 Section 10 of my first book by various authors. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Ruth Golding. The House of Elmore by F. W. Robinson It is a far cry back to 1853 when dreams of writing a book had almost reached the boundary line of probable events. I was then a pale long-haired, consumptive-looking youth who had been successful in prize poems, for there were prize competitions even in those far-off days, and in acrostics, and in the acceptance of one or two short stories which had been actually published in a magazine that did not pay for contributions. It was edited by a clergyman of the Church of England and the chaplain to a real duke, which magazine has gone the way of many magazines and is now as extinct as the dodo. It was in the year 1853, or a month or two earlier, that I wrote my first novel, which, upon a moderate computation, I think would make four or five good-sized library volumes, but I have never attempted to scale the manuscript. It is in my possession still, although I have not seen it for many weary years. It is buried with a heap more rubbish in a respectable old oak chest, the key of which is even lost to me. And yet that manuscript was the turning point of my small literary career. And it is the history of that manuscript which leads up to the publication of my first novel, my first step, though I did not know it, and hence it is part and parcel of the history of my first book, A Link in the Chain. When that manuscript was completed it was read aloud night after night to an admiring audience of family members, and pronounced as fit for publication as anything of Dickens or Thackeray or Bulwer, who were then in the full swing of their mighty capacities. Alas, I was a better judge than my partial and amiable critics. I had very grave doubts, qualms, I think they are called, and I had read that it was uphill work to get a book published, and swagger through the world as a real life-being who had actually written a novel. There was a faint hope that was all. And so, with my manuscript under my arm, I strolled into the palatial premises of Messers Hurst and Blackit, successors to Henry Colburn, they proudly designated themselves at that period, laid my heavy parcel on the counter, and waited, with fear and trembling, for from one to emerge from the galleries of books and rows of desks beyond, and inquire the nature of my business. And here ensued my first surprise, quite a dramatic coincidence. For the tall, spare middle-aged gentleman who advanced from the shadows towards the counter, proved to my intense astonishment to be a constant chess antagonist of mine at Kling's Chess Rooms, round the corner in New Oxford Street, rooms which have long since disappeared, together with Horvitz, Harvitz, Lerventhal, Williams, and other great chess-lights of those faraway times, who were to be seen there night after night, prepared for all comers. Kling's was a great chess-house, and I was a chess enthusiast, as well as a youth who wanted to get into print. Failing literature I had made up my mind to become a chess champion, if possible, although I knew already by quiet observation of my antagonists, that in that way madness lay, sheer, uncontrollable, raging madness, for me at any rate. And the grave middle-aged gentleman behind the counter of Thirteen Great Marlborough Street, proved to be the cashier of the firm, and used, being chess-mad with the rest of us, to spend his evenings at Kling's. He was a player of my own strength, and for twelve months or so had I skirmished with him over the chess-board, and fought innumerable battles with him. He had never spoken of his occupation, nor I of my restless ambitions, chess-players never go far beyond the chequered board. "'Hello, Robinson!' he exclaimed in his surprise, "'You don't mean to say that you?' And then he stopped and regarded my youthful appearance very critically. "'Yes, Mr. Kenny, it's a novel,' I said modestly. "'My first.' "'There's plenty of it,' he remarked, dryly. "'I'll send it upstairs at once, and I'll wish you luck, too.' But he added, kindly preparing to soften the shock of a future refusal. We have plenty of these come in, about seven a day, and most of them go back to their writers again.' "'Yes, I suppose so,' I answered with a sigh. For a while, however, I regarded the meeting as a happy augury, a lucky coincidence. I even had the vain, hopeless notion that Mr. Kenny might put in a good word for me, ask for special consideration, out of that kindly feeling which we had for each other, and which chess antagonists have invariably for each other I am inclined to believe. But though we met three or four times a week, from that day forth not one word concerning the fate of my manuscript escaped the lips of Mr. Kenny. It is probable the incident had passed from his memory. He had nothing to do with the novel department itself, and the delivery of manuscripts was a very common every day proceeding to him. I was too bashful, perhaps too proud an individual to ask any questions. But every evening that I encountered him I used to wonder if he had heard anything, if any news of the book's fate had reached him directly or indirectly. Occasionally, even as time went on, I was disposed to imagine that he was letting me win the game out of kindness, for he was a gentle, kindly soul always, in order to soften the shock of a disappointment which he knew perfectly well was on its way towards me. Some months afterwards the fateful letter came to me from the firm, regretting its inability to make use of the manuscript, and expressing many thanks for a perusal of the same. A polite, concise, all-round kind of epistle, which a publisher is compelled to keep in stock, and to send out when rejected literature pours forth like a waterfall from the dusky caverns of a publishing house in a large way of business. It was all over then. I had failed. From that hour I would turn chess-player, and soften my brain in a quest for silver cups, or champion amateur stakes. I could play chess better than I could write fiction, I was sure. Still, after some days of dead despair, I sent the manuscript once more on its travels, this time to Smith and Elders, whose reader, Mr. Williams, had leapt into singular prominence since his favourable judgment of Charlotte Bronte's book, and to whom most manuscripts flowed spontaneously for many years afterwards. And in due course of time, Mr. Williams, acting for Messers Smith and Elder, asked me to call upon him for the manuscript at Corn Hill. And there I received my first advice, my first thrill of exultation. Presently, and probably, and with perseverance, he said, you will succeed in literature. And if you will remember now that to write a good novel is a very considerable achievement. Years of short story writing is the best apprenticeship for you. Write and rewrite and spare no pains. I thanked him, and I went home with tears in my eyes of gratitude and consolation, though my big story had been declined with thanks. But I did not write again. I put away my manuscript, and went on for six or eight hours a day at Chess for many idle months, before I was in the vein for composition. And then, with a sudden dash, I began the House of Elmore. It was half finished when another strange incident occurred. I received one morning a letter from LaCelle's Raxle, afterwards Sir LaCelle's Raxle, but, as the reader may be probably aware, informing me that he was one of the readers for Messers Hurst and Blackit, and that it had been his duty some time ago to decide unfavourably against a story which I had submitted to the notice of his firm, but that he had intended to write to me a private note, urging me to adopt literature as a profession. His principal object in writing at that time was to suggest my trying the fortunes of the novel which he had already read, with Messers Routledge, and he kindly added a letter of introduction to that firm in the Broadway—an introduction which, by the way, never came to anything. Poor LaCelle's Raxle. Clever writer and editor, press man and literary adviser, real Bohemian and true friend, indeed everybody's friend but his own. I look back at him with feelings of deep gratitude. He was a rolling stone, and when I met him for the first time in my life, years afterwards, he had left Malbra Street for the Crimea. He had been given a commission in the Turkish contingent at Kerch. He had come back anathematising the service and chock full of grievances against the Government, and he became once more editor and sub-editor and publisher's hack even, until he stepped into his baronetcy, an empty title, for he had sold the reversion of the estates for a mere song long ago, and became special correspondent in Austria for the Daily Telegraph. And in Vienna he died, young in years still, not forty, I think, closing a life that only wanted one turn more of application, I have often thought, to have achieved very great distinction. There are still a few writing men about who remember LaCelle's Raxle, but they are the boys of the Old Brigade. It was to LaCelle's Raxle I sent when finished the House of Elmore, as the reader may very easily guess. Raxle had stepped so much out of his groove, for the busy literary man that he was, to take me by the hand and point the way along the perilous road. He had given me so many kind words that I wrote my hardest to complete my new story before I should fade from his recollection. The book was finished in five weeks and in hot haste, and for months again I was left wondering what the outcome of it all was to be. Whether Raxle was reading my story, or whether, oh horror, some other reader less kindly disposed, and more austere and critical and hard to please, had been told off to sit in judgment upon my second manuscript. I went back to Chess for a distraction till the fate of that book was pronounced or sealed. It was always Chess in the hours of my distress and anxiety. And I once again faced Charles Kenny. And once again wondered if he knew, and how much he knew, whilst he was deep in his king's gambit, or his jaw culpiano. But he was not even aware that I had sent in a second story I learned afterwards. And then at last came the judgment, the pleasant, if formal, notice from Malbara Street that the novel had been favourably reported upon by the reader, and that Messer's Hearst and Blackit would be pleased to see me at Malbara Street to talk the matter of its publication over with me. Ah! what a letter that was! What a surprise, after all, what a good omen! And some three months afterwards, at the end of the year 1854, my first book, but my second novel, was launched into the reading world. And I have hardly got over the feeling yet that I had actually a right to dub myself a novelist. When the first three notices of the book appeared, wild dreams of a brilliant future beset me. They were all favourable notices, too favourable. But John Bull, the press and Bell's messenger, I think they were the papers, scattered favourable notices indiscriminately at that time. Presently the Athenaeum sobered me a little, but wound up with a kindly pat on the back. And the Saturday review, then in its seventh number, drenched me with vitriolic acid, and brought me to a lower level altogether. And finally the morning herald blew a loud blast to my praise and glory. That last notice I believe having been written by my old friend Sir Edward Clark, then a very young reviewer on the herald's staff, with no dreams of becoming Her Majesty's Solicitor General just then. The House of Elmore actually paid its publisher's expenses and left a balance, and brought me in a little check. And thus my writing life began in sober earnest. The End of the House of Elmore by F. W. Robinson. I think that it was in an article by a fellow scribe, where doubtless more in sorrow than in anger, that gentleman exposed the worthlessness of the productions of sundry of his brother authors, in which I read that whatever success I had met with as a writer of fiction was due to my literary friends and nepotic criticism. This is scarcely the case, since when I began to write I do not think that I knew a single creature who had published books, blue books alone accepted. Nobody was ever more outside the ring, or less acquainted with the art of rolling logs, than the humble individual who pens these lines. But the reader shall judge for himself. To begin at the beginning, my very first attempt at imaginative writing was made while I was a boy at school. One of the masters promised a prize to that youth who should best describe on paper any incident real or imaginary. I entered the lists, and selected the scene at an operation in a hospital as my subject. The fact that I had never seen an operation, or crossed the doors of a hospital, did not deter me from this bold endeavour, which, however, was justified by its success. I was declared to have won in the competition, though, probably through the forgetfulness of the master, I remember that I never received the promised prize. My next literary effort, written in 1876, was an account of a Zulu war dance, which I witnessed when I was on the staff of the Governor of Natal. It was published in the Gentleman's Magazine, and very kindly noticed in various papers. A year later I wrote another article, entitled A Visit to the Chief Sekakoni, which very nearly got me into trouble. I was then serving on the staff of Sir Theophilus Shepstone, and the article, signed with my initials, reached South Africa in its printed form, shortly after the annexation of the Transvaal. Young men, with a pen in their hands, are proverbially indiscreet, and in this instance I was no exception. In the course of my article I had described the Transvaal Boa at home, with a fidelity that should be avoided by members of a diplomatic mission, and had even gone the length of saying that most of the Dutch women were fat. Needless to say, my remarks were translated into the Afrikaander papers, and somewhat extensively read, especially by the ladies in question and their male relatives. Nor did the editors of those papers forebear to comment on them in leading articles. Shortly afterwards there was a great and stormy meeting of Boas at Pretoria. As matters began to look serious, somebody ventured among them to ascertain the exciting cause, and returned with the pleasing intelligence that they were all talking of what the Englishmen had written about the physical proportions of their women-kind and domestic habits, and threatening to take up arms to avenge it. Of my feelings on learning this news I will not discourse, but they were uncomfortable to say the least of it. Happily in the end the gathering broke up without bloodshed. But when the late Sir Bartle Freer came to Pretoria some months afterwards, he administered to me a sound and well-deserved lecture on my indiscretion. I excused myself by saying that I had set down nothing which was not strictly true, and he replied to the effect that therein lay my fault. I quite agree with him. Indeed there is little doubt but that these bald statements of fact as to the stoutness of the chance of frows and the lack of cleanliness in their homes went near to precipitating a result that, as it chanced, was postponed for several years. Well, it is all done with now. And I take this opportunity of apologising to such of the ladies in question as may still be in the land of life. This unfortunate experience cooled my literary ardour, yet as it chanced, when some five years later I again took up my pen, it was in connection with African affairs. These pages are no place for politics, but I must allude to them in explanation. It will be remembered that the transfer was annexed by Great Britain in 1877. In 1881 the Boers rose in rebellion and administered several thrashings to our troops, whereon the government of this country came suddenly to the conclusion that a wrong had been done to the victors, and subject to some paper restrictions gave them back their independence. As it chanced, at the time I was living on some African property belonging to me in the centre of the operations, and so disgusted was I, in common with thousands of others, at the turn which matters had taken, that I shook the dust of South Africa off my feet and returned to England. Now, the first impulse of an aggrieved Englishman is to write to the Times, and if I remember right I took this course, but my letter not being inserted I enlarged upon the idea, and composed a book called Ketaweo and His White Neighbours. This semi-political work, or rather history, was very carefully constructed from the records of some six years experience, and by the help of a shelf full of blue books that stare me in the face as I write these words. And the fact that it still goes on selling seems to show that it has some value in the eyes of students of South African politics. But when I had written my book, I was confronted by a difficulty which I had not anticipated, being utterly without experience in such affairs, that of finding somebody willing to publish it. I remember that I purchased a copy of the Athenaeum, and selecting the names of various firms at Hazard, wrote to them offering to submit my manuscript, but, strange to say, none of them seemed anxious to peruse it. At last, how I do not recollect, it came into the hands of Mrs. Trubner, who after consideration wrote to say that they were willing to bring it out on the half-profit system, provided that I paid down £50 towards the cost of production. I did not at all like the idea of parting with the £50, but I believed in my book, and was anxious to put my views on the Transvaal Rebellion and other African questions before the world. So I consented to the terms, and in due course Keter Ware was published in a neat green binding. Somewhat to my astonishment, it proved a success from a literary point of view. It was not largely purchased, indeed that £50 took several years on its return journey to my pocket, but it was favourably and in some instances almost enthusiastically reviewed, especially in the colonial papers. About this time, the face of a girl whom I saw in a church at Norwood gave me the idea of writing a novel. The face was so perfectly beautiful, and at the same time so refined, that I felt I could fit a story to it which should be worthy of a heroine similarly endowed. When next I saw Mr. Trubner, I consulted him on the subject. You can write, it is certain that you can write. Yes, do it, and I will get the book published for you," he answered. Thus encouraged I set to work. How to compose a novel I knew not, so I wrote straight on, trusting to the light of nature to guide me. My main object was to produce a picture of a woman perfect in mind and body, and to show her character ripening and growing spiritual under the pressure of various afflictions. Of course there is a vast gulf between a novice's aspiration and his attainment, and I do not contend that Angela, as she appears in dawn, fulfills this ideal. Also such a person in real life might and probably would be a bore. Something too bright and good for human nature's daily food. Still, this was the end I aimed at. Indeed, before I had done with her, I became so deeply attached to my heroine that in a literary sense I have never quite got over it. I worked very hard at this novel during the next six months or so, but at length it was finished and dispatched to Mr. Trubner, who, as his firm did not deal in this class of book, submitted it to five or six of the best publishers of fiction. One and all they declined it, so that by degrees it became clear to me that I might as well have saved my labour. Mr. Trubner, however, had confidence in my work, and submitted the manuscript to Mr. John Cordy Gifferson for report. And here I may pause to say that I think there is more kindness in the hearts of literary men than is common in the world. It is not a pleasant task, in the face of repeated failure, again and again, to attempt the adventure of persuading brother publishers to undertake the maiden effort of an unknown man. Still less pleasant is it, as I can butch from experience, to wade through a lengthy and not particularly legible manuscript, and write an elaborate opinion thereon for the benefit of a stranger. Yet Mr. Trubner and Mr. Gifferson did these things for me without fee or reward. Mr. Gifferson's report I have lost or mislaid, but I remember its purport well. It was to the effect that there was a great deal of power in the novel, but that it required to be entirely rewritten. The first part he sought so good that he advised me to expand it, and the unhappy ending he could not agree with. If I killed the heroine it would kill the book, he said. He may have been right, but I still hold to my first conception, according to which Angela was doomed to an early and pathetic end, as the fittest crown to her career. That the story needed rewriting there is no doubt, but I believe that it would have been better as a work of art if I had dealt with it on the old lines. Especially as the expansion of the beginning, in accordance with the advice of my kindly critic, took the tale back through the history of another generation, always a most dangerous experiment. Still I did as I was told, not presuming to set up a judgment of my own in the matter. If I had worked hard at the first draft of the novel I worked much harder at the second, especially as I could not give all my leisure to it, being engaged at the time in reading for the bar. So hard did I work that at length my eyesight gave out, and I was obliged to complete the last hundred sheets in a darkened room. But let my eyes ache as they might I would not give up till it was finished, within about three months from the date of its commencement. Recently I went through this book to prepare it for a new edition, chiefly in order to cut out some of the mysticism and tall writing for which it is too remarkable, and was pleased to find that it still interested me. But if a writer may be allowed to criticise his own work it is two books, not one. Also the hero is a very poor creature. Evidently I was too much occupied with my heroines to give much thought to him. Moreover women are so much easier and more interesting to write about, for whereas no two of them are alike, in modern men, or rather in young men of the middle and upper classes, there is a paralysing sameness. As a candid friend once said to me, there is nothing manly about that chap Arthur, he is the hero, except his bulldog. With Angela herself I am still in love, only she ought to have died, which on the whole would have been a better fate than being married to Arthur, more especially if he was anything like the illustrator's conception of him in the current edition. In its new shape Dawn was submitted to Mrs. Hurst and Blackit, and at once accepted by that firm. Why it was called Dawn I am not now quite clear, but I think it was because I could find no other title acceptable to the publishers. The discovery of suitable titles is a more difficult matter than people who do not write romances would suppose, most of the good ones having been used already and copyrighted. In due course the novel was published in three fat volumes and a pretty green cover, and I sat down to await events. At best I did not expect to win a fortune out of it, as if every one of the five hundred copies printed were sold I could only make fifty pounds under my agreement, not an extravagant reward for a great deal of labour. As a matter of fact, but four hundred and fifty sold, so the net proceeds of the venture amounted to ten pounds only, and forty surplus copies of the book which I bored my friends by presenting to them. But as the copyright of the work reverted to me at the expiration of a year I cannot grumble at this result. The reader may think that it was mercenary of me to consider my first book from this financial point of view, but to be frank though the story interested me much in its writing, and I had a sneaking belief in its merits. It never occurred to me that I, an utterly inexperienced beginner, could hope to make any mark in competition with the many brilliant writers of fiction who were already before the public. Therefore, so far as I was concerned, any reward in the way of literary reputation seemed to be beyond my reach. It was on the occasion of the publication of this novel that I made my first and last attempt to roll a log with somewhat amusing results. Almost the only person of influence whom I knew in the world of letters was the editor of a certain society paper. I had not seen him for ten years, but at this crisis I ventured to recall myself to his memory, and to ask him not for a favourable notice, but that the book should be reviewed in his journal. He acceded to my prayer, it was reviewed, but after a fashion for which I did not bargain. This little incident taught me a lesson, and the moral of it is, never trouble an editor about your immortal works, he can so easily be even with you. I commend it to all literary tiros. Even if you are in a position to command puffs, the public will find you out in the second edition, and revenge itself upon your next book. Here is a story that illustrates the accuracy of this statement. It came to me on good authority and I believe it to be true. A good many years ago the relation of an editor of a great paper published a novel. It was a bad novel, but a desperate effort was made to force it upon the public, and in many of the leading journals appeared notices so laudatory that readers fell into the trap, and the book went through several editions. Encouraged by success the writer published a second book, but the public had found her out and it fell flat. Being a person of resource she brought out a third work under a nom de plume which as at first was accorded an enthusiastic reception by previous arrangement and forced into circulation. A fourth followed under the same name, but again the public had found her out and her career as a novelist came to an end. To return to the fate of dawn. In most quarters it met with the usual reception of a first novel by an unknown man. Some of the reviewers sneered at it, and some slated it and made merry over the misprints, a cheap form of wit that saves those who practice it the trouble of going into the merits of a book. Two very good notices fell to its lot, however, in the times and in the morning post. The first of these speaking about the novel in terms of which any amateur writer might feel proud, though unfortunately it appeared too late to be of much service. Also I discovered that the story had interested a great many readers, and none of them more than the late Mr. Trubner, through whose kind offices it came to be published. Who, I was told, paid me the strange compliment of continuing its perusal till within a few hours of his death, a sad event that the enemy might say was hastened thereby. In this connection I remember that the first hint I received that my story was popular with the ordinary reading public, whatever reviewers might say of it, came from the lips of a young lady, a chance visitor at my house whose name I have forgotten. Seeing the book lying on the table, she took a volume up, saying, Oh! have you read Dawn? It is a first rate novel. I have just finished it. Somebody explained, and the subject dropped, but I was not a little gratified by the unintended compliment. These facts encouraged me, and I wrote a second novel, The Witch's Head. This book I endeavoured to publish serially by posting the manuscript to the editors of various magazines for their consideration. But in those days there were no literary agents or authors' societies to help young writers with their experience and advice, and the bulky manuscript always came back to my hand like a boomerang, till at length I wearied of the attempt. Of course I sent to the wrong people. Afterwards the editor of a leading monthly told me that he would have been delighted to run the book had it fallen into the hands of his firm. In the end, as in the case of Dawn, I published The Witch's Head in three volumes. Its reception astonished me, for I did not think so well of the book as I had done of its predecessor. In that view, by the way, the public has borne out my judgment, for to this day three copies of Dawn are absorbed for every two of The Witch's Head, a proportion that has never varied since the two works appeared in one volume form. The Witch's Head was very well reviewed. Indeed, in one or two cases the notices were almost enthusiastic, most of all when they dealt with the African part of the book, which I had inserted as padding, the fight between Jeremy and the bored giant being singled out for a special praise. Whatever it may lack, one merit this novel has, however, that was overlooked by all the reviewers. Omitting the fictitious incidents introduced for the purposes of the story, it contains an accurate account of the great disaster inflicted upon our troops by the Zulus at his Andalwana. I was in the country at the time of the massacre, and heard its story from the lips of survivors. Also, in writing of it, I studied the official reports in the blue books and the minutes of the court-martial. The Witch's Head attained the dignity of being pirated in America, and in England went out of print in a few weeks, but no argument that I could use would induce my publishers to reissue it in a one-volume edition. The risk was too great, they said. Then it was I came to the conclusion that I would abandon the making of books. The work was very hard, and when put to the test of experience, the glamour that surrounds this occupation vanished. I did not care much for the publicity it involved, and, like most young authors, I failed to appreciate being sneered at by anonymous critics, who happened not to admire what I wrote, and whom I had no opportunity of answering. It is true that then, as now, I liked the work for its own sake. Indeed, I have always thought that literature would be a charming profession, if its conditions allowed of the depositing of manuscripts when completed in a draw, there to languish in obscurity, or of their private publication only. But I could not afford myself these luxuries. I was too modest to hope for any renown worth having, and for the rest the game seemed scarcely worth the candle. I had published a history and two novels. On the history I had lost fifty pounds. On the first novel I had made ten pounds, and on the second fifty. Net profit on the three ten pounds, which, in the case of a man with other occupations and duties, did not appear to be an adequate return for the labour involved. But I was not destined to escape thus from the toils of romance. One day I chanced to read a clever article in favour of Boy's books, and it occurred to me that I might be able to do as well as others in that line. I was working at the bar at the time, but in my spare evenings, more from amusement than from any other reason, I entered on the literary adventure that ended in the appearance of King Solomon's minds. This romance has proved very successful, although three firms, including my own publishers, refused even to consider it. But as it can scarcely be called one of my first books, I shall not speak of it here. In conclusion I will tell a moving tale that it may be a warning to young authors for ever. After my publishers declined to issue the witch's head in a six-shilling edition, I tried many others without success, and at length in my folly signed an agreement with a firm since deceased. Under this document the firm in question agreed to bring out dawn and the witch's head in a two-shilling edition, and generously to remunerate me with a third share in the profits realised, if any. In return for this concession I, on my part, undertook to allow the said firm to republish any novel that I might write, for a period of five years from the date of the agreement, in a two-shilling form, and on the same third profit terms. Of course, so soon as the success of King Solomon's minds was established, I received a polite letter from the publishers in question, asking when they might expect to republish that romance at two shillings. Then the matter came under the consideration of lawyers and other skilled persons, with the result that it appeared that, if the courts took a strict view of the agreement, ruin stared me in the face, so far as my literary affairs were concerned. To begin with, either by accident or design, this artful document was so worded that, Primafeishi, the contracting publisher, had a right to place his cheap edition on the market whenever it might please him to do so, subject only to the payment of a third of the profit to be assessed by himself, which practically might have meant nothing at all. How could I expect to dispose of work subject to such a legal servitude? For five long years I was a slave to the framer of the hanging claws of the agreement. Things looked black indeed, when, thanks to the diplomacy of my agent, and to a fortunate change in the personnel of the firm to which I was bound, I avoided disaster. The fatal agreement was cancelled, and in consideration of my release, I undertook to write two books upon a moderate royalty. Thus, then, did I escape out of bondage. To be just it was my own fault that I should ever have been sold into it, but authors are proverbially guileless when they are anxious to publish their books, and a piece of printed paper, with a few editions written in a neat hand, looks innocent enough. Now no such misfortunes need happen, for the authors' society is ready and anxious to protect them from themselves and others, but in those days it did not exist. This is the history of how I drifted into the writing of books. If it saves one beginner so inexperienced and unfriended as I was in those days, from putting his hand to a hanging agreement under any circumstances whatsoever, it will not have been set out in vain. The advice that I give to would-be authors, if I may presume to offer it, is to think for a long while before they enter at all, upon a career so hard and hazardous, but having entered on it not to be easily cast down. There are great virtues in perseverance, even though critics sneer and publishers prove unkind. End of Dawn by H. Ryder Haggart. One-twelve of my first book by various authors. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Ruth Golding. Hudson's Bay by R. M. Ballantine. Having been asked to give some account of the commencement of my literary career, I begin by remarking that my first book was not a tale or story book, but a free and easy record of personal adventure and everyday life in those wild regions of North America which are known variously as Rupert's Land, the Hudson's Bay Territory, the Norwest, and the Great Lone Land. The record was never meant to see the light in the form of a book. It was written solely for the eye of my mother, but as it may be said that it was the means of leading me ultimately into the path of my life work, and was penned under somewhat peculiar circumstances, it may not be out of place to refer to it particularly here. The circumstances were as follows. After having spent about six years in the wild Norwest as a servant of the Hudson's Bay Fur Company, I found myself one summer at the advanced age of twenty-two, in charge of an outpost on the uninhabited northern shores of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, named Seven Islands. It was a dreary, desolate spot, at that time far beyond the bounds of civilisation. The Gulf, just opposite the establishment, was about fifty miles broad. The ships which passed up and down it were invisible, not only on a count of distance, but because of Seven Islands at the mouth of the bay, coming between them and the outpost. My next neighbour, in command of a similar post up the Gulf, was about seventy miles distant. The nearest house down the Gulf was about eighty miles off, and behind us lay the virgin forests, with swamps, lakes, prairies, and mountains stretching away without break right across the continent to the Pacific Ocean. The outpost, which in virtue of a ship's caronade and a flagstaff, was occasionally styled a fort, consisted of four wooden buildings. One of these, the largest with a veranda, was the residency. There was an offshoot in rear which served as a kitchen. The other houses were a store for goods, wherewith to carry on trade with the Indians, a stable and a workshop. The whole population of the establishment, indeed of the surrounding district, consisted of myself and one man, also a horse. The horse occupied the stable, I dwelt in the residency, the rest of the population lived in the kitchen. There were indeed five other men belonging to the establishment, but these did not affect its desolation, for they were away netting salmon at a river about twenty miles distant at the time I write of. My Friday, who was a French-Canadian, being cook as well as man of all works, found a little occupation in attending to the duties of his office, but the unfortunate governor had nothing whatever to do except await the arrival of Indians who were not due at that time. The horse was a bad one, without a saddle, and in possession of a pronounced backbone. My Friday was not sociable. I had no books, no newspapers, no magazines, or literature of any kind, no game to shoot, no boat wherewith to prosecute fishing in the bay, and no prospect of seeing any one to speak to for weeks if not months to come. But I had pen and ink, and by great good fortune was in possession of a blank paper book fully an inch thick. These, then, were the circumstances in which I began my first book. When that book was finished and not long afterwards submitted to the, I need hardly say, favourable criticism of my mother. I had not the most distant idea of taking to authorship as a profession. Even when a printer-cousin, seeing the manuscript, offered to print it, and the well-known black wood of Edinburgh seeing the book offered to publish it, and did publish it, my ambition was still so absolutely asleep that I did not again put pen to paper in that way for eight years thereafter. Although I might have been encouraged there too by the fact that this first book, named Hudson's Bay, besides being a commercial success, received favourable notice from the press. It was not until the year 1854 that my literary path was opened up. At that time I was a partner in the late publishing firm of Constable and Coe of Edinburgh. Happening one day to meet with the late William Nelson publisher, I was asked by him how I should like the idea of taking to literature as a profession. My answer, I forget. It must have been vague, for I had never thought of the subject before. Well, said he, what had you think of trying to write a story? Somewhat amused I replied that I did not know what to think, but I would try if he wished me to do so. Do so, said he, and go to work at once, or words to that effect. I went to work at once, and wrote my first story or work of fiction. It was published in 1855 under the name of Snowflakes and Sunbeams, or the Young Fur Traders. Afterwards the first part of the title was dropped, and the book is now known as the Young Fur Traders. From that day to this I have lived by making storybooks for young folk. From what I have said it will be seen that I have never aimed at the achieving of this position, and I hope that it is not presumptuous in me to think, and to derive much comfort from the thought that God led me into the particular path along which I have walked for so many years. The scene of my first story was naturally laid in those backwards with which I was familiar, and the story itself was founded on the adventures and experiences of myself and my companions. When a second book was required of me I stuck to the same regions, but changed the locality. When casting about in my mind for a suitable subject I happened to meet with an old retired Norwester who had spent an adventurous life in Rupert's land. Among other duties he had been sent to establish an art-post of the Hudson's Bay Company at Angava Bay, one of the most dreary parts of a desolate region. On hearing what I wanted he sat down and wrote a long narrative of his proceedings there which he placed at my disposal, and thus furnished me with the foundation of Angava. But now I had reached the end of my tether, and when a third story was wanted I was compelled to seek new fields of adventure in the books of travellers. Regarding the southern seas as a most romantic part of the world, after the backwards, I mentally and spiritually plunged into those warm waters, and the dive resulted in the Coral Island. It now began to be borne in upon me that there was something not quite satisfactory in describing, expatiating on, and energizing in, regions which one has never seen. For one thing it was needful to be always carefully on the watch to avoid falling into mistakes, geographical, topographical, natural, historical, and otherwise. For instance, despite the utmost care of which I was capable while studying up for the Coral Island, I fell into a blunder through ignorance in regard to a familiar fruit. I was under the impression that coconuts grew on their trees in the same form as that in which they are usually presented to us in grosses windows, namely about the size of a large fist with three spots at one end. Learning from trustworthy books that at a certain stage of development the nut contains a delicious beverage like lemonade, I sent one of my heroes up a tree for a nut, through the shell of which he bored a hole with a pen-knife. It was not till long after the story was published that my own brother, who had voyaged in southern seas, wrote to draw my attention to the fact that the coconut is nearly as large as a man's head, and its outer husk is over an inch thick, so that no ordinary pen-knife could bore to its interior. Of course I should have known this, and perhaps should be ashamed of my ignorance, but somehow I'm not. I admit that this was a slip, but such and other slips hardly justify the remark that some people have not hesitated to make, namely that I have a tendency to draw the long bow. I feel almost sensitive on this point, for I have always laboured to be true to nature and to fact, even in my wildest flights of fancy. This reminds me of the remark made to myself once by a lady in reference to this same coral island. There is one thing, Mr. Ballantine, she said, which I really find it hard to believe. You make one of your three boys dive into a clear pool, go to the bottom, and then turning on his back, look up, and wink and laugh at the other two. No, no, not laugh. I said I, remonstratively. Well, then you make him smile. Ah, that is true, but there is a vast difference between laughing and smiling underwater. But is it not singular that you should doubt the only incident in the story which I personally verify? I happened to be in lodgings at the seaside while writing that story, and after penning the passage you refer to, I went down to the shore, pulled off my clothes, dived to the bottom, turned on my back, and, looking up, I smiled and winked. The lady laughed, but I have never been quite sure from the tone of that laugh whether it was a laugh of conviction or of unbelief. It is not improbable that my fair friend's mental constitution may have been somewhat similar to that of the old woman who declined to believe her sailor-grandson when he told her he had seen flying fish. But at once recognized his veracity when he said he had seen the remains of Pharaoh's chariot-wheels on the shores of the Red Sea. Recognizing, then, the difficulties of my position, I formed the resolution to visit, when possible, the scenes in which my stories were laid, converse with the people who under modification were to form the dramatist persona of the tales, and generally to obtain information in each case as far as laying my power from the fountain-head. Thus, when about to begin the life-boat, I went to Ramsgate, and for some time was hand-and-glove with Jarman, the heroic coxson of the Ramsgate boat, a lion-like as well as a lion-hearted man who rescued hundreds of lives from the fatal Goodwin sands during his career. In like manner, when getting up information for the lighthouse, I obtained permission from the commissioners of Northern Lights to visit the Bell Rock lighthouse, where I hobnobbed with the three keepers of that celebrated pillar in the sea for three weeks, and read Stevenson's graphic account of the building of the structure in the library or visitors' room just under the lantern. I was absolutely a prisoner there during those three weeks, for no boats ever came near us, and it needs scarcely be said that ships kept well out of our way. By good fortune there came on a pretty stiff gale at the time, and Stevenson's thrilling narrative was read to the tune of whistling winds and roaring seas, many of which latter sent the spray right up to the lantern, and caused the building more than once to quiver to its foundation. In order to do justice to fighting the flames, I careered through the streets of London on fire-engines, clad in a P-jacket and a black leather helmet of the salvage-core. This to enable me to pass the cordon of police without question, though not without recognition, as was made apparent to me on one occasion at a fire by a fireman whispering confidentially, I know what you are, sir, you are a hammy-tour. A right you are, said I, and moved away in order to change the subject. It was a glorious experience, by the way, this galloping on fire-engines through the crowded streets. It had in it much of the excitement of the chase, possibly that of war, with the noble end in view of saving instead of destroying life. Such tearing along at headlong speed, such wild roaring of the fireman to clear the way, such frantic dashing aside of cabs, carts, buses and pedestrians, such reckless courage on the part of the men and volcanic spoutings on the part of the fires. But I must not linger the memory of it is too enticing. Deep down took me to Cornwall, where over two hundred fathoms beneath the green turf, and more than half a mile out under the bed of the sea, I saw the sturdy miners at work winning copper and tin from the solid rock, and acquired some knowledge of their life, sufferings and toils. In the land of the Vikings I shot Tarmigan, caught salmon, and gathered material for earling the bold. A winter in Algiers made me familiar with the pirate city. I enjoyed a fortnight with the hearty inhabitants of the gull lightship off the Goodwin Sands, and went to the Cape of Good Hope and up into the interior of the colony to spy out the land, and hold intercourse with the settler and the savage. Although I am bound to confess that with regard to the latter, I talked to him only with mine eyes. I also went afloat for a short time with the fishermen of the North Sea, in order to be able to do justice to the young trawler. To arrive still closer at the truth, and to avoid errors, I have always endeavored to submit my proof sheets, when possible, to experts and men who knew the subjects well. Thus Captain Shaw, late chief of the London Fire Brigade, kindly read the proofs of fighting the flames, and prevented my getting off the rails in matters of detail. And Sir Arthur Blackwood, financial secretary to the general post-office, obligingly did me the same favour in regard to post-haste. One other word in conclusion. Always, while writing, whatever might be the subject of my story, I have been influenced by an undercurrent of effort and desire to direct the minds and affections of my readers towards the higher life. 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 do not really 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 autobiography. What is a pound, asked Sir Robert Peale, in an interrogative mood futile as pilots? 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 inquiry 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 school fellow 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 emmanuensis. 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 a proved story form I must request the reader to come back two years with me. One fine day, when I was sixteen, I was wondering about the Ramsgate sands, looking for tool. 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 tool, but I could not find tool. 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 Threppence. 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 today. 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 commediata. The five-pounds humorous story competition I did not go in for. But when the last day of sending in manuscripts for that had passed, I reproached myself with not having dispatched 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 five pounds, 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 commediata 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 seventeenths and eighteenths 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 Why, 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 Why. It was the only time he ever darted me. By that time I shall be able to afford a staff, I replied triumphantly. Why was convinced, but before the comic paper was born, Why 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. Why paid five, and we divided the profits? He has since not become a publisher. My first book, Price One Penny Net, went well. It was loudly denounced by those it described, 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 bookstores. 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 manuscript when writing Children of the Ghetto. The description of market day and jury was transferred bodily from the manuscript 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. Why saw the back hair of fortune almost within our grasp? One morning I had Master walked into my room with a portentously solemn air. I felt instinctively that the murder was out. But he only said, Where is why? 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 peculiarly sceptical glance. When did you last see why? 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 why had suddenly been taken with a further happy thought. Contemplation of those gorgeous tri-coloured posters had turned his brain, and armed with an amateur pastepot 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 why, being legal-minded, had argued it out with the policeman duo en barre from the top of his ladder. The outraged majesty of the law thereupon hailed why 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. Straight away 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 meter 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 upon walls. I said I could not see anything objectionable in it. Come now, confess you were 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 that Bret Hart 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 Cohen 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 chryton. What drew me to him was his mordant wit, today, 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 would be as comically out of place in the East End environment. He thought it would make a funny Arabian night sort of burlesque. And so it would have done, but unfortunately I saw subtler possibilities of political satire in it. Nothing less than a reductio ad absurdum of the whole system of party government. 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 collaborators' 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 tenon sixpony, for that was the unfortunate price of publication, political treaties of over sixty long chapters, and five hundred closely printed pages. I drew all the characters as seriously and complexly, as if the fundamental conception were a matter of history. The outgoing Premier became an elaborate study of a nineteenth-century hamlet. The Bethnal green life amid which he came to live was presented with photographic fullness 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 reassumed 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. In contrast to all this elephantine waggery, the half-dozen chapters near the commencement, in which my collaborator sketched the first adventures of the radical working man in Downing Street, were light and sparkling, and I feel sure the shilling skit he originally meditated would have been a great success. We christened the book, the Premier and the Painter, ourselves J. Freeman Bell, had it type-written and sent it round to the publishers in two enormous quarter volumes. I had been working at it for more than a year every evening, after the hellish torture of the day's teaching, and all day every holiday, but now I had a good rest while it was playing its boomerang prank of returning to me once a month. The only gleam of hope came from Bentley's, who wrote to say that they could not make up their minds to reject it, but they prevailed upon themselves to part with it at last, though not without asking to see Mr. Bell's next book. At last it was accepted by Spencer Blackett, and though it had been refused by all the best houses, it failed—failed in a material sense, that is, for there was plenty of praise in the papers, though at too long intervals to do us any good. The Athenaeum has never spoken so well of anything I have done since. The late James Ransiment, I learnt after his death that it was he, raved about it in various uninfluential organs. It even called forth a leader in the family Herald, and there are odd people here and there who know the secret of J. Freeman Bell, who declare that I, Zangwill, will never do anything so good. There was a cheaper edition, but it did not sell much then, though now it is in its third edition, issued uniformly with my other books by Heinemann and absolutely unrevised. But not only did the Premier and the painter fail with the great public at first, it did not even help either of us one step up the ladder. Never got us a letter of encouragement nor a stroke of work. I had to begin journalism at the very bottom and entirely unassisted, narrowly escaping canvassing for advertisements, for I had by this time thrown up my scholastic position and had gone forth into the world penniless and without even a character, branded as an atheist because I did not worship the Lord who presided over our committee and a revolutionary because I refused to break the law of the land. I should stop here if I was certain I had written the required article, but as the Premier and the Painter was not entirely my first book, I may perhaps be expected to say something of my third first book, and the first to which I put my name, The Bachelor's Club. Years of literary apathy succeeded the failure of the Premier and the Painter. All I did was to publish a few serious poems which I hope will survive time. A couple of pseudonymous stories signed the Baroness von Ess and a long philosophical essay upon religion, and to lend a hand in the writing of a few playlets. Becoming convinced of the irresponsible mendacity of the dramatic profession, I gave up the stage too, vowing never to write except on commission. I kept, my vow, and yet was played ultimately, and sank entirely into the slough of journalism, glad enough to get there, into alia editing a comic paper, not Grimaldi but Ariel, with a heavy heart. At last the long apathy wore off, and I resolved to cultivate literature again in my scraps of time. It is a mere accident that I wrote a pair of funny books, or put serious criticism of contemporary manners into a shape not understood in a country where only the dull are profound and only the ponderous are earnest. The Bachelor's Club was the result of a whimsical remark, made by my dear friend Eda of Bartholomews, with whom I was then sharing rooms in Bernard Street, and who helped me greatly with it, and its publication was equally accidental. One spring day, in the year of Grace 1891, having lived unsuccessfully for a score of years and seven upon this absurd planet, I crossed Fleet Street and stepped into what is called success. It was like this. Mr. J. T. Grine, now of the Independent Theatre, meditated a little monthly called the Playgoers' Review, and he asked me to do an article for the first number. On the strength of some speeches I had made at the Playgoers' Club. When I got the proof it was marked, please return at once to Sixth Bouffery Street. My office boy being out, and Bouffery Street being only a few steps away, I took it over myself, and found myself somewhat to my surprise in the office of Henry and Co. publishers, and in the presence of Mr. J. Hannaford Bennett, an active partner in the firm. He greeted me by name also to my surprise, and told me he had heard me speak at the Playgoers' Club. A little conversation ensued, and he mentioned that his firm was going to bring out a library of wittent humour. I told him I had begun a book of vaardly humourous, and had written two chapters of it, and he straightway came over to my office, heard me read them, and immediately secured the book. The then editor ultimately refused to have it in the White Friars Library of Wittent humour, and so it was brought out separately. Within three months, working in odds and ends of time, I finished it, correcting the proofs of the first chapters while I was writing the last. Indeed, ever since the day I read those two chapters to Mr. Hannaford Bennett, I have never written a line anywhere that has not been purchased before it was written. Fought to my undying astonishment, two average editions of my real first book were disposed of on the day of publication to say nothing of the sale in New York. Unless I had acquired a reputation of which I was totally unconscious, it must have been the title that fetched the trade. Or perhaps it was the illustrations by my friend Mr. George Hutchinson, whom I am proud to have discovered as a cartoonist for Ariel. So here the story comes to a nice sensational climax. Rereading it, I feel dimly that there ought to be a moral in it somewhere for the benefit of struggling fellow scribblers. But the best I can find is this. That if you are blessed with some talent, a great deal of industry, and an amount of conceit, mighty enough to enable you to disregard superiors, equals and critics, as well as the fancied demands of the public, it is possible, without friends or introductions, or bothering celebrities to read your manuscripts, or cultivating the camp of the log-rollers, to attain by dint of slaving day and night for years during the flower of your youth, to a fame infinitely less widespread than a prize fighter's, and a pecuniary position which you might with far less trouble have been born to. End of the Premiere and the Painter by I. Zangwill. I discovered that I could write decent prose, and even make money out of it, for during many years my youthful aspirations had been to rival Rosetti, or get on a level with Browning, rather than to make a living out of literature as a profession. But when I did start a book, I went through three years of American experience, like fire through flax, and wrote the western avarice of volume containing ninety-three thousand words in less than a lunar month. I had been in Australia years before, coming home before the mast as an A, B, and a Blackwell liner, but my occasional efforts to turn that experience into form always failed. Once or twice I read some of my prose to friends, who told me that it was worse even than my poetry. Such criticism naturally confirmed me in the belief that I must be a poet or nothing, and I soon got into a fair way to become nothing, for my health broke down. At last finding my choice lay between two kinds of tragedies, I chose the least, and went off to Texas. On February 27th, 1884, I was working in a government office as a writer. On March 27th, I was sheep herding in Scurry County, northwest Texas, in the south of the Panhandle. This experience was the opening of the western avarice, but I should never have written the book if it had not been for two friends of mine. One was George Gissing, and the other, W. H. Hudson, the Argentine naturalist. When I returned from the west, and yarned to them of the starvation and toil and strife in that new world, they urged me to put it down instead of talking it. I suppose they looked on it as good material running to verbal conversational waste, being both writers of many years standing. Now I understand their point of view, and carry a notebook, or an odd piece of paper, to jot down motives that crop up in occasional talk, but then I was ignorant, and astonished at the wild notion of writing anything saleable. However, in desperation, for I had no money, I began to write, and went ahead in the same way that I have so far kept to. I wrote it without notes, without care, without thought, save that each night the past was resurgent and alive before and within me, just as it was when I worked and starved between Texas and the Great Northwest. Each Sunday I read what I had done to George Gissing, at first with terror, but afterwards with more confidence when he nodded approval, and as the end approached I began to believe in it myself. It is only six years since the book was finished and sent to Messers Smith, Elder & Co., but it seems half a century ago so much has happened since then, and when it was accepted and published and paid for, and actually reviewed favorably, I almost determined to take to literature as a profession. I remembered that when I was a boy of eleven I wrote a romance with twenty people, men and women, in it. I married them all off at the end, being then in the childish mind of the most usual novelist who believes or pretends to believe, or at any rate by implication teaches, that the interesting part of life finishes then instead of beginning. I recalled the fact that I wrote doggerel verse at the age of thirteen when I was at bed for grammar school, and that an ardent, ignorant conservatism drove me, when I was at Owens College, Manchester, to lampoon the liberal candidates in rhymes and pace them up in the big lavatory. And under the influence of these memories, I began to think that perhaps scribbling was my natural trade. I had tried some forty different callings, including Sailorising, Sawmill Work, Bullock Driving, Tramping, and the selling of books in San Francisco, within different financial success, so perhaps my Metier was the making of books instead. So I went on trying and had a very bad time for two years. Having written the Western Avernus in a kind of intuitive instructive way, it came easy enough to me, but very soon I began to think of the technique of writing, and wrote badly. I had to look back at the best part of that book to be assured I could write it all. For a long time it was a consolation and a distress to me, for I had to find out that knowledge must get into one's fingers before it can be used. Only those who know nothing, or who know a great deal very well, can write decently, and the intermediate state is exceedingly painful. Both the public and private laudation of my American book made me unhappy then. I thought I had only that one book in me. Some of the letters I received from America, and more particularly British Columbia, were anything but cheerful reading. One man, of whom I had spoken rather freely, said I should be hanged on a cottonwood tree if I ever set foot in the colony again. I do not believe there are any cottonwoods there, but he used a phrase common in American literature. Another Willem friend of mine, who had read some favourable criticisms, wrote me to say he was sure Messers, Smith, and Elder had paid for them. He had understood it was always done, and now he knew the truth of it because the book was so bad. I almost feared to return to British Columbia. The critics there might use worse weapons than a sneering paragraph. In England the worst one need fear is an action for criminal libel, or a rough-and-tumble fight. There it might end in an inquest. I wrote back to my critics that if I ever came out again I would come armed, and endeavour to reply effectually. For that wild life far away from the ancient sad and hardened bonds of social law which crush a man and make him just like his fellows, or so nearly like that only intimacy can distinguish individual differences, had allowed me to grow in another way, and become more myself, more independent, more like a savage, better able to fight and endure. That is the use of going abroad, and going abroad to places that are not civilised. They allow a man to revert and be himself. It may make his return hard, his endurance of social bonds bitterer, but it may help him to refuse to endure. He may attain to some natural sight. Not many weeks ago I was talking to a well-known American publisher, and our conversation ran on the trans-oceanic view of Europe. He was amused and delighted to come across an Englishman who was so Americanised in one way as to look on our standing camps and armed kingdoms as citizens of the States do, especially those who live in the West. To the American, Europe seems like a small collection of walled yards, each with a crowing fighting cock defying the universe on the top of his own dung hill with an occasional scream from the wall. The whole of our international politics gets to look small and petty, and a bitter waste of power. Perhaps the American view is right. At any rate it seemed so when I sat far aloof upon the lofty mountains to the West of the Great Plains. The isolation from the politics of the moment allowed me to see nature and natural law. And as it was with nations, so it was with men. Out yonder in the West, most of us were brutal at times, and ready to kill or be killed. But my American-bred acquaintances looked like men, strikingly like men, independent, free, equal to the need of the ensuing day, or the call of some sudden hour. It is a liberal education to the law-abiding Englishman to see a good specimen of a Texan cowboy walk down a Western street, for he looks like a law unto himself, calm and greatly assured of the validity of his own enactments. We live in a crowd here, and it takes a rebel to be himself, and in the struggle for freedom he is likely to go under. While I was gaining the experience that went solid and crystallized into the Western avarice, I was discovering much that had never been discovered before, not in a geographical sense, for I have been in few places where men have not been, but in myself. Each new task teaches us something new, and something more than the mere way to do it. To drive horses, or milk a cow, or make bread, or kill a sheep, sets us level with facts and face to face with some reality. We are called on to be real, and not the shadow of others. This is the worth that is in all real workers whatever they do, under whatever conditions. Every truth so learnt strips away ancient falsehood from us. It is real education, not the taught instruction which makes us alike, and thus shams, merely arming us with weapons to fight our fellows in the crowded, unwholesome life of falsely civilized cities. And in America there is the sharp contrast between the city life and the life of the mountain and the plain. It is seen more clearly than in England, which is all more or less city. There are no clear stellar interspaces in our life here, but out yonder, a long day's train ride across the High Baron Cactus Plateaus of Arizona teaches us as much as a clear and open depth in the sky. For of a sudden we run into the very midst of a big town, and shams are made gods for our worship. It is difficult to be one self when all others refuse to be themselves. This was for me the lesson of the West and the life there. When I wrote this book, I did not know it. I wrote almost unconsciously without taking thought, without weighing words, without conscious knowledge. But I see now what I learnt in a hard and bitter school, for I acknowledge that the experience was at times bitterly painful. It is not pleasant to toil sixteen hours a day. It is not good to starve over much. It is not well to feel bitter for long months. And yet it is well and good and pleasant in the end, to learn realities and live without lies. It is better to be a truthful animal than a civilized man, as things go. I learnt much from horses and cattle and sheep. The very prairie dogs taught me. The ospreys and the salmon they prayed on expressed truths. They didn't attempt to live on words, or the dust and ashes of dead things. They were themselves and no one else, and were not diseased with theories or a morbid altruism that is based on dependence. This, I think, is the lesson I learnt from my own book. I did not know it when I wrote it. I never thought of writing it. I never meant to write anything. I only went to America because England and the life of London made me ill. If I could have lived my own life here, I would have stayed. But the crushing combination of social forces drove me out. For fear of cutting my own throat I left, and took my chance with natural forces. To fight with nature makes men. To fight with society makes devils, or criminals, or martyrs, and sometimes a man may be all three. I preferred to revert to mere natural conditions for a time. To lead such a life for a long time is to give up creeds, and to go to the universal storehouse whence all creeds come. It is giving up dogmas and becoming religious. In true opposition to instructive nature we find our own natural religion, which cannot be wholly like any other. So a life of this kind does not make men good, in the common sense of the word, but it makes a man good for something. It may make him an ethical outcast, as facts faced always will. He prefers induction to deduction, especially the sanctioned, unverified deductions of social order. For nature affords the only verification for the logical process of deduction, we fear nature too much, to say the least. For most of us hold to other men's theories instead of making our own. When Mel said, solitude in the sense of being frequently alone is necessary to the formation of any depth of character, he spoke almost absolute truth. But here we can never be alone. The very air is full of the dead breath of others. I learnt more in four days' walk over the California coast range, living on parched Indian corn, than I could have done in a lifetime of the solitude of a lonely house. The Selkirks and the Rocky Mountains are books of ancient learning, the long plains of grey grass, the burnt plateaus of the hot south, speak eternal truths to all who listen. They need not listen, for their men do not learn by the ear. They breathe the knowledge in. In speaking as I have done about America, I do not mean to praise it as a state or a society. In that respect it is perhaps worse than our own, more diseased, more under the heel of the money fiend, more recklessly and brutally acquisitive. But there are parts of it still more or less free. Nature reigns still over vast tracts in the west. As a democracy it is so far a failure, as democracies must be organized on a plutocratic basis. But it at any rate allows a man to think himself a man. Walt Whitman is the big expression of that thought, but his fervent belief in America was really but deep trust in man himself, in man's power of revolt, in his ultimate recognition of the beauty of the truth. The power of America to teach lies in the fact that a great part of her fertile and barren soil has not yet been taught, not yet cultivated for the bread, which of itself can feed no man wholly. Perhaps among the few who have read the western Avernus, for it was not a financial success, fewer still have seen what I think I myself see in it now. But it has taken me six years to understand it, six years to know how I came to write it and what it meant. That is the way in life. We do not learn at once what we are taught. We do not always understand all we say even when speaking earnestly. There is often one aspect of a book that the writer himself can learn from, and that is not always the technical part of it. All sayings may have an esoteric meaning. In those hard days by the campfire on the trail, on the prairie with sheep and cattle, I did not understand that they called up in me the ancient underlying experience of the race, and, like a deep plow, brought to the surface the lowest soil which should hereafter be a little fertile. When I starved, I thought not of our far ancestors who had suffered too. As I watched the sheep or the sharp horned Texas steers, I could not reflect upon our pastoral forefathers. As I climbed with bleeding feet the steep slopes of the western hills, my thoughts were set in a narrow circle of dark misery. I could not think of those who had striven, like me, in distant ages. But the songs of the campfire and the leap of the flame, and the crackling wood and the lofty snow-clad hills, and the long, dim plains, the wild beast, and the venomous serpents, and the need of food, brought me back to nature. The nature that had created those who were the fathers of us all, and, bringing me back, they taught me, as they strived to teach all, that the real and deeper life is everywhere, even in a city, if we will but look for it with unscaled eyes, and mine set free from the tedious trivialities of this debauched modern life.