Chapter I: Introduction: By JEROME K. JEROME (1)

'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

MY FIRST BOOK

'_READY MONEY MORTIBOY_'

BY WALTER BESANT

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

'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.

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.

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?'

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.

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.

'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.

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.'

'_THE WRECK OF THE "GROSVENOR"_'

BY W. CLARK RUSSELL

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.

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.