LESTER VALIANT came back from Oxford with the degree of B. Litt., some
unpaid tailors' bills, and the conviction that the world owed him a
living because he had been suffered within the sacred precincts of
Balliol College for three years. A Rhodes scholarship is one of the most
bounteous gifts the world holds for a young man; but in Lester's case
Oxford piled upon Harvard left him with a perilous lot to unlearn. You
can tell a lot about a man when you know what he is proud of; and Lester
was really proud of having worn a wrist watch and a dinner jacket with
blue silk lapels three or four years before they became habitual in the
region of Herald Square. But let us be just: he was also proud of his
first editions of Conrad and George Moore; for he was much afflicted
with literature.
Lester originated in the yonder part of Indiana, but when he returned
from Oxford he made up his mind to live in New York. He felt it
appropriate that he should be connected in some way with the production
of literature, and after hiring a bedroom on the fourth floor of an old
house on Madison Avenue, where two friends of his were living, he set
out to visit the publishers.
There is a third-rate club in London called the Litterateurs' Club.
A few years ago it was in urgent need of funds, and a brilliant idea
struck the managing committee. Every writer listed in the American
“Who's Who” was circularized and received a very flattering letter
saying that, owing to the distinction of his contributions to
contemporary letters, the Litterateurs' Club of London would be very
much pleased to welcome him as a member, upon a nominal payment of
five guineas. About seven hundred guileless persons complied, and
transatlantic travel became appreciably denser on account of these men
of letters crossing to England to revel in their importance as members
of a club of which no one in London has ever heard. And by some fluke
the managing committee had got hold of the name of Lester Valiant,
then at Oxford--perhaps because he had once published a story in the
_Cantharides Magazine_. Probably they bought a mailing list from some
firm in Tottenham Court Road.
Cecil Rhodes's executors paid his five guineas, and he had his cards
engraved: