Chapter IV

Much of this book, as you will have noted, is the story of other books, their origins and their fates. This is something I could not help if I tried, because my whole life has been a series of books.

On our first motor trip up the Pacific Coast we had gone through one of the redwood forests, and I was fascinated by those marvelous trees. One of them was so big that the one-lane road had been cut through its trunk. I got out and wandered about in the fern-covered forest, and when I drove on, there popped into my mind a delightful story for children. Two little gnomes, a young one and his grandfather, were the last of their race to survive. A human child, wandering about in the ferns, was greeted timidly by the grandfather and begged to help in finding a wife for the younger gnome.

The little girl promised to help, and the two gnomes were taken into the automobile, which of course immediately became a “gnomobile”--the title of the book. There followed a string of adventures extending all the way from California to the forests of the East. The two gnomes were kept in a large basket, and the playful young man of fashion who did the driving told everybody that the basket contained Abyssinian geese. Thereafter he was hounded by newspapermen who wanted to see those rare and precious creatures. When the gnomes were stolen and put on exhibition in a circus, the story indeed became exciting.

This book for children was published with a lot of gay pictures; it was also published in France, and is about to be republished here. Walt Disney read it and told me that he had never done anything with live characters, but if ever he did he would do _The Gnomobile_. Now, almost thirty years later, he is setting out to keep the promise. I have a contract.

V

Next story: I thought it most amusing when my cousin, Wallis Warfield of Baltimore, came near to wrecking the British Empire by running away with its king; so I wrote a one-act play showing exactly how a Baltimore belle went about fascinating any male animal, whether he had a crown or a dunce’s cap on his head--or both at the same time. I called it _Wally for Queen_. I thought it was hilariously funny; but when I sent it to my friend, Arch Selwyn, movie producer, he wrote back, “Upton, are you crazy, or do you think that I am?” So the crazy little play remains unproduced. But I can wait, and maybe I’ll outlast my cousin and her ex-king, and my story will be history and can be made into a musical comedy, as happened to Bernard Shaw’s _Pygmalion_.