correspondents' column of the _Halfpenny
Journal_ than to be rejected as a story-writer by the editors of
higher-priced periodicals.
[Illustration: 'Beauty,' an old Favourite, Twenty Years old.]
But though I played with poetry again, I didn't even succeed in getting
into the 'Answers to Correspondents.' My vaulting ambition o'erleaped
its selle, and I sent my verses to journals which didn't 'correspond.'
In those days I kept a little book, in which I entered all the
manuscripts I sent to editors, and from it now I copy the following
instructive record. R stands for 'Returned':--
_Once a Week_ 'The Minstrel's Curse' R.
_Belgravia_ 'After the Battle' R.
_Broadway_ 'After the Battle' R.
_Fun_ 'Nearer and Dearer' R.
_Fun_ 'An Unfortunate Attachment' R.
_Fun_ 'A Song of May' R.
_Banter_ 'Nearer and Dearer' R.
_Judy_ 'An Unfortunate Attachment' R.
_London Society_ 'The Minstrel's Curse' R.
_Owl_ 'Nearer and Dearer' R.
Returned! Returned! Returned! All I got for my pains was the chance of
making a joke in my diary on my birthday. In those days of my wild
struggles with Fate I find written against the 2nd of September, 'Many
unhappy Returns.'
I believe that I should have flung up authorship in despair, and never
have had a first book, but for the chance remark of the dear old doctor
who looked after my health in the days when I hadn't to pay my own
doctor's bills.
[Illustration: THE DRAWING-ROOM]
He was talking about me one day in my father's private office, and I
happened to be passing, and I heard him say, 'He's a nice lad--what a
pity he scribbles!' Scribbles! the word burnt itself into my brain, it
seared my heart, it brought the hot blood to my cheeks, and the
indignant tears to my eyes. Was I not ready to write an acrostic at a
moment's notice on the name of the sweetheart of any fellow who asked me
to do it? Had I not written a poem on the fall of Napoleon, which my
eldest sister had read aloud to her schoolfellows, and made them all mad
with jealousy to think there wasn't a brother among the lot of them who
could even rhyme decently? Had I not had stories rejected by the _Family
Herald_, _All the Year Round_, and _Chambers's Journal_, and a letter on
the subject of the crossing opposite St. Mark's Church, Hamilton
Terrace, printed in the _Marylebone Mercury_? And was I to be dubbed a
scribbler, and pitied for my weakness? It is nearly twenty years since
those words were uttered, and my dear old doctor rests beyond the reach
of all human ills, but I can hear them now. They have never ceased to
ring in my ears as they rang that day.
[Illustration: 'FAUST UP TO DATE']
My pride was wounded, my vanity was hurt, I was put upon my mettle. I
registered a silent vow there and then that some day I would have a
noble revenge on my friendly detractor, and make him confess that he was
wrong when he said that it was a pity I scribbled.
From that hour I set myself steadily to be an author. I wrote poetry by
the mile, prose by the acre, and I sent it to every kind of periodical
that I could find in the 'Post Office Directory.'
I had to pass through years of rejection, but still I wrote on, and
still I spent all my pocket-money on books, and postage-stamps, and
paper.
And at last the chance came. I was allowed to write paragraphs in the
_Weekly Dispatch_ by a friend who was a real journalist, and had a
column at his disposal to fill with gossip.
After doing the work for a month for nothing, I had the whole column
given to me, and one day I received my first guinea earned by
scribbling.
[Illustration: MR. SIMS'S DINNER PARTY]
I was a proud man when I went out of the _Dispatch_ office that day with
a sovereign and a shilling in my hand. I had forced the gates of the
citadel at last. I had marched in with the honours of war, and I was
marching out with the price of victory in my hand.
Soon afterwards there came another chance. The editor of the _Dispatch_
wanted a series of short complete stories. I asked to be allowed to try
if I could do them. Under the title of 'The Social Kaleidoscope,' I
wrote a series of short stories or sketches, and from that day no week
has passed that I have not contributed something to the columns of a
weekly journal.
When the sketches were complete, the publisher of the _Dispatch_ offered
to bring them out in book form for me and publish them in the office.
'The Social Kaleidoscope' was my first book, and that is how it came
into the world.
Years afterwards, my chance came with the dear old fellow who had said
that it was a pity I scribbled so. Fortune had smiled upon me in one way
then, and I was earning an excellent income with my pen. But my health
had broken down, and it was thought necessary that I should place myself
in the hands of a celebrated surgeon. I had not seen my old doctor for
some years, but my people wished that he should be consulted, because he
had known me so well in the days of my youth.
So I submitted, and he came, and he shook his head and agreed that
so-and-so was the man to take me in hand.
'I think he'll cure you, my dear fellow,' said the doctor; 'he's the
most skilful surgeon we have for cases like yours, but his fee is a
heavy one. Still, you can afford it.'
'Yes, doctor,' I replied, 'thanks to my _scribbling_, I can.'
That was the hour of my triumph. I had waited for it for fifteen years,
but it had come at last.
The dear old boy gripped my hand. 'I was wrong,' he said, with a quiet
smile, 'and I confess it; but we'll get you well, and you shall scribble
for many a year to come.'
And I am scribbling still.
'_DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES_'
BY RUDYARD KIPLING
[Illustration: THE NEWSPAPER FILES]
As there is only one man in charge of a steamer, so there is but one man
in charge of a newspaper, and he is the editor. My chief taught me this
on an Indian journal, and he further explained that an order was an
order, to be obeyed at a run, not a walk, and that any notion or notions
as to the fitness or unfitness of any particular kind of work for the
young had better be held over till the last page was locked up to press.
He was breaking me into harness, and I owe him a deep debt of gratitude,
which I did not discharge at the time. The path of virtue was very
steep, whereas the writing of verses allowed a certain play to the mind,
and, unlike the filling in of reading matter, could be done as the
spirit served. Now, a sub-editor is not hired to write verses: he is
paid to sub-edit. At the time, this discovery shocked me greatly; but,
some years later, when I came to be a sort of an editor in charge,
Providence dealt me for my subordinate one saturated with Elia. He
wrote very pretty, Lamblike essays, but he wrote them when he should
have been sub-editing. Then I saw a little of what my chief must have
suffered on my account. There is a moral here for the ambitious and
aspiring who are oppressed by their superiors.
[Illustration: 'YOUR POTERY VERY GOOD, SIR; JUST COMING PROPER LENGTH
TO-DAY']
This is a digression, as all my verses were digressions from office
work. They came without invitation, unmanneredly, in the nature of
things; but they had to come, and the writing out of them kept me
healthy and amused. To the best of my remembrance, no one then
discovered their grievous cynicism, or their pessimistic tendency, and I
was far too busy, and too happy, to take thought about these things.
[Illustration: drawing by Geo. Hutchinson
signed: Sincerely,
Rudyard Kipling]
So they arrived merrily, being born out of the life about me, and they
were very bad indeed, and the joy of doing them was payment a thousand
times their worth. Some, of course, came and ran away again, and the
dear sorrow of going in search of these (out of office hours, and
catching them) was almost better than writing them clear. Bad as they
were, I burned twice as many as were published, and of the survivors at
least two-thirds were cut down at the last moment. Nothing can be wholly
beautiful that is not useful, and therefore my verses were made to ease
off the perpetual strife between the manager extending his
advertisements and my chief fighting for his reading-matter. They were
born to be sacrificed. Rukn-Din, the foreman of our side, approved of
them immensely, for he was a Muslim of culture. He would say: 'Your
potery very good, sir; just coming proper length to-day. You giving more
soon? One-third column just proper. Always can take on third page.'
Mahmoud, who set them up, had an unpleasant way of referring to a new
lyric as '_Ek aur chiz_'--one more thing--which I never liked. The job
side, too, were unsympathetic, because I used to raid into their type
for private proofs with old English and Gothic headlines. Even a Hindoo
does not like to find the serifs of his f's cut away to make long s's.
And in this manner, week by week, my verses came to be printed in the
paper. I was in very good company, for there is always an undercurrent
of song, a little bitter for the most part, running through the Indian
papers. The bulk of it is much better than mine, being more graceful,
and is done by those less than Sir Alfred Lyall--to whom I would
apologise for mentioning his name in this gallery--'Pekin,' 'Latakia,'
'Cigarette,' 'O.,' 'T. W.,' 'Foresight,' and others, whose names come up
with the stars out of the Indian Ocean going eastward.
Sometimes a man in Bangalore would be moved to song, and a man on the
Bombay side would answer him, and a man in Bengal would echo back, till
at last we would all be crowing together like cocks before daybreak,
when it is too dark to see your fellow. And, occasionally, some unhappy
Chaaszee, away in the China Ports, would lift up his voice among the
tea-chests, and the queer-smelling yellow papers of the Far East brought
us his sorrows. The newspaper files showed that, forty years ago, the
men sang of just the same subjects as we did--of heat, loneliness, love,
lack of promotion, poverty, sport, and war. Further back still, at the
end of the eighteenth century, Hickey's _Bengal Gazette_, a very wicked
little sheet in Calcutta, published the songs of the young factors,
ensigns, and writers to the East India Company. They, too, wrote of the
same things, but in those days men were strong enough to buy a bullock's
heart for dinner, cook it with their own hands because they could not
afford a servant, and make a rhymed jest of all the squalor and poverty.
Lives were not worth two monsoons' purchase, and perhaps the knowledge
of this a little coloured the rhymes when they sang:
In a very short time you're released from all cares--
If the Padri's asleep, Mr. Oldham reads prayers!
The note of physical discomfort that runs through so much Anglo-Indian
poetry had been struck then. You will find it most fully suggested in
'The Long, Long Indian Day,' a comparatively modern affair; but there is
a set of verses called 'Scanty Ninety-five,' dated about Warren
Hastings's time, which gives a lively idea of what our seniors in the
Service had to put up with. One of the most interesting poems I ever
found was written at Meerut, three or four days before the Mutiny broke
out there. The author complained that he could not get his clothes
washed nicely that week, and was very facetious over his worries.
[Illustration: SUNG TO THE BANJOES ROUND CAMP FIRES]
My verses had the good fortune to last a little longer than some others,
which were more true to facts and certainly better workmanship. Men in
the Army, and the Civil Service, and the Railway, wrote to me saying
that the rhymes might be made into a book. Some of them had been sung to
the banjoes round camp fires, and some had run as far down coast as
Rangoon and Moulmein, and up to Mandalay. A real book was out of the
question, but I knew that Rukn-Din and the office plant were at my
disposal at a price, if I did not use the office time. Also, I had
handled in the previous year a couple of small books, of which I was
part owner, and had lost nothing. So there was built a sort of a book, a
lean oblong docket, wire-stitched, to imitate a D.O. Government
envelope, printed on one side only, bound in brown paper, and secured
with red tape. It was addressed to all heads of departments and all
Government officials, and among a pile of papers would have deceived a
clerk of twenty years' service. Of these 'books' we made some hundreds,
and as there was no necessity for advertising, my public being to my
hand, I took reply-postcards, printed the news of the birth of the book
on one side, the blank order-form on the other, and posted them up and
down the Empire from Aden to Singapore, and from Quetta to Colombo.
There was no trade discount, no reckoning twelves as thirteens, no
commission, and no credit of any kind whatever. The money came back in
poor but honest rupees, and was transferred from the publisher, the
left-hand pocket, direct to the author, the right-hand pocket. Every
copy sold in a few weeks, and the ratio of expenses to profits, as I
remember it, has since prevented my injuring my health by sympathising
with publishers who talk of their risks and advertisements. The
down-country papers complained of the form of the thing. The wire
binding cut the pages, and the red tape tore the covers. This was not
intentional, but Heaven helps those who help themselves. Consequently,
there arose a demand for a new edition, and this time I exchanged the
pleasure of taking in money over the counter for that of seeing a real
publisher's imprint on the title-page. More verses were taken out and
put in, and some of that edition travelled as far as Hong-Kong on the
map, and each edition grew a little fatter, and, at last, the book came
to London with a gilt top and a stiff back, and was advertised in the
publishers' poetry department.
[Illustration]
But I loved it best when it was a little brown baby with a pink string
round its stomach; a child's child, ignorant that it was afflicted with
all the most modern ailments; and before people had learned, beyond
doubt, how its author lay awake of nights in India, plotting and
scheming to write something that should 'take' with the English public.
[Illustration: portrait by Geo. Hutchinson. Signed: Yours very truly A
Conan Doyle]
JUVENILIA
BY A. CONAN DOYLE
It is very well for the master craftsman with twenty triumphs behind him
to look down the vista of his successes, and to recall how he picked out
the path which has led him to fame, but for the tiro whose first book is
perilously near to his last one it becomes a more invidious matter. His
past presses too closely upon his present, and his reminiscences,
unmellowed by the flight of years, are apt to be rawly and crudely
personal. And yet even time helps me when I speak of my first work, for
it was written seven-and-twenty years ago.
[Illustration: I WAS SIX]
I was six at the time, and have a very distinct recollection of the
achievement It was written, I remember, upon foolscap paper, in what
might be called a fine bold hand--four words to the line, and was
illustrated by marginal pen-and-ink sketches by the author. There was a
man in it, and there was a tiger. I forget which was the hero, but it
didn't matter much, for they became blended into one about the time when
the tiger met the man. I was a realist in the age of the Romanticists. I
described at some length, both verbally and pictorially, the untimely
end of that wayfarer. But when the tiger had absorbed him, I found
myself slightly embarrassed as to how my story was to go on. 'It is very
easy to get people into scrapes, and very hard to get them out again,' I
remarked, and I have often had cause to repeat the precocious aphorism
of my childhood. On this occasion the situation was beyond me, and my
book, like my man, was engulfed in my tiger. There is an old family
bureau with secret drawers, in which lie little locks of hair tied up in
circles, and black silhouettes and dim daguerreotypes, and letters which
seem to have been written in the lightest of straw-coloured inks.
Somewhere there lies my primitive manuscript, where my tiger, like a
many-hooped barrel with a tail to it, still envelops the hapless
stranger whom he has taken in.
[Illustration: ON THE PRAIRIES AND THE OCEANS]
Then came my second book, which was told and not written, but which was
a much more ambitious effort than the first. Between the two, four years
had elapsed, which were mainly spent in reading. It is rumoured that a
special meeting of a library committee was held in my honour, at which a
bye-law was passed that no subscriber should be permitted to change his
book more than three times a day. Yet, even with these limitations, by
the aid of a well-stocked bookcase at home, I managed to enter my tenth
year with a good deal in my head that I could never have learned in the
class-rooms.
[Illustration: MY DÉBUT AS A STORY-TELLER]
I do not think that life has any joy to offer so complete, so
soul-filling as that which comes upon the imaginative lad, whose spare
time is limited, but who is able to snuggle down into a corner with his
book, knowing that the next hour is all his own. And how vivid and fresh
it all is! Your very heart and soul are out on the prairies and the
oceans with your hero. It is you who act and suffer and enjoy. You carry
the long small-bore Kentucky rifle with which such egregious things are
done, and you lie out upon the topsail yard, and get jerked by the flap
of the sail into the Pacific, where you cling on to the leg of an
albatross, and so keep afloat until the comic boatswain turns up with
his crew of volunteers to handspike you into safety. What a magic it is,
this stirring of the boyish heart and mind! Long ere I came to my teens
I had traversed every sea and knew the Rockies like my own back garden.
How often had I sprung upon the back of the charging buffalo and so
escaped him! It was an everyday emergency to have to set the prairie on
fire in front of me in order to escape from the fire behind, or to run a
mile down a brook to throw the bloodhounds off my trail. I had creased
horses, I had shot down rapids, I had strapped on my mocassins
hind-foremost to conceal my tracks, I had lain under water with a reed
in my mouth, and I had feigned madness to escape the torture. As to the
Indian braves whom I slew in single combats, I could have stocked a
large graveyard, and, fortunately enough, though I was a good deal
chipped about in these affairs, no real harm ever came of it, and I was
always nursed back into health by a very fascinating young squaw. It was
all more real than the reality. Since those days I have in very truth
both shot bears and harpooned whales, but the performance was flat
compared with the first time that I did it with Mr. Ballantyne or
Captain Mayne Reid at my elbow.
[Illustration: 'WITH THE EDITOR'S COMPLIMENTS']
In the fulness of time I was packed off to a public school, and in some
way it was discovered by my playmates that I had more than my share of
the lore after which they hankered. There was my _début_ as a
story-teller. On a wet half-holiday I have been elevated on to a desk,
and with an audience of little boys all squatting on the floor, with
their chins upon their hands, I have talked myself husky over the
misfortunes of my heroes. Week in and week out those unhappy men have
battled and striven and groaned for the amusement of that little circle.
I was bribed with pastry to continue these efforts, and I remember that
I always stipulated for tarts down and strict business, which shows that
I was born to be a member of the Authors' Society. Sometimes, too, I
would stop dead in the very thrill of a crisis, and could only be set
agoing again by apples. When I had got as far as 'With his left hand in
her glossy locks, he was waving the blood-stained knife above her head,
when---- ' or 'Slowly, slowly, the door turned upon its hinges, and with
eyes which were dilated with horror, the wicked Marquis saw---- ' I knew
that I had my audience in my power. And thus my second book was evolved.
[Illustration: 'HAVE YOU SEEN WHAT THEY SAY ABOUT YOU?']
It may be that my literary experiences would have ended there had there
not come a time in my early manhood when that good old harsh-faced
schoolmistress, Hard Times, took me by the hand. I wrote, and with
amazement I found that my writing was accepted. _Chambers's Journal_ it
was which rose to the occasion, and I have had a kindly feeling for its
mustard-coloured back ever since. Fifty little cylinders of manuscript
did I send out during eight years, which described irregular orbits
among publishers, and usually came back like paper boomerangs to the
place that they had started from. Yet in time they all lodged somewhere
or other. Mr. Hogg, of _London Society_, was one of the most constant of
my patrons, and Mr. James Payn wasted hours of his valuable time in
encouraging me to persevere. Knowing as I did that he was one of the
busiest men in London, I never received one of his shrewd and kindly and
most illegible letters without a feeling of gratitude and wonder.
I have heard folk talk as though there were some hidden back door by
which one may creep into literature, but I can say myself that I never
had an introduction to any editor or publisher before doing business
with them, and that I do not think that I suffered on that account. Yet
my apprenticeship was a long and trying one. During ten years of hard
work, I averaged less than fifty pounds a year from my pen. I won my way
into the best journals, _Cornhill_, _Temple Bar_, and so on; but what is
the use of that when the contributions to those journals must be
anonymous? It is a system which tells very hardly against young authors.
I saw with astonishment and pride that 'Habakuk Jephson's Statement' in
the _Cornhill_ was attributed by critic after critic to Stevenson, but,
overwhelmed as I was by the compliment, a word of the most lukewarm
praise sent straight to my own address would have been of greater use to
me. After ten years of such work I was as unknown as if I had never
dipped a pen into an ink-bottle. Sometimes, of course, the anonymous
system may screen you from blame as well as rob you of praise. How well
I can see a dear old friend running after me in the street, waving a
London evening paper in his hand! 'Have you seen what they say about
your _Cornhill_ story?' he shouted. 'No, no. What is it?' 'Here it is!
Here it is!' Eagerly he turned over the column, while I, trembling with
excitement, but determined to bear my honours meekly, peeped over his
shoulder. 'The _Cornhill_ this month,' said the critic, 'has a story in
it which would have made Thackeray turn in his grave.' There were
several witnesses about, and the Portsmouth bench are severe upon
assaults, so my friend escaped unscathed. Then first I realised that
British criticism had fallen into a shocking state of decay, though when
some one has a pat on the back for you you understand that, after all,
there are some very smart people upon the literary Press.
[Illustration: 'MRS. THURSTON'S LITTLE BOY WANTS TO SEE YOU, DOCTOR']
And so at last it was brought home to me that a man may put the very
best that is in him into magazine work for years and years and reap no
benefit from it, save, of course, the inherent benefits of literary
practice. So I wrote another of my first books and sent it off to the
publishers. Alas for the dreadful thing that happened! The publishers
never received it, the Post Office sent countless blue forms to say
that they knew nothing about it, and from that day to this no word has
ever been heard of it. Of course it was the best thing I ever wrote. Who
ever lost a manuscript that wasn't? But I must in all honesty confess
that my shock at its disappearance would be as nothing to my horror if
it were suddenly to appear again--in print. If one or two other of my
earlier efforts had also been lost in the post, my conscience would have
been the lighter. This one was called 'The Narrative of John Smith,' and
it was of a personal-social-political complexion. Had it appeared I
should have probably awakened to find myself infamous, for it steered,
as I remember it, perilously near to the libellous. However, it was
safely lost, and that was the end of another of my first books.
Then I started upon an exceedingly sensational novel, which interested
me extremely at the time, though I have never heard that it had the same
effect upon anyone else afterwards. I may urge in extenuation of all
shortcomings that it was written in the intervals of a busy though
ill-paying practice. And a man must try that and combine it with
literary work before he quite knows what it means. How often have I
rejoiced to find a clear morning before me, and settled down to my task,
or rather, dashed ferociously at it, as knowing how precious were those
hours of quiet! Then to me enter my housekeeper, with tidings of dismay.
'Mrs. Thurston's little boy wants to see you, doctor.' 'Show him in,'
say I, striving to fix my scene in my mind that I may splice it when
this trouble is over. 'Well, my boy?' 'Please, doctor, mother wants to
know if she is to add water to that medicine.' 'Certainly, certainly.'
Not that it matters in the least, but it is well to answer with
decision. Exit the little boy, and the splice is about half accomplished
when he suddenly bursts into the room again. 'Please, doctor, when I got
back mother had taken the medicine without the water.' 'Tut, tut!' I
answer. 'It really does not matter in the least.' The youth withdraws
with a suspicious glance, and one more paragraph has been written when
the husband puts in an appearance. 'There seems to have been some
misunderstanding about that medicine,' he remarks coldly. 'Not at all,'
I say, 'it really didn't matter.' 'Well, then, why did you tell the boy
that it should be taken with water?' And then I try to disentangle the
business, and the husband shakes his head gloomily at me. 'She feels
very queer,' says he; 'we should all be easier in our minds if you came
and looked at her.' So I leave my heroine in the four-foot way with an
express thundering towards her, and trudge sadly off, with the feeling
that another morning has been wasted, and another seam left visible to
the critic's eye in my unhappy novel. Such was the genesis of my
sensational romance, and when publishers wrote to say that they could
see no merit in it, I was, heart and soul, of the same way of thinking.
[Illustration: MR. ANDREW LANG]
And then, under more favourable circumstances, I wrote 'Micah Clarke,'
for patients had become more tractable, and I had married, and in every
way I was a brighter man. A year's reading and five months' writing
finished it, and I thought I had a tool in my hands that would cut a
path for me. So I had, but the first thing that I cut with it was my
finger. I sent it to a friend, whose opinion I deeply respected, in
London, who read for one of the leading houses, but he had been bitten
by the historical novel, and very naturally he distrusted it. From him
it went to house after house, and house after house would have none of
it. Blackwood found that the people did not talk so in the seventeenth
century; Bentley that its principal defect was that there was a complete
absence of interest; Cassells that experience had shown that an
historical novel could never be a commercial success. I remember smoking
over my dog-eared manuscript when it returned for a whiff of country air
after one of its descents upon town, and wondering what I should do if
some sporting, reckless kind of publisher were suddenly to stride in and
make me a bid of forty shillings or so for the lot. And then suddenly I
bethought me to send it to Messrs. Longmans, where it was fortunate
enough to fall into the hands of Mr. Andrew Lang. From that day the way
was smoothed to it, and, as things turned out, I was spared that keenest
sting of ill-success, that those who had believed in your work should
suffer pecuniarily for their belief. A door had been opened for me into
the temple of the Muses, and it only remained that I should find
something that was worthy of being borne through it.
'THE TRAIL OF THE SERPENT'
BY M. E. BRADDON
MY first novel! Far back in the distinctness of childish memories I see
a little girl who has lately learnt to write, who has lately been given
a beautiful brand-new mahogany desk, with a red velvet slope, and a
glass ink-bottle, such a desk as might now be bought for
three-and-sixpence, but which in the forties cost at least half a
guinea. Very proud is the little girl, with the Kenwigs pigtails and the
Kenwigs frills, of that mahogany desk, and its infinite capacities for
literary labour, above all, gem of gems, its stick of variegated
sealing-wax, brown, speckled with gold, and its little glass seal with
an intaglio representing two doves--Pliny's doves, perhaps, famous in
mosaic, only the little girl had never heard of Pliny, or his Laurentine
Villa.
Armed with that desk and its supply of stationery, Mary Elizabeth
Braddon--very fond of writing her name at full length, and her address
also at full length, though the word 'Middlesex' offered
difficulties--began that pilgrimage on the broad high road of fiction,
which was destined to be a longish one. So much for the little girl of
eight years old, in the third person, and now to become strictly
autobiographical.
My first story was based on those fairy tales which first opened to me
the world of imaginative literature. My first attempt in fiction, and in
round-hand, on carefully pencilled double lines, was a story of two
sisters, a good sister and a wicked, and I fear adhered more faithfully
to the lines of the archetypal story than the writer's pen kept to the
double fence which should have ensured neatness.
The interval between the ages of eight and twelve was a prolific period,
fertile in unfinished MSS., among which I can now trace an historical
novel on the Siege of Calais, an Eastern story, suggested by a
passionate love of Miss Pardoe's Turkish tales, and Byron's 'Bride of
Abydos,' which my mother, a devoted Byron worshipper, allowed me to read
aloud to her--and doubtless murder in the reading--a story of the Hartz
Mountains, with audacious flights in German diablerie; and lastly, very
seriously undertaken, and very perseveringly worked upon, a domestic
story, the outline of which was suggested by the same dear and
sympathetic mother.
[Illustration: LICHFIELD HOUSE, RICHMOND]
Now it is a curious fact, which may or may not be common to other
story-spinners, that I have never been able to take kindly to a plot--or
the suggestion of a plot--offered to me by anybody else. The moment a
friend tells me that he or she is desirous of imparting a series of
facts--strictly true--as if truth in fiction mattered one jot!--which
in his or her opinion would make the ground plan of an admirable,
startling, and altogether original three-volume novel, I know in advance
that my imagination will never grapple with those startling
circumstances--that my thoughts will begin to wander before my friend
has got half through the remarkable chain of events, and that if the
obliging purveyor of romantic incidents were to examine me at the end of
the story, I should be spun ignominiously. For the most part, such
subjects as have been proposed to me by friends have been hopelessly
unfit for the circulating library; or, where not immoral, have been
utterly dull; but it is, I believe, a fixed idea in the novel-reader's
mind that any combination of events out of the beaten way of life will
make an admirable subject for the novelist's art.
[Illustration: THE HALL]
My dear mother, taking into consideration my tender years, and perhaps
influenced in somewise by her own love of picking up odd bits of
Sheraton or Chippendale furniture in the storehouses of the less
ambitious second-hand dealers of those simpler days, offered me the
following _scenario_ for a domestic story. It was an incident which, I
doubt not, she had often read at the tail of a newspaper column, and
which certainly savours of the gigantic gooseberry, the sea-serpent, and
the agricultural labourer who unexpectedly inherits half a million. It
was eminently a Simple Story, and far more worthy of that title than
Mrs. Inchbald's long and involved romance.
An honest couple, in humble circumstances, possess among their small
household gear a good old easy chair, which has been the pride of a
former generation, and is the choicest of their household gods. A
comfortable cushioned chair, snug and restful, albeit the chintz
covering, though clean and tidy, as virtuous people's furniture always
is in fiction, is worn thin by long service, while the dear chair itself
is no longer the chair it once was as to legs and framework.
[Illustration: THE DINING-ROOM]
Evil days come upon the praiseworthy couple and their dependent brood,
among whom I faintly remember the love interest of the story to have
lain; and that direful day arrives when the average landlord of juvenile
fiction, whose heart is of adamant and brain of brass, distrains for the
rent. The rude broker swoops upon the humble dovecot; a cart or
hand-barrow waits on the carefully hearth-stoned doorstep for the
household gods; the family gather round the cherished chair, on which
the rude broker has already laid his grimy fingers; they hang over the
back and fondle the padded arms; and the old grandmother, with clasped
hands, entreats that, if able to raise the money in a few days, they may
be allowed to buy back that loved heirloom.
[Illustration: THE DRAWING-ROOM]
The broker laughs the plea to scorn; they might have their chair, and
cheap enough, he had no doubt. The cover was darned and patched--as only
the virtuous poor of fiction do darn and do patch--and he made no doubt
the stuffing was nothing better than brown wool; and with that coarse
taunt the coarser broker dug his clasp-knife into the cushion against
which grandfatherly backs had leaned in happier days, and lo! an
avalanche of banknotes fell out of the much-maligned horsehair, and the
family was lifted from penury to wealth. Nothing more simple--or more
natural. A prudent but eccentric ancestor had chosen this mode of
putting by his savings, assured that, whenever discovered, the money
would be useful to--somebody.
So ran the _scenario_; but I fancy my juvenile pen hardly held on to the
climax. My brief experience of boarding school occurred at this time,
and I well remember writing 'The Old Arm Chair' in a penny account book,
in the schoolroom of Cresswell Lodge, and that I was both surprised and
offended at the laughter of the kindly music-teacher who, coming into
the room to summon a pupil, and seeing me gravely occupied, inquired
what I was doing, and was intensely amused at my stolid method of
composition, plodding on undisturbed by the voices and occupations of
the older girls around me. 'The Old Arm Chair' was certainly my first
serious, painstaking effort in fiction; but as it was abandoned
unfinished before my eleventh birthday, and as no line thereof ever
achieved the distinction of type, it can hardly rank as my first novel.
[Illustration: THE EVENING ROOM]
There came a very few years later the sentimental period, in which my
unfinished novels assumed a more ambitious form, and were modelled
chiefly upon 'Jane Eyre,' with occasional tentative imitations of
Thackeray. Stories of gentle hearts that loved in vain, always ending in
renunciation. One romance there was, I well remember, begun with
resolute purpose, after the first reading of 'Esmond,' and in the
endeavour to give life and local colour to a story of the Restoration
period, a brilliantly wicked interval in the social history of England,
which, after the lapse of thirty years, I am still as bent upon taking
for the background of a love story as I was when I began 'Master
Anthony's Record' in Esmondese, and made my girlish acquaintance with
the reading-room of the British Museum, where I went in quest of local
colour, and where much kindness was shown to my youth and inexperience
of the book world. Poring over a folio edition of the 'State Trials' at
my uncle's quiet rectory in sleepy Sandwich, I had discovered the
passionate romantic story of Lord Grey's elopement with his
sister-in-law, next in sequence to the trial of Lawrence Braddon and
Hugh Speke for conspiracy. At the risk of seeming disloyal to my own
race, I must add that it seemed to me a very tinpot order of plot to
which these two learned gentlemen bent their legal minds, and which cost
the Braddon family a heavy fine in land near Camelford--confiscation
which I have heard my father complain of as especially unfair--Lawrence
being a younger son. The romantic story of Lord Grey was to be the
subject of 'Master Anthony's Record,' but Master Anthony's sentimental
autobiography went the way of all my earlier efforts. It was but a year
or so after the collapse of Master Anthony, that a blindly enterprising
printer of Beverley, who had seen my poor little verses in the _Beverley
Recorder_, made me the spirited offer of ten pounds for a serial story,
to be set up and printed at Beverley, and published on commission by a
London firm in Warwick Lane. I cannot picture to myself, in my
after-knowledge of the bookselling trade, any enterprise more futile in
its inception or more feeble in its execution; but to my youthful
ambition the actual commission to write a novel, with an advance
payment of fifty shillings to show good faith on the part of my
Yorkshire speculator, seemed like the opening of that pen-and-ink
paradise which I had sighed for ever since I could hold a pen. I had,
previously to this date, found a Mæcenas in Beverley, in the person of a
learned gentleman who volunteered to foster my love of the Muses by
buying the copyright of a volume of poems and publishing the same at his
own expense--which he did, poor man, without stint, and by which noble
patronage of Poet's Corner verse he must have lost money. He had,
however, the privilege of dictating the subject of the principal poem,
which was to sing--however feebly--Garibaldi's Sicilian campaign.
[Illustration: THE SMOKING-ROOM]
The Beverley printer suggested that my Warwick Lane serial should
combine, as far as my powers allowed, the human interest and genial
humour of Dickens with the plot-weaving of G. W. R. Reynolds; and,
furnished with these broad instructions, I filled my ink-bottle, spread
out my foolscap, and, on a hopelessly wet afternoon, began my first
novel--now known as 'The Trail of the Serpent'--but published in Warwick
Lane, and later in the stirring High Street of Beverley, as 'Three Times
Dead.' In 'Three Times Dead' I gave loose to all my leanings to the
violent in melodrama. Death stalked in ghastliest form across my pages:
and villainy reigned triumphant till the Nemesis of the last chapter. I
wrote with all the freedom of one who feared not the face of a critic;
and, indeed, thanks to the obscurity of its original production, and its
re-issue as the ordinary two-shilling railway novel, this first novel of
mine has almost entirely escaped the critical lash, and has pursued its
way as a chartered libertine. People buy it and read it, and its faults
and follies are forgiven as the exuberances of a pen unchastened by
experience; but faster and more facile at that initial stage than it
ever became after long practice.
[Illustration: THE LIBRARY]
I dashed headlong at my work, conjured up my images of horror or of
mirth, and boldly built the framework of my story, and set my puppets
moving. To me, at least, they were living creatures, who seemed to
follow impulses of their own, to be impelled by their own passions, to
love and hate, and plot and scheme of their own accord. There was
unalloyed pleasure in the composition of that first story, and in the
knowledge that it was to be actually printed and published, and not to
be declined with thanks by adamantine magazine editors, like a certain
short story which I had lately written, and which contained the germ of
'Lady Audley's Secret.' Indeed, at this period of my life, the postman's
knock had become associated in my mind with the sharp sound of a
rejected MS. dropping through the open letter-box on to the floor of the
hall, while my heart seemed to drop in sympathy with that book-post
packet.
Short of never being printed at all, my Beverley-born novel could have
hardly entered upon the world of books in a more profound obscurity.
That one living creature ever bought a number of 'Three Times Dead' I
greatly doubt. I can recall the thrill of emotion with which I tore open
the envelope that contained my complimentary copy of the first number,
folded across, and in aspect inferior to a gratis pamphlet about a
patent medicine. The miserable little wood block which illustrated that
first number would have disgraced a baker's whitey-brown bag, would have
been unworthy to illustrate a penny bun. My spirits were certainly
dashed at the technical shortcomings of that first serial, and I was
hardly surprised when I was informed a few weeks later, that although my
admirers at Beverley were deeply interested in the story, it was not a
financial success, and that it would be only obliging on my part, and in
accordance with my known kindness of heart, if I were to restrict the
development of the romance to half its intended length, and to accept
five pounds in lieu of ten as my reward. Having no desire that the rash
Beverley printer should squander his own or his children's fortune in
the obscurity of Warwick Lane, I immediately acceded to his request,
shortened sail, and went on with my story, perhaps with a shade less
enthusiasm, having seen the shabby figure it was to make in the book
world. I may add that the Beverley publisher's payments began and ended
with his noble advance of fifty shillings. The balance was never paid;
and it was rather hard lines that, on his becoming bankrupt in his poor
little way a few years later, a judge in the Bankruptcy Court remarked
that, as Miss Braddon was now making a good deal of money by her pen,
she ought to 'come to the relief' of her first publisher.
And now my volume of verses being well under way, I went with my mother
to farmhouse lodgings in the neighbourhood of that very Beverley, where
I spent perhaps the happiest half-year of my life--half a year of
tranquil, studious days, far from the madding crowd, with the mother
whose society was always all sufficient for me--half a year among level
pastures, with unlimited books from the library in Hull, an old
farm-horse to ride about the green lanes, the breath of summer, with all
its sweet odours of flower and herb, around and about us; half a year of
unalloyed bliss, had it not been for one dark shadow, the heroic figure
of Garibaldi, the sailor-soldier, looming large upon the foreground of
my literary labours, as the hero of a lengthy narrative poem in the
Spenserian metre.
[Illustration: MISS BRADDON'S FAVOURITE MARE]
My chief business at Beverley was to complete the volume of verse
commissioned by my Yorkshire Mæcenas, at that time a very rich man, who
paid me a much better price for my literary work than his townsman, the
enterprising printer, and who had the first claim on my thought and
time.
[Illustration: THE ORANGERY]
With the business-like punctuality of a salaried clerk, I went every
morning to my file of the _Times_, and pored and puzzled over Neapolitan
revolution and Sicilian campaign, and I can only say that if Emile Zola
has suffered as much over Sedan as I suffered in the freshness of my
youth, when flowery meadows and the old chestnut mare invited to summer
idlesse, over the fighting in Sicily, his dogged perseverance in
uncongenial labour should place him among the Immortal Forty. How I
hated the great Joseph G. and the Spenserian metre, with its exacting
demands upon the rhyming faculty! How I hated my own ignorance of modern
Italian history, and my own eyes for never having looked upon Italian
landscape, whereby historical allusion and local colour were both
wanting to that dry-as-dust record of heroic endeavour! I had only the
_Times_ correspondent; where he was picturesque I could be
picturesque--allowing always for the Spenserian straining--where he was
rich in local colour I did my utmost to reproduce his colouring,
stretched always on the Spenserian rack, and lengthened out by the
bitter necessity of finding triple rhymes. Next to Giuseppe Garibaldi I
hated Edmund Spenser, and it may be from a vengeful remembrance of those
early struggles with a difficult form of versification, that, although
throughout my literary life I have been a lover of England's earlier
poets, and have delighted in the quaintness and _naïveté_ of Chaucer, I
have refrained from reading more than a casual stanza or two of the
'Faëry Queen.' When I lived at Beverley, Spenser was to me but a name,
and Byron's 'Childe Harold' was my only model for that exacting verse. I
should add that the Beverley Mæcenas, when commissioning this volume of
verse, was less superb in his ideas than the literary patron of the
past. He looked at the matter from a purely commercial standpoint, and
believed that a volume of verse, such as I could produce, would pay--a
delusion on his part which I honestly strove to combat before accepting
his handsome offer of remuneration for my time and labour. It was with
this idea in his mind that he chose and insisted upon the Sicilian
campaign as a subject for my muse, and thus started me heavily
handicapped on the racecourse of Parnassus.
[Illustration: MISS BRADDON'S COTTAGE AT LYNDHURST]
The weekly number of 'Three Times Dead' was 'thrown off' in brief
intervals of rest from my _magnum opus_, and it was an infinite relief
to turn from Garibaldi and his brothers in arms to the angels and the
monsters which my own brain had engendered, and which to me seemed more
alive than the good great man whose arms I so laboriously sang. My
rustic pipe far better loved to sing of melodramatic poisoners and
ubiquitous detectives; of fine houses in the West of London, and dark
dens in the East. So the weekly chapter of my first novel ran merrily
off my pen while the printer's boy waited in the farmhouse kitchen.
Happy, happy days, so near to memory, and yet so far! In that peaceful
summer I finished my first novel, knocked Garibaldi on the head with a
closing rhapsody, saw the York spring and summer races in hopelessly wet
weather, learnt to love the Yorkshire people, and left Yorkshire almost
broken-heartedly on a dull, grey October morning, to travel Londonwards
through a landscape that was mostly under water.
[Illustration: MISS BRADDON'S INKSTAND]
And, behold, since that October morning I have written fifty-three
novels; I have lost dear old friends and found new friends, who are also
dear, but I have never looked on a Yorkshire landscape since I turned my
reluctant eyes from those level meadows and green lanes where the old
chestnut mare used to carry me ploddingly to and fro between tall,
tangled hedges of eglantine and honeysuckle.
[Illustration: signature: Very truly yours,
M. E. Braddon]
'_THE HOUSE OF ELMORE_'
BY F. W. ROBINSON
[Illustration]
It is a far cry back to 1853, when dreams of writing a book had almost
reached the boundary line of 'probable events.' I was then a pale,
long-haired, consumptive-looking youth, who had been successful in prize
poems--for there were prize competitions even in those far-off days--and
in acrostics, and in the acceptance of one or two short stories, which
had been actually published in a magazine that did not pay for
contributions (it was edited by a clergyman of the Church of England,
and the chaplain to a real duke), which magazine has gone the way of
many magazines, and is now as extinct as the dodo. It was in the year
1853, or a month or two earlier, that I wrote my first novel--which,
upon a moderate computation, I think, would make four or five good-sized
library volumes, but I have never attempted to 'scale' the manuscript.
It is in my possession still, although I have not seen it for many
weary years. It is buried with a heap more rubbish in a respectable old
oak chest, the key of which is even lost to me. And yet that MS. was the
turning-point of my small literary career. And it is the history of that
manuscript which leads up to the publication of my first novel; my first
step, though I did not know it, and hence it is part and parcel of the
history of my first book--a link in the chain.
[Illustration: AT TWENTY]
[Illustration: drawing by Geo. Hutchinson
signed: Yours Very Truly,
F. W. Robinson
(_From a photograph by Elliott & Fry_)]
When that manuscript was completed, it was read aloud, night after
night, to an admiring audience of family members, and pronounced as fit
for publication as anything of Dickens or Thackeray or Bulwer, who were
then in the full swing of their mighty capacities. Alas! I was a better
judge than my partial and amiable critics. I had very grave
doubts--'qualms,' I think they are called--and I had read that it was
uphill work to get a book published, and swagger through the world as a
real live being who had actually written a novel. There was a faint
hope, that was all; and so, with my MS. under my arm, I strolled into
the palatial premises of Messrs. Hurst & Blackett ('successors to Henry
Colburn' they proudly designated themselves at that period), laid my
heavy parcel on the counter, and waited, with fear and trembling, for
some one to emerge from the galleries of books and rows of desks beyond,
and inquire the nature of my business. And here ensued my first
surprise--quite a dramatic coincidence--for the tall, spare, middle-aged
gentleman who advanced from the shadows towards the counter, proved, to
my intense astonishment, to be a constant chess antagonist of mine at
Kling's Chess Rooms, round the corner, in New Oxford Street--rooms
which have long since disappeared, together with Horwitz, Harrwitz,
Loewenthal, Williams, and other great chess lights of those far-away
times, who were to be seen there, night after night, prepared for all
comers. Kling's was a great chess house, and I was a chess enthusiast,
as well as a youth who wanted to get into print. Failing literature, I
had made up my mind to become a chess champion, if possible, although I
knew already by quiet observation of my antagonists, that in that way
madness lay, sheer uncontrollable, raging madness--for me at any rate.
And the grave, middle-aged gentleman behind the counter of 13 Great
Marlborough Street, proved to be the cashier of the firm, and
used--being chess-mad with the rest of us--to spend his evenings at
'Kling's.' He was a player of my own strength, and for twelve months or
so had I skirmished with him over the chessboard, and fought innumerable
battles with him. He had never spoken of his occupation, nor I of my
restless ambitions--chess players never go far beyond the chequered
board.
[Illustration: ELMORE HOUSE]
'Hallo, Robinson!' he exclaimed in his surprise, 'you don't mean to say
that you---- '
And then he stopped and regarded my youthful appearance very critically.
'Yes, Mr. Kenny--it's a novel,' I said modestly; 'my first.'
'There's plenty of it,' he remarked dryly. 'I'll send it upstairs at
once. And I'll wish you luck, too; but,' he added, kindly preparing to
soften the shock of a future refusal, 'we have plenty of these come
in--about seven a day--and most of them go back to their writers again.'
[Illustration: AT THIRTY]
'Ye-es, I suppose so,' I answered, with a sigh.
For a while, however, I regarded the meeting as a happy augury--a lucky
coincidence. I even had the vain, hopeless notion that Mr. Kenny might
put in a good word for me, ask for special consideration, out of that
kindly feeling which we had for each other, and which chess antagonists
have invariably for each other, I am inclined to believe. But though we
met three or four times a week, from that day forth not one word
concerning the fate of my manuscript escaped the lips of Mr. Kenny. It
is probable the incident had passed from his memory; he had nothing to
do with the novel department itself, and the delivery of MSS. was a very
common everyday proceeding to him. I was too bashful, perhaps too
proud, an individual to ask any questions; but every evening that I
encountered him I used to wonder 'if he had heard anything,' if any news
of the book's fate had reached him, directly or indirectly; occasionally
even, as time went on, I was disposed to imagine that he was letting me
win the game out of kindness--for he was a gentle, kindly soul
always--in order to soften the shock of a disappointment which he knew
perfectly well was on its way towards me.
[Illustration: MR. ROBINSON'S LIBRARY]
[Illustration: THE GARDEN]
Some months afterwards, the fateful letter came to me from the firm,
regretting its inability to make use of the MS., and expressing many
thanks for a perusal of the same--a polite, concise, all-round kind of
epistle, which a publisher is compelled to keep in stock, and to send
out when rejected literature pours forth like a waterfall from the dusky
caverns of a publishing house in a large way of business. It was all
over, then--I had failed! From that hour I would turn chess player, and
soften my brain in a quest for silver cups or champion amateur stakes.
I could play chess better than I could write fiction, I was sure. Still,
after some days of dead despair, I sent the MS. once more on its
travels--this time to Smith & Elder's, whose reader, Mr. Williams, had
leapt into singular prominence since his favourable judgment of
Charlotte Brontë's book, and to whom most MSS. flowed spontaneously for
many years afterwards. And in due course of time, Mr. Williams, acting
for Messrs. Smith & Elder, asked me to call upon him--_for the MS.!_--at
Cornhill, and there I received my first advice, my first thrill of
exultation. 'Presently, and probably, _and with perseverance_,' he said,
'you will succeed in literature, and if you will remember now, that to
write a good novel is a very considerable achievement. Years of short
story-writing is the best apprenticeship for you. Write and rewrite, and
spare no pains.' I thanked him, and I went home with tears in my eyes of
gratitude and consolation, though my big story had been declined with
thanks. But I did not write again. I put away my MS., and went on for
six or eight hours a day at chess for many idle months before I was in
the vein for composition, and then, with a sudden dash, I began 'The
House of Elmore.' It was half finished when another strange incident
occurred. I received one morning a letter from Lascelles Wraxall
(afterwards Sir Lascelles Wraxall, Bart., as the reader may be probably
aware), informing me that he was one of the readers for Messrs. Hurst &
Blackett, and that it had been his duty some time ago to decide
unfavourably against a story which I had submitted to the notice of his
firm, but that he had intended to write to me a private note urging me
to adopt literature as a profession. His principal object in writing at
that time was to suggest my trying the fortunes of the novel, which he
had already read, with Messrs. Routledge, and he kindly added a letter
of introduction to that firm in the Broadway--an introduction which, by
the way, never came to anything.
[Illustration: THE DRAWING-ROOM]
Poor Lascelles Wraxall, clever writer and editor, press-man and literary
adviser, real Bohemian and true friend--indeed, everybody's friend but
his own--I look back at him with feelings of deep gratitude. He was a
rolling stone, and when I met him for the first time in my life, years
afterwards, he had left Marlborough Street for the Crimea; he had been
given a commission in the Turkish Contingent at Kertch; he had come back
anathematising the Service, and 'chock full' of grievances against the
Government, and he became once more editor and sub-editor, and
publisher's hack even, until he stepped into his baronetcy--an empty
title, for he had sold the reversion of the estates for a mere song long
ago--and became special correspondent in Austria for the _Daily
Telegraph_. And in Vienna he died, young in years still--not forty, I
think--closing a life that only wanted one turn more of 'application,' I
have often thought, to have achieved very great distinction. There are
still a few writing men about who remember Lascelles Wraxall, but they
are 'the boys of the old brigade.'
[Illustration: AT FORTY]
It was to Lascelles Wraxall I sent, when finished, 'The House of
Elmore,' as the reader may very easily guess. Wraxall had stepped so
much out of his groove--for the busy literary man that he was--to take
me by the hand, and point the way along 'the perilous road;' he had
given me so many kind words, that I wrote my hardest to complete my new
story before I should fade from his recollection. The book was finished
in five weeks, and in hot haste, and for months again I was left
wondering what the outcome of it all was to be; whether Wraxall was
reading my story, or whether--oh, horror!--some other reader less kindly
disposed, and more austere and critical, and hard to please, had been
told off to sit in judgment upon my second MS.
[Illustration: MR. ROBINSON AT WORK]
I went back to chess for a distraction till the fate of that book was
pronounced or sealed--it was always chess in the hours of my distress
and anxiety--and I once again faced Charles Kenny, and once again
wondered if he knew, and how much he knew, whilst he was deep in his
king's gambit or his giuoco piano; but he was not even aware that I had
sent in a second story, I learned afterwards. And then at last came the
judgment--the pleasant, if formal, notice from Marlborough Street that
the novel had been favourably reported upon by the reader, and that
Messrs. Hurst & Blackett would be pleased to see me at Marlborough
Street to talk the matter of its publication over with me. Ah! what a
letter that was!--what a surprise, after all!--what a good omen!
And some three months afterwards, at the end of the year 1854, my first
book--but my second novel--was launched into the reading world, and I
have hardly got over the feeling yet that I had actually a right to dub
myself a novelist!
When the first three notices of the book appeared, wild dreams of a
brilliant future beset me. They were all favourable notices--too
favourable; but _John Bull_, _The Press_, and _Bell's Messenger_ (I
think they were the papers) scattered favourable notices
indiscriminately at that time. Presently the _Athenæum_ sobered me a
little, but wound up with a kindly pat on the back, and the _Saturday
Review_, then in its seventh number, drenched me with vitriolic acid,
and brought me to a lower level altogether; and, finally, the _Morning
Herald_ blew a loud blast to my praise and glory--that last notice, I
believe, having been written by my old friend Sir Edward Clarke, then a
very young reviewer on the _Herald_ staff, with no dreams of becoming
Her Majesty's Solicitor-General just then! 'The House of Elmore'
actually paid its publishers' expenses, and left a balance, and brought
me in a little cheque; and thus my writing life began in sober earnest.
[Illustration: drawing by Geo. Hutchinson
signed: Very Truly Yours,
H. Rider Haggard]
'_DAWN_'
BY H. RIDER HAGGARD
[Illustration: THE FRONT GARDEN[B]]
I think that it was in an article by a fellow-scribe, where, doubtless
more in sorrow than in anger, that gentleman exposed the worthlessness
of the productions of sundry of his brother authors, in which I read
that whatever success I had met with as a writer of fiction was due to
my literary friends and 'nepotic criticism.' This is scarcely the case,
since when I began to write I do not think that I knew a single creature
who had published books--blue books alone excepted. Nobody was ever more
outside the ring, or less acquainted with the art of 'rolling logs,'
than the humble individual who pens these lines. But the reader shall
judge for himself.
To begin at the beginning: My very first attempt at imaginative writing
was made while I was a boy at school. One of the masters promised a
prize to that youth who should best describe on paper any incident, real
or imaginary. I entered the lists, and selected the scene at an
operation in a hospital as my subject. The fact that I had never seen an
operation, nor crossed the doors of a hospital, did not deter me from
this bold endeavour, which, however, was justified by its success. I was
declared to have won in the competition, though, probably through the
forgetfulness of the master, I remember that I never received the
promised prize. My next literary effort, written in 1876, was an account
of a Zulu war dance, which I witnessed when I was on the staff of the
Governor of Natal. It was published in the _Gentleman's Magazine_, and
very kindly noticed in various papers. A year later I wrote another
article, entitled 'A Visit to the Chief Secocoeni,' which very nearly
got me into trouble. I was then serving on the staff of Sir Theophilus
Shepstone, and the article, signed with my initials, reached South
Africa in its printed form shortly after the annexation of the
Transvaal. Young men with a pen in their hands are proverbially
indiscreet, and in this instance I was no exception. In the course of my
article I had described the Transvaal Boer at home with a fidelity that
should be avoided by members of a diplomatic mission, and had even gone
the length of saying that most of the Dutch women were 'fat.' Needless
to say, my remarks were translated into the Africander papers, and
somewhat extensively read, especially by the ladies in question and
their male relatives; nor did the editors of those papers forbear to
comment on them in leading articles. Shortly afterwards, there was a
great and stormy meeting of Boers at Pretoria. As matters began to look
serious, somebody ventured among them to ascertain the exciting cause,
and returned with the pleasing intelligence that they were all talking
of what the Englishman had written about the physical proportions of
their womenkind and domestic habits, and threatening to take up arms to
avenge it. Of my feelings on learning this news I will not discourse,
but they were uncomfortable, to say the least of it. Happily, in the
end, the gathering broke up without bloodshed, but when the late Sir
Bartle Frere came to Pretoria, some months afterwards, he administered
to me a sound and well-deserved lecture on my indiscretion. I excused
myself by saying that I had set down nothing which was not strictly
true, and he replied to the effect that therein lay my fault. I quite
agree with him; indeed, there is little doubt but that these bald
statements of fact as to the stoutness of the Transvaal 'fraus,' and the
lack of cleanliness in their homes, went near to precipitating a result
that, as it chanced, was postponed for several years. Well, it is all
done with now, and I take this opportunity of apologising to such of the
ladies in question as may still be in the land of life.
[Illustration: MR. RIDER HAGGARD AND HIS DAUGHTERS]
This unfortunate experience cooled my literary ardour, yet, as it
chanced, when some five years later I again took up my pen, it was in
connection with African affairs. These pages are no place for politics,
but I must allude to them in explanation. It will be remembered that the
Transvaal was annexed by Great Britain in 1877. In 1881 the Boers rose
in rebellion and administered several thrashings to our troops, whereon
the Government of this country came suddenly to the conclusion that a
wrong had been done to the victors, and, subject to some paper
restrictions, gave them back their independence. As it chanced, at the
time I was living on some African property belonging to me in the centre
of the operations, and so disgusted was I, in common with thousands of
others, at the turn which matters had taken, that I shook the dust of
South Africa off my feet and returned to England. Now, the first impulse
of an aggrieved Englishman is to write to the _Times_, and if I remember
right I took this course, but, my letter not being inserted, I enlarged
upon the idea and composed a book called 'Cetewayo and his White
Neighbours.' This semi-political work, or rather history, was very
carefully constructed from the records of some six years' experience,
and by the help of a shelf full of blue books that stare me in the face
as I write these words; and the fact that it still goes on selling seems
to show that it has some value in the eyes of students of South African
politics. But when I had written my book I was confronted by a
difficulty which I had not anticipated, being utterly without experience
in such affairs--that of finding somebody willing to publish it. I
remember that I purchased a copy of the _Athenæum_, and selecting the
names of various firms at hazard, wrote to them offering to submit my
manuscript, but, strange to say, none of them seemed anxious to peruse
it. At last--how I do not recollect--it came into the hands of Messrs.
Trübner, who, after consideration, wrote to say that they were willing
to bring it out on the half profit system, provided that I paid down
fifty pounds towards the cost of production. I did not at all like the
idea of parting with the fifty pounds, but I believed in my book, and
was anxious to put my views on the Transvaal rebellion and other African
questions before the world. So I consented to the terms, and in due
course 'Cetewayo' was published in a neat green binding. Somewhat to my
astonishment, it proved a success from a literary point of view. It was
not largely purchased--indeed, that fifty pounds took several years on
its return journey to my pocket, but it was favourably, and in some
instances almost enthusiastically, reviewed, especially in the colonial
papers.
[Illustration: THE HALL]
About this time the face of a girl whom I saw in a church at Norwood
gave me the idea of writing a novel. The face was so perfectly
beautiful, and at the same time so refined, that I felt I could fit a
story to it which should be worthy of a heroine similarly endowed. When
next I saw Mr. Trübner I consulted him on the subject.
'You can write--it is certain that you can write. Yes, do it, and I will
get the book published for you,' he answered.
Thus encouraged I set to work. How to compose a novel I knew not, so I
wrote straight on, trusting to the light of nature to guide me. My main
object was to produce the picture of a woman perfect in mind and body,
and to show her character ripening and growing spiritual, under the
pressure of various afflictions. Of course, there is a vast gulf between
a novice's aspiration and his attainment, and I do not contend that
Angela as she appears in 'Dawn' fulfils this ideal; also, such a person
in real life might, and probably would, be a bore--
Something too bright and good
For human nature's daily food.
[Illustration: MR. RIDER HAGGARD'S STUDY]
Still, this was the end I aimed at. Indeed, before I had done with her,
I became so deeply attached to my heroine that, in a literary sense, I
have never quite got over it. I worked very hard at this novel during
the next six months or so, but at length it was finished and despatched
to Mr. Trübner, who, as his firm did not deal in this class of book,
submitted it to five or six of the best publishers of fiction. One and
all they declined it, so that by degrees it became clear to me that I
might as well have saved my labour. Mr. Trübner, however, had confidence
in my work, and submitted the manuscript to Mr. John Cordy Jeaffreson
for report; and here I may pause to say that I think there is more
kindness in the hearts of literary men than is common in the world. It
is not a pleasant task, in the face of repeated failure, again and again
to attempt the adventure of persuading brother publishers to undertake
the maiden effort of an unknown man. Still less pleasant is it, as I can
vouch from experience, to w
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