HE SQUINTED!HE SQUINTED!
And there is a cold-blooded squint, which makes your flesh creep, and which, when taken in connection with business, brings little stories to your mind—'Is anyone coming, sister Anne?' and that sort of thing.
Mr.—— asked me to excuse him a moment while he gave some instructions, and, without waiting for my permission, looked through a few letters, shouted a message down a speaking-tube, and then, after having arranged the fate of about half-a-dozen novels by the means of the same instrument, he sent a final message down the tube asking for my MS., only to be told that he would find it in the top right-hand drawer of his desk.
As a matter of fact, all this delay, intended to impressMISS STANNARD (From a photograph by H. S. Mendelssohn)MISS STANNARD(From a photograph by H. S. Mendelssohn)me and make me understand what a great thing had happened to me in having won attention from so busy a man, simply did for Mr.—— so far as I was concerned. Instead of impressing me, it gave me time to get used to the place, it gave me time to look at Mr.—— when he was not looking at me.
Then, having found the MS., he looked at me and prepared to give me his undivided attention.
'Well,' he said, with a long breath, as if it was quite a relief to see a new face, 'I am very glad you have decided to close with our offer. We confidently expect a great success with your book. We shall have to change the title though. There's a good deal in a title.'
I replied modestly that there was a good deal in a title. 'But,' I added, 'I have not closed with your offer—on the contrary, I—— '
He looked up sharply, and he squinted worse than ever. 'Oh, I quite thought that you had definitely—— '
'Not at all,' I replied; then added a piece of information, which could not by any chance have been new tohim. 'A hundred pounds is a lot of money, you know,' I remarked.
Mr.—— looked at me in a meditative fashion. 'Well, if you have not got the money,' he said rather contemptuously, 'we might make a slight reduction—say, if we brought it down to 75l., solely because our readers have spoken so highly of the story. Now look here, I will show you what our reader says—which is a favour that we don't extend to everyone, that I can tell you. Here it is!'
'THE TWINS'—BOOTLES AND BETTY (From photographs by H. S. Mendelssohn)'THE TWINS'—BOOTLES AND BETTY(From photographs by H. S. Mendelssohn)
Probably in the whole of his somewhat chequered career as a publisher, Mr.—— never committed such a fatal mistake as by handing me the report on my history (in detail) of that very large family of boys and girls. 'Bright, crisp, racy,' it ran. 'Very unequal in parts, wants a good deal of revision, and should be entirely re-written. Would be better if the story was brought to a conclusion when the heroine first meets with the hero after the parting, as all the rest forms an anti-climax. This might be worked up into a really popularnovel, especially as it is written very much in Miss—— 's style' (naming a then popular authoress whose sole merit consisted in being the most faithful imitator of the gifted founder of a very pernicious school).
I put the sheet of paper down, feeling very sick and ill. And the worst of it was, I knew that every word of it was true. I was young and inexperienced then, and had notnousenough to say plump out that my eyes had been opened, and that I could see that I should be neither more nor less than a fool if I wasted a single farthing over a story that must be utterly worthless. So I prevaricated mildly, and said that I certainly did not feel inclined to throw a hundred or even seventy-five pounds away over a story without some certainty of success. 'I'll think it over during the day,' I said, rising from my chair.
'Oh, we must know within an hour, at the outside,' Mr.—— said very curtly. 'Our arrangements will not wait, and the time is very short now for us to decide on our books for September. Of course, if you have not got the money, we might reduce a little more. We are always glad, if possible, to meet our clients.'
'It's not that,' I replied, looking at him straight. 'I have the money in my pocket; but a Yorkshire woman does not put down a hundred pounds without some idea what is going to be done with it.'
'You must let me have your answer within an hour,' Mr.—— remarked briefly.
'I will,' said I, in my most polite manner; 'but I really must think out the fact that you are willing to knock off twenty-five pounds at one blow. It seems to me if you could afford to take that much off, and perhaps a little more, there must have been something very odd about your original offer.'
'My time is precious,' said Mr.—— in a grumpy voice.
'Then, good morning,' said I cheerfully.
My hopes were all dashed to the ground again, but I feltvery cheerful, nevertheless. I trotted round to my friend, Mr. Stevens, who gave a whistle of astonishment at my story. 'I'll send my head clerk round for your MS. at once,' he said, 'else you'll probably never see it again.'
And so he did, and so ended my next attempt to bring out my first book.
After this I felt very keenly the real truth of the oldLONG-LEGGED SOLDIERSLONG-LEGGED SOLDIERSsaying, 'Virtue is its own reward.' For, not long after my episode with Mr.——, the then editor ofLondon Societywrote to me, saying that he thought that as I had already had several stories published in the magazine, it might make a very attractive volume if I could add a few more and bring them out as a collection of soldier stories.
I did not hesitate very long over this offer, but set to work with all the enthusiasm of youth—and youth does have the advantage of being full of the fire of enthusiasm, if of nothing else—and I turned out enough new stories to make a very respectable volume.
Then followed the period of waiting to which all literary folk must accustom themselves.
I was, however, always of a tolerably long-suffering disposition, and possessed my soul in patience as well as I could. The next thing I heard was that the book had verygood prospects, but that it would have its chances greatly improved if it were in two volumes instead of being in only one.
Well, youth is generous, and I did not see the wisdom of spoiling the ship for the traditional ha'porth of tar, so I cheerfully set to work and evolved another volume of stories, all of smart, long-legged soldiers, and with—as Heaven knows—no more idea of setting myself up as possessing all knowledge about soldiers and the Service than I had of aspiring to the Crown of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. But, even then, I had need of a vast amount of patience, for time went on, and really my book seemed as far from publication as ever. Every now and then I had a letter telling me that the arrangements were nearly completed, and that it would probably be brought out by Messrs. So-and-so. But days wore into weeks, and weeks into months, until I really began to feel as if my first literary babe was doomed to die before it was born.
Then arose a long haggle over terms, which I had thought were settled, and to be on the same terms as the magazine rates—no such wonderful scale after all. However, my literary guide, philosopher, and friend thought, as he was doing me the inestimable service of bringing me out, that 20l.was an ample honorarium for myself; but I, being young and poor, did not see things in the same light at all. Try as I would—and I cannot lay claim to trying very hard—I could not see why a man, who had never seen me, should have put himself to so much trouble out of a spirit of pure philanthropy, and a desire to help a struggling young author forward. So I obstinately kept to my point, and said if I did not have 30l., I would rather have all of the stories back again. I think nobody would credit to-day what that special bit of firmness cost me. Still, I would cheerfully have died before I would have given in, having once conceived my claim to be a justone. A bad habit on the whole, and one that has since cost me dear more than once.
Eventually, my guide and I came to terms for the sum for which I had held out, namely, 30l., which was the price I received for my very first book, in addition to about 8l.thatCAVALRY LIFECAVALRY LIFEI had already had from the magazine for serial use of a few of the stories.
So, in due course, my book, under the title of 'Cavalry Life,' was brought out in two great cumbersome volumes by Messrs. Chatto & Windus, and I was launched upon the world as a full-blown author under the name of 'Winter.'
So many people have asked me why I took that name, and how I came to think of it, that it will not, perhaps, be amiss if I give the reason in this paper. It happened like this. During our negotiations, my guide suggested that Ihad better take somenom de guerre, as it would never do to bring out such a book under a woman's name. 'Make it as real-sounding and non-committing as you can,' he wrote, and so, after much cogitation and cudgelling of my brains, I chose the name of the hero of the only story of the series which was written in the first person, and called myself J. S. Winter. I believe that 'Cavalry Life' was published on the last day of 1881.
Then followed the most trying time of all—that of waiting to see what the Press would say of this, my first child, which had been so long in coming to life, and had been chopped and changed, bundled from pillar to post, until my heart was almost worn out before ever it saw the light. Then, on January 14, 1882, I went into the Subscription Library at York, where I was living, and began to search the new journals through, in but faint hopes, however, of seeing a review of my book so soon as that; for I was quite alone in the world, so far as literary matters went. Indeed, not one friend did I possess who could in any way influence my career, or obtain the slightest favour for me.
I remember that morning so well; it is, I think, printed on my memory as the word 'Calais' was on the heart of Queen Mary. It was a fine, cold morning, and there was a blazing fire in the inner room, where the reviews were kept. I sat down at the table, and took up theSaturday Review, never dreaming for a moment that I should be honoured by so much as a mention in a journal which I held in such awe and respect. And as I turned over the leaves, my eyes fell on a row of foot-notes at the bottom of the page, giving the names of the books which were noticed above, and among them I saw—'Cavalry Life, by J. S. Winter.'
For full ten minutes I sat there, feeling sick and more fit to die than anything else. I was perfectly incapable of looking at the notice above. But, at last, I plucked up courage to meet my fate, very much as one summons up courage to havea tooth out and get the horrid wrench over. Judge of my surprise and joy when, on reading the notice, I found that theSaturdayhad given me a rattling good notice, praising the new author heartily and without stint. I shall never, as long as I live, forget the effect of that, my first review, upon me. For quite half an hour I sat without moving, only feeling, 'I shall never be able to keep it up. I shall never be able to follow it up by another.' I felt paralysed, faint, crushed, anything but elated and jubilant. And, at last, through some instinct, I put my hand up to my head to find that it was cold and wet, as if it had been dipped in the river. Thank Heaven, from that day to this I have never known what a cold sweat was. It was my first experience of such a thing, and sincerely I hope it will be my last.
I TOOK UP THE 'SATURDAY REVIEW'I TOOK UP THE 'SATURDAY REVIEW'
Drawing signed A. S. Boyd, 18th Mar. 1892 with signature below: Bret Harte A Sketch from LifeA Sketch from Life
WHEN I say that my 'first book' wasnotmy own, and contained beyond the title-page not one word of my own composition, I trust that I shall not be accused of trifling with paradox, or tardily unbosoming myself of youthful plagiary. But the fact remains that in priority of publication the first book for which I became responsible, and which probably provoked more criticism than anything I have written since, was a small compilation of Californian poems indited by other hands.
A well-known bookseller of San Francisco one day handed me a collection of certain poems which had already appeared in Pacific Coast magazines and newspapers, with the request that I should, if possible, secure further additions to them, and then make a selection of those which I considered the most notable and characteristic for a single volume to be issued by him. I have reason to believe that this unfortunate man was actuated by a laudable desire to publish a pretty Californian book—hisfirst essay in publication—and at the same time to foster Eastern immigration by an exhibit of the Californian literary product, but, looking back upon his venture, I am inclined to think that the little volume never contained anything more poetically pathetic or touchingly imaginative than that gentle conception. Equally simple and trustful was his selection of myself as compiler. It was based somewhat, I think, upon the fact that 'theartless Helicon' I boasted 'was Youth,' but I imagine it was chiefly owing to the circumstance that I had from the outset, with precocious foresight, confided to him my intention of not putting any of my own verses in the volume. Publishers are appreciative; and a self-abnegation so sublime, to say nothing of its security, was not without its effect.
WE SETTLED TO OUR WORKWE SETTLED TO OUR WORK
We settled to our work with fatuous self-complacency, and no suspicion of the trouble in store for us, or the storm that was to presently hurtle around our devoted heads. I winnowed the poems, and he exploited a preliminary announcement to an eager and waiting Press, and we moved together unwittingly to our doom. I remember to have been early struck with the quantity of material coming in—evidently theresult of some popular misunderstanding of the announcement. I found myself in daily and hourly receipt of sere and yellow fragments, originally torn from some dead and gone newspaper, creased and seamed from long folding in wallet or pocket-book. Need I say that most of them were of an emotional or didactic nature; need I add any criticism of these homely souvenirs, often discoloured by the morning coffee, the evening tobacco, or, Heaven knows! perhaps blotted by too easy tears! Enough that I knew now what had become of those original but never re-copied verses which filled the 'Poet's Corner' of every country newspaper on the coast. I knew now theA CIRCULATION IT HAD NEVER KNOWN BEFOREA CIRCULATION IT HAD NEVER KNOWN BEFOREgenesis of every didactic verse that 'coldly furnished forth the marriage table' in the announcement of weddings in the rural Press. I knew now who had read—and possibly indited—the drearyhic jacetsof the dead in their mourning columns. I knew now why certain letters of the alphabethadbeen more tenderly considered than others, and affectionately addressed. I knew the meaning of the 'Lines to Her who can best understand them,' and I knew that they had been understood. The morning's post buried my table beneath these withered leaves of posthumous passion. They lay there like the pathetic nosegays of quickly-fading wild flowers, gathered by school children, inconsistently abandoned upon roadsides, or as inconsistently treasured as limp and flabby superstitions in their desks. The chill wind from the Bay blowing in at my window seemed to rustle them into sad articulate appeal. I remember thatwhen one of them was whisked from the window by a stronger gust than usual, and was attaining a circulation it had never known before, I ran a block or two to recover it. I was young then, and in an exalted sense of editorial responsibility which I have since survived, I think I turned pale at the thought that the reputation of some unknown genius might have thus been swept out and swallowed by the all-absorbing sea.
There were other difficulties arising from this unexpected wealth of material. There were dozens of poems on the same subject. 'The Golden Gate,' 'Mount Shasta,' 'The Yosemite,' were especially provocative. A beautiful bird known as the 'Californian Canary' appeared to have been shot at and winged by every poet from Portland to San Diego. Lines to the 'Mariposa' flower were as thick as the lovely blossoms themselves in the Merced Valley, and the Madrone tree was as 'berhymed' as Rosalind. Again, by a liberal construction of the publisher's announcement,manuscriptpoems, which had never known print, began to coyly unfold their virgin blossoms in the morning's mail. They were accompanied by a few lines stating, casually, that their sender had found them lying forgotten in his desk, or, mendaciously, that they were 'thrown off' on the spur of the moment a few hours before. Some of the names appended to them astonished me. Grave, practical business men, sage financiers, fierce speculators, and plodding traders, never before suspected of poetry, or even correct prose, were among the contributors. It seemed as if most of the able-bodied inhabitants of the Pacific Coast had been in the habit at some time of expressing themselves in verse. Some sought confidential interviews with the editor. The climax was reached when, in Montgomery Street, one day, I was approached by a well-known and venerable judicial magnate. After some serious preliminary conversation, the old gentleman finally alluded to what he was pleased to call a task of 'great delicacy and responsibility' laid upon my 'young shoulders.''In fact,' he went on paternally, adding the weight of his judicial hand to that burden, 'I have thought of speaking to you about it. In my leisure moments on the Bench I have, from time to time, polished and perfected a certain college poem begun years ago, but which may now be said to have been finished in California, and thus embraced in the scope of your proposed selection. If a few extracts, selected by myself,'CONSIDER THEM AT YOUR SERVICE''CONSIDER THEM AT YOUR SERVICE'to save you all trouble and responsibility, be of any benefit to you, my dear young friend, consider them at your service.'
In this fashion the contributions had increased to three times the bulk of the original collection, and the difficulties of selection were augmented in proportion. The editor and publisher eyed each other aghast. 'Never thought there were so many of the blamed things alive,' said the latter with great simplicity, 'had you?' The editor had not. 'Couldn't you sort of shake 'em up and condense 'em, you know? keep their ideas—and their names—separate, so that they'd have proper credit. See?' The editor pointed out that this would infringe the rule he had laid down. 'I see,' said the publisher thoughtfully—'well, couldn't you pare 'em down; give the first verse entire and sorter sample the others?' The editor thought not. There was clearly nothing to do but to make a more rigid selection—a difficult performance when the material was uniformly on a certain dead level, which it isnot necessary to define here. Among the rejections were, of course, the usual plagiarisms from well-known authors imposed upon an inexperienced country Press; several admirable pieces detected as acrostics of patent medicines, and certain veiled libels and indecencies such as mark the 'first' publications on blank walls and fences of the average youth. Still the bulk remained too large, and the youthful editor set to work reducing it still more with a sympathising concern which the good-natured, but unliterary, publisher failed to understand, and which, alas! proved to be equally unappreciated by the rejected contributors.
The book appeared—a pretty little volume typographically, and externally a credit to pioneer book-making. Copies were liberally supplied to the Press, and authors and publisher self-complacently awaited the result. To the latter this should have been satisfactory; the book sold readily from his well-known counters to purchasers who seemed to be drawn by a singular curiosity, unaccompanied, however, by any critical comment. People would lounge into the shop, turn over the leaves of other volumes, say carelessly, 'Got a new book of California poetry out, haven't you?' purchase it, and quietly depart. There were as yet no notices from the Press; the big dailies were silent; there was something ominous in this calm.
Out of it the bolt fell. A well-known mining weekly, which I here poetically veil under the title of the Red DogJay Hawk, was first to swoop down upon the tuneful and unsuspecting quarry. At this century-end of fastidious and complaisant criticism, it may be interesting to recall the direct style of the Californian 'sixties.' 'The hogwash and "purp"-stuff ladled out from the slop bucket of Messrs.—— & Co., of 'Frisco, by some lop-eared Eastern apprentice, and called "A Compilation of Californian Verse," might be passed over, so far as criticism goes. A club in the hands of any able-bodied citizen of Red Dog and a steamboat ticketto the Bay, cheerfully contributed from this office, would be all-sufficient. But when an imported greenhorn dares to call his flapdoodle mixture "Californian," it is an insult to the State that has produced the gifted "Yellow Hammer," whose lofty flights have from time to time dazzled our readers in the columns of theJay Hawk. That this complacent editorial
I WAS INWARDLY RELIEVEDI WAS INWARDLY RELIEVED
jackass, browsing among the dock and thistles which he has served up in this volume, should make no allusion to California's greatest bard, is rather a confession of his idiocy than a slur upon the genius of our esteemed contributor.' I turned hurriedly to my pile of rejected contributions—thenom de plumeof 'Yellow Hammer' didnotappear among them;certainly I had never heard of its existence. Later, when a friend showed me one of that gifted bard's pieces, I was inwardly relieved! It was so like the majority of the other verses, in and out of the volume, that the mysterious poet might have written under a hundred aliases. But the Dutch FlatClarion, following, with no uncertain sound, left me small time for consideration. 'We doubt,' said that journal, 'if a more feeble collection of drivel could have been made, even if taken exclusively from the editor's own verses, which we note he has, by an equal editorial incompetency, left out of the volume. When we add that, by a felicity of idiotic selection, this person has chosen only one, and the least characteristic, of the really clever poems of Adoniram Skaggs, which have so often graced these columns, we have said enough to satisfy our readers.' The Mormon HillQuartz Crusherrelieved this simple directness with more fancy: 'We don't know why Messrs.—— & Co. send us, under the title of "Selections of Californian Poetry," a quantity of slum-gullion which really belongs to the sluices of a placer mining camp, or the ditches of the rural districts. We have sometimes been compelled to run a lot of tailings through our stamps, but never of the grade of the samples offered, which, we should say, would average about 331/3cents per ton. We have, however, come across a single specimen of pure gold evidently overlooked by the serene ass who has compiled this volume. We copy it with pleasure, as it has already shone in the "Poet's Corner" of theCrusheras the gifted effusion of the talented Manager of the Excelsior Mill, otherwise known to our delighted readers as "Outcrop."' The Green SpringsArcadianwas no less fanciful in imagery: 'Messrs.—— & Co. send us a gaudy green-and-yellow, parrot-coloured volume, which is supposed to contain the first callow "cheepings" and "peepings" of Californian songsters. From the flavour of the specimens before us we should say that the nest had been disturbed prematurely. Thereseems to be a good deal of the parrot inside as well as outside the covers, and we congratulate our own sweet singer "Blue Bird," who has so often made these columns melodious, that she has escaped the ignominy of being exhibited in Messrs.—— & Co.'s aviary.' I should add that this simile of the aviary and its occupants was ominous, for my tuneful choir was relentlessly slaughtered; the bottom of the cage was strewn with feathers! The big dailies collected the criticisms and published them in their own columns with the grim irony of exaggerated head-lines. The book sold tremendously on account of this abuse, but I am afraid that the public was disappointed. The fun and interest lay in the criticisms, and not in any pointedly ludicrous quality in the rather commonplace collection, and I fear I cannot claim for it even that merit. And it will be observed that the animus of thecriticism appeared to be the omission rather than the retention of certain writers.
THE BOOK SOLD TREMENDOUSLYTHE BOOK SOLD TREMENDOUSLY
But this brings me to the most extraordinary feature of this singular demonstration. I do not think that the publishers were at all troubled by it; I cannot conscientiously say thatIwas; I have every reason to believe that the poets themselves, in and out of the volume, were not displeased at the notoriety they had not expected, and I have long since been convinced that my most remorseless critics were not in earnest, but were obeying some sudden impulse started by the first attacking journal. The extravagance of the Red DogJay Hawkwas emulated by others: it was a large, contagious joke, passed from journal to journal in a peculiar cyclonic Western fashion. And there still lingers, not unpleasantly, in my memory the conclusion of a cheerfully scathing review of the book which may make my meaning clearer: 'If we have said anything in this article which might cause a single pang to the poetically sensitive nature of the youthful individual calling himself Mr. Francis Bret Harte—but who, we believe, occasionally parts his name and his hair in the middle—we will feel that we have not laboured in vain, and are ready to singNunc Dimittis, and hand in our checks. We have no doubt of the absolutely pellucid and lacteal purity of Franky's intentions. He means well to the Pacific Coast, and we return the compliment. But he has strayed away from his parents and guardians while he was too fresh. He will not keep without a little salt.'
It was thirty years ago. The book and its Rabelaisian criticisms have been long since forgotten. Alas! I fear that even the capacity for that Gargantuan laughter which met them, in those days, exists no longer. The names I have used are necessarily fictitious, but where I have been obliged to quote the criticisms from memory I have, I believe, only softened their asperity. I do not know that this story has any moral. The criticisms here recorded never hurt a reputationnor repressed a single honest aspiration. A few contributors to the volume, who were of original merit, have made their mark, independently of it or its critics. The editor, who was for two months the most abused man on the Pacific slope, within the year became the editor of its first successful magazine. Even the publisher prospered, and died respected!
photo signed, Very faithfully yours, A. T. Quiller Couch.
ICHERISH no parental illusions about 'Dead Man's Rock.' It is two or three years since I read a page of that blood-thirsty romance, and my only copy of it was found, the other day, in turning out the lumber-room at the top of the house.'Q.' JUNIOR'Q.' JUNIORLater editions have been allowed to appear with all the inaccuracies and crudities of the first. On page 116, Bombay is still situated in the Bay of Bengal, and may continue to adorn that shore. The error must be amusing, since unknown friends continue to write and confess themselves tickled by it; and it is stupid to begin amending a book in which you have lost interest. But though this is my attitude towards 'Dead Man's Rock,' I can still look back on the writing of it as on an amusing adventure.
It was begun in the late summer of 1886, and was my first attempt at telling a story on paper. I am careful to say 'on paper,' because in childhood I was telling myself stories from morning to night. Tens of thousands of small boys aredoing the same every day in the year; but I should be sorry to guess how much of my time, between the ages of seven and thirteen, must have been given up to weaving these childish epics. They were curious jumbles; the characters (of which I had a constant set) being drawn indiscriminately from the 'Morte d'Arthur,' 'Bunyan's Holy War,' 'Pope's Iliad,' 'Ivanhoe,' and a book of Fairy Tales by Holme Lee, as well as from history; and the themes ranging from battles and tournaments to cricket, wrestling, and sailing matches. Anachronisms never troubled the story-teller. The Duke of Wellington would cheerfully break a lance with Captain Credence or Tristram of Lyonesse, and I rarely made up a football fifteen without including Hardicanute (whom I loved for his name), Hector (dear for his own sake) and Wamba (who supplied the comic interest and scored off Thersites). They were brave companions; but at the age of thirteen they deserted me suddenly. Or perhaps after reading Mr. Stevenson's 'Chapter on Dreams,' I had better say it was the Piskies—the Small People—who deserted me. They alone know why—for their pensioner had never betrayed a single one of their secrets—or why in these later times, when he sells their confidences for money, they have come back to help him, though more sparingly. Three or four of the little stories in 'Noughts and Crosses' are but translated dreams, and there are others in my notebook; but now I never compose without some pain, whereas in the old days I had but to sit alone in a corner or take a solitary walk and invite them, and they did all the work. But one summer evening I summoned them and met with no response. Without warning the tales had come to an end.
From my first school at Newton Abbot I went to Clifton, and from Clifton in my nineteenth year to Oxford. It was here that the old desire to weave stories began to come back. Mr. Stevenson's 'Treasure Island' was the immediate cause. I had been scribbling all through my school days; had writtena prodigious quantity of bad reflective poetry and burnt it as soon as I really began to reflect; and was now plying theOxford Magazinewith light verse, a large proportion of which was lately reprinted in a thin volume, with the title of 'Green Bays.' But I wrote little or no prose. My prose essays at school were execrable. I had followed after false models for a while, and when gently made aware of this by the sound and kindly scholar who looked over our sixth-form essays at Clifton, had turned dispirited and wrote scarcely at all. Though reading great quantities of fiction, I had, as has been said, no thought of telling a story, and so far as I knew, no faculty. The desire, at least, was awakened by 'Treasure Island,' and, in explanation of this, I can only quote the gentleman who reviewed my first book in theAthenæum, and observed that 'great wits jump, and lesser wits jump with them.' That is just the truth of it. I began as a pupil and imitator of Mr. Stevenson, and was lucky in my choice of a master.
The germ of 'Dead Man's Rock' was a curious little bit of family lore, which I may extract from my father's history of Polperro, a small haven on the Cornish coast. The Richard Quiller of whom he speaks is my great grandfather.
'In the old home of the Quillers, at Polperro, there was hanging on a beam a key, which we as children regarded with respect and awe, and never dared to touch, for Richard Quiller had put the key of his quadrant on a nail, with strong injunctions that no one should take it off until his return (which never happened), and there, I believe, it still hangs. His brother John served for several years as commander of a hired armed lugger, employed in carrying despatches in the French war, Richard accompanying him as subordinate officer. They were engaged in the inglorious bombardment of Flushing in 1809. Some short time after this they were taken, after a desperate fight with a pirate, into Algiers, but were liberated on the severe remonstrances of the British Consul. They returned to their homes in most miserable plight, having lost their all, except their Bible, much valued then by the unfortunate sailors, and now by a descendant inwhose possession it is. About the year 1812 these same brothers sailed to the island of Teneriffe in an armed merchant ship, but after leaving that place were never heard of.'
'In the old home of the Quillers, at Polperro, there was hanging on a beam a key, which we as children regarded with respect and awe, and never dared to touch, for Richard Quiller had put the key of his quadrant on a nail, with strong injunctions that no one should take it off until his return (which never happened), and there, I believe, it still hangs. His brother John served for several years as commander of a hired armed lugger, employed in carrying despatches in the French war, Richard accompanying him as subordinate officer. They were engaged in the inglorious bombardment of Flushing in 1809. Some short time after this they were taken, after a desperate fight with a pirate, into Algiers, but were liberated on the severe remonstrances of the British Consul. They returned to their homes in most miserable plight, having lost their all, except their Bible, much valued then by the unfortunate sailors, and now by a descendant inwhose possession it is. About the year 1812 these same brothers sailed to the island of Teneriffe in an armed merchant ship, but after leaving that place were never heard of.'
Here, then, I had the simple apparatus for a mystery; for, of course, the key must be made to unlock something far more uncommon than a quadrant; and I still think it a capital apparatus, had I only possessed the wit to use it properly. There was romance in this key—that was obvious enough, and I puzzled over it for some weeks, by the end of which my plot had grown to something like this: A family living in poverty, though heirs to great wealth—this wealth buried close to their door, and the key to unlock it hanging over their heads from morning to night. It was soon settled, too, that this family should be Cornish, and the scene laid on the Cornish coast, Cornwall being the only corner of the earth with which I had more than a superficial acquaintance.
So far, so good; but what was the treasure to be? And what the reason that stood between its inheritors and their enjoyment of it? As it happened, these two questions were answered together. The small library at Trinity—a delightful room, where Dr. Johnson spent many quiet hours at work upon his 'Dictionary'—is fairly rich in books of old travel and discovery; fine folios, for the most part, filling the shelves on your left as you enter. To the study of these I gave up a good many hours that should have been spent on ancient history of another pattern, and more directly profitable for Greats; and in one of them—Purchas, I think, but will not swear—first came on the Great Ruby of Ceylon. Not long after, a note in Yule's edition of 'Marco Polo' set my imagination fairly in chase of this remarkable gem; and I hunted up all the accessible authorities. The size of this ruby (as thick as a man's arm, says Marco Polo, while Maundevile, who was an artist, and lied with exactitude, puts it at a foot in length and five fingers in girth), its colour, 'like unto fire,' and the mystery and completeness of its disappearance, combined to fascinateme. No form of riches is so romantic as a precious stone with a heart in it and a history. I had only to endow it with a curse proportionate to its size and beauty, and I had all that a story-teller could possibly want.
'THE HAVEN,' FOWEY'THE HAVEN,' FOWEY[E]
But even a treasure hunt is a poor affair unless you have two parties vying for the booty, and a curse can hardly be worked effectively until you introduce the fighting element, and make destiny strike her blows through the passions—hate, greed, &c.—of her victims. I had shaped my story to this point: the treasure was to be buried by a man who had slain his comrade and only confidant in order to enjoy the booty alone, and had afterwards become aware of the curse attached to its possession. And the descendants of these two men were to be rivals in the search for it, each side possessing half of the clue. It was at this point that, like George IV., I invented a buckle. My buckle had two clasps, and on these the secretof the treasure was so engraved as to become intelligible only when they were united.
My plot had now taken something like a shape; but it had one serious defect. It would not start to walk. Coax it as I might it would not budge. Even the worst book must have a beginning—this reflection was no less distressing than obvious, for mine had none. And there is no saying it would ever have found one but for a lucky accident.
In the Long Vacation of 1885 I spent three weeks or a month at the Lizard pollacking and reading Plato. Knowing at that time comparatively little of this corner of the coast, I had brought one or two guide books and local histories in the bottom of my portmanteau. One evening, after a stiff walk along the cliffs, I put the 'Republic' aside for a certain 'History and Description of the Parish of Mullyon,' by its vicar, the Rev. E. G. Harvey, and came upon a passage that immediately shook my scraps of invention into their proper places.
The passage in question was a narrative of the wreck of the 'Jonkheer Meester Van de Wall,' a Dutch barque, on the night of March 25, 1867. I cannot quote at length the vicar's description of this wreck; but in substance and in many of its details it is the story of the 'Belle Fortune' in 'Dead Man's Rock.' The vessel broke up in the night and drowned every soul on board except a Greek sailor, who was found early next morning clambering about the rocks under cliff, between Polurrian and Poljew. This man's behaviour was mysterious from the first, and his evidence at the inquest held on the drowned bodies of his shipmates was, to say the least, extraordinary. He said: 'My name is Georgio Buffani. I was seaman on board the ship, which belonged to Dordrecht. I joined the ship at Batavia,but I do not know the name of the ship or the name of the captain.' Being shown, however, the official list of Dutch East Indiamen, he pointed to one built in 1854, the 'Kosmopoliet,' Captain König. He then told his story of the disaster, which there was no one to contradict, andthe jury returned a verdict of 'Accidentally drowned.' The Greek made his bow and left the neighbourhood.
MR. AND MRS. QUILLER COUCHMR. AND MRS. QUILLER COUCH
Just after the inquest Mr. Broad, Dutch Consul at Falmouth, arrived, bringing with him the captains of two Dutch East Indiamen then lying at Falmouth. One of them asked at once 'Is it Klaas Lammerts's?' Being told that the 'Kosmopoliet' was the name of the wrecked ship, he said, 'I don't believe it.The "Kosmopoliet" wouldn't be due for a fortnight, almost. It must be Klaas Lammerts's vessel.' The vicar, who had now come up, showed a scrap of flannel he had picked up, with '6. K. L.' marked upon it. 'Ah!' said the Dutchman, 'it must be so. Itmustbe the "Jonkheer."' But she had been returned 'Kosmopoliet' at the inquest, so there the matter rested.
'On the Friday following, however,' pursues the vicar, 'when Mr. Broad and this Dutch captain again visited Mullyon, the first thing handed them was a parchment which had been picked up meanwhile, and this was none other than the masonic diploma of Klaas van Lammerts. Here, then, was no room for doubt. The ship was identified as the "Jonkheer Meester van de Wall van Puttershoek," Captain Klaas van Lammerts, 650 tons register, homeward bound from the East Indies, with a cargo of sugar, coffee, spices, and some Banca tin. The value of the ship and cargo would be between 40,000l.and 50,000l.' It may be added that on the afternoon before the wreck, the vessel had been seen to miss stays more than once in her endeavour to beat off the land, and generally to behave as if handled by an unaccountably clumsy crew. Altogether, folks on shore had grave suspicions that there was mutiny or extreme disorder of some kind on board; but of this nothing was ever certainly known.
I think this narrative was no sooner read than digested into the scheme of my romance, now for some months neglected and almost forgotten. But the Final School of Literæ Humaniores loomed unpleasantly near, and just a year passed before I could turn my discovery to account. The following August found me at Petworth, in Sussex, lodging over a clockmaker's shop that looked out upon the Market Square. Petworth is quiet; and at that time I knew scarcely a soul in the place; but lovely scenery lies all around it, and on a hot afternoon you may do worse than stretch yourself on the slopes above the weald and smoke and do nothing. There is one small common in particular, close to the monumentat the top of the park, and just outside the park wall, where I spent many hours looking across the blue country to Blackdown, and lazily making up my mind about the novel. In the end—it was some time in September—I called on the local stationer and bought a large heap of superior foolscap.
FOWEY GRAMMAR SCHOOL CREW AND MR. QUILLER COUCHFOWEY GRAMMAR SCHOOL CREW AND MR. QUILLER COUCH
A travelling waxwork company was unpacking its caravan in the square outside my window on the morning when I pulled in my chair and light-heartedly wrote 'Dead Man's Rock (a Romance), by Q.,' at the top of the first sheet of foolscap. The initial was my old initial of theOxford Magazineverses, and the title had been settled on for some time before. Staying with some friends on the Cornish coast, I had been taken to a picnic, or some similar function, on a beach, where they showed me a pillar-shaped rock, standing boldly up from the sands, and veined with curious red streaksresembling bloodstains. 'I want a story written about that rock,' a lady of the party had said; 'something really blood-thirsty. "Slaughter Rock" might do for the name.' But my title was really borrowed from the Dodman, locally called Deadman, a promontory east of Falmouth, between Veryan and St. Austell bays.
I had covered two pages of foolscap before the brass band of the waxwork show struck up and drove me out of doors and along the road that leads to the railway station—the only dull road around Petworth, and chosen now for that very reason. A good half of that morning's work was afterwards torn up; but I felt at the time that the enterprise was going well. I had written slowly, but easily; and, of course, believed that I had found my vocation, and would always be able to write easily—most vain delusion! For in six years and a half I have recaptured the fluency of that morning not half-a-dozen times. Still, I continued to take a lively interest in my story, and wrote at it very steadily, finishing Book I. before my return to Oxford. It surprised me, though, that, for all my interest in it, the story gave me little or no emotion. Once only did I get a genuine thrill, and that was at the point where young Jasper finds the sailor's cap (p. 25), and why at this point more than another is past explaining. In later efforts I have written several pages with a shaking pen and amid dismal signs of grief; and, on revision, have usually had to tear those pages up. On the whole, my short experience goes against
But ifon revisionan author is moved to tears or laughter by any part of his work, then he may reckon pretty safely upon it, no matter with how stony a gravity it was written.
Book I.—just half the tale—was finished then, and put aside. The Oxford Michaelmas Term was beginning, andthere were lectures to be prepared; but this was not all the reason. To tell the truth, I had wound up my story into a very pretty coil, and how to unwind it was past my contriving. When the book appeared, its critics agreed in pronouncing Part I. to be a deal better than Part II., and they were right; for Book II. is little more than a violent cutting of half-a-dozen knots that had been tied in the gayest of spirits; and