 CHAPTER XII HUDSON'S BAE by R. M. BALANTINE Having been asked to give some account of the commencement of my literary career, I began 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 Northwest, 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 Northwest 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 north shores of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, named Seven Islands. It was a dreary, desolate spot, at that time far beyond the bounds of civilization. The gulf, just opposite the establishment, was about fifty miles broad. The ships which passed up and down it were invisible, not only on account of the distance, but because of seven islands at the mouth of the bay coming between them and the outpost. My next neighbor, 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 the 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 anyone 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 favorable, 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 Blackwood 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 favorable 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 Company 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 never thought of the subject before. Well, said he, what would 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 date 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 backwoods 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 outpost of the Hudson's Bay Company at Ungava 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 Ungava. 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 backwoods, 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, expiating 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 the grocers' 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 penknife. It was not till long after the story was published that my own brother, who had voyaged in the 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 over an inch thick so that no ordinary penknife could bore to its interior. Of course I should have known this, and perhaps should be ashamed of my ignorance, but somehow I am 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 labored 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. Valentine, 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, 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 happen to be in lodging at the seaside while writing that story, and after penning the passage you referred 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 it 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. I found verse with the people who, under modification, were to form the dramatic personae of the tales, and generally to obtain information in each case as far as lay in my power from the fountain head. Thus, when about to begin the lifeboat, I went to Ramsgate, and, for some time, was hand and glove with the German, the heroic coxswain of the Ramsgate boat, a lion-like as well as 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 later 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're a amateur, 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 ending view of saving instead of destroying life. Such tearing along it had long speed, such wild roaring of the firemen 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 a half 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 ptarmigan, 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 gall light ship 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 preventing my getting off the rails in matters of detail. And Sir Arthur Blackwood, financial secretary to the General Post Office, obliging me did 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. End of Chapter 12 Chapter 13 of my first book. 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 Abaii in September 2019. My first book by Various. Chapter 13. The Premier and the Painter. By Aizang Will. 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 Peel in an interrogative mood futile as Pilates. What is a book? I ask, and the dictionary answers with its usual dogmatic air, a collection of sheets of paper or a 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 and amennuences. 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 the printed first book. The story of this first book is peculiar, and to tell it in an approved 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 a 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 merely at a penny, but at that time it had also a Saturday edition at three pence. 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 comediata. The five-pound 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 feel 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 that my comediata 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 17th and 18th years in the scanty leisure of a harassed pupil teacher at an elementary school working hard in the evenings for a degree at the London University to boot. There was a fellow pupil teacher, let us call him Y, who believed in me and who had a little money with which to back his belief. I was for starting a comic paper. The name was to be Grimaldi and I was to write it all every week. But don't you think your invention would give way ultimately? Asked Y. It was the only time he ever doubted me. By that time I shall be able to afford a staff. I replied triumphantly. Y was convinced. But before the comic paper was born, Y had another happy thought. He suggested that if I wrote a Jewish story, we might make enough to finance the comic paper. I was quite willing. If he had suggested an epic, I should have written it. So I wrote the story in four evenings. I always write in spurts. And within ten days from the inception of the idea, the booklet was on sale in a coverless pamphlet form. The printing cost ten pounds. I paid five. The five I had won. Y paid five and we divided the profits. He has since not become a publisher. My first book, Price One Penny Knit, 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 bookstalls. 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 interlarge 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 in Jewry 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. Which is, 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 black hair of fortune almost within our grasp? One morning our headmaster walked into my room with a potentiously solemn air. I felt instinctively that the murder was out. But he only said, where is why? Though to me a coupling of our names was ominous, for our publishing partnership was unknown. I replied, how should I know, in his room I suppose? He gave me a peculiar sceptical glance. When did you last see 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 tricoloured posters had turned his brain and, armed with an amateur paste pot and a ladder, he had sallied forth at midnight to stick them about the silent streets so as to cut down the publishing expenses. A policeman observing him at work had told him to get down and why, being legal-minded, had argued it out with the policeman the Hothomba 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. Straightway the committee of the school was summoned in hot haste and held debate upon the scandal of a pupil teacher being guilty of originality. And one dread afternoon, when all nature seemed to hold its breath, I was called down to interview a member of the committee. In his hand were copies of the obnoxious publications. I approached a 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 ballot 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 are ashamed of it, he urged. You only wrote it to make money. If you mean that I deliberately wrote low stuff to make money, I replied calmly, it is untrue. There is nothing I am ashamed of. What you object to is simply realism. I pointed out 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 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 letter. 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. Once, 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 Cowan, by name. This time my colleague was part author. I 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 chiton. What drew me to him was his mordant wit. Today, alas, wasted on anonymous journalism. When we 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 chilling book had occurred to him. It was that a radical prime minister and a conservative working man would change into each other by supernatural means and the working man be confronted with the problem of governing while the prime minister should be as comically out of place in the East End environment. He thought it would make a funny Arabian knight's sort of burlesque. And so it would have done, but unfortunately I saw subtler possibilities of political satire in it, being less than a reductio at 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 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 chilling skit, grew to a ten-and-six penny. 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 maneuvers were described with infinite detail. Numerous real personages were introduced under nominal disguises and subsequent history was curiously anticipated in some of the female franchise and home-rule episodes. Worst of all, so super-subtle was the satire that it was never actually stated straight out that the premier had changed places with the radical working man so that the door might be left open for satirically suggested alternative explanations of the metamorphosis in their characters. And as, moreover, the two men re-assumed their original roles for one night only with infinitely complex effects, many readers, otherwise unimpeachable, reached the end without any suspicion of the actual plot and yet, on their own confession, enjoyed the book. In contrast to all this elephantine waggery, the half-dozen chapters near the commencement in which my collaborators sketched the first adventures of the radical working man in Downing Street were light and sparkling and I feel sure the shilling skitty originally mediated would have been a great success. We christened the book, the premier and the painter, ourselves J. Freeman Bell had it typewritten and sent it round to the publishers into enormous quarto 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 Runkiman, I learned after his death that it was he, raved about it in various uninfluential organs. It even called forth a leader in the family Harold, and there are odd people here and there who know the secret of J. Freeman Bell, who declared 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 many 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 leather, 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 S 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 two, bowing 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, inter alia editing a comic paper, not Grimaldi but Ariel, with a heavy heart. At last a 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, either of Bartholomew's, 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. Grain, now of the independent theatre, mediated a little monthly called the Playgoer's Review and he asked me to do an article for the first number on the strength of some speeches I had made at the Playgoer's Club. When I got the proof it was marked, please return it once to Sixth Bouveries Street. My office boy being out and Bouveries 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 Company, publishers and in the presence of Mr. J. Haniford 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 Playgoer's Club. A little conversation ensued and he mentioned that his firm was going to bring out a library of wit and humour. I told him I had begun a book, avowedly humourous and had written two chapters of it and his straight way came over to my office, made me read them and immediately secured the book. The then editor ultimately refused to have it in the White Friars Library of Wit and 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. Haniford Bennett, I have never written a line anywhere that has not been purchased before it was written. For, 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 George Hutchinson whom I am proud to have discovered as a cartoonist for Ariel. So here the story comes to a nice sensational climax. Re-reading 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 and a pecuniary position which you might with far less trouble have been born to. End of Chapter 13 Chapter 14 of My First Book 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 Jennifer Painter My First Book by Various Chapter 14 The Western Avernus by Morley Roberts Certainly no one was more surprised than myself when 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 Rossetti 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 Avernus a volume containing 93,000 words in less than a lunar month. I had been in Australia years before coming home before the mast as an AB in a black hole 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 the 27th, 1884 I was working in a government office as a writer. On March the 27th, I was sheep herding in Scurry County, northwest Texas in the south of the Panhandle. This experience was the opening of The Western Avernus. 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 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 and 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 favourably, 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 recall the fact that I wrote doggerel verse at the age of thirteen when I was at Bedford 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 place 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, Sawmillwork, Bullock Driving, Tramping and the selling of books in San Francisco within different financial success. So perhaps my Metiaire was the making of books instead. So I went on trying and had a very bad time for two years. Having written the Western of earnest in a kind of intuitive instructive way it came easily enough to me but very soon I began to think of the technique of writing that I wrote badly. I had to look back at the best part of that book to be assured I could write at 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 have 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 well-owned friend of mine who had read some favourable criticisms wrote me to say he was sure Messrs 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 set 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 clock 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 seems 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 bread 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 of earnest 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 learned strips away ancient falsehood promise 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 days train ride across the high barren cactus plateaus of Arizona teaches us as much as a clear and open depth in the sky for all 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 oneself 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 learned in a hard and bitter school for I acknowledge that the experience was at times bitterly painful it is not pleasant to toil 16 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 learned 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 learned 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 when 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 holy 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 on to other men's theories instead of making our own when mill 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 be alone the very air is full of the dead breath of others I learned more in a 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 Selkerks 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 traps 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 of earnest for it was not a financial success few are 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 horns of 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 the 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 strive to teach all the real and deeper life is everywhere even in a city if we will but look for it with unsealed eyes and minds set free from the tedious trivialities of this debauched modern life End of Chapter 14 Chapter 15 of my first book 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 Jennifer Painter my first book by Various A Life's Atonement by David Christie Murray I began my first book more years ago than I care to count and naturally enough it took poetic form if not poetic substance in its original shape it was called Marsh Hall and ran into four cantos on the eve of my 21st birthday I sent the manuscript to Messrs McMillan who very wisely as I have since come to believe counseled me not to publish it I say this in full sincerity though I remember some of the youthful bombars not all together without a fiction here and there I can recall a passage which still seems respectable I wrote reams of verse in those days but when I came into the rough and tumble of journalistic life I was too occupied to court the muses any longer and found myself condemned to a life of crows I was acting as special correspondent for the Birmingham Morning News in the year 73 I think it was 73 though it might have been a year later and at that time Mr Edmund Yates was lecturing in America and a novel of his the last he ever wrote was running through our columns whether the genial Atlas who at that time had not taken the burden of the world upon his shoulders found his associations too numerous and heavy I can only guess but he closed the story with an unexpected suddenness and the editor who had supposed himself to have a month or two in hand to make arrangements for his next serial was confronted with the fini of Mr Yates work and was compelled to start a new novel at a week's notice in this extremity he turned to me I think young and he said that you ought to be able to write a novel I shared his faith and had indeed already begun a story which I had christened Brace Four Beach I handed him two chapters he read it once and in high feather sent the printer it never bade fair to be a mighty work but at least it fulfilled the meaning of the original edition of Pope's famous line for it was certainly all without a plan I had appropriate scenery in my mind no end of typical people to draw and one or two moving actualities to work from but I had forgotten the plot to attempt a novel without a definite scheme of some sort he's very like trying to make a Christmas pudding without a cloth Ruth Pinch was uncertain as to whether her first venture to pudding might not turn out a soup my novelistic effort I'm sorry to confess had no cohesion in it its parts got loose in the cooking and I have reason to think that most people who tried it found the dish repellent the cashier assured me that I had sent down the circulation of the Saturday issue by 16,000 I had excellent reasons for disbelieving this circumstantial statement in the fact that the Saturday issue had never reached that number but I have no doubt I did a deal of damage there had been an idea in Marsh Hall and what with intercalated ballads and poetic excursions and allirums of all sorts I had found in it matter enough to fill out my four cantos I set out with the intent to work that same idea through the pages of Grace Four Beach but it was too scanty for the uses of a free volume novel at least in the hands of a Tyro I know one or two accomplished gentlemen who could make it serve the purpose admirably and perhaps I myself might do something with it at a pinch at this time of day anyhow as it was the cloth was too small to hold the pudding and in the process of cooking I was driven to the most desperate expedience to drop the simile and to come to the plain facts of the case I sent all my wicked and superfluous people into a coal mine and they are put an end to them by an inrush of water I forget what became of the hero but I know that some of the most promising characters dropped out of that story and were no more heard of the sub-editor used occasionally to my encouragement to show me letters he had received denouncing the work and asking wrathfully when it would end whilst I am about Grace Four Beach it may be worthwhile to tell the story of the champion-printer's era of my experience I wrote at the close of the story are there known troubles now? the lover asks not one dear Frank, not one and then in brackets thus I set the words white line this was a technical instruction to the printer and meant that one line of space should be left clear the genius who had the copy in hand put the lover's speech in type correctly and then setting it out as if it were a line of verse he gave me not one dear Frank, not one white line it was custom in the printing office a leather medal by a leather boot lace round the neck of the man who had achieved the prize betease of the year it was somewhere about mid-summer at this time but it was instantly and unanimously resolved that nothing better than this would or could be done by anybody the compositors performed what they called a gerry in the blunderer's honour and invested him after an animated fight with the medal Grace Fourbeach has been dead and buried for very nearly a score of years it never saw book form and I was never anxious that it should do so but as it had grown out of Marsh Hall so my first book grew out of it and, oddly enough, not only my first but my second and my third Joseph's coat, which made my fortune and gave me such literary standing as I have was built on one episode of that abortive story and Val Strange was constructed and written to lead up to the episode of the attempted suicide on Wellbeck Head which had formed the culminating point in the poem when I got to London I determined to try my hand anew and having learned by failure something more than success could ever have taught me I built up my scheme before I started on my book having come to utter grief for want of a scheme to work on I ran, in my eagerness to avoid that thought in the opposite extreme and built an iron-band plot which afterwards cost me very many weeks of unnecessary and unvalued labour I am quite sure that no reader of a life's atonement ever guessed that the author took one time or even one twentieth part of the trouble it actually cost to weave the two strands of its narrative together I divided my story into 36 chapters 12 of these were autobiographical in the sense that they were supposed to be written by the hero in person The remaining 24 were historical purporting to be written, that is by an impersonal author The autobiographical portions necessarily began in the childhood of the narrator and between them and the history there was a considerable gulf of time little by little this gulf had to be bridged over until the action in both portions of the story became synchronous I really do not suppose that the most pitiless critic ever felt it worth his while to question the accuracy of my dates and I dare say that all the trouble I took was quite useless but I fixed in my own mind the actual years over which the story extended and spent scores of hours in the consultation of old Ormanax I have never verified the work since it was done but I believe that in this one respect at least it is beyond cavill the two central figures of the book were lifted straight from the story of Marshfall and Grace Forebeach gave her quota to the narrative I had completed the first volume when I received a commission to go out a special correspondent to the Russo-Turkish War I left the manuscript behind me and for many months the scheme was banished from my mind I went through those cities of the dead Kessunlink, Kalofar, Kalova and Sopot I watched the long-drawn artillery duel at the ship Kapas made the dreary month-long march in the rainy season from Orkhani to Plevna with the army of reinforcement under Cefket Pasha and Chakia Pasha lived in the besieged town until Osman drove away all foreign visitors and sent out his wounded to sow the whole melancholy road with corpses I put up on the heights of Tashkeshin and saw the stubborn defence of Mehmet Ali and there was pounced upon by the Turkish authorities for a too faithful dealing with the story of the horrors of the war and was deported to Constantinople I had originally gone out for an American journal at the instance of a gentleman who exceeded his instructions in dispatching me and I was left high and dry in the Turkish capital without a penny and without a friend but work of the kind I could do was wanted and I was on the spot I slid into an engagement with the Scotsman and then into another with the Times The late Mr MacDonald who was killed by the pigot forgeries was then manager of the leading journal and offered me fresh work I waited for it and a year of wild adventure in the face of war had given me such a taste for that sort of existence that I let a life's atonement slide and had no thought of taking it up again A misunderstanding with the Times authorities happily cleared up years after left me in the cold and I was bound to do something for a living The first volume of a life's atonement had been written in the intervals of labour in the gallery of the House of Commons and such work as an active hack journalist confined among the magazines and the weekly society papers I had been away a whole year and everywhere my place was filled it was obviously no use to a man in want of ready money to undertake the completion of a three-volume novel of which only one volume was written and so I betook myself to the writing of short stories The very first of these was blessed by a lucky accident Mr George Augustus Sala had begun to write for the Gentleman's magazine a story called, if I remember rightly, Dr Cupid Sala was suddenly summoned by the proprietors of the Daily Telegraph to undertake one of his innumerable journeys and the copy of the second installment of his story reached the editor too late for publication Just when the publishers of The Gentleman's were at a loss for suitable copy my manuscript of an old miershawn reached them and to my delighted surprise I received proofs almost by return of post The story appeared with an illustration by Arthur Hopkins and about a week later that came to me through Messas Chateau and Windus a letter from Robert Chambers Sir, I have read with unusual pleasure and interest in this month's Gentleman's magazine a story from your pen entitled An Old Miershawn If you have a novel on hand or in preparation I should be glad to see it In the meantime, a short story not much longer than an old miershawn would be gladly considered by yours very truly Robert Chambers P.S. We publish no author's names but we pay handsomely This letter brought back to mind at once the neglected life's atonement but I was uncertain as to the whereabouts of the manuscript I searched everywhere amongst my own belongings in vain but it suddenly occurred to me that I had left it in charge of a passing acquaintance of mine who had taken up the unexpired lease of my chambers in Grey's Inn at the time of my departure for the seat of war I jumped into a cab and drove off in search of my property The shabby old laundress who had made my bed and served my breakfast was pottering about the rooms She remembered me perfectly well of course but could not remember that I had left anything behind me when I went away I talked to manuscript and she recalled doubtfully a quantity of waste paper of the final destination of which she knew nothing I began to think it extremely improbable that I should ever recover a line of the missing novel when she opened a cupboard and drew from it a brown paper parcel and, opening it, displayed to me the manuscript of which I was in search I took it home and read it through with infinite misgiving The enthusiasm with which I had begun the work had long since had time to pull and the whole thing looked weary, flat, stale and unprofitable For one thing I had adopted the abominable expedient of writing in the present tense so far as the autobiographical portion of the work was concerned and in the interval which had gone by my taste had, I suppose, undergone an unconscious correction It was a dull business but, despondent as I was I found the heart to rewrite those chapters Charles Reed describes the task of writing out one's work a second time as nauseous and I confess that I am with him with all my heart It is a misery which I have never since in all my work imposed upon myself At that time I counted amongst my friends an eminent novelist on whose critical faculty and honesty I knew I could place the most absolute reliance I submitted my revised first volume to his judgement and was surprised to learn that he thought highly of it His judgement gave me new courage and I sent the copy into chambers After a delay of a week or two I received a letter which gave me I think a keener delight than has ever touched me at the receipt of any other communication If, wrote Robert Chambers the rest is as good as the first volume I shall accept the book with pleasure Our price for the serial use will be £250 of which we will pay £100 on receipt of completed manuscript The remaining £150 will be paid on the publication of the first monthly number I had been out of harness for so long a time and had been, by desultory work able to earn so little that this letter seemed to open a sort of El Dorado to my gaze It was not that alone which made it so agreeable to receive It opened the way to an honourable ambition which I had long nourished and I slaved away at the remaining two volumes with an enthusiasm which I have never been able to revive There are two or three people still extant who know in part the privations I endured whilst the book was being finished I set everything else on one side for it in cautiously enough and for two months I did not earn a penny by other means The most trying accident of all the time was the tobacco famine which set in towards the close of the third volume But in spite of all obstacles the book was finished I worked all night at the final chapter and wrote Fini somewhere about five o'clock on a summer morning I shall never forget the solemn exultation with which I laid down my pen and looked from the window of the little room in which I had been working over the golden splendour of the gorse-covered common of Ditten Marsh All my original enthusiasm had revived and in the course of my lonely labours had grown to a white heat I solemnly believed at that moment that I had written a great book I suppose I may make that confession now without proclaiming myself a fool I really and seriously believed that the work I had just finished was original in conception, style and character No reviewer ever taunted me with the fact but the truth is that a life's atonement is a very curious instance of unconscious plagiarism It is quite evident to my mind now that if there had been no David Copperfield there would have been no life's atonement My gas coin is steer forth My John Campbell is David John's aunt is Miss Betsy Trotwood Sally Troman is Pegaty The very separation of the friends though brought about by different cause is a reminiscence I was utterly unconscious of these facts and remembering how devotedly and honestly I worked how resolute I was to put my best of observation and invention into the story I have ever since felt cherry of entertaining a charge of plagiarism against anybody There are of course flagrant and obvious cases but I believe that in nine instances out of ten the supposed criminal had worked as I did having so completely absorbed and digested in childhood the work of an admired master that he has come to feel that work as an actual portion of himself A life's atonement ran its course through Chambers Journal in due time and was received with favour Messers Griffin and Farron undertook its publication in book form but one or two accidental circumstances forbade it to prosper in their hands To begin with, the firm at that time had only newly decided on publishing novels at all and a work under such a title and issued by such a house was naturally supposed to have a theological tendency Then again, in the very week in which my book saw the light, Lothair appeared and for the time being swamped everything all the world read Lothair all the world talked about it and all the newspapers and reviews dealt with it to the exclusion of the products of the smaller fry Later on, a life's atonement was handsomely reviewed and was indeed, as I am disposed to think praised a good deal beyond its merits but it lay a dead weight on the hands of its original publishers until Messers Chateau and Windus expressed a wish to incorporate it in their Piccadilly series The negotiations between the two houses were easily completed the stock was transferred from one establishment to the other the volumes were stripped of their old binding and dressed anew and with this novel impetus the story reached a second edition in three volume form It brought me almost immediately two commissions and by the time that they were completed I had grown into a professional novel writer End of Chapter 15 Chapter 16 of my first book This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org A Romance of Two Worlds by Marie Corelli It is an unromantic thing for an author to have had no literary vicitudes One cannot expect to be considered interesting unless one has come up to London with the proverbial solitary shilling and gone about hungry and foot sore begging from one hard-hearted publisher's house to another with one's perpetually rejected manuscript under one's arm One ought to have consumed the midnight oil to have coined one heart's blood to borrow the tragic expression of a contemporary gentleman novelist to have sacrificed one's self-respect by metaphorically crawling on all fours to the critical faculty and to have become aesthetically cadaverous and bleer-eyed through the action of inspired dyspepsia Now I'm obliged to confess that I've done none of these things which, to quote the prayer book, I ought to have done I have had no difficulty in making my career or winning my public and I attribute my good fortune to the simple fact that I have always tried to write straight from my own heart to the hearts of others, regardless of opinions and indifferent to results My object in writing has never been and never will be to concoct a mere story which shall bring me to a certain amount of cash or notoriety but solely because I wish to say something which, be it ill or well said, is the candid and independent expression of a thought which I will have uttered at all risks In this spirit I wrote my first book, A Romance of Two Worlds now in its seventh edition It was the simply-worded narration of a singular, psychical experience and included certain theories on religion which I, personally speaking, accept and believe I had no sort of literary pride in my work whatsoever There was nothing of self in the wish I had that my ideas, such as they were, should reach the public with no particular need of money and certainly no hankering after fame When the book was written I doubted whether it would ever find a publisher though I determined to try and launch it if possible My notion was to offer it to Arrowsmith as a shilling railway volume under the title Lift It Up But in the interim, as a kind of test of its merit or de-merit I sent the MS to Mr. George Bentley head of the long-established and famous Bentley publishing firm It ran the gauntlet of his readers first and they all advised its summary rejection Among these readers at that time was Mr. Hall Kane His strictures on my work were peculiarly bitter though strange to relate he afterwards forgot the nature of his own report For on being introduced to me at a ball given by Miss Eastlake when my name was made and my success assured he blandly remarked before a select circle of interested auditors that he had had the pleasure of recommending my first book to Mr. Bentley Comment on this were needless and unkind He tells stories so admirably that I readily excuse him for his slip of memory and accept the whole incident as a delightful example of his inventive faculty His severe judgment pronounced upon me combined with similar but perhaps milder severity on the part of the other readers had however an unexpected result Mr. George Bentley moved by curiosity and possibly by compassion for the impending fate of a young woman so sat upon by his selected censors decided to read my MS himself Happily for me the consequence of his unprejudiced and impartial perusal was acceptance and I still keep the kind and encouraging letter he wrote to me at the time informing me of his decision and stating the terms of his offer These terms were summed down for one year's rights the copyright of the work to remain my own entire property I did not then understand what an advantage this retaining of my copyright and my own possession was to prove to me financially speaking but I am willing to do Mr. Bentley the full justice of proposing that he foresaw the success of the book and that therefore his action in leaving me the sole owner of my then very small literary estate redounds very much to his credit and is an evident proof amongst many of his manifest honor and integrity Of course the copyright of an unsuccessful book is valueless but my romance was destined to prove a sound investment though I never dreamed that it would be so with my chance of reaching the public with what I had to say I gratefully closed with Mr. Bentley's proposal he considered the title Lifted Up as lacking attractiveness it was therefore discarded and Mr. Eric McKay the poet gave the book its present name a romance of two worlds once published the career of the romance became singular and totally apart from that of any other so-called novel it only received four reviews all brief and distinctly unfavorable the one which appeared in the dignified morning post is a fair sample of the rest I keep it by me preciously because it serves as a wholesome tonic to my mind and proves to me that when a leading journal can so review a book one need fear nothing from the literary knowledge, acumen, or discernment of reviewers I quote it verbatim Miss Corelli would have been better advised had she embodied her ridiculous ideas in a six-penny pamphlet the names of Helio Boss and Zara are alone sufficient indications of the dullness of this book this was all no explanation was vouchsafed as to why my ideas were ridiculous though such explanation was justly due nor did the reviewer state why he, or she found the names of characters sufficient indications of dullness a curious discovery which I believe is unique however the so-called critique did one good thing it moved me to sincere laughter and showed me what I might expect from the critical brethren in these days days which can no longer boast of a lord Makalai a brilliant if bitter Geoffrey or a generous Sir Walter Scott to resume the four notices having been grudgingly bestowed the press dropped the romance considering no doubt that it was quashed and would die the usual death of women's novels as they are contemptuously called in the prescribed year but it did nothing of the sort ignored by the press it attracted the public letters concerning it and its theories began to pour in from strangers in all parts of the United Kingdom and at the end of its 12 months run in the circulating libraries Mr. Bentley brought it out in one volume in his favorite series then it started off at full gallop the great majority got at it and what is more kept at it it was pirated in America chosen out and liberally paid for by Baron Tauchnitz for the Tauchnitz series translated into various languages on the continent and became a topic of social discussion a perfect ocean of correspondence flowed in upon me from India Africa Australia and America and at this very time I count through correspondence a host of friends in all parts of the world whom I do not suppose I shall ever see friends who even carry their enthusiasm so far as to place their houses at my disposal for a year or two years and surely the force of hospitality can no further go with all these attentions I began to find out the advantage my practical publisher had given me in the retaining of my copyright my royalties commenced increased and accumulated with every quarter and at the present moment continues still to accumulate so much so that the romance of two worlds alone apart from all my other works is the source of a very pleasant income and I have great satisfaction in knowing that its prolonged success is not due to any influence save that which is contained within itself it certainly has not been helped on by the press for since I began my career six years ago I have never had a word of open encouragement or kindness from any leading English critic the only real reviews I ever received worthy of the name appeared in the spectator and the literary world the first was on my book Ardath the story of a dead self and in this the overabundant praise in the beginning was all smothered by the unmitigated abuse at the end the second in the literary world was eminently generous it dealt with my last book The Soul of Lilith so taken aback was I with surprise at receiving in all through kindly as well as scholarly criticism from any court of the press that though I knew nothing about the literary world I wrote a letter of thanks to my unknown reviewer the editor to forward it in the right direction he did so and my generous critic turned out to be a woman a literary woman too fighting a hard fight herself who would have had an excuse to slate me as an unrequired rival in literature had she so chosen but who instead of this easy course adopted the more difficult path of justice and unselfishness after the romance of two worlds I wrote Vendetta then followed Thelma and then Ardath the story of a dead self which among other purely personal rewards brought me a charming autograph letter from the late Lord Tennyson full of valuable encouragement then followed Wormwood a drama of Paris now in its fifth edition Ardath and Thelma being in their seventh editions my publisher seldom advertised the number of my editions which is I suppose the reason why the continuous run of the books escapes the press comment of the great success supposed to attend various other novels which only attained to third or fourth editions the Soul of Lilith published only last year ran through four editions in three volume form it is issued now in one volume by Messers Bentley to whom however I have not offered any new work a change of publishers is sometimes advisable but I have a sincere personal liking for Mr. George Bentley who is himself an author of distinct originality and ability though his literary gifts are only known to his own private circle his book of essays entitled After Business is a delightful volume full of point and brilliancy two specially admirable papers being those on villain and Carlisle while it would be difficult to discover a more taking prose bit than the concluding chapter under an old poplar a very foolish and erroneous rumor has of late been circulated concerning me asserting that I owe a great measure of my literary success to the kindly recognition and interest of the queen I take the present opportunity to clear up this perverse misunderstanding my books have been running successfully through several editions for six years and the much commented upon presentation of a complete set of them to Her Majesty took place only last year if it were possible to regret the honor of the queen's acceptance of these volumes I should certainly have caused to do so as the extraordinary spite and malice that has since been poured on my unoffending head has shown me a very bad side of human nature which I am sorry to have seen there is very little cause to envy me in this matter I have but received the courteously formal thanks of the queen and the Empress Frederick conveyed through the medium of their ladies in waiting for the special copies of the books their Majesties were pleased to admire yet for this simple and quite ordinary honor I have been subjected to such forms of gratuitous abuse as I did not think possible to adjust a noble English press I have often wondered why I was not equally assailed when the Queen of Italy not content with merely accepting a copy of the romance of two worlds sent me an autographed portrait of herself accompanied by a charming letter a souvenir which I value not at all because the sender is a queen but because she's a sweet and noble woman whose every action is marked by grace and unselfishness and who has deservedly won the title given her by her people the blessing of Italy I repeat, I owe nothing whatever of my popularity such as it is to any royal noticeer, favor though I am naturally glad to have been kindly recognized and encouraged by those thrown powers who command the nation's utmost love and loyalty but my appeal for a hearing was first made to the great public and the public responded moreover they do still respond with so much heartiness and goodwill that I should be the most ungrateful scribbler that ever scribbled if I did not despite press shrubbings and the amusing total ignoring of my very existence by certain clique a literary magazines take out my courage in both hands as the French say and march steadily onward to such generous cheering and encouragement I'm told by an eminent literary authority that critics are down upon me because I write about the supernatural I do not entirely believe the eminent literary authority and as much as I have not always written about the supernatural neither Vendetta nor Thelma nor Wormwood is supernatural but says the eminent literary authority I write it all at any time about the supernatural why? because I feel the existence of the supernatural and feeling it, I must speak of it I understand that the religion we profess to follow emanates from the supernatural and I presume that churches exist for the solemn worship of the supernatural wherefore if the supernatural be thus universally acknowledged as a guide for thought and morals I fail to see why I and as many others as choose to do so should not write on the subject an author has quite as much right to characterize angels and saints in his or her pages as a painter has to depict them on his canvas and I do not keep my belief in the supernatural as a sort of special mood to be entered into on Sundays only it accompanies me in my daily round and helps me along in all my business but I distinctly wish to be understood that I am neither a spiritualist nor a theosophist I am not a strong-minded woman with egotistical ideas of omission I have no other supernatural belief than that which is taught by the founder of our faith and this can never be shaken for me or sneered down if critics object to my dealing with this in my books they are very welcome to do so their objections will not turn me from what they are pleased to consider the error of my ways I know that unrelieved naturalism and atheism are much more admired subjects with a critical faculty but the public differ from this view the public, being in the main healthy-minded and honest do not care for positivism and pessimism they like to believe in something better than themselves they like to rest on the ennobling idea that there is a great loving maker of this splendid universe and they have no lasting affection for any author whose tendency in teaching is to despise the hope of heaven and reason away the existence of God it's a very clever no doubt and very brilliant to deny the creator it's as if a monkey should, while being caged and fed by man, deny man's existence such a circumstance would make us laugh, of course we should think it uncommonly smart of the monkey but we should not take his statement for a fact all the same of the mechanical part of my work there is little to say I write every day from 10 in the morning till 2 in the afternoon alone and undisturbed save for the tin-pot tinkling of unmusical neighbor's pianos and the perpetual organ grinding which is freely permitted to interfere add libitum with the quiet and comfort of all the patient brain workers who pay rent and taxes in this great and glorious metropolis I generally scribble off the first rough draft of a story very rapidly in pencil then I copy it out in pen and ink chapter by chapter with fastidious care not only because I like a neat manuscript but because I think everything that is worth doing at all is worth doing well and I do not see why my publishers should have to pay for more printer's errors than the printers themselves make necessary I find too that in the gradual process of copying by hand the original draft, like a painter's first sketch, gets improved and enlarged no one sees my manuscript before it goes to press as I am now able to refuse to submit my work to the judgment of readers these worthy's treated me roughly in the beginning but they will never have the chance again I correct my proofs myself though I regret to say my instructions and revisions are not always followed in my novel Wormwood I corrected the French article let chose to lot chose three times but apparently the printers preferred their own French for it is still let chose in the favorite edition and the error is stereotyped in accordance with the arrangement made by Mr. George Bentley for my first book I retain to myself sole possession of all my copyrights and as all my novels are successes the financial results are distinctly pleasing America, of course, is always a thorn in the side of an author the romance, vendetta, Thelma and Ardath were all pirated over there before the passing of the American Copyright Act it being apparently out of Messersch Bentley and Sun's line to make even an attempt to protect my rights after the act was passed I was paid a sum for Wormwood and a larger sum for the soul of Lilith but as everyone knows the usual honorarium offered by American publishers for the rights of a successful English novel are totally inadequate to the sales they are able to command American critics, however, have been very good to me they have at least read my books before starting to review them which is a great thing I've always kept my Tauchnitz rights and very pleasant have all my dealings been with the courteous and generous Baron all wanderers on the continent love the Tauchnitz volumes their neatness, handy form and remarkably clear type given them precedence over every other foreign series Baron Tauchnitz pays his authors excellently well and takes a literary as well as commercial interest in their fortunes perhaps one of the pleasantest things connected with my success is the popularity I've won in many quarters of the continent without any exertion on my own part my name is as well known in Germany as anywhere while in Sweden they have been good enough to elect me as one of their favorite authors thanks to the admirable translations made of all my books by Miss Emily Coleman of Stockholm whose energy did not desert her even when she had so difficult a task to form as the rendering of Ardath into Swedish in Italy and Spain, Vendetta translated into the languages of those countries, is popular Madame Emma Gorducci Giaconi is the translator of Wormwood into Italian and her almost literal and perfect rendering has been running as the fuletone in the Florentine journal La Nazione, under the title Leal Colissimo, Udrama de Parisie the romance of two worlds is to be had in Russian, so I am told and it will shortly be published at Athens rendered into modern Greek while engaged in writing this article I have received a letter asking for permission to translate this same romance into one of the dialects of northwest India a request I shall very readily grant in its eastern dress, the book Will I Understand be published at Lucknow I may here state that I gain no financial advantage from these numerous translations nor do I seek any sometimes the translators do not even ask my permission to translate but content themselves with sending me a copy of the book when completed without any word of explanation and now to wind up, if I have made a name if I have made a career, as it seems I have I have only one piece of pride connected with it not pride in my work for no one with a grain of censor modesty would in these days dare to consider his or her literary efforts of much worth as compared with what has already been done by the past great authors my pride is simply this that I have fought my fight alone and that I have no thanks to offer to anyone save those legitimately due to the publisher who launched my first book but who, it must be remembered, would as a good businessman have unquestionably published nothing else of mine had I been a failure I count no friend on the press and I owe no distinguished critic any debt of gratitude I have come by happy chance straight into close and sympathetic union with my public and attained to independence and good fortune while still young and able to enjoy both an incomprehensibly successful novelist I was called last summer by an irritated correspondent of life who chanced to see me sharing in the full flow of pleasure and social amusement during the season at Homburg well if it be so this incomprehensible success has been attained I rejoice to say without either log roller or boom and worry of the old Greek faith I should pour libation to the gods for giving me this victory certainly I used to hope for what Britishers aptly call fair play from the critics but I have ceased to expect that now it is evidently a delight to them to abuse me else they would not go out of their way to do it and I have no wish to interfere with either their copy or their fun the public are beyond them all together and literature is like that famous hill told of in the Arabian Nights where threatening anonymous voices shouted the most deadly insults and injuries to anyone who attempted to climb it if the adventurer turned back to listen he was instantly changed into stone but if he pressed boldly on he reached the summit and found magic talismans now I am only at the commencement of the journey and I'm ascending the hill with a light heart and in good humor I hear the taunting voices on all sides but I do not stop to listen nor have I once turned back my eyes are fixed on the distinct peak of the mountain and my mind is set on arriving there if possible my ambition may be too great and I may never arrive that is a matter for the fates to settle but in the meanwhile I enjoy climbing I have nothing to grumble about I consider literature the noblest art in the world and have no complaint whatever to urge against it as a profession its rewards whether great or small are sufficient for me in as much as I love my work and love makes all things easy note since writing the above I have been asked to state whether in my arrangements for publishing I employ a literary agent or use a typewriter I do not with regard to the first part of the query I consider that authors like other people should learn how to manage their own affairs themselves and that when they take a paid agent into their confidence they make open confession of their business in capacity and voluntarily elect to remain in foolish ignorance of the practical part of their profession secondly I dislike typewriting and prefer to make my own MS distinctly legible it takes no more time to write clearly than in spidery hieroglyphics and a slovenly scribble is no proof of cleverness but rather of carelessness and a tendency to scamp work End of Chapter 16 Recording by Lynn Handler