For the benefit of his many boy readers with whom Henty's stories were
most popular, a writer on the staff of _Chums_ paid Henty a visit one
day. He described him as a tall man, massive in build, with a fine head
and a commanding presence, the lower part of his face adorned with a
great flowing beard, and though his hair was almost white, the dark
beard was only slightly flecked with silver threads. He had the
appearance of a man who had knocked about the world and rubbed shoulders
with strange bed-fellows, and looked as though he would be a capital
companion and just the sort of person with whom one would like to share
the solitude of a desert island. There is no doubt that the writer said
this in the full belief that Henty would have been an ideal comrade--a
brave man, amiable, happy in temper, straightforward, and ready at a
pinch to dare danger to the very death.
The visit paid to him was, primarily, to ask him how he wrote his books.
"How does a man write his books?" is a question that calls for a little
thought before answering. One man will write them mentally from end to
end before putting pen to paper; another will jot down sketchy notes
which, after months of thought and labour, represent so many scraps that
have to be picked out, set in something like order, and then fitted into
shape as if they were pieces of a dissected puzzle; and only then, after
much work, do they take form as a comprehensive whole. Again, another
will spend years over the construction of a book, sparing no pains, in
the full knowledge that he will never be able to write another; and
after all it may prove to be not worth the reading, or, if worth the
trouble, it may be utterly wanting in that indescribable element which
enchains the reader at once and keeps his attention riveted to the very
end. Yes, that indescribable something which is given to so few by
nature--the few who, somehow, find themselves writing as no man to their
knowledge ever wrote before; and so say their readers. For there is a
peculiarity in some men's thoughts when placed on paper in print--a
something which attracts, through the soul that is in it, people of all
ranks and classes--the highly-cultivated classical scholar, the student
of other men's works, the great criminal or civil judge whose life has
been spent in examining the ways, thoughts, and acts of every form of
human nature, the best as well as the vilest and worst.
And yet this book which affords such intense delight to its reader,
often by its pathos, less often by its mirth--for, strangely enough, one
finds that the gift of being humorous is extremely rare--will give as
much pleasure to the half-educated child as it does to the man whom poor
old Captain Cuttle, Dickens's simple-hearted child-like creation,
described as "chock full of science." Now, how is this? I, the writer
of these lines, have been a reader for seventy years, and I must frankly
confess that I don't know, and my honest belief is that I never shall.
But this I do know, that I found all this attraction ready for my
reading thirst in a story entitled _Rip Van Winkle_, in the pages of an
old, old magazine called the _Queen Bee_. This story somehow painted a
picture in my young brain of the Catskill Mountains and the Dutchmen
playing ninepins, while the roll of the balls resounded and re-echoed
like thunder, and the voice that rang out, crying, "Rip Van Winkle! Rip
Van Winkle!" sounds, at any time when I think upon it, loud and clear.
There is the picture still, like a dream of the photography that I was
to live to see in all its present beauty, only clear and bright and
better still; for there are the colours of nature which some of us yet
may see photographed in the continuation of these wondrous days in which
science has given us so much.
There is no saying how a man contrives to write a book; but this is the
question that George Henty's visitor asked, as he sat near a table where
closely-written sheets lay in a heap, apparently just as they had been
laid together by the writer. There was a half laugh, followed by the
rather disconcerting reply: "I do not write any of my books myself. I
get a man to do them for me--an amanuensis, of course; it all comes out
of my head, but he does all the actual writing. I never see any of my
work until it comes to me from the printers in the shape of
proof-sheets. My amanuensis sits at the table, and I sit near him, or
lie on the sofa, and dictate the stories which I publish."
So said Henty to his visitor, and he might have added, "and smoke the
while," for nature must have needed something in the way of sedative for
the brain so constantly upon the strain.
Then questions were asked by the eager enquirer as to how long this
writing went on for so great an output, as a manufacturer would call it,
to result. In the words that followed the real secret was explained--
and it lay in the quiet, steady, regular application which is seen in
the man who is discovered one day, trowel in hand, by a small pile of
bricks which he goes on laying in position; he gives each a tap or two
and a scrape, and in course of time, lo and behold! as the old writers
say, there stands a magnificent house.
"What do I call a good day's work?" said Henty. "Well, say my man comes
at half-past nine in the morning and stays for four hours, till
half-past one; we can get through a good deal of work in that space of
time. Then perhaps he comes round in the evening for a couple of hours;
so in the course of a day I finish a chapter, that is, about six
thousand five hundred words. I call that a good day's work."
And so would anyone. Six thousand five hundred words of consistent
description and conversation, all forming a portion of an interesting
tale which will hold a boy's attention--often a man's! Think of it! At
half-past nine that morning there was nothing; when work was knocked off
in the evening there was a chapter that would some day be read with
satisfaction--a something made out of nothing save a few flying
thoughts. With George Henty that was how a story was written.
Such books as these would average in length from a hundred and thirty to
a hundred and fifty thousand words; that is to say, about the length of
the old three-volume novel, a class of work at which Henty also tried
his hand. One of his first novels, _A Search for a Secret_, was
published by Tinsley Brothers in 1867, and from time to time another was
turned out which achieved a fair amount of success; indeed, almost up to
the end of his life Henty wrote an occasional novel when a good plot
occurred to him and when he felt in the mood. But quite early in his
career he was invited by an old club friend, the late Thomas Archer, to
contribute a story suitable for the reading of boys to a series of
juvenile works that Messrs. Blackie and Son were about to produce, and
which Mr Archer was to see through the press.
This was the commencement of a long series of boys' books--a long way on
towards a hundred--which achieved universal success, and for the task of
writing which their author, in his avocation of war correspondent and
descriptive writer, had in a manner passed his life priming himself.
In his choice of subjects, almost from the first, he drew on his old
experience, and in one of his earliest essays he, the son of a coal-mine
proprietor, naturally enough began upon a story dealing with the perils
and dangers (not of the sea where the stormy winds do blow) encountered
by the stern-visaged grimy men who gain their daily bread by descending
with their lives in their hands into the bowels of the earth. He tells
a tale here of the men who, with Davy lamp in hand, go right down among
the coal seams, to where the atmospheric pressure is light and the
insidious gas can be heard hissing out of the strata. He describes how,
weary and tempted by the longing for a pipe, some weak-minded comrade
may contrive by the help of a nail to pick the lock of his
carefully-secured safety lamp, so as to expose the flame for a pipe to
be lit. Then comes the ignition of the gas in one scathing burning
blast, the herald of death to the offender and to those nearest the
explosion, while for those who are farther away, and who are warned by
the thunderous roar, there is the race for life as they tear for the
pit's mouth, to be too often overtaken by the deadly choke-damp, whose
poisonous strangling fumes follow the firing of the gas. Others,
imprisoned by the falling rock and coal, after fighting hard to escape,
have to sit and wait and pray that the help which they know will be
trying to reach them as soon as comrades can descend, may not come too
late.
This, _Facing Death_, was Henty's first story for boys. But a soldier
by training, he soon turned to the military element. It speedily dawned
upon him that there is nothing a boy likes better than a good
description of a fight--with fisticuffs not objected to against some
school tyrant--and here, in his descriptions, the writer was thoroughly
at home. He knew how his heroes should behave, and in such encounters
there was the vraisemblance that added power to his narrative. Then,
too, as war correspondent who had seen fighting in the Crimea, in Italy
with Garibaldi during the War of Independence, with Lord Napier in
Abyssinia, in the Franco-German War and during the Commune, in Russia,
in the West Coast forests on the way to Coomassie, in Spain during the
Carlist Insurrection, and in the Turco-Servian War, his mind was stored
with material and with picturesque backgrounds for stories to come.
Here was a stupendous collection of embryo "copy" for boys' books on
fighting full of reality from beginning to end. From his wide
experience he knew and described how fighting should be, and was carried
on. When he felt a desire for change, he struck farther back, and
enlisted as the years went by various heroes of history whose names have
been immortalised. At one time he would be weaving a story about the
prowess of our men in India with Clive, at another time following
Wellington through the Peninsular War. He was, in imagination, with
Roberts at Kandahar, with Kitchener at Khartoum, and with Buller in
Natal. He often made a plunge into naval history and dealt with our
naval heroes. Unconsciously, too, all this while he was building up a
greater success for his boys' books by enlisting on their behalf the
suffrages of that great and powerful body of buyers of presents who had
the selection of their gifts. By this body is meant our boys'
instructors, who, in conning the publishers' lists, would come upon some
famous name for the hero of the story and exclaim: "Ha! history; that's
safe." In this way Henty linked himself with the great body of teachers
who joined with him hand in hand; hence it was that the book-writer who
kept up for so many years his wonderful supply of two, three, and often
four boys' books a year, full of solid interest and striking natural
adventure, taught more lasting history to boys than all the
schoolmasters of his generation.
Naturally the works that dealt with his own experience were the simple
honest truth; but the same may be said of those in which he had to deal
with the past, and therefore had to strengthen and supplement his
knowledge by the study of the best works he could get hold of
preparatory to writing fiction dealing with some particular epoch. For,
following upon the choice of his subject, say the battles of some war
through which he carried his heroes, he confessed that he got together a
pile of books from one of the big libraries and stored his mind with
material for the purpose of the story he was about to weave; so that his
fiction was very near akin to fact, though possibly it was highly
coloured. No boy dislikes colour, and Henty's readers did not object to
a little blood. His boys were fighting boys, and very manly, full, as
he termed it, of pluck; and though he dressed them up and carried them
through peril and adventure galore, it was all good honest excitement,
even if here and there a little too bright in hue. As to that, he had
the example of the famous romanticist of the north, the great Sir
Walter, who said that in equipping a character in one of his romances he
liked to give him a cocked hat and a walking-stick to add to his
appearance.
There was nothing namby-pamby in Henty's writings, for his adolescent
characters were not so much boys as men, saving in this, that he kept
them to boy life, and never made his works sickly by the introduction of
what an effeminate writer would term the tender passion. "No," he said,
"I never touch on love interest. Once I ventured to make a boy of
twelve kiss a little girl of eleven, and I received a very indignant
letter from a dissenting minister."
Men who write books build up for themselves plenty of critics besides
the authorised judges to whom their works are sent out by the
publishers, and unfortunately the self-constituted censors do not
possess the broad knowledge of the genuine critic.
But for outspoken, downright, honest but self-satisfied criticism, no
one equals the "cocky" schoolboy who has entered upon the phase when he
begins to feel that he can write, and has begun to get over the natural
repugnance to express himself in correspondence. Early in life your
natural boy only writes as much as he feels bound to set down with pen,
ink, and paper. These effusions one may call duty-letters home. The
next letters are those relating to his wants; they come more freely, and
of course often savour of pocket-money. It is later, when he has taken
to reading, and has arrived at the stage when his spelling is more
regular, his grammar fairly correct, and his words flow more freely from
his pen, that he becomes opinionated, and informs those to whom he
writes what he thinks.
Sometimes an author is favoured by these young gentlemen, and more than
one communicated with Henty and informed him that he had read his last
book, which was, of course, satisfactory; but the criticisms and the
points fallen foul of would have been unpleasant only for the fact that
they formed food for mirth.
One day, during a chat concerning the success of a well-known magazine
that was current some five-and-twenty or thirty years ago, which he
edited, Henty laughingly complained to the writer about the way in which
boys of this type troubled him with their opinions. One of them--it was
in the early days when this corrupt word was beginning to be utilised in
boy life as something very forcible and expressive--wrote and asked him
why he put such "rot" in his paper. One fancies one can recall at the
present moment the grim, half-amused, half-angry expression of the
editor's face as he related the anecdote. But it is only fair to say
that such young gentlemen are the exceptions, and when a boy does
praise, he can do it with a warmth that makes his favourite author's
cheeks glow with pride, for he feels that the criticism is very honest
and true.
And boys can write very very pleasant letters, such as set one thinking
that one would like to know the writers. Some of their letters show
very plainly what the young correspondents have thought as they read,
though they often enough cause much amusement by their _naivete_,
especially those which come suddenly from the most out-of-the-way
places. These are some of the great rewards which come to a writer, and
make up for many a long day of drudgery in the cause of duty on days
when nature is preaching idleness to a worker, and is calling to him
with her myriad voices to leave the pen and desk and come and commune
with her while there is time; on days--those rare days--when she is all
smiles, and full of suggestions of those bright days of the past, which
seem to have become rarer as one has been growing old.
Henty had a little selection of correspondents' letters sent from
out-of-the-way places. One was from an American boy, written with all
the quaint _naivete_ and ignorance of one who was on his travels to see
what the world was really like. He writes from Italy, after "doing"
England with his father:--
Hotel Europa, Venezia, March 22nd, 1889.
Dear Mr Henty,
I am an American boy, ten years old, travelling in Europe. I read
some of your books at home, and enjoyed them so much that, as soon as
I arrived in London, I wanted to go to Mr Blackie's, hoping to see
you and all your books. So when I had been to Westminster Abbey and
the Tower, my father took me there; but I could not see you, and the
books were shut up. But the gentleman was very kind to me, and
brought some of them out, and I went home laden. I think _The Lion of
Saint Mark_ is splendid. I am reading it here, and am sure Malleo
lived in this house. I have been to the very place in the Piazetta
where Matteo and Francis had their first conversation.
Yours respectfully, --.
Nothing could be more amusing than the boy's mingling of shrewdness and
innocence respecting the author's connection with his publisher. There
is something in it suggestive of the days of Newbery and Dodsley, with
an idea evidently in the boy's mind that publishers kept authors in
stock. But it is the letter of a clever boy notwithstanding, blessed
with a father aiming at increasing his boy's store of knowledge in the
wisest way extant.
Such letters come abundantly to a boys' author; but Henty thought far
more highly of those which he received from girls, for where there is a
girl in the same family the brothers' books are generally common stock,
and are carefully read, appreciated, and judged. The author declares
that girls write more intelligently and evince greater judgment in their
criticisms, while those who write, especially American girls, make a
point of requesting an answer, and do not shrink from asking for the
author's autograph to add to the collection being made.
At the same time, unconscious of the estimation in which the sister is
held by her correspondent, the boy does not fail to write in a
half-contemptuous spirit like this: "Dear Mr -, I have read your story,
which I and my brother think splendid. Emmie has read it too, and she
says it's delightful; but then, she's only a girl."
A propos of the boy seeker for an author's autograph, there are many of
these acquisitive young gentlemen who make applications by post and do
not get one, even on days when the author is in his most amiable frame
of mind. Possibly this is due to the fact that they are perfectly
unconscious of being propagators of a custom which has grown into a
heavy tax. Others, more wise in their young generation, make a point of
enclosing a carefully-directed and stamped envelope, which places the
person addressed in the position of a creditor, whose conscience
immediately smites him with the suggestion that it would be churlish and
rude not to reply. And somehow almost invariably those young gentlemen
obtain the addition to their collection that they have sought.
Boys' writers most probably do not have more worries than other people,
but they have to submit to one nuisance from the selfish and thoughtless
which does go very much against the grain. Fancy being a man who feels
himself in duty bound to fulfil an engagement to write some four, five,
or six thousand words of a story pretty well every day. Is it not
extremely probable that when that long tale of words is written he will
lay the pen down with a feeling of weariness, almost of loathing and
disgust. Imagine his feelings, then, when he finds in his
correspondence a letter from some absolute stranger, enclosing a long
manuscript which he has written "especially for boys," with the request
that "as the recipient is so clever and knows so well exactly what a boy
likes, he will be good enough to read it at once and give his opinion
upon its merits"? Now, human nature is human nature, and as a weary
writer has a great deal of that sad human nature in his composition, and
is prone to be irritable, surely it is not surprising that for a few
minutes he falls into a fretful state, and mentally asks this would-be
scribe why he does not send his MS to an editor or other practised judge
of people's works for his opinion about the unknown one's literary
production?
Henty uttered his wail to one of his visitors who recorded an interview,
and then confessed to being as weak and amiable as many others of his
craft, for he says: "I do generally read them, and have helped several
men to get publishers; but, of course, the great majority of the stories
are hopelessly unfit for boys. One does not like to write back and say
that the work is confounded rubbish, although I suppose it would be the
most merciful thing to do, as it would prevent the writer from wasting
his time. I let them down as lightly as I can."
There is a well-known old proverb, for which we have to thank one of the
old Roman writers, who spread their Latin and their works through the
civilised world, that a poet is born, not made, and it applies equally
to the story-teller or writer of narrative. Henty was a story-teller
from quite early days; for, following up his boyish attempts, the days
came when, as a married man, with his children gathering round his
fireside, it became a custom for them to come and say the familiar
good-night, with the appeal to father to tell them a story. At first
the stories were brief of the briefest, and doubtless versions of the
old popular nursery tales. These, however, soon began to give way to
invention, and these again would be followed by flights of fancy as the
young author's wings grew stronger, till, from being so brief that they
only sufficed for one evening, his stories expanded and gradually merged
into those which were cut short with, "There, it's growing too late now.
I must finish to-morrow night." Doubtless invention in the furnishing
of these little narratives, composed expressly for the juvenile
audience, soon had to give way to study, and their author began to seek
his inspiration from some incident in history. Gradually, too, as he
realised the interest taken in his narratives by his own children, they
began to be more thoughtfully designed, and grew longer, while the idea
strengthened that they might prove as attractive to other children as to
his own, until by a natural sequence the story-constructing took up more
thought, grew more businesslike, and developed, as it were, into a
profession.
It is easy, too, to imagine that as some of these stories--which were
told for the benefit of his two boys, and the two little girls who were
carried off by consumption on the verge of womanhood--ran to a length of
four or five nights, they gave their originator the power to compose
with fluency and ease. For throughout his life Henty practised
storytelling as opposed to story-writing. It is not everyone who finds
dictation easy, but for twenty years he dictated all his fiction to his
secretary and amanuensis, Mr Griffiths, even down to the very last tale
which he finished, prior to his being stricken down by paralysis.
In writing his books Henty was wonderfully practical. He thoroughly
enjoyed a quiet evening and a dinner with friends at his club, but,
speaking from old experience, he never allowed this to interfere with
the work he had on hand. More than once the writer has said to him,
"What! going already?" ("already" being almost directly after dinner).
"Yes," he would reply; "I shall perhaps have some telegrams to write up
next door," ("next door" being the _Standard_ office). On other
occasions it would be, "Yes; going home. My man will be waiting when I
get there," ("my man" representing his amanuensis, ready for him in his
study at Lavender Hill). And in response to the remark, "Rather late to
begin when you get home", "Oh yes, but I daresay I shall get a couple of
thousand words done"; and that meant from Henty that the work would be
done, for he was a man who meant work, and did it. This would happen
usually when he was extra busy preparing some book for the press. He
had a quiet, determined way of making hay when the sun shone, for the
_Standard_ made great calls upon his time, requiring him to write
matters of fact, and at such times fiction had to be laid aside. His
long absences from home in times of war interfered greatly with his
peaceful avocations, but he treated all these journeys as so many
copy-collecting trips. They provided him with material which he would
afterwards cleverly utilise, as can be gathered from passage after
passage in his many works.
For details of the many stories for the young written by Henty, one is
disposed to refer the reader to the publisher's list; but to follow upon
what has been said respecting the correspondence that reaches a writer
from his young readers, a letter that has come to hand, written by a
Canadian boy some years ago, is very amusing in its admiration of his
favourite author. It indicates such an amount of steady reading, it
evinces so much ingenuity, and (if it should ever reach the young
writer's eyes and he will take the criticism in the good part in which
it is meant) displays so much need for improvement, that one gives it in
full as an amusing list of the author's works from the boy's point of
view.
The little lad calls it "a story." Well, it is an original story of
stories, and, as intimated, emanates from Canada. It is here given in a
confidence which suppresses names, and thus cloaks the literary mistakes
of the past:--
G.A. Henty, Esq.
Dear Sir,
Hoping you will excuse me for troubling you, but I would like you to
read the little story I have made (while staying home from school with
the measles). I have read and enjoyed a great many of your books.
Following is the story made out of the names of some of the books you
have written:--
"Jack Archer", while travelling "Through Russian Snows", met "Captain
Bayley's Heir", who had been "Through the Sikh War" as "One of the
28th" and was "True to the Old Flag", was swimming "In Greek Waters",
being pursued by "The Tiger of Mysore", which had come "Through the
Fray" "By Sheer Pluck." All of a sudden along came a man who was "The
Bravest of the Brave" while "With Wolfe in Canada" and "With Clive in
India"; he also showed valour "At Agincourt", which was "Won by the
Sword" "By England's Aid", headed by "A Knight of the White Cross",
who was with "Wulf the Saxon" and "Beric the Briton" in fighting "The
Dragon and the Raven", which were "For the Temple", met "The Cat of
Bubastes", followed by "The Young Carthaginian", who was "Condemned as
a Nihilist" for killing "The Lion of the North" and "The Lion of Saint
Mark", which were owned by "The Young Colonist" and "Maori and
Settler", who said they were "With Buller in Natal", and had come to
arrest him as "A Jacobite Exile", with their colours "Orange and
Green", in the name of "Bonnie Prince Charlie." It happened when on
"Saint Bartholomew's Eve" along came "Saint George for England" "By
Right of Conquest." "In Freedom's Cause" he was "Held Fast for
England" "In the Reign of Terror." "Under Drake's Flag" he made "The
Dash for Khartoum", which "With Lee in Virginia" "For Name and Fame"
he fought and won "By Pike and Dyke", assisted by "Redskin and
Cowboy." All this happened "When London Burned."
Trusting you will let me know if you receive this, and how you like
the story, Yours very truly, --.
Doubtless, as was often his custom, George Henty, who was proud of, as
well as amused by, the above letter, replied to the young writer. One
would be glad to know.
In addition to the three-volume story, _A Search for a Secret_,
mentioned earlier, Henty produced several more, so that he may claim to
be one of those who saw out the old days which preceded the six-shilling
novel. He concluded his series of novels with another secret--_Colonel
Thorndykes'_--but this, like those which had preceded it, only achieved
what the superfine litterateur terms a _succes d'estime_, which is not
the success beloved of the publisher, who has a bad habit of judging an
author's merits by reference to his ledger and counting the number of
copies sold.
Henty's novels were well contrived and thought out, and full of
interesting matter, but not one of them seemed to contain that unknown
quality which nobody appears as yet to have been able to analyse, but
which causes the British public to go reading mad over something which
hits the fancy of the time.
As a novelist he was unsuccessful; not that it mattered, for he soon
laid the foundation of what was to prove an enduring fame, one which set
an enormous clientele of young readers looking forward year by year for
his next book or books--one, two, three, or even four per annum--until
he had erected a literary column familiar in the bright young memories
of thousands upon thousands of readers to whom the names of his works
are well known.
In the long list of his other writings, _A Story of the Carlist
Troubles_, another volume more modern and up-to-date, relating to the
Sudan when Kitchener was in command, and a romance telling of a search
for the treasure of the Peruvian kings, were among his last productions,
while editions after editions of his earlier works kept on appearing,
and were eagerly read. These new issues of his earlier books of course
appealed to a much wider public than before, since the writer's
popularity had gone on increasing with every fresh story from his pen.
As is often the case with a young and enthusiastic writer, Henty in his
early days made more than one attempt to publish his productions at his
own cost, only to learn the severe lesson that these business
transactions are matters of trade, and do not often prosper in the hands
of an author.
One of his hardest fights was over the _Union Jack_, which he edited for
some years. It was a boys' journal, which ought to have succeeded, and
over which he worked very hard both as author and editor; but somehow,
in spite of the names of the able men whom he enlisted as his literary
lieutenants, the sun of prosperity did not shine upon it brightly, and
after a last effort, in which he took in new blood, he gave it up in
disgust. He must have thought, after the fashion of others before him,
that the success of periodicals is a matter of accident. It would be
difficult indeed to come to any other conclusion when one sees the way
in which clever and scholarly productions, fostered by the best literary
ability, struggle into life and hold on to a precarious existence for a
few brief weeks or months, and then die from lack of appreciation, while
others that are perfect marvels of all that a magazine should not be,
rush up into popularity and become, as it were, gold-mines to their
proprietors.
So far as Henty was concerned, however, there is the consolation that
whatever disappointments he may have had over his early productions,
they formed a portion of the literary concrete upon which he raised a
structure that made his name familiar to every young reader of his time.