To begin, I will place the responsibility for the whole affair where it
belongs. It was the fault of no less a person than Mr. Rudyard Kipling.
Mr. Andrew Lang's connection with the episode, of course, involved us in
the final catastrophe, but he is not to blame. Mr. Kipling started the
whole affair, and if Mulvaney and Ortheris and Learoyd had behaved
themselves properly the book would now be resting calmly upon many an
appreciative library shelf, instead of being, as it is, but a sorrowful
memory and a possible cause for a series of international lawsuits.
This fact being understood as the basis of my argument, I will proceed
to prove it; and to do so properly I must give in brief outline some
idea of the contents of the book. It was to be called "Over the
Plum-Pudding; or, Tales Told Under the Mistletoe, by Sundry Tattlers.
Edited by Horace Wilkinson"--in fact, I hold a copyright at this moment
upon this alluring title. Furthermore, it was to be unique among modern
publications in that, while professing to be a Christmas book, the tales
were to be full of Christmas spirit. The idea struck me as a very
original one. I had observed that Fourth-of-July issues of periodicals
were differentiated from the Christmas numbers only in the
superabundance of advertisements in the latter, and it occurred to me
that a Christmas publication containing some reference to the Christmas
season would strike the public as novel--and, in spite of the
unfortunate overturning of my schemes, I still think so. Messrs.
Hawkins, Wilkes & Speedway thought so, too, and gave me _carte blanche_
to go ahead, stipulating only that I should spare no expense, and that
the stories should be paid for on publication. I was also to enlist the
services of the best persons in letters only.
Taking this last stipulation as the basis of my editorial operations, it
is not a far cry to the conclusion that I sought to get stories from
such eminent writers as Mr. Hall Caine, Dr. Doyle, Mr. Kipling, Richard
Harding Davis, Andrew Lang, George Meredith, and myself. There were a
few others, but these were people whose light shone forth suddenly and
brilliantly, and then went out. I shall have no occasion to mention
their names. It is enough to call attention to the fact that ultimately
they were all I had left.
Mr. Caine's contribution was a charming little fancy written originally
for children, but sent to me because it was the only thing the author
happened to have on hand at the moment he received my request. It was
called, if I remember rightly, "The Inebriate Santa Claus." It was full
of that spirit of life and gayety which has been such a marked feature
of Mr. Caine's work in the past, and was written with all of that fine,
manly vigor that Mr. Caine puts into his every word. Sunshiny, I should
call it, if I were seeking for the one word which summed up the virtues
of "The Inebriate Santa Claus." One glowed as one perused it with the
warmth of the whole thing, especially in such passages as this, for
instance:
"His downward trip through the chimney of Marston Hall gave
him confidence in himself. He had observed as he was about
to leave the roof of Higginbottom Castle that his footprints
in the snow were suggestive of his actual condition, and he
wondered if he could possibly get through the evening's work
without catastrophe. But the Marston Hall chimney flue
restored his confidence. It was straight, and after his
descent the soot, that clung to the inner walls like bad
habits to a man, showed none of the vacillating lines which
were the essential characteristic of his footprints on the
roof. He was sobering up."
I wish I could remember the story as a whole. It would be unjust,
however, to the author to try to reproduce it from memory, and I shall
not make the effort. It went on to tell, however, how the good old
Saint, in his unfortunate condition of inebriacy, overturned the
Christmas tree at Marston Hall and set fire to the house, resulting in a
slight singeing of his own person and the destruction of the Hall,
together with all the inmates, a fact that so distressed the unhappy
Santa Claus that at the next nursery he visited he resolved to reform
and indulge no more in strong drink, although the nurse, on putting the
children to bed, had departed, leaving a bottle of whiskey upon the
mantel-piece--this showing Santa Claus's powers of self-control in the
face of temptation.
Altogether, as I have already said, the story was full of import and
sunshine, and, as may be seen from my brief and inadequate description,
was possibly more fitted for children than for the adult mind.