Chapter THIRTEEN

Among Editors and Publishers--The Hiding Place of King
Solomon’s Treasures--An Amazing Story which Puzzled Dr.
Adler, the Chief Rabbi--Adventures in Novel-Writing--Mr.
Asquith and the Editor--A Special Correspondent’s
Humour--Sir George Newnes and I Play at Cross Purposes--The
Great _Tit-Bits_ Treasure Hunt and its Humours--The Man
Who Found the Secret of the World’s Origin--_Pearson’s_
and Their Brilliant Staff--Percy Everett Compels the
Author of _If Winter Comes_ to Destroy a Wasps’ Nest--The
Editor of _Pearson’s Magazine_ has a Most Humiliating
Experience--Stories of Writers.

At first the publishers were not exactly kind to me.

I wrote my first novel, _Guilty Bonds_, on my return from Russia, where I had been on a special mission for _The Times_, the country then being under the Emperor Alexander, and people were being exiled wholesale to Siberia without any charge being made against them. The story sold well, for, coincident with _Called Back_, it was one of the first novels that described Russia under the Tzars. It was afterwards dramatized. My old friend Joseph Hatton wrote _By Order of the Tzar_! and had it published with a significant yellow ticket inside, the public to this day never dreaming that it was the colour of the passport issued to every Jewess, of whatever station, proclaiming her to be a woman of ill-fame!

Feeling success assured, I went to the Great Sahara with the Dubois Expedition, and on returning wrote _Zoraida_ and _The Great War_. Because George Griffith--who had written _The Angel of the Revolution_--induced me, I gave both these books to the Tower Publishing Company.

They produced them well. Coulson Kernahan, my oldest literary friend, then reader to Ward & Lock; Sir Robertson Nicoll--to whom I owe much of my success; W. E. Henley, Clement Shorter; Norman Gale; Douglas Sladen, and Davenport Adams--of the black velvet jacket--all declared my success to be assured.

I had then given up journalism and was living in a cosy little flat at the Magnan end of the Promenade des Anglais at Nice, going up in July and August to the Pyrenees to escape the great heat on the Riviera.

I trod on air and worked hard; but imagine my dismay and disappointment when, at the moment I expected to receive a substantial cheque for the royalties on both books, which were selling by thousands, I received a formal letter from a bankruptcy official to say that the Tower Publishing Company had failed, and that I should not only get nothing from my two years of labour, but that the copyrights had been bought by a well-known firm of publishers, and passed out of my hands! Such was the law in those days. I had, in my youthful enthusiasm, toiled for two years for nothing!

That was over thirty years ago, and to-day, as I write, _Zoraida_ has just begun as “a great new Le Queux serial” in an Irish daily newspaper!

Could any man experience a greater set-back?

I went to my old friend A. P. Watt, the literary agent, who was just then commencing business in Paternoster Row, and he introduced me to various publishers.

Sir George Hutchinson and Alfred Spencer, his partner, F. V. White, who was publishing _Belgravia_ and John Strange Winter’s novels; Newman Flower, who had just come to Cassell’s; Fisher Unwin, who later sought me in Florence; and Eveleigh Nash, all became my firmest friends, and remain so to-day. I also got to know intimately Stanley Paul, the burly giant who, alas! has had ill-health of late years, W. L. Courtney, Israel Zangwill, Sir Ernest Hodder-Williams, whom everyone congratulated on his well-earned title, and the irascible old George Newnes and his kindly son, Sir Frank.

Then, later, I met such outstanding men as Lord Riddell, Sir Edward Hulton, James Heddle, and William Lees, who had just graduated from Thomson’s of Dundee to the fiction department of the _Daily Sketch_.

With the belief that publishers are often pilferers of one’s royalties I do not agree.

With the exception of the Tower Publishing Company--which let George Griffith and myself down so very badly--I have never met a firm who would descend to “cook” an author’s accounts. I hold in respect every firm with whom I have had business dealings, both here and in America--where, because of curious copyright laws, the temptation to steal is certainly open. Even the good continental firms are always fair and above-board.

I have many pleasant recollections of my editor and publisher friends, not only in London, but also in Paris, Milan, and New York.

But to the aspiring author I would say a word of warning regarding the firms who publish books on commission. If a book is not worth the publisher’s risk it certainly is not worth the author’s, no matter how tempting the terms offered.

A mysterious affair, which remains a mystery to this day, is known only to myself, although both Sir C. Arthur Pearson and my dear friend, Dr. Adler, the Chief Rabbi, both now dead, knew of it.

One day, during the five years I lived at the Hotel Cecil, a waiter brought me a card bearing the name of Broström, with an address in Stockholm. A tall, middle-aged, clean-shaven Swede was ushered in, and handed me a letter of introduction from a friend, a certain Baroness Ernberg, who is one of the leaders of Society in the Swedish capital.

This letter explained that my visitor was a well-known civil engineer in Sweden, that he was highly trustworthy, and that he had a very curious disclosure to make to me.

We sat down, and certainly what he told me caused my eyes to bulge.

Briefly, it was that a friend of his, a certain Professor Afzelius, at Abö University, had discovered in the original text of the Book of Ezekiel preserved in the Imperial Library at Petrograd a cipher message that gave the whereabouts of the concealed treasures from King Solomon’s temple.

At first I was inclined to laugh, but he assured me that he wished for no money, only my influence and support to induce a London newspaper to take up the matter and send out an expedition to Jerusalem to explore.

“I will leave these papers with you,” he said. “I daresay you do not know Hebrew, but if you will submit them to any good Hebrew scholar I think you will find that he will be much interested.” And he rose and left.

I thought of my old friend Dr. Adler, Chief Rabbi, and that same day I called and left the papers, he promising to go through them, but expressing an honest scepticism.

Three days later, when I called, he admitted that he had gone through them with his distinguished brother, and that there was certainly something in them very curious and intensely interesting to Hebrew scholars. It was his opinion that the matter should certainly be further investigated. Indeed, he seemed highly excited over the whole matter.

In consequence, I called on another old friend, Sir C. Arthur Pearson, then proprietor of the _Standard_, put the matter before him and suggested the sending out of an expedition to Palestine to explore. To this he most generously acceded, and an initial sum was agreed between us for its cost. I was to head the expedition to Palestine.

That afternoon I walked along the Strand full of suppressed excitement. I was to search for the treasure of Solomon!

I called Mr. Broström on the telephone, and when he arrived at the hotel I announced the joyful news, and the amount placed at my disposal for the equipment of the expedition.

But, to my utter amazement, he replied:

“To-day I have had a telegram from my friend Afzelius, in Abö, and, though I thank you, we have decided not to carry our investigations any further.”

He left me, and he has never since been seen in London.

Dr. Adler admitted that the papers in Hebrew I placed before him contained something extraordinary. And it certainly seems apparent that there is some curious hidden message in the earliest manuscript of Ezekiel. Can any reader solve the mystery why the discoverers so suddenly withdrew? I cannot.

The curious incident gave me the idea for my novel, _Treasure of Israel_.

My recollections of editors are many. Here is one.

The day that H. H. Asquith was appointed Home Secretary I met Lincoln Springfield (now the editor of that gay and flippant paper _London Opinion_) at one of those many cheerful resorts that the town no longer knows--Romano’s Bar, and Springfield pretended to be broken-hearted over Mr. Asquith’s appointment. “Asquith would be delighted to refuse to reprieve me were the occasion ever to arrive,” said L. S., and when I asked him what Asquith had against him my friend related this incident.

At the Parnell Commission, when Asquith was Sir Charles Russell’s junior, he used to sit next Springfield, who, with T. P. O’Connor and H. W. Massingham, reported the trial for the _Star_. Asquith and Springfield had many an idle hour’s gossip together during the many months of that trial. Stock Exchange flutters arising among other topics, the journalist communicated to the barrister the fact that a certain company, the White Lead Co., Ltd., was to be floated, and was for a day or two to be rushed up to a substantial premium. Both decided to improve their bank balances by venturing to the extent of a hundred shares. Springfield the instant he got his allotment, sold his hundred at a profit of £70 or £80, and forgot about the matter. But Asquith had not grasped the necessity of seizing a rapid profit, and in a week or two the engineered premium ran off into a huge discount, and Asquith lost the major part of his £100 flutter. This was no joke to Asquith in those early struggling days. Hence Springfield’s mock fear of reprisals on the part of Mr. Secretary Asquith.

“Lincoln” is an unusual Christian name, but it is not unique. Some years ago there appeared in the Divorce Court a co-respondent named Lincoln Jefferson. Dear old Harry Fenn, the Divorce Court reporter, got to thinking of Lincoln Springfield as he wrote his report, and he inadvertently recorded the co-respondent’s name as Lincoln Springfield Jefferson. Thus it appeared in the _Daily Telegraph_. Springfield was on the _Pall Mall Gazette_ in those days, and his colleague there, Charlie Hands--afterwards the special correspondent of the _Daily Mail_--cut out the report. He deleted the name Jefferson by carefully sticking over it a piece of white paper that rendered the deletion imperceptible, thus making the report declare that the co-respondent was Lincoln Springfield. This doctored report Charlie Hands hung up on the wall of one of the _Pall Mall’s_ editorial rooms, having first headed it “Serpent Springfield: How a Man May Have Curly Hair and Yet Be a Villain.” He had barely fixed it on the wall when Mr. Springfield’s wife called at the office, and could not be restrained from reading the report. It took five hectic minutes to restore Springfield’s unsullied reputation.

Charles Terry, the blue-eyed sportsman, beloved of every bookman and publisher, and who has had quite as varied an experience as myself, I first met when he was proprietor of R. H. Everett & Son, publishers. He had then been manager of the London Opera House, and later became manager of the book department of Messrs. Odhams Limited. He tells a good story about books.

A few months ago, having prepared the balance sheet of his department, he was chatting with Mr. Elias, managing director of the firm of Odhams.

“Terry,” said Elias, “Mr. Harris, our chief accountant, says that your accounts are extremely clear and well kept. You must be a jolly good book-keeper.”

Terry, who began life as an accountant, was rather flattered, and admitted that he knew a good deal about book-keeping.

“Yes, I thought so,” replied Elias. “But we want you to _sell books_, not to _keep them_!”

Each time I enter the great offices of George Newnes Limited I recollect the first day I put my foot across that threshold.

For about three years I had constantly contributed to the then newly-established _Tit-Bits_, but had never seen its founder, George Newnes. Being back in England, it struck me that I might venture to call. So I did.

I gave my name, waited a few moments in the waiting-room, and presently was ushered into the presence of the bluff, outspoken man who, in common with other Lancashire men, had come to London by sheer perseverance and hard grit.

But his reception of me! Well, it was so hostile that I stood staggered in wonder as he paced up and down his fine, airy room, denouncing me, and heaping on my head all sorts of vituperations.

At last I managed to get in a few feeble words.

“I really don’t understand you, Mr. Newnes.”

“Understand me! Can’t you hear?” he cried excitedly. “Don’t you understand that you’ve done more harm to the firm than anybody else has ever done?”

“Perhaps I have, but I’ve been paid for it,” I replied meekly.

“Paid? Who’s paid you?”

“The firm,” I replied.

“The firm paid you!” he cried, glaring at me. “Are you mad? What do you mean? This firm has paid you to do what you’ve done against me?”

I stood aghast.

Then I calmly turned to the door to go.

“No, you shan’t,” he cried. “We must have all this out. I won’t stand it from you--or anybody else!”

“But there is nothing to have out, Mr. Newnes,” I said quite calmly. “All the contributions I have made to your journals you have invited and paid for.”

“Contributions? What the devil do you mean?”

“Well, you have published a good many under my name--William Le Queux.”

“Good God! Are you Le Queux?”

“Certainly,” I said. “Who do you think I am?”

“Why, I understood that you were that cursed swindler H----, who let me down so badly over some paper!”

The lad who had ushered me in had an impediment in his speech, so he had understood that I was “Mr. H----”--hence his violent anger.

We laughed, shook hands, and ever afterwards he was my firm friend.

Soon after that incident I wrote for _Tit-Bits_ a serial, called _The Tickencote Treasure_, and it aroused in the young men of the office the idea of a real treasure-hunt. Golden sovereigns in iron tubes were sunk into the ground at night, in odd places, by people who travelled in motor-cars up and down the country.

A real treasure-hunt began. I believe Sir Frank Newnes, son and heir of the late Sir George, was in the forefront of that new excitement. Excitement! If you sent a postcard to your local paper that the treasure was sure to be buried in Such-and-Such road, those who lived in the road would find, ere it was light next morning, a gang of people of all ages, digging up every front garden and casting great bushes out on the pavements in their frenzied efforts to discover the hidden sovereigns.

The hunt grew so fierce at last that somebody dug beneath a telegraph-pole, on the Great North Road, near Hitchin, and tossed it over, thus interrupting the whole telegraph communications with the North of England. The Government remonstrated, and the merry game was stopped. But while it lasted it was full of fun.

The Marquis of Exeter, whose lordly mansion, “Burghley House by Stamford town” is described by Tennyson in his “Lord of Burghley,” helped me to write _The Tickencote Treasure_. The little hamlet of Tickencote is on his estate, and there has long been a legend that great treasure is buried on one of the farms.

The Marquis helped me in my attempt to locate it, but, alas! we dug without avail. However, we had many merry days over it, and the Marchioness gallantly assisted us.

Only a few weeks before writing these lines, I lunched at the Reform Club with my friend Mr. W. Grierson, who to-day so ably conducts the great House of Newnes, and who, besides being a most successful business man, is also a clever editor. He told me a typical story of the troubles of publishers, who with authors do not always see eye to eye.

“I had a funny letter during the publication of _The Outline of Science_,” he said. “After the appearance in serial form of the second part I had a letter from a correspondent earnestly begging me ‘to hold up publication till I heard further from him.’ He had just discovered ‘the secret of the origin of the world.’ In a few days he would send his article, in which ‘everything would be explained and the _face of modern science would be entirely changed_.’ The fact that this man’s masterpiece has not yet seen the light of day only provides one more illustration of the short-sightedness of publishers, and how slow we are to recognize originality!”

In the whole world of publishing there is no man with a more open mind than Grierson. When I edited _The War of the Nations_ I was many times annoyed by the way in which he mutilated my manuscript. Once I remonstrated.

He smiled at me across the table, and said:

“Le Queux, you are an author. You know your subject and write with authority. But it is my job to keep my fingers on the pulse of the public, the readers of all our papers and magazines. I try and gauge what they desire to read, and I provide it for them. Will you forgive me?”

To gauge the taste of the public is indeed a hard task.

In the long years of authorship I have sometimes half-heartedly executed commissions from publishers, when, to my surprise, my work has met with great and instant success. At others, when I am enthusiastic over an idea or the plot of a novel, I am frequently doomed to disappointment.

Why? Who can tell the real reason of a book’s or a play’s success?

I have written much for the House of Pearson--in fact, continuously from the day it was established to the present.

Peter Keary, who was partner with Sir C. A. Pearson, was a close friend of mine from the first publication of _Pearson’s Weekly_ to the day of his untimely death. He was a clever editor, and a shrewd business man, with a keen sense of humour. We often spent a night in town together. His bosom friend was Mr. George Griffith, who wrote _The Angel of the Revolution_, and other notable books, and who held the record for going round the world (before the construction of the Siberian Railway) in seventy-one and a half days.

One day Keary invited F. V. White, the publisher, Griffith, and myself to dine at his house on Wimbledon Common, and we all went down together.

Before dinner Keary said:

“I’ve got a new game to show you fellows. It’s quite simple.”

He took us out upon the lawn, where he put up cricket stumps.

“Now,” he said, “we put a shilling on each stump and the one who knocks them off gets the shillings. Quite simple.”

We all three bowled, but had no luck, yet Keary--whom we afterwards found was a very good cricketer--knocked off the shillings each time either of us tried to bat. I believe it cost us about thirty shillings each before we went in to dinner.

At table Keary turned to us and said:

“I told Everett that I meant you chaps to pay for your dinners!”

I remember that White was very annoyed.

Percy W. Everett, to whom he referred, is now head of Pearson’s, and has also been a friend of mine for many years. He is a cheery, merry-eyed man of untiring energy, and impervious to fatigue.

A few weeks ago, while chatting with him at the dinner of the Crimes Club, of which he is a fellow-member, he told me of a most humiliating experience he once had. He said:

“I remember very well how one day a short, good-looking, apparently harmless gentleman strolled into my office, and began to talk to me of a science of which nothing was then known in this country--ju-jitsu. He explained how the weakest man who understood the science could overcome the strongest man who knew nothing about it. In the interests of truth, and to find out if my visitor were really qualified to write an article on this subject, I challenged him to prove his words. The next moment I was on my back on the floor. I was allowed to rise again, but a simple though deadly grip with but two fingers was responsible for an immediate and very undignified editorial somersault. A most painful quarter of an hour ensued. One by one, with fiendish science, my visitor subjected the joints of every part of my body from head to toe to strains that, as it proved, they were anatomically unable to resist. I suffered every kind of known agony. But the result was that I obtained for _Pearson’s Magazine_ a series of articles on ju-jitsu that created a world-wide sensation.”

A. S. M. Hutchinson, author of _If Winter Comes_, tells an amusing story of Everett, who was his chief in the days when he was editor of _The Royal Magazine_, a post now filled by that writer of delightful short stories, F. E. Baily.

It seems that one Saturday night Percy Everett, who, by the way, is an outdoor man, and takes very long walks, even as far as Brighton, invited Hutchinson down to his home at Elstree, as he intended that night to destroy a wasps’ next. The nest, since it was under some thick bushes, was difficult of access, and Hutchinson’s task was to creep in on his hands and knees in the dark to pour paraffin into the hole. It was a job that required considerable care and pluck, for Everett, standing behind striking matches, told him that wasps always kept a sentinel outside their nest, both by day and night and asked him if he could “spot” him. He couldn’t, as he is near-sighted. Everett was crouching behind him blocking the way out, and every moment Hutchinson expected the whole swarm to attack him.

In telling the story he said:

“However, by the mercy of Providence the sentinel wasp was not up to his work that night, and I squirted down my paraffin and backed out praising heaven. Everett applied the match (I will say that much for him) and I got as far away as I could in the darkness and stayed there.”

Hutchinson also told me, referring to his early days on the _Royal Magazine_, that:

“The thrill of the Israelites when entering the Promised Land was a torpid yawn compared to my sensations as I first walked into Pearson’s.”

Writing of Hutchinson, the present editor of the _Royal_ says:

“Hutchinson I remember as a tremendous worker. I can see him still at a roll-top desk, working on doggedly amid a cloud of tobacco smoke, turning out page after page in his careful, fastidious handwriting. This careless world seldom takes temperament into account, preferring to measure the ox-like type and highly-strung person of creative imagination by a general rule of thumb. Nevertheless, the price of success is a great deal higher to the second than to the first, for he lives on his nerves, and his masterpieces are literally written with his heart’s blood.”

Another ex-member of the Pearson staff is C. W. Shepherd, now editor of the _Northern Newspaper Syndicate_. He told me the other day a good story concerning John Hassall, the well-known artist. At the time he was under Everett on the editorial staff of _Pearson’s_, they were publishing an article on the influence of colour in daily life, and he went to see one or two eminent people to get their views--including Lady Duff-Gordon on dress and John Hassall on art. He had a cheerful chat with Hassall in his studio, and, after discussing various colours, he asked him what he would call the best tonic colour. “The colour of a good port wine,” said he. “That is why one instinctively holds up a glass of port to the light,” Some spirit of mischief prompted Shepherd to try and trip him up. “But surely,” he said, “you do the same with a bottle of Bass?” “Ah!” said Hassall, as quick as lightning, “but that’s to see if there’s any cork in it.”

My friend D. M. Sutherland, editor of the _Pall Mall Gazette_, tells a good journalistic story of the great Horace Greeley, whose handwriting was so bad that at one time there was only one compositor in the office in New York who could set up his copy. This man seemed to his fellows unduly puffed up by this fact.

One day, while the super-compositor was out, a bird that had flown into the office walked into some printing ink and then on to a number of loose sheets lying on the floor.

“Why,” said one of the printers, picking up a sheet, “this looks like the old man’s writing.” So saying, he fastened the sheets together and put them on the absent compositor’s case.

Presently the compositor came back, and, with all eyes turned on him, picked up the sheets, and to the amazement of the room started setting up the supposed “copy.” Presently, however, he jibbed at a word and asked the man nearest him what it was.

“How should I know?” was the reply. “You know that you alone can read the old man’s writing. Better ask him.”

Reluctantly the baffled compositor took the sheet to Greeley’s sanctum.

“Well,” grunted the great man, “what is it?”

“It’s this word, Mr. Greeley,” stammered the man.

Greeley snatched the sheet from the man’s hand, looked at the alleged word, and threw himself back with a snort of disgust.

“Why,” he shouted, “any fool could see what it is! It’s unconstitutional!”

Stanley Paul, the publisher, tells a delightful story of a certain well-known cosmopolitan writer. He says, “Returning from a trip to the Gay City my friend (who is popularly known as ‘the master of mystery’) asked me how I had enjoyed myself. I replied that I had had a good time, and mentioned some of the gay places I had visited. In his turn he sighed, and said that nowadays he never had time to explore the modern Montmartre. In order to test the soundness of this statement I referred to one notorious place, quietly stating as a joke that I was very surprised to see the author’s caricature by a well-known French artist adorning the walls, when the latter exclaimed with much agitation, ‘Hush! No! No! No!’ I said, ‘Ah! I wondered whether you had ever been there!’”

Mr. W. L. Courtney once referred to publishers as a “timid race of men,” but are they also absent-minded? A story is told concerning Stanley Paul, when he started business in Clifford’s Inn, and was at the time prominent on the executive of several athletic clubs, whose headquarters were at the Argyll Hotel. One day, when absorbed in the prospect of a London-to-Brighton walk, which was then one of Paul’s hobbies, the office-boy said a gentleman wanted to see him. Asked who it was, he said he wasn’t sure, but he thought it was “Argle,” and Mr. Paul, thinking of a “gentleman” he sometimes saw at headquarters, decided to be “out” and couldn’t be seen till after 6 p.m. The gentleman left. Next day the correspondence contained a very courteous note from His Grace the late Duke of Argyll, asking if it would be possible for Mr. Stanley Paul to see him at Kensington Palace in connection with his memoirs, _Intimate Society Letters of the Eighteenth Century_, which Mr. Paul had previously commissioned for publication.

Mrs. M. Chester ffoulkes, the well-known authoress--who, by the way, was at one time private secretary to Douglas Sladen--once told me how, while collaborating with Lord Rossmore, who was writing his reminiscences, they quarrelled desperately. It was a case of Dr. Fell with them both, all the time. But when the book was published Lord Rossmore invited the popular Maude to lunch one Sunday at the Stud House, Hampton Court, and in front of his assembled guests presented her with a platinum and coral necklet.

“Isn’t it a nice present, Maudie?” remarked his lordship.

Mrs. ffoulkes took the necklet and replied pensively, “Yes, it is very pretty--a clear case of ‘After Battles--Rewards’” (the motto of the Rossmores).

It was Lord Rossmore who, when speaking to Mrs. ffoulkes about a certain publisher whom most people will recognize, remarked:

“But, damn it! the fellow is a gentleman! I thought a publisher was always a shopkeeper. It is the accepted idea!”

“Well,” replied Maude, “the accepted idea of a nobleman is that he is a gentleman, but it’s often wrong, isn’t it?”

Lord Rossmore was compelled to agree.

In the Bath Club the other day I heard a good story concerning my old friend David Whitelaw, the well-known editor of the _London_ and _Premier_ magazines. He was walking one hot afternoon last year on Brighton Pier with Herman Finck, the composer of so many popular orchestral pieces, and as they passed the bandstand the orchestra, under Captain Amers, was playing “In the Shadows.”

The irrepressible David complimented Herman on hearing his own composition played to the pleasure of the great assembly of summer idlers. To be polite, Herman Finck bet Whitelaw a level shilling that if they continued their walk they would discover somebody reading one of his novels. Whitelaw accepted, and together the pair strolled along eagerly scanning every book or paper that the seaside girls and fellows were reading. Every author except David seemed to be represented on that drowsy summer afternoon, beside the lazily-lapping waves. The well-known novelist-editor had almost given up hope when suddenly Finck pointed out a very old and shabby gentleman in steel-rimmed spectacles seated in one of the pier-shelters. On his lap was a cheap edition of _The Little Hour of Peter Wells_. But the old fellow was fast asleep!