Chapter II: Part 2

"I have every sympathy," he replied, "with the attempts made by Antoine and his Theatre Libre to discover strong and unconventional work. But I do not believe in the new terms which a certain school have invented for everything; after all, the play's the thing, whether it is produced by a group who dub themselves romantics, realists, old or new style. Realism is not necessarily real life; a photograph only gives a rigid, neutral side of the object placed in front of the camera. A dissection of what we call affection does not give so vivid an impression of the master-passion as a true love-sonnet written by a poet. Life is a thing of infinite gradations; a dramatist wishes to show existence as it really is, not as it may be under exceptionally revolting circumstances."

His own favourite dramatist and writer is Shakespeare, whom, however, he only knows by translation, and _Hamlet_ and _Desdemona_ are his favourite hero and heroine in the fiction of the world, although he considered Balzac his literary master.

M. Daudet will seldom be beguiled into talking on politics. Like all Frenchmen, the late Panama scandals have profoundly shocked and disgusted him, as revealing a state of things discreditable to the Government of his country. But the creator of Desiree Dolobelle has a profound belief in human nature, and believes that, come what may, the novelist will never lack beautiful and touching models in the world round and about him.

_The Dismal Throng._

BY ROBERT BUCHANAN.

ILLUSTRATIONS BY GEO. HUTCHINSON.

(_Written after reading the last Study in Literary Distemper._)

-----

The Fairy Tale of Life is done,
The horns of Fairyland cease blowing,
The Gods have left us one by one,
And the last Poets, too, are going!
Ended is all the mirth and song,
Fled are the merry Music-makers;
And what remains? The Dismal Throng
Of literary Undertakers!

Clad in deep black of funeral cut,
With faces of forlorn expression,
Their eyes half open, souls close shut,
They stalk along in pale procession;
The latest seed of Schopenhauer,
Born of a Trull of Flaubert's choosing,
They cry, while on the ground they glower,
"There's nothing in the world amusing!"

There's Zola, grimy as his theme,
Nosing the sewers with cynic pleasure,
Sceptic of all that poets dream,
All hopes that simple mortals treasure;
With sense most keen for odours strong,
He stirs the Drains and scents disaster,
Grim monarch of the Dismal Throng
Who bow their heads before "the Master."

There's Miss Matilda[1] in the south,
There's Valdes[2] in Madrid and Seville,
There's mad Verlaine[3] with gangrened mouth.
Grinning at Rimbaud and the Devil.
From every nation of the earth,
Instead of smiling merry-makers,
They come, the foes of Love and Mirth,
The Dismal Throng of Undertakers.

There's Tolstoi, towering in his place
O'er all the rest by head and shoulders;
No sunshine on that noble face
Which Nature meant to charm beholders!
Mad with his self-made martyr's shirt,
Obscene, through hatred of obsceneness,
He from a pulpit built of Dirt
Shrieks his Apocalypse of Cleanness!

There's Ibsen,[4] puckering up his lips,
Squirming at Nature and Society,
Drawing with tingling finger-tips
The clothes off naked Impropriety!
So nice, so nasty, and so grim,
He hugs his gloomy bottled thunder;
To summon up one smile from _him_
Would be a miracle of wonder!

There's Maupassant,[5] who takes his cue
From Dame Bovary's bourgeois troubles;
There's Bourget, dyed his own sick "blue,"
There's Loti, blowing blue soap bubbles;
There's Mendes[6] (no Catullus, he!)
There's Richepin,[7] sick with sensual passion.
The Dismal Throng! So foul, so free,
Yet sombre all, as is the fashion.

"Turn down the lights! put out the Sun!
Man is unclean and morals muddy.
The Fairy Tale of Life is done,
Disease and Dirt must be our study!
Tear open Nature's genial heart,
Let neither God nor gods escape us,
But spare, to give our subjects zest,
The basest god of all--Priapus!"

The Dismal Throng! 'Tis thus they preach,
From Christiania to Cadiz,
Recruited as they talk and teach
By dingy lads and draggled ladies;
Without a sunbeam or a song,
With no clear Heaven to hunger after;
The Dismal Throng! the Dismal Throng!
The foes of Life and Love and Laughter!

By Shakespere's Soul! if this goes on,
From every face of man and woman
The gift of gladness will be gone,
And laughter will be thought inhuman!
The only beast who smiles is Man!
_That_ marks him out from meaner creatures!
Confound the Dismal Throng, who plan
To take God's birth-mark from our features!

Manfreds who walk the hospitals.
Laras and Giaours grown scientific,
They wear the clothes and bear the palls
Of Stormy Ones once thought terrific;
They play the same old funeral tune,
And posture with the same dejection,
But turn from howling at the moon
To literary vivisection!

And while they loom before our view,
Dark'ning the air that should be sunny,
Here's Oscar,[8] growing dismal too,
Our Oscar, who was once so funny!
Blue china ceases to delight
The dear curl'd darling of society,
Changed are his breeches, once so bright,
For foreign breaches of propriety!

I like my Oscar, tolerate
My Archer[9] of the Dauntless Grammar,
Nay, e'en my Moore[10] I estimate
Not too unkindly, 'spite his clamour;
But I prefer my roses still
To all the garlic in their garden--
Let Hedda gabble as she will,
I'll stay with Rosalind, in Arden!

O for one laugh of Rabelais,
To rout these moralising croakers!
(The cowls were mightier far than they,
Yet fled before that King of Jokers)
O for a slash of Fielding's pen
To bleed these pimps of Melancholy!
O for a Boz, born once again
To play the Dickens with such folly!

Yet stay! why bid the dead arise?
Why call them back from Charon's wherry?
Come, Yankee Mark, with twinkling eyes,
Confuse these ghouls with something merry!
Come, Kipling, with thy soldiers three,
Thy barrack-ladies frail and fervent,
Forsake thy themes of butchery
And be the merry Muses' servant!

Come, Dickens' foster-son, Bret Harte!
Come, Sims, though gigmen flout thy labours!
Tom Hardy, blow the clouds apart
With sound of rustic fifes and tabors!
Dick Blackmore, full of homely joy,
Come from thy garden by the river,
And pelt with fruit and flowers, old boy,
These dismal bores who drone for ever!

Come, too, George Meredith, whose eyes,
Though oft with vapours shadow'd over,
Can catch the sunlight from the skies
And flash it down on lass and lover;
Tell us of Life, and Love's young dream,
Show the prismatic soul of Woman,
Bring back the Light, whose morning beam
First made the Beast upright and human!

You _can_ be merry, George, I vow!
Wit through your cloudiest prosing twinkles!
Brood as you may, upon your brow
The cynic, Art, has left no wrinkles!
For you're a poet to the core,
No ghouls can from the Muses win you;
So throw your cap i' the air once more,
And show the joy of earth that's in you!

By Heaven! we want you one and all,
For Hypochondria is reigning--
The Mater Dolorosa's squall
Makes Nature hideous with complaining!
Ah! who will paint the Face that smiled
When Art was virginal and vernal--
The pure Madonna with her Child,
Pure as the light, and as eternal!

Pest on these dreary, dolent airs!
Confound these funeral pomps and poses!
Is Life Dyspepsia's and Despair's,
And Love's complexion all _chlorosis_?
A lie! There's Health, and Mirth, and Song,
The World still laughs, and goes a-Maying--
The dismal, droning, doleful Throng
Are only smuts in sunshine playing!

Play up, ye horns of Fairyland!
Shine out, O sun, and planets seven!
Beyond these clouds a beckoning Hand
Gleams from the lattices of Heaven!
The World's alive--still quick, not dead,
It needs no Undertaker's warning;
So put the Dismal Throng to bed,
And wake once more to Light and Morning!

* * *

[1] Mathilde Serao, an Italian novelist.

[2] A Spanish novelist.

[3] Verlaine and Rimbaud, two poets of the Parisian Decadence.

[4] A Norwegian playwright.

[5] Guy de Maupassant, Paul Bourget, and Pierre Loti, novelists of the
Decadence.

[6] Catulle Mendes, a Parisian poet and novelist.

[7] Jean Richepin, ditto.

[8] Mr. Oscar Wilde.

[9] Mr. William Archer, a newspaper critic.

[10] Mr. George Moore, an author and newspaper critic.

NOTE.--These verses refer to a literary phenomenon that will in
time become historical, that phenomenon being the sudden growth, in
all parts of Europe, of a fungus-literature bred of Foulness and
Decay; and contemporaneously, the intrusion into all parts of human
life of a Calvinistic yet materialistic Morality. This literature
of a sunless Decadence has spread widely, by virtue of its own
uncleanness, and its leading characteristics are gloom, ugliness,
prurience, preachiness, and weedy flabbiness of style. That it has
not flourished in Great Britain, save among a small and discredited
Cockney minority, is due to the inherent manliness and vigour of
the national character. The land of Shakespere, Scott, Burns,
Fielding, Dickens, and Charles Reade is protected against literary
miasmas by the strength of its humour and the sunniness of its
temperament.--R.B.

_In the Hands of Jefferson._

BY EDEN PHILLPOTTS.

ILLUSTRATIONS BY RONALD GRAY.

-----

It is not difficult to appreciate the recent catastrophe in Oceania, where the island of Great Sangir was partially smothered by terrific volcanic and seismic convulsions, when one has visited the Western Indies.

Many of these tropic isles probably owe their present isolation, if not their actual existence, to mighty earthquake throes in remote ages of terrestrial history beyond the memory of man. But man's memory is not a very extensive affair, and at best probes the past to the extent of a mere rind of a few thousand years. For the rest he has to read the word of God, written in fossil and stone and those wondrous arcana of Nature, which, each in turn, yields a fragment of the secret of truth to human intellect.

Regions that have been produced or largely modified by earthquake and volcanic upheaval may, probably enough, vanish at any moment under like conditions; and the island of Nevis, hard by St. Christopher, in the West Indies, strongly suggests a possibility of such disaster. It has always been the regular rendezvous of hurricanes and earthquakes, and it consists practically of one vast volcanic mountain which rises abruptly from the sea and pushes its densely-wooded sides three thousand two hundred feet into the sky. The crater shows no particularly active inclination at present, but it is doubtless wide awake and merely resting, like its volcanic neighbour in St. Christopher, where the breathing of the dormant giant can be noted through rent and rift. The Fourth Officer of our steamship "Rhine" assured me, as we approached the lofty dome of Nevis and gazed upon its fertile acclivities and fringe of palms, that it would never surprise him upon his rounds to find the place had altogether disappeared under the Caribbean Sea. He added, according to his custom, an allusion to Columbus, and explained also that, in the dead and gone days of Slave Traffic, Nevis was a much more important spot than it is ever likely to become again. Then, indeed, the island enjoyed no little prosperity and importance, being a head centre and mart for the industry in negroes. Emancipation, however, wrecked Nevis, together with a good many other of the Antilles.

At Montpelier, on this island, Lord Nelson enjoyed his honeymoon, but now only a few trees and a little ruined masonry at the corner of a sugar-cane plantation appear to mark the spot. Further, it may be recorded, as a point in favour of the place, that it grows very exceptional Tangerine oranges. These, to taste in perfection, should be eaten at the turning point, before their skins grow yellow. We cannot judge of the noble possibilities in an orange at home. I brought back a dozen of these Nevis Tangerines with me, but I secretly suspected that, in spite of their fine reputation, quite inferior sorts would be able to beat them by the time they got to England; and it was so.

We stopped half-an-hour only at Charlestown, Nevis, and then proceeded to St. Christopher, a sister isle of greater size and scope.

At Antigua, there came aboard the "Rhine" a young man who implicitly leads us to understand that he is the most important person in the West Indies. He is the Governor of Antigua's own clerk, and is going to St. Christopher with a portmanteau, some walking-sticks, and a despatch-box. It appears that his significance is gigantic, and that, though the nominal seat of government lies at Antigua, yet the real active centre of political administration may be found immediately under the Panama hat of the Governor's own clerk. This he takes the trouble to explain to us. The Governor himself is a puppet, his trusted men of resource and portfolio-holders are the veriest fantoccini; for the Governor's own clerk pulls the strings, frames the foreign policy, conducts, controls, adjusts difficulties, and maintains a right balance between the parties. This he condescends to make clear to us.

I ventured to ask him how many of the more important nations were involved with the matters at present in his despatch-box; and he said lightly, as though the concern in hand was a mere bagatelle, that only the United States, Great Britain and Germany were occupying his attention at the moment.

The Model Man said:

"I suppose you'll soon knock off a flea-bite like that?"

And the Governor's own clerk answered:

"Yes, I fancy so, unless any unforeseen hitch happens. Negotiations are pending."

I liked his last sentence particularly. It smacked so strongly of miles of red tape and months of official delay.

When we reached St. Christopher, it was currently reported that the Governor's own clerk had simply come to settle a dispute between two negro landowners concerning a fragment of the island rather smaller than a table-napkin; but personally I doubt not this was a blind, under cover of which he secretly pushed forward those pending negotiations. He certainly had fine diplomatic instincts, and a sound view, from a political standpoint, of the value of veracity.

When we cast out anchor off Basseterre, St. Christopher, the Treasure hurried to me in some sorrow. He had proposed going ashore, with his Enchantress and her mother, to show them the sights, but now, to his dismay, he found that unforeseen official duties would keep him on the ship during our brief sojourn here. With anxiety almost pathetic, therefore, he entrusted the Enchantress to me, and commended her mother to the Doctor's care. I felt the compliment, and assured him that I would simply devote myself to her--platonically withal; but the Doctor was not quite so hearty about her mother. However, he must behave like a gentleman, whether he felt inclined to do so or not, which the Treasure knew, and, therefore, felt safe.

Our party of four started straightway for a ramble in St. Kitts (as St. Christopher is more generally called), and, upon landing, we were happily met by a middle-aged negro, who had evidently watched our boat from afar. He tumbled off a pile of planks, where he had been basking in the sun, girt his indifferent raiment about him, and then, by sheer force of character, took complete command of our contemplated expedition. It may have been hypnotism, or some kindred mystery, but we were unresisting children in his hands. He said: "Follow me, gem'men: me show you ebb'ryting for nuffing: de 'tanical Garns, de prison-house, de public buildings, de church, an' all. Dis way, dis way, ladies. Don't listen to dem niggers; dey nobody on dis island."

The Doctor alone fought feebly, but it was useless, and, in two minutes, our masterful Ethiop had led us all away to see the sights.

"What's your name?" I asked.

"Jefferson, sar; ebb'rybody know Jefferson. Fus', we go to 'tanical Garns. Here dey is."

The Botanical Gardens of Basseterre, St. Kitts, were handsome, extensive, and well cared for. We wandered with pleasure down broad walks, shaded by cabbage palms and palmettos, mahogany and tamarind trees; we admired the fountain and varied foliage and blazing flower-beds, streaked and splashed with many brilliant blossoms and bright-leaved crotons.

"There," said the mother of the Enchantress, pointing to a handsome lily, "is a specimen of Crinum Asiaticum."

The Doctor started as though she had used a bad word. He hates a woman to know anything he does not, and this botanical display irritated him; but our attention was instantly distracted by Jefferson, who, upon hearing the lily admired, walked straight up to it and picked it.

I expostulated. I said:

"You mustn't go plucking curiosities here, Jefferson, or you will get us all into hot water."

"Dat's right, massa," he replied. "Me an' de boss garner great ole frens. De ladies jus' say what dey like, an' Jefferson pick him off for dem."

He was as good as his word, and a fine theatrical display followed, as our party grew gradually bolder and bolder, and our guide, evidently upon his mettle, complied with each request in turn.

I will cast a fragment of the dialogue and action in dramatic form, so that you may the better judge of and picture that wild scene.

THE ENCHANTRESS (_timidly_): Should you think we might have this tiny flower?

JEFFERSON: I pick him, missy. (_Does so._)

THE DOCTOR: I wonder if they'd miss one of those red things? They've got a good number. I believe they're medicinal. Should you think----?

(_Jefferson picks two of the flowers in question. The Doctor takes heart._)

THE MOTHER OF THE ENCHANTRESS: Dear me! Here's a singularly fine specimen of the Somethingiensis. I wonder if you----?

(_Jefferson picks it._)

THE DOCTOR: We might have that big affair there, hidden away behind those orange trees. Nobody will miss it. I should rather like it for my own.

(_Jefferson wrestles with this concern, and the Doctor lends him a knife._)

THE ENCHANTRESS: Oh, there's a sweet, sweet blossom! Might we have that, and that bud, and that bunch of leaves next to them, Monsieur Jefferson?

(_Jefferson, evidently feeling he is in for a hard morning's work, makes further onslaught upon the flora, and drags down three parts of an entire tree._)

THE MOTHER OF THE ENCHANTRESS: When you're done there, I will ask you to go into this fountain for one of those blue water-lilies.

(_Jefferson, getting rather sick of it, pretends he does not hear._)

THE DOCTOR (_speaking in loud tones which Jefferson cannot ignore_): Pick that, please, and that, and those things half-way up that tree.

(_Jefferson begins to grow very hot and uneasy. He peeps about nervously, probably with a view to dodging his old friend, the head gardener._)

THE CHRONICLER (_feeling that his party is disgracing itself, and desiring to reprove them in a parable_): I say, Jefferson, could you cut down that palm--the biggest of those two--and have it sent along to the ship? If the head gardener is here, he might help you.

JEFFERSON (_losing his temper, missing the parable, and turning upon the Chronicler_): No, sar! You no hab no more. I'se dam near pulled off ebb'ryting in de 'tanical Garns, an' I'se goin' right away now 'fore anyfing's said!

(_Exit Jefferson rapidly, trying to conceal a mass of foliage under his ragged coat. The party follows him in single file._)

[_Curtain._]

I doubt not that, had we met the head gardener just then, our guide would have lost a friend.

Henceforth, evidently feeling we were not wholly responsible in this foreign atmosphere of wonders, Jefferson stuck to the streets, and took us to churches and shops and other places where we had to control ourselves and leave things alone.

On the way to a photographer's he cooled down and became instructive again. He told us the name and address and bad actions of every white person we met. Society at St. Kitts, from his point of view, appeared to be in an utterly rotten condition. The most reputable clique was his own. We met several of his personal friends. They were generally brown or yellow, and he assured us that he had white blood in him too--a fact we could not possibly have guessed. Presently he grew confidential, and told us that his eldest son was a source of great discomfort to him. At the age of fifteen Jefferson Junior had run away from home and left St. Kitts to better himself at Barbados. Five years afterwards, however, when he had almost passed out of his parents' memory, so Jefferson declared, the young man returned, sick and penniless, to the home of his birth. I said here:

"This is the Prodigal Son story over again, Jefferson. Did you kill the fatted calf, I wonder, and make much of the lad?"

"No, sar," he answered; "didn't kill no fatted nuffing, but I precious near kill de podigal son."

Concerning St. Christopher, we have direct authority, from the immortal and ubiquitous Columbus himself, that it is an island of exceptional advantages; for, delighted with its aspect in 1493, he bestowed his own name upon it. Indeed, the place has a beautiful and imposing appearance. Dark green forests and emerald tracts of sugar-cane now clothe its plains and hills; and Mount Misery, the loftiest peak, rises to a height of over four thousand feet. Caribs were the original inhabitants and possessors of St. Kitts, but when England and France agreed to divide this island between them in 1627, we find the local anthropophagi left out in the cold as usual. After bickering for about sixty years, the French enjoyed a temporary success, and slew their British brother colonists pretty generally. Then Fortune's wheel took a turn, and under the Peace of Utrecht, in 1713, St. Kitts became our property from strand to mountain-top.

There is only one road in this island, I am told, but that is thirty miles long, and extends all round the place. Volcanic indications occur freely on Mount Misery, and, as at Nevis, so here, the entire community may, some day, find itself very uncomfortably situated. A feature of St. Kitts is said to be monkeys, which occur in the woods. These, however, like the deer at Tobago, are more frequently heard of than seen. People were rather alarmed here, during our flying visit, by a form of influenza which settled upon the town of Basseterre; but we, who had only lately come from England, and were familiar with the revolting lengths to which this malady will go in cold climes, reassured them, and laughed their puny tropical species to scorn. Finally, of St. Kitts, I would say: From information received in the first case, and from personal experience in the second, that there you shall find sugar culture in most approved and advanced perfection, and purchase walking-sticks of bewildering variety and beauty.

The ladies of our party decreed they had no wish to visit the gaol--a decision on their part which annoyed Jefferson considerably. He explained that the St. Kitts prison-house was, perhaps, better worth seeing than anything on the island; he also added that a book was kept there in which we should be invited to write our names and make remarks. They were proof, however, against even this inducement; and, having seen the church--a very English building, with homely little square tower--we left our Enchantress and her parent at the photographer's, to make such purchases as seemed good to them, and await our return.

In this picture-shop, by the way, the Doctor grew almost boisterously delighted over a deplorable representation of negro lepers. Young and old, male and female, halt and maimed, the poor sufferers had been photographed in a long row; and my brother secured the entire panorama of them and whined for more. These lamentable representations of lepers gave him keener pleasure than anything he had seen since we left the Trinidad Hospital. In future, when we reached a new port, he would always hurry off to photographers' shops, where they existed, and simply clamour for lepers.

I asked Jefferson, as we proceeded to the prison, whether he thought we should be allowed to peer about among the inner secrets of the place, and he answered: "You see ebb'ryting, sar; de head p'liceman great ole fren' of mine."

My brother said:

"You seem to know all the best people in St. Kitts, Jefferson."

And he admitted that it was so. He replied:

"Jefferson 'quainted wid ebb'rybody, an' ebb'rybody 'quainted wid Jefferson."

Which put his position in a nutshell.

The prison was not very impressive viewed from outside, being but a mere mean black and white building, with outer walls which experienced criminals at home would have smiled at. We rang a noisy bell, and were allowed to enter upon the demand of Jefferson.

Four sinners immediately met our gaze. They sat pensively breaking stones in a wide courtyard. A building, with barred windows, threw black shade upon the blazing white ground of this open space; and here, shielded from the sun, the convicts reclined and made a show of work. Jefferson, with rather a lack of delicate feeling, drew up before this little stone-breaking party and beamed upon it. The Doctor and I walked past and tried to look as though we saw nobody, but our guide did not choose that we should miss the most interesting thing in the place thus.

"Look har, gem'men; see dese prisoners breakin' stones."

"All right, all right," answered my brother; "push on; don't stand staring there. We haven't come to gloat over those poor devils."

But I really think the culprits were as disappointed as Jefferson. They evidently felt that they were the most important part of the entire spectacle, and rather resented being passed over.

"You won't see no more prisoners, if you don't look at dese, sar," answered Jefferson. "Dar's only terrible few convics in de gaol jus' now."

"So much the better," answered the unsympathetic Doctor.

It certainly appeared to be a most lonely and languishing place of incarceration. We inspected the cells, and observed in one of them a peculiar handle fastened against the wall. This proved to be a West Indian substitute for the treadmill. The turning of the handle can be made easy or difficult by an arrangement of screws without the cell. The affair is set for a certain number of revolutions, and a warder explained to us that where hard labour has been meted to a prisoner, he spends long, weary hours struggling with this apparatus and earning his meals. When the necessary number of turns are completed, a bell rings, and one can easily picture the relief in many an erring black man's heart upon the sound of it. At another corner of the courtyard was piled a great heap of cannon-balls. These were used for shot-drill--an arduous form of exercise calculated to tame the wildest spirit and break the strongest back. The whitewashed cells were wonderfully clean and wholesome--more so, in fact, than most public apartments I saw elsewhere in the West Indies. This effect may be produced in some measure by the absolute lack of household goods and utensils, pictures or _bric-a-brac_. In fact, the only piece of furniture I could find anywhere was a massive wooden tripod, used for flogging prisoners upon.

Then we went in to have a chat with the Superintendent. He was rather nervous and downcast, and apparently feared that we had formed a poor opinion of his gaol. He apologised quite humbly for the paucity of prisoners, and explained that times were bad, and there was little or nothing doing in the criminal world of St. Kitts. He really did not know what had come to the place lately. He perfectly remembered, in the good old days, having had above fifty prisoners at a time in his hands. Why, blacks had been hung there before now. But of late days business grew to be a mere farce. If anybody did do anything of a capitally criminal nature at St. Kitts, during the next twenty years or so, he very much doubted if the authorities would permit him to carry the affair through. His opinion was that an assassin would be taken away altogether and bestowed upon Antigua. I asked him how he accounted for such a stagnation in crime, and he answered, rather bitterly, that the churches and chapels and Moravian missions had to be thanked for it. There were far too many of them. Ordinary human instincts were frustrated at every turn. Little paltry sects of nobodies filled their tin meeting-houses Sunday after Sunday, and yet an important Government institution, like the gaol, remained practically empty. He could not understand it. At the rate things were going, it would be necessary to shut his prison up altogether in a year's time. Certainly, one of his present charges--a man he felt proud of in every way--was sentenced to penal servitude for life, and had only lately made a determined attempt to escape. But he could hardly expect the Government to keep up an entire gaol, with warders and a Superintendent and everything, for one man, however wicked he might be. I tried to cheer him up, and spoke hopefully about the natural depravity of everything human. I said:

"You must look forward. The Powers of Evil are by no means played out yet. Black sheep occur in every fold. After periods of drought, seasons of great plenty frequently ensue. There should be magnificent raw material in this island, which will presently mature and keep you as busy as a bee."

"Dar's my son, too," said Jefferson, encouragingly; "I'se pretty sure you hab him 'fore long."

Then the man grew slightly more sanguine, and asked if we should care to sign his book, and make a few remarks in it before departing.

"Of course I know it's only a small prison at best," he said, deferentially.

"As to that," answered the Doctor, speaking for himself, "I have certainly been in a great many bigger ones, but never in any house of detention better conducted and cleaner kept than yours. You deserve more ample recognition. I should judge you to be a man second to none in your management of malefactors. For my part, I will assuredly write this much in your book."

The volume was produced, and my brother sat down and expatiated about the charms and advantages of St. Kitts prison-house. He filled half a page with complimentary and irresponsible criticism; then he handed the book to me. The Superintendent said that he should take it as particularly kind if, in my remarks, I would insert a good word for the drainage system. Advised by the Doctor that I might do so with truth and justice, I wrote as follows:

"A remarkably clean, ably-managed, and well-ordered establishment, with an admirable staff of officials, a gratifying scarcity of evil-doers, and particularly happy sanitary arrangements."

Then we went off to rejoin the Enchantress and her mother, and see further sights during the brief time which now remained at our disposal. The ladies had completed their purchases, and with them we now traversed extended portions of the town, and visited a negro colony, where thatched roofs peeped out from among tattered plantain leaves, and rustic cottages hid in the shade of tamarind and orange, lime and cocoanut. The lazy folks lounged about, chewing sugar-cane and munching bananas, according to their pleasant custom. The men chattered, and the women prattled and played with their yellow and ebony babies. One saw no ambition, no proper pride, no obtrusive morality anywhere. Jefferson appeared to be a personage in these parts. He marched along saluting his many friends and smoking a cigar which the Doctor had given him. He stopped occasionally to crack a joke or offer advice; and when we came to any negro or negress whose history embraced a matter of interest, Jefferson would stop and lecture upon the subject, while he or she stood and grinned and admitted his remarks were unquestionably true. As a rule, instead of grinning, they ought to have wept, for Jefferson's anecdotes and scraps of private scandals led me to fear that about ninety-nine in a hundred of his cronies ought to be under lock and key, in spite of what the prison authorities had told us.

Then we came down through a slum and found ourselves by the sea, upon a long, level beach of dark sand. The pier stood half-a-mile ahead, and we now determined to proceed without further delay to the boats, return to the "Rhine," and safely bestow our curiosities before she sailed. Apprised of this intention, Jefferson prepared to take leave of our party. He assured me that it had given him very considerable pleasure to thus devote his morning hours to our service. He trusted that we were satisfied with his efforts, and hinted that, though he should not dream of levying any formal charge, yet some trifling and negotiable memento of us would not be misunderstood or give him the least offence. We rewarded him adequately, thanked him much for all his trouble, and hoped that, when next we visited St. Kitts, his cheerful face might be the first to meet us. He answered:

"Please God, gem'men, I be at de pier-head when next you come 'long. Anyhow, you ask for Jefferson." Then, blessing us without stint, he departed.

And here I am reluctantly compelled to reprove the white and tawny-coloured inhabitants of St. Kitts for a breach of good manners. Boat-loads of gentlemen from shore crowded the "Rhine," like locusts, during her short stay at this island. They inundated the saloon bar, scrambled for seats at the luncheon-table, and showed a wild eagerness to eat and drink for nothing, which was most unseemly. One would have imagined that these worthy folks only enjoyed a hearty meal upon the occasional visits of a steamer; for after they had done with us they all rowed off to a neighbouring vessel, and boarded her in like manner, swarming up her sides to see what they could devour. That the intelligent male population of an island should come off to the ships, and chat with acquaintances and hear the latest news and enlarge its mind, is rational enough; but that it should organise greedy raids upon the provisions, and get in the way of the crew and passengers, and eat up refreshments which it is not justified in even approaching, appears to me unrefined, if not absolutely vulgar.

Leprosy and gluttony are the prevailing disorders at St. Kitts. The first is, unfortunately, incurable, but the second might easily be remedied, and should be. All that the white inhabitants need is a shade more self-control in the matter of other people's food, then they will be equal to the best of their brothers at home or abroad.

That afternoon the subject of influenza formed a principal theme in the smoking-room of the "Rhine." Our Fourth Officer said:

"Probably I am better qualified to discuss it than any of you men; for, two years ago, I had a most violent attack of Russian influenza _in_ Russia. Mere English, suburban influenza is child's-play by comparison. I suffered at Odessa on the Black Sea, and my temperature went up to just under two hundred, and I singed the bed-clothes. A friend of mine, an old shipmate, had it at the same place; and his temperature went considerably over two hundred, and he set his bed-clothes on fire and was burnt to death, being too weak to escape."

This reminiscence would seem to show that our Fourth Officer has at last exhausted his supplies of facts, and will now no doubt fall back on reserves of fiction; which, judged from this sample, are probably very extensive. Though few mariners turn novelists, yet it is significant, as showing the great bond of union between seafaring life and pure imagination, that those who have done so can point to most gratifying results.

_My First Book._

BY I. ZANGWILL.

ILLUSTRATIONS BY GEO. HUTCHINSON.

-----

As it is scarcely two years since my name (which, I hear, is a _nom de plume_) appeared in print on the cover of a book, I may be suspected of professional humour when I say I really do not know which was my first book. Yet such is the fact. My literary career has been so queer that I find it not easy to write my autobibliography.

"What is a pound?" asked Sir Robert Peel in an interrogative mood futile as Pilate's. "What is a book?" I ask, and the dictionary answers with its usual dogmatic air, "A collection of sheets of paper, or similar material, blank, written, or printed, bound together." At this rate my first book would be that romance of school life in two volumes, which, written in a couple of exercise books, circulated gratuitously in the schoolroom, and pleased our youthful imaginations with teacher-baiting tricks we had not the pluck to carry out in the actual. I shall always remember this story because, after making the tour of the class, it was returned to me with thanks and a new first page from which all my graces of style had evaporated. Indignant enquiry discovered the criminal--he admitted he had lost the page, and had rewritten it from memory. He pleaded that it was better written (which in one sense was true), and that none of the facts had been omitted.

This ill-treated tale was "published" when I was ten, but an old schoolfellow recently wrote to me reminding me of an earlier novel written in an old account book. Of this I have no recollection, but, as he says he wrote it day by day at my dictation, I suppose he ought to know. I am glad to find I had so early achieved the distinction of keeping an amanuensis.

The dignity of print I achieved not much later, contributing verses and virtuous essays to various juvenile organs. But it was not till I was eighteen that I achieved a printed first book. The story of this first book is peculiar; and, to tell it in approved story form, I must request the reader to come back two years with me.

One fine day, when I was sixteen, I was wandering about the Ramsgate sands looking for Toole. I did not really expect to see him, and I had no reason to believe he was in Ramsgate, but I thought if providence were kind to him it might throw him in my way. I wanted to do him a good turn. I had written a three-act farcical comedy at the request of an amateur dramatic club. I had written out all the parts, and I think there were rehearsals. But the play was never produced. In the light of after knowledge I suspect some of those actors must have been of quite professional calibre. You understand, therefore, why my thoughts turned to Toole. But I could not find Toole. Instead, I found on the sands a page of a paper called _Society_. It is still running merrily at a penny, but at that time it had also a Saturday edition at threepence. On this page was a great prize-competition scheme, as well as details of a regular weekly competition. The competitions in those days were always literary and intellectual, but then popular education had not made such strides as to-day.

I sat down on the spot, and wrote something which took a prize in the weekly competition. This emboldened me to enter for the great stakes.

There were various events. I resolved to enter for two. One was a short novel, and the other a comedietta. The "L5 humorous story" competition I did not go in for; but when the last day of sending in MSS. for that had passed, I reproached myself with not having despatched one of my manuscripts. Modesty had prevented me sending in old work, as I felt assured it would stand no chance, but when it was too late I was annoyed with myself for having thrown away a possibility. After all I could have lost nothing. Then I discovered that I had mistaken the last date, and that there was still a day. In the joyful reaction I selected a story called "Professor Grimmer," and sent it in. Judge of my amazement when this got the prize (L5), and was published in serial form, running through three numbers of _Society_. Last year, at a press dinner, I found myself next to Mr. Arthur Goddard, who told me he had acted as Competition Editor, and that quite a number of now well-known people had taken part in these admirable competitions. My painfully laboured novel only got honourable mention, and my comedietta was lost in the post.

But I was now at the height of literary fame, and success stimulated me to fresh work. I still marvel when I think of the amount of rubbish I turned out in my seventeenth and eighteenth years, in the scanty leisure of a harassed pupil-teacher at an elementary school, working hard in the evenings for a degree at the London University to boot. There was a fellow pupil-teacher (let us call him Y.) who believed in me, and who had a little money with which to back his belief. I was for starting a comic paper. The name was to be _Grimaldi_, and I was to write it all every week.

"But don't you think your invention would give way ultimately?" asked Y. It was the only time he ever doubted me.

"By that time I shall be able to afford a staff," I replied triumphantly.

Y. was convinced. But before the comic paper was born, Y. had another happy thought. He suggested that if I wrote a Jewish story, we might make enough to finance the comic paper. I was quite willing. If he had suggested an epic, I should have written it.

So I wrote the story in four evenings (I always write in spurts), and within ten days from the inception of the idea the booklet was on sale in a coverless pamphlet form. The printing cost ten pounds. I paid five (the five I had won), Y. paid five, and we divided the profits. He has since not become a publisher.

My first book (price one penny nett) went well. It was loudly denounced by Jews, and widely bought by them; it was hawked about the streets. One little shop in Whitechapel sold four hundred copies. It was even on Smith's book-stalls. There was great curiosity among Jews to know the name of the writer. Owing to my anonymity, I was enabled to see those enjoying its perusal, who were afterwards to explain to me their horror and disgust at its illiteracy and vulgarity. By vulgarity vulgar Jews mean the reproduction of the Hebrew words with which the poor and the old-fashioned interlard their conversation. It is as if English-speaking Scotchmen and Irishmen should object to "dialect" novels reproducing the idiom of their "uncultured" countrymen. I do not possess a copy of my first book, but somehow or other I discovered the MS. when writing _Children of the Ghetto_. The description of market-day in Jewry was transferred bodily from the MS. of my first book, and is now generally admired.

What the profits were I never knew, for they were invested in the second of our publications. Still jealously keeping the authorship secret, we published a long comic ballad which I had written on the model of Bab. With this we determined to launch out in style, and so we had gorgeous advertisement posters printed in three colours, which were to be stuck about London to beautify that great dreary city. Y. saw the back-hair of Fortune almost within our grasp.

One morning our headmaster walked into my room with a portentously solemn air. I felt instinctively that the murder was out. But he only said "Where is Y.?" though the mere coupling of our names was ominous, for our publishing partnership was unknown. I replied, "How should I know? In his room, I suppose."

He gave me a peculiar sceptical glance.

"When did you last see Y.?" he said.

"Yesterday afternoon," I replied wonderingly.

"And you don't know where he is now?"

"Haven't an idea--isn't he in school?"

"No," he replied in low, awful tones.

"Where then?" I murmured.

"_In prison!_"

"In prison," I gasped.

"In prison; I have just been to help bail him out."

It transpired that Y. had suddenly been taken with a further happy thought. Contemplation of those gorgeous tricoloured posters had turned his brain, and, armed with an amateur paste-pot and a ladder, he had sallied forth at midnight to stick them about the silent streets, so as to cut down the publishing expenses. A policeman, observing him at work, had told him to get down, and Y., being legal-minded, had argued it out with the policeman _de haut en bas_ from the top of his ladder. The outraged majesty of the law thereupon haled Y. off to the cells.

Naturally the cat was now out of the bag, and the fat in the fire.

To explain away the poster was beyond the ingenuity of even a professed fiction-monger.

Straightway the committee of the school was summoned in hot haste, and held debate upon the scandal of a pupil-teacher being guilty of originality. And one dread afternoon, when all Nature seemed to hold its breath, I was called down to interview a member of the committee. In his hand were copies of the obnoxious publications.

I approached the great person with beating heart. He had been kind to me in the past, singling me out, on account of some scholastic successes, for an annual vacation at the seaside. It has only just struck me, after all these years, that, if he had not done so, I should not have found the page of _Society_, and so not have perpetrated the deplorable compositions.

In the course of a bad quarter of an hour, he told me that the ballad was tolerable, though not to be endured; he admitted the metre was perfect, and there wasn't a single false rhyme. But the prose novelette was disgusting. "It is such stuff," said he, "as little boys scribble up on walls."

I said I could not see anything objectionable in it.

"Come now, confess you are ashamed of it," he urged. "You only wrote it to make money."

"If you mean that I deliberately wrote low stuff to make money," I replied calmly, "it is untrue. There is nothing I am ashamed of. What you object to is simply realism." I pointed out Bret Harte had been as realistic, but they did not understand literature on that committee.

"Confess you are ashamed of yourself," he reiterated, "and we will look over it."

"I am not," I persisted, though I foresaw only too clearly that my summer's vacation was doomed if I told the truth. "What is the use of saying I am?"

The headmaster uplifted his hands in horror. "How, after all your kindness to him, he can contradict you----!" he cried.

"When I come to be your age," I conceded to the member of the committee, "it is possible I may look back on it with shame. At present I feel none."

In the end I was given the alternative of expulsion or of publishing nothing which had not passed the censorship of the committee. After considerable hesitation I chose the latter.

This was a blessing in disguise; for, as I have never been able to endure the slightest arbitrary interference with my work, I simply abstained from publishing. Thus, although I still wrote--mainly sentimental verses--my nocturnal studies were less interrupted. Not till I had graduated, and was of age, did I return to my inky vomit. Then came my next first book--a real book at last.

In this also I had the collaboration of a fellow-teacher, Louis Cowen by name. This time my colleague was part-author. It was only gradually that I had been admitted to the privilege of communion with him, for he was my senior by five or six years, and a man of brilliant parts who had already won his spurs in journalism, and who enjoyed deservedly the reputation of an Admirable Crichton. What drew me to him was his mordant wit (to-day, alas! wasted on anonymous journalism! If he would only reconsider his indetermination, the reading public would be the richer!) Together we planned plays, novels, treatises on political economy, and contributions to philosophy. Those were the days of dreams.

One afternoon he came to me with quivering sides, and told me that an idea for a little shilling book had occurred to him. It was that a Radical Prime Minister and a Conservative working man should change into each other by supernatural means, and the working man be confronted with the problem of governing, while the Prime Minister should be as comically out of place in the East End environment. He thought it would make a funny "Arabian Nights" sort of burlesque. And so it would have done; but, unfortunately, I saw subtler possibilities of political satire in it. I insisted the story must be real, not supernatural, the Prime Minister must be a Tory, weary of office, and it must be an ultra-Radical atheistic artisan bearing a marvellous resemblance to him who directs (and with complete success) the Conservative Administration. To add to the mischief, owing to my collaborator's evenings being largely taken up by other work, seven-eighths of the book came to be written by me, though the leading ideas were, of course, threshed out and the whole revised in common, and thus it became a vent-hole for all the ferment of a youth of twenty-one, whose literary faculty had furthermore been pent up for years by the potential censorship of a committee. The book, instead of being a shilling skit, grew to a ten-and-sixpenny (for that was the unfortunate price of publication) political treatise of over sixty long chapters and 500 closely-printed pages. I drew all the characters as seriously and complexly as if the fundamental conception were a matter of history; the out-going Premier became an elaborate study of a nineteenth century Hamlet; the Bethnal Green life amid which he came to live was presented with photographic fulness and my old trick of realism; the governmental manoeuvres were described with infinite detail; numerous real personages were introduced under nominal disguises, and subsequent history was curiously anticipated in some of the Female Franchise and Home Rule episodes. Worst of all, so super-subtle was the satire, that it was never actually stated straight out that the Premier had changed places with the Radical working man, so that the door might be left open for satirically suggested alternative explanations of the metamorphosis in their characters; and as, moreover, the two men re-assumed their original _roles_ for one night only with infinitely complex effects, many readers, otherwise unimpeachable, reached the end without any suspicion of the actual plot--and yet (on their own confession) enjoyed the book!