"Come now, confess you are ashamed of it," he urged. "You only wrote it
to make money."
"If you mean that I deliberately wrote low stuff to make money," I
replied calmly, "it is untrue. There is nothing I am ashamed of. What
you object to is simply realism." I pointed out Bret Harte had been as
realistic, but they did not understand literature on that committee.
"Confess you are ashamed of yourself," he reiterated, "and we will look
over it."
"I am not," I persisted, though I foresaw only too clearly that my
summer's vacation was doomed if I told the truth. "What is the use of
saying I am?"
The headmaster uplifted his hands in horror. "How, after all your
kindness to him, he can contradict you----!" he cried.
"When I come to be your age," I conceded to the member of the committee,
"it is possible I may look back on it with shame. At present I feel
none."
In the end I was given the alternative of expulsion or of publishing
nothing which had not passed the censorship of the committee. After
considerable hesitation I chose the latter.
This was a blessing in disguise; for, as I have never been able to
endure the slightest arbitrary interference with my work, I simply
abstained from publishing. Thus, although I still wrote--mainly
sentimental verses--my nocturnal studies were less interrupted. Not till
I had graduated, and was of age, did I return to my inky vomit. Then
came my next first book--a real book at last.
In this also I had the collaboration of a fellow-teacher, Louis Cowen by
name. This time my colleague was part-author. It was only gradually that
I had been admitted to the privilege of communion with him, for he was
my senior by five or six years, and a man of brilliant parts who had
already won his spurs in journalism, and who enjoyed deservedly the
reputation of an Admirable Crichton. What drew me to him was his mordant
wit (to-day, alas! wasted on anonymous journalism! If he would only
reconsider his indetermination, the reading public would be the richer!)
Together we planned plays, novels, treatises on political economy, and
contributions to philosophy. Those were the days of dreams.
[Illustration: LIFE IN BETHNAL GREEN.]
One afternoon he came to me with quivering sides, and told me that an
idea for a little shilling book had occurred to him. It was that a
Radical Prime Minister and a Conservative working man should change into
each other by supernatural means, and the working man be confronted with
the problem of governing, while the Prime Minister should be as
comically out of place in the East End environment. He thought it would
make a funny "Arabian Nights" sort of burlesque. And so it would have
done; but, unfortunately, I saw subtler possibilities of political
satire in it. I insisted the story must be real, not supernatural, the
Prime Minister must be a Tory, weary of office, and it must be an
ultra-Radical atheistic artisan bearing a marvellous resemblance to him
who directs (and with complete success) the Conservative
Administration. To add to the mischief, owing to my collaborator's
evenings being largely taken up by other work, seven-eighths of the book
came to be written by me, though the leading ideas were, of course,
threshed out and the whole revised in common, and thus it became a
vent-hole for all the ferment of a youth of twenty-one, whose literary
faculty had furthermore been pent up for years by the potential
censorship of a committee. The book, instead of being a shilling skit,
grew to a ten-and-sixpenny (for that was the unfortunate price of
publication) political treatise of over sixty long chapters and 500
closely-printed pages. I drew all the characters as seriously and
complexly as if the fundamental conception were a matter of history; the
out-going Premier became an elaborate study of a nineteenth century
Hamlet; the Bethnal Green life amid which he came to live was presented
with photographic fulness and my old trick of realism; the governmental
manoeuvres were described with infinite detail; numerous real
personages were introduced under nominal disguises, and subsequent
history was curiously anticipated in some of the Female Franchise and
Home Rule episodes. Worst of all, so super-subtle was the satire, that
it was never actually stated straight out that the Premier had changed
places with the Radical working man, so that the door might be left open
for satirically suggested alternative explanations of the metamorphosis
in their characters; and as, moreover, the two men re-assumed their
original _roles_ for one night only with infinitely complex effects,
many readers, otherwise unimpeachable, reached the end without any
suspicion of the actual plot--and yet (on their own confession) enjoyed
the book!
[Illustration: "HAD IT SENT ROUND."]
In contrast to all this elephantine waggery the half-a-dozen chapters
near the commencement, in which my collaborator sketched the first
adventures of the Radical working man in Downing Street, were light and
sparkling, and I feel sure the shilling skit he originally meditated
would have been a great success. We christened the book _The Premier and
the Painter_, ourselves J. Freeman Bell, had it type-written, and sent
it round to the publishers in two enormous quarto volumes. I had been
working at it for more than a year every evening after the hellish
torture of the day's teaching, and all day every holiday, but now I had
a good rest while it was playing its boomerang prank of returning to me
once a month. The only gleam of hope came from Bentleys, who wrote to
say that they could not make up their minds to reject it; but they
prevailed upon themselves to part with it at last, though not without
asking to see Mr. Bell's next book. At last it was accepted by Spencer
Blackett, and, though it had been refused by all the best houses, it
failed. Failed in a material sense, that is; for there was plenty of
praise in the papers, though at too long intervals to do us any good.
The _Athenaeum_ has never spoken so well of anything I have done since.
The late James Runciman (I learnt after his death that it was he) raved
about it in various uninfluential organs. It even called forth a leader
in the _Family Herald (!)_, and there are odd people here and there, who
know the secret of J. Freeman Bell, who declare that I. Zangwill will
never do anything so good. There was some sort of a cheap edition, but
it did not sell much, and when, some years ago, Spencer Blackett went
out of business, I acquired the copyright and the remainder copies,
which are still lying about somewhere. And not only did _The Premier and
the Painter_ fail with the great public, it did not even help either of
us one step up the ladder; never got us a letter of encouragement nor a
stroke of work. I had to begin journalism at the very bottom and
entirely unassisted, narrowly escaping canvassing for advertisements,
for I had by this time thrown up my scholastic position, and had gone
forth into the world penniless and without even a "character," branded
as an Atheist (because I did not worship the Lord who presided over our
committee) and a Revolutionary (because I refused to break the law of
the land).
[Illustration: MR. ZANGWILL AT WORK.]
I should stop here if I were certain I had written the required article.
But as _The Premier and the Painter_ was not entirely _my_ first book, I
may perhaps be expected to say something of my third first book, and the
first to which I put my name--_The Bachelors' Club_. Years of literary
apathy succeeded the failure of _The Premier and the Painter_. All I did
was to publish a few serious poems (which, I hope, will survive _Time_),
a couple of pseudonymous stories signed "The Baroness Von S." (!), and a
long philosophical essay upon religion, and to lend a hand in the
writing of a few playlets. Becoming convinced of the irresponsible
mendacity of the dramatic profession, I gave up the stage, too, vowing
never to write except on commission, and sank entirely into the slough
of journalism (glad enough to get there), _inter alia_ editing a comic
paper (not _Grimaldi_, but _Ariel_) with a heavy heart. At last the long
apathy wore off, and I resolved to cultivate literature again in my
scraps of time. It is a mere accident that I wrote a pair of "funny"
books, or put serious criticism of contemporary manners into a shape not
understood in a country where only the dull are profound and only the
ponderous are earnest. _The Bachelors' Club_ was the result of a
whimsical remark made by my dear friend, Eder of Bartholomew's, with
whom I was then sharing rooms in Bernard Street, and who helped me
greatly with it, and its publication was equally accidental. One spring
day, in the year of grace 1891, having lived unsuccessfully for a score
of years and seven upon this absurd planet, I crossed Fleet Street and
stepped into what is called "success." It was like this. Mr. J. T.
Grein, now of the Independent Theatre, meditated a little monthly called
_The Playgoers' Review_, and he asked me to do an article for the first
number, on the strength of some speeches I had made at the Playgoers'
Club. When I got the proof it was marked "Please return at once to 6,
Bouverie Street." My office boy being out, and Bouverie Street being
only a few steps away, I took it over myself, and found myself, somewhat
to my surprise, in the office of Henry & Co., publishers, and in the
presence of Mr. J. Hannaford Bennett, an active partner in the firm. He
greeted me by name, also to my surprise, and told me he had heard me
speak at the Playgoers' Club. A little conversation ensued, and he
mentioned that his firm was going to bring out a Library of Wit and
Humour. I told him I had begun a book, avowedly humorous, and had
written two chapters of it, and he straightway came over to my office,
heard me read them, and immediately secured the book. (The then editor
ultimately refused to have it in the "Whitefriars' Library of Wit and
Humour," and so it was brought out separately.) Within three months,
working in odds and ends of time, I finished it, correcting the proofs
of the first chapters while I was writing the last; indeed, ever since
the day I read those two chapters to Mr. Hannaford Bennett I have never
written a line anywhere that has not been purchased before it was
written. For, to my undying astonishment, two average editions of my
real "First Book" were disposed of on the day of publication, to say
nothing of the sale in New York. Unless I had acquired a reputation of
which I was totally unconscious, it must have been the title that
"fetched" the trade. Or, perhaps, it was the illustrations by my friend,
Mr. George Hutchinson, whom I am proud to have discovered as a
cartoonist for _Ariel_.
[Illustration: "EDITING A COMIC PAPER."]
So here the story comes to a nice sensational climax. Re-reading it, I
feel dimly that there ought to be a moral in it somewhere for the
benefit of struggling fellow-scribblers. But the best I can find is
this: That if you are blessed with some talent, a great deal of
industry, and an amount of conceit mighty enough to enable you to
disregard superiors, equals and critics, as well as the fancied demands
of the public, it is possible, without friends, or introductions, or
bothering celebrities to read your manuscripts, or cultivating the camp
of the log-rollers, to attain, by dint of slaving day and night for
years during the flower of your youth, to a fame infinitely less
widespread than a prize-fighter's, and a pecuniary position which you
might with far less trouble have been born to.
[Illustration: "A FAME LESS WIDESPREAD THAN A PRIZE-FIGHTER'S."]
_By the Light of the Lamp._