-----
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 really do not 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 autobibliography.
"What is a pound?" asked Sir Robert Peel in an interrogative mood futile
as Pilate's. "What is a book?" I ask, and the dictionary answers with
its usual dogmatic air, "A collection of sheets of paper, or 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 enquiry 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
schoolfellow 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 an amanuensis.
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 a printed first book. The story of this first
book is peculiar; and, to tell it in approved story form, I must request
the reader to come back two years with me.
[Illustration: "LOOKING FOR TOOLE."]
One fine day, when I was sixteen, I was wandering about the Ramsgate
sands looking for Toole. 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 Toole. But I could not find Toole. Instead, I found on the sands a
page of a paper called _Society_. It is still running merrily at a
penny, but at that time it had also a Saturday edition at threepence. 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 to-day.
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.
[Illustration: "I SAT DOWN AND WROTE SOMETHING."]
There were various events. I resolved to enter for two. One was a short
novel, and the other a comedietta. The "L5 humorous story" competition I
did not go in for; but when the last day of sending in MSS. for that
had passed, I reproached myself with not having despatched one of my
manuscripts. Modesty had prevented me sending in old work, as I felt
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 (L5), 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, and my comedietta was lost in the post.
[Illustration: Arthur Goddard.]
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 seventeenth and eighteenth 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.
[Illustration: "IT WAS HAWKED ABOUT THE STREETS."]
My first book (price one penny nett) went well. It was loudly denounced
by Jews, 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 book-stalls. 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 interlard 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 MS. when writing
_Children of the Ghetto_. The description of market-day in Jewry was
transferred bodily from the MS. 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.
With this 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. Y. saw the back-hair of
Fortune almost within our grasp.
[Illustration: "A POLICEMAN TOLD HIM TO GET DOWN."]
One morning our headmaster walked into my room with a portentously
solemn air. I felt instinctively that the murder was out. But he only
said "Where is Y.?" though the mere 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 Y.?" 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 Y. 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 Y., being legal-minded, had argued it out
with the policeman _de haut en bas_ from the top of his ladder. The
outraged majesty of the law thereupon haled Y. 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.
[Illustration: "'SUCH STUFF AS LITTLE BOYS SCRIBBLE UP ON WALLS.'"]
I approached the 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 ballad
was tolerable, though not to be endured; he admitted the metre 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 up
on walls."