The one thing of all others upon which Watts-Dunton set store was
good-fellowship, which he counted as of greater worth even than
genius. If ever he went critically astray, if ever intellectually he
overrated his man, it was because he allowed his heart to outride his
head. Once convince him that this or that young writer was a good
fellow, and, born critic though he was, even criticism went by the
board in Watts-Dunton’s intellectual estimate. If I illustrate this
by a personal experience it is not to speak of myself, but because,
though I have personal knowledge of many similar instances, in this
instance I have the “documents” in the case before me. It concerns
the circumstances by which I first came to know Watts-Dunton.
In the New Year of 1885 there appeared the first number of a weekly
(afterwards a monthly) magazine with the somewhat infelicitous if
not feeble title of _Home Chimes_. It was edited and owned by F. W.
Robinson, then a popular novelist. To the first number Swinburne
and Theodore Watts contributed poems, and in that now dead and
forgotten venture the early work of many men and women who thereafter
became famous is to be found. For instance, Jerome K. Jerome’s _Idle
Thoughts of an Idle Fellow_ as well as his _Three Men in a Boat_
first saw the light there. There, much of Sir James Barrie’s early
work appeared, for I once heard the author of _A Window in Thrums_
say, though I do not suppose he meant to be taken too seriously, that
there was a time when to him “London” meant the place where _Home
Chimes_ was published. There, early work by Eden Phillpotts, Israel
Zangwill, G. B. Burgin, and a host of others who have since “come
into their own” was printed, and there, I may say incidentally, part
of my own first little book appeared.
“Yes,” Robinson once said to me reminiscently, “it is true that
Jerome, Barrie, Phillpotts, Zangwill, Burgin and yourself all more
or less ‘came out’ in _Home Chimes_, but I have my doubts sometimes
whether the whole of you ever raised the sale of the magazine by so
much as a number.”
“On the contrary,” I replied, “my own opinion is that, between us, we
killed it.”
Be that as it may, Robinson lost heavily upon _Home Chimes_ and was
hit even harder by the death of the “three-decker”--I mean by the
ousting of novels in three volumes at thirty shillings in favour of
novels in one volume at six shillings. The change, indeed, caused
such a drop in his income that he decided to look about him for
another means of livelihood outside literature, and when, soon after,
an Inspectorship of H.M. Prisons became vacant, he decided to apply
for the appointment. For this he had special qualifications, as he
had for years closely and critically studied our Prison System and
had, in fact, written and published much upon the subject. Knowing
how eager he was, for pecuniary reasons, to secure the appointment,
and being anxious to do what I could to assist his candidature (I
plead guilty to “log-rolling” in this most justifiable instance), I
asked the late Mr. Passmore Edwards, proprietor and editor of the
_Echo_, the only halfpenny evening paper in those days, to let me
write a sketch of Robinson in the “Echo Portrait Gallery” to which I
was a contributor. In this sketch--it was signed “C. K.” merely--I
touched, purposely, upon Robinson’s close study and special knowledge
of the workings and defects of our Prison System. My article was seen
by Theodore Watts, who wrote Robinson a letter which the latter sent
on to me. It was as follows: