MY FIRST BOOK

THE EXPERIENCES OF

WALTER BESANTR. M. BALLANTYNE

JAMES PAYNI. ZANGWILL

W. CLARK RUSSELLMORLEY ROBERTS

GRANT ALLENDAVID CHRISTIE MURRAY

HALL CAINEMARIE CORELLI

GEORGE R. SIMSJEROME K. JEROME

RUDYARD KIPLINGJOHN STRANGE WINTER

A. CONAN DOYLEBRET HARTE

M. E. BRADDON'Q.'

F. W. ROBINSONROBERT BUCHANAN

H. RIDER HAGGARD ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY JEROME K. JEROME AND 185 ILLUSTRATIONS London CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY 1894

INTRODUCTION CONTENTS LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS FOOTNOTES

INTRODUCTION

By JEROME K. JEROME

'PLEASE, sir,' he said, 'could you tell me the right time?'

'Twenty minutes to eight,' I replied, looking at my watch.

'Oh,' he remarked. Then added for my information after a pause: 'I haven't got to be in till half-past eight.'

After that we fell back into our former silence, and sat watching the murky twilight, he at his end of the park seat, I at mine.

'And do you live far away?' I asked, lest, he having miscalculated, the short legs might be hard put to it.

'Oh no, only over there,' he answered, indicating with a sweep of his arm the northern half of London where it lay darkening behind the chimney-fringed horizon; 'I often come and sit here.'

It seemed an odd pastime for so very small a citizen. 'And what makes you like to come and sit here?' I said.

'Oh, I don't know,' he replied, 'I think.'

'And what do you think about?'

'Oh—oh, lots of things.'

He inspected me shyly out of the corner of his eye, but, satisfied apparently by the scrutiny, he sidled up a little nearer.

'Mama does not like this evening time,' he confided to me; 'it always makes her cry. But then,' he went on to explain, 'Mama has had a lot of trouble, and that makes anyone feel different about things, you know.'

I agreed that this was so. 'And do you like this evening time?' I enquired.

'Yes,' he answered; 'don't you?'

'Yes, I like it too,' I admitted. 'But tell me why you like it, then I will tell you why I like it.'

'Oh,' he replied, 'things come to you.'

'What things?' I asked.

Again his critical eye passed over me, and it raised me in my own conceit to find that again the inspection contented him, he evidently feeling satisfied that here was a man to whom another gentleman might speak openly and without reserve.

He wriggled sideways, slipping his hands beneath him and sitting on them.

'Oh, fancies,' he explained; 'I'm going to be an author when I grow up, and write books.'

Then I knew why it was that the sight of his little figure had drawn me out of my path to sit beside him, and why the little serious face had seemed so familiar to me, as of some one I had once known long ago.

So we talked of books and bookmen. He told me how, having been born on the fourteenth of February, his name had come to be Valentine, though privileged parties, as for example Aunt Emma, and Mr. Dawson, and Cousin Naomi, had shortened it to Val, and Mama would sometimes call him Pickaniny, but that was only when they were quite alone. In return I confided to him my name, and discovered that he had never heard it, which pained me for the moment, until I found that of all my confrères, excepting only Mr. Stevenson, he was equally ignorant, he having lived with the heroes and the heroines of the past, the new man and the new woman, the new pathos and the new humour being alike unknown to him.

Scott and Dumas and Victor Hugo were his favourites. 'Gulliver's Travels,' 'Robinson Crusoe,' 'Don Quixote,' and the 'Arabian Nights,' he knew almost by heart, and these we discussed, exchanging many pleasant and profitable ideas upon the same. But the psychological novel, I gathered, was not to his taste. He liked 'real stories,' he told me, naïvely unconscious of the satire, 'where people did things.'

'I used to read silly stuff once,' he confessed humbly, 'Indian tales and that sort of thing, you know, but Mama said I'd never be able to write if I read that rubbish.'

'So you gave it up,' I concluded for him.

'Yes,' he answered. But a little sigh of regret, I thought, escaped him at the same time.

'And what do you read now?' I asked.

'I'm reading Marlowe's plays and De Quincey's Confessions (he called him Quinsy) just now,' was his reply.

'And do you understand them?' I queried.

'Fairly well,' he answered. Then added more hopefully, 'Mama says I'll get to like them better as I go on.'

'I want to learn to write very, very well indeed,' he suddenly added after a long pause, his little earnest face growing still more serious, 'then I'll be able to earn heaps of money.'

It rose to my lips to answer him that it was not always the books written very, very well that brought in the biggest heaps of money; that if heaps of money were his chiefest hope he would be better advised to devote his energies to the glorious art of self-advertisement and the gentle craft of making friends upon the Press. But something about the almost baby face beside me, fringed by the gathering shadows, silenced my middle-aged cynicism. Involuntarily my gaze followed his across the strip of foot-worn grass, across the dismal-looking patch of ornamental water, beyond the haze of tangled trees, beyond the distant row of stuccoed houses, and, arrived there with him, I noticed many men and women clothed in the garments of all ages and all lands, men and women who had written very, very well indeed and who notwithstanding had earned heaps of money, the hire worthy of the labourer, and who were not ashamed; men and women who had written true words which the common people had read gladly; men and women who had been raised to lasting fame upon the plaudits of their day; and before the silent faces of these, made beautiful by Time, the little bitter sneers I had counted truth rang foolish in my heart, so that I returned with my young friend to our green seat beside the foot-worn grass, feeling by no means so sure as when I had started which of us twain were the better fitted to teach wisdom to the other.

'And what would you do, Valentine, with heaps of money?' I asked.

Again for a moment his old shyness of me returned. Perhaps it was not quite a legitimate question from a friend of such recent standing. But his frankness wrestled with his reserve and once more conquered.

'Mama need not do any work then,' he answered. 'She isn't really strong enough for it, you know,' he explained, 'and I'd buy back the big house where she used to live when she was a little girl, and take her back to live in the country—the country air is so much better for her, you know—and Aunt Emma, too.'

But I confess that as regards Aunt Emma his tone was not enthusiastic.

I spoke to him—less dogmatically than I might have done a few minutes previously, and I trust not discouragingly—of the trials and troubles of the literary career, and of the difficulties and disappointments awaiting the literary aspirant, but my croakings terrified him not.

'Mama says that every work worth doing is difficult,' he replied, 'and that it doesn't matter what career we choose there are difficulties and disappointments to be overcome, and that I must work very hard and say to myself "I will succeed," and then in the end, you know, I shall.'

'Though of course it may be a long time,' he added cheerfully.

Only one thing in the slightest daunted him, and that was the weakness of his spelling.

'And I suppose,' he asked, 'you must spell very well indeed to be an author.'

I explained to him, however, that this failing was generally met by a little judicious indistinctness of caligraphy, and all obstacles thus removed, the business of a literary gent seemed to him an exceptionally pleasant and joyous one.

'Mama says it is a noble calling,' he confided to me, 'and that anyone ought to be very proud and glad to be able to write books, because they give people happiness and make them forget things, and that one ought to be awfully good if one's going to be an author, so as to be worthy to help and teach others.'

'And do you try to be awfully good, Valentine?' I enquired.

'Yes,' he answered; 'but it's awfully hard, you know. I don't think anybody could ever be quite good—until,' he corrected himself, 'they were grown up.'

'I suppose,' he added with a little sigh, 'it's easy for grown-up people to be good.'

It was my turn to glance suspiciously at him, this time wondering if the seeds of satire could have taken root already in that tiny brain. But his eyes met mine without flinching, and I was not loath to drift away from the point.

'And what else does your Mama say about literature, Valentine?' I asked. For the strangeness of it was that, though I kept repeating under my breath 'Copy-book maxims, copy-book maxims,' hoping by such shibboleth to protect myself from their influence, the words yet stirred within me old childish thoughts and sentiments that I, in my cleverness, had long since learnt to laugh at, and had thought forgotten. I, with my years of knowledge and experience behind me, seemed for the nonce to be sitting with Valentine at the feet of this unseen lady, listening, as I again told myself, to 'copy-book maxims' and finding in them in spite of myself a certain element of truth, a certain amount of helpfulness, an unpleasant suggestion of reproach.

He tucked his hands underneath him, as before, and sat swinging his short legs.

'Oh—oh lots of things,' he answered vaguely.

'Yes?' I persisted.

'Oh, that—' he repeated it slowly, recalling it word for word as he went on, 'that he who can write a great book is greater than a king; that a good book is better than a good sermon; that the gift of being able to write is given to anybody in trust, and that an author should never forget that he is God's servant.'

I thought of the chatter of the clubs, and could not avoid a smile. But the next moment something moved me to take his hand in mine, and, turning his little solemn face towards mine, to say:

'If ever there comes a time, little man, when you are tempted to laugh at your mother's old-fashioned notions—and such a time may come—remember that an older man than you once told you he would that he had always kept them in his heart, he would have done better work.'

Then growing frightened at my own earnestness, as we men do, deeming it, God knows why, something to be ashamed of, I laughed away his answering questions, and led the conversation back to himself.

'And have you ever tried writing anything?' I asked him.

Of course he had, what need to question! And it was, strange to say, a story about a little boy who lived with his mother and aunt, and who went to school.

'It is sort of,' he explained, 'sort of auto—bio—graphical, you know.'

'And what does Mama think of it?' was my next question, after we had discussed the advantages of drawing upon one's own personal experiences for one's material.

'Mama thinks it is very clever—in parts,' he told me.

'You read it to her?' I suggested.

'Yes,' he acknowledged, 'in the evening, when she's working, and Aunt Emma isn't there.'

The room rose up before me, I could see the sweet-faced lady in her chair beside the fire, her white hands moving to and from the pile of sewing by her side, the little flushed face of the lad bending over his pages written in sprawling schoolboy hand. I saw the love light in her eyes as every now and then she stole a covert glance across at him, I heard his childish treble rising and falling, as his small finger moved slowly down the sheet.

Suddenly it said, a little more distinctly:

'Please, sir, could you tell me the time?'

'Just over the quarter, Valentine,' I answered, waking up and looking at my watch.

He rose and held out his hand.

'I didn't know it was so late,' he said, 'I must go now.'

But as our hands met another question occurred to him.

'Oh,' he exclaimed, 'you said you'd tell me why you liked to come and sit here of an evening, like I do. Why?'

'So I did, Valentine,' I replied, 'but I've changed my mind. When you are a big man, as old as I am, you come and sit here and you'll know. But it isn't so pleasant a reason as yours, Valentine, and you wouldn't understand it. Good-night.'

He raised his cap with an old-fashioned courtesy and trotted off, looking however a little puzzled. Some distance down the path, he turned and waved his hand to me, and I watched him disappear into the twilight.

I sat on for a while, thinking many thoughts, until across the rising mist there rang a hoarse, harsh cry, 'All out, All out,' and slowly I moved homeward.

CONTENTS

PAGE

READY-MONEY MORTIBOY. By Walter Besant3

THE FAMILY SCAPEGRACE. By James Payn15

THE WRECK OF THE 'GROSVENOR.' By W. Clark29

PHYSIOLOGICAL ÆSTHETICS AND PHILISTIA. By Grant Allen43

THE SHADOW OF A CRIME. By Hall Caine53

THE SOCIAL KALEIDOSCOPE. By George R. Sims75

DEPARTMENTAL DITTIES. By Rudyard Kipling91

JUVENILIA. By A. Conan Doyle99

THE TRAIL OF THE SERPENT. By M. E. Braddon109

THE HOUSE OF ELMORE. By F. W. Robinson123

DAWN. By H. Rider Haggard135

HUDSON'S BAY. By R. M. Ballantyne151

THE PREMIER AND THE PAINTER. By I. Zangwill163

THE WESTERN AVERNUS. By Morley Roberts181

A LIFE'S ATONEMENT. By David Christie Murray193

A ROMANCE OF TWO WORLDS. By Marie Corelli206

ON THE STAGE AND OFF. By Jerome K. Jerome221

CAVALRY LIFE. By 'John Strange Winter' (Mrs. Arthur Stannard)239

CALIFORNIAN VERSE. By Bret Harte257

DEAD MAN'S ROCK. By 'Q.'269

UNDERTONES and IDYLS AND LEGENDS OF INVERBURN. By Robert Buchanan283

TREASURE ISLAND. By Robert Louis Stevenson297

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

The images may be view enlarged by clicking on them. (note of ebooks transcriber.)

PAGE

Jerome K. JeromeFrontispiece

Walter Besant2

James Rice5

Julia7

Mr. Besant's Study9

The Oyster Shop12

A Book Plate13

A Wicked Sister16

James Payn17

It 'took off' from his Shoulder18

Mr. Payn's Study19

Count Gotsuchakoff21

'Would you mind just Reading a Bit of it?'22

The Servant came to put Coals on the Fire23

Mr. Payn's Office at Waterloo Place24

Killed by Lions25

Clark Russell28

Clark Russell as a Midshipman of Seventeen29

I was a Child of Thirteen30

Neatby31

Anchored in the Downs32

Some of the Crew33

The Magistrates34

The Wreck of the 'Grosvenor'35

Mrs. Clark Russell37

The Boatswain of the 'Grosvenor'38

The 'Hougoumont'39

Poor Jack!40

Grant Allen42

Fiction44

Science45

Andrew Chatto49

A Shelf in the Study50

'Thank you, sir'51

I left it54

Hall Caine55

My MS. went Sprawling over the Table56

Derwentwater57

Sty Head Pass58

Wastwater from Sty Head Pass59

The Horse broke away60

Something strapped on its Back61

The Castle Rock, St. John's Vale62

Thirlmere63

Rossetti walking to and fro64

Dante Gabriel Rossetti65

Mr. Hall Caine in his Study68

Mrs. Hall Caine69

Coming up in the Train71

12 Clarence Terrace75

The Hall76

George R. Sims77

George R. Sims78

The 'Social Kaleidoscope'79

The Snuggery80

Mr. Sims's 'Little Dawg'81

The Dining-room82

The Library83

'Sir Hugo'84

The Balcony85

'Beauty,' an old Favourite, Twenty Years old86

The Drawing-room87

'Faust up to Date'88

Mr. Sims's Dinner Party89

The Newspaper Files91

'Your Potery very good, sir; just coming proper Length to-day.'92

Rudyard Kipling93

Sung to the Banjoes round Camp Fires96

Departmental Ditties97

A. Conan Doyle98

I was Six99

On the Prairies and the Oceans100

My Début as a Story-teller101

'With the Editor's Compliments'102

'Have you seen what they say about you?'103

'Mrs. Thurston's little Boy Wants To See You, Doctor'105

Mr. Andrew Lang107

Lichfield House, Richmond110

The Hall111

The Dining-room112

The Drawing-room113

The Evening-room115

The Smoking-room116

The Library117

Miss Braddon's favourite Mare119

The Orangery120

Miss Braddon's Cottage at Lyndhurst121

Miss Braddon's Inkstand122

At Twenty124

F. W. Robinson125

Elmore House126

At Thirty127

Mr. Robinson's Library128

The Garden129

The Drawing-room130

At Forty131

Mr. Robinson at Work132

H. Rider Haggard134

The Front Garden135

Mr. Rider Haggard and his Daughters137

The Hall139

Mr. Rider Haggard's Study141

Some Curios143

A Study Corner145

Mr. Rider Haggard147

The Farm149

Where I wrote my First Book151

R. M. Ballantyne153

Mr. Ballantyne's House at Harrow155

Trophies from Mr. Ballantyne's Travels157

The Study159

Mr. R. M. Ballantyne161

Looking for Toole164

I. Zangwill165

I sat down and wrote something166

Arthur Goddard167

It was hawked about the Streets168

A Policeman told him to get down169

Such Stuff as Little Boys scribble upon Walls171

Life in Bethnal Green173

We sent it round175

Mr. Zangwill at Work177

Editing a Comic Paper178

A Fame less widespread than a Prizefighter's179

Mr. Morley Roberts180

Before the Mast181

I Married them all off at the End182

An American Saw-mill where Mr. Roberts worked183

Defying the Universe185

Cowboy Roberts186

The very Prairie Dogs taught me187

The California Coast Range189

By the Camp Fire190

D. Christie Murray192

I handed him Two Chapters194

I sent all my People into a Coal-mine195

They invested him with the Medal197

Consulting old Almanacs199

She drew from it a Brown-paper Parcel201

If there had been no 'David Copperfield'202

The Stock was transferred203

Some Novels204

The Drawing-room209

The Library211

The Study213

Facsimile of Marie Corelli's MS. as prepared for the Press217

My First-born222

Jerome K. Jerome223

'He and you had to carry Lisa Weber across the Stage'226

That Brilliant Idea227

I hated the dismal little 'slavey'230

The Study231

I am remembering234

Mr. Jerome K. Jerome237

Three Soldiers and a Pig239

John Strange Winter241

Mr. Arthur Stannard243

'The Firm' considering246

He Squinted!247

Miss Stannard248

'The Twins'—Bootles and Betty249

Long-legged Soldiers251

Cavalry Life253

I took up the 'Saturday Review'255

Bret Harte256

We settled to our Work258

A Circulation it had never known before259

'Consider them at your Service'261

I was inwardly relieved263

The Book sold tremendously265

A. T. Quiller Couch268

'Q.' Junior269

'The Haven,' Fowey273

Mr. and Mrs. Quiller Couch275

Fowey Grammar School Crew and Mr. Quiller Couch277

The old Study279

Mr. and Mrs. Quiller Couch in a Canadian Canoe281

Robert Buchanan285

Mr. Buchanan's House287

The Study291

Mr. Robert Buchanan and his favourite Dog295

Robert Louis Stevenson299

Mr. Stevenson's House in Samoa301

Mrs. R. L. Stevenson305

Stevenson telling 'Yarns'307