IX
I am going to show in this chapter how I got my feet on the lower rungs of the ladder, and how I began to climb.
I go back to 1868. My book on early French poetry was out and had succeeded among the reviewers. At least I had gained a start and a hearing, and, as I very soon found out, was regarded benevolently by certain editors as a man of some promise. It was in this year that I made the acquaintance of James Rice; he was the editor and proprietor of Once a Week. I have already spoken of my voyage to the Island of Réunion, and mentioned the paper I wrote about it. This paper was not acknowledged by the editor, but happening one day to take up Once a Week on a railway stall, I found my paper in it—printed badly, uncorrected, and full of mistakes. Naturally I wrote an angry letter, and in reply received a note in very courteous terms inviting me to call. I did so, and learned that the editor had just taken over the paper. He had found my article in type and published it, knowing nothing of the author; he added complimentary remarks on the paper and invited me to write more for him, an invitation which I accepted with much satisfaction.
Next I had an invitation from the late George Bentley, editor of Temple Bar, to write for his magazine more studies in French literature. For six or seven years I continued to write papers for this magazine, perhaps three or four every year; towards the end of that time, not so many.
About the year 1870 I was invited to write for the British Quarterly Review, to which I contributed some half-a-dozen essays, which cost me a great deal of time and work; among them were papers entitled “The Failure of the French Reformation,” “Admiral Coligny,” the “Romance of the Rose,” and “French Literary Clubs”; and in the year 1871 I wrote a paper for Macmillan’s Magazine on Rabelais.
In 1870, on the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War, the Marseillaise was restored to France as its national anthem. I happened to know the history of that hymn and sent a short paper on the subject to the Daily News. The editor not only accepted it, but called upon me and asked for more. This led to the contributions of leading articles on social subjects to that paper. I was never on the regular staff, but when I had a subject and could find the time, I would offer an article, and it was seldom that it was refused.
In 1873 I gathered together a group of my various papers and brought them out in volume form called The French Humorists.
By this time, then, I was in a position to have as many papers as I could write accepted. I would beg the candidate for literature to consider how it was done:—
1. I was not dependent on literature—I could spend time on my work.
2. I began by producing a book on the subject on which I desired to be considered a specialist. The work had a succès d’estime, and in a sense made my literary fortune.
3. This book opened the doors for me of magazines and reviews.
4. The knowledge of French matters also opened the door of the daily press to me.
5. I followed up the line by a second book on the same subject. The press were again, on the whole, very civil.
Circumstances obliged me to give up the pursuit of French literature, but I had at least succeeded in gaining a special reputation and in making an excellent start as a writer on one subject. I was, of course, content with small returns. For my paper on the “Romance of the Rose,” which cost me six months and more of solid work, I received £37. Between 1868 and 1873 inclusive, I do not suppose that I ever made so much as £200 a year for all this work. I was, however, unmarried, I lived in chambers, and I still kept my secretaryship. It is really astonishing how well one can live as a bachelor on quite a small income. My rent was £40 a year; my laundress, washing, coals, lights, and breakfast cost me about £70 a year. My dinners—it is a great mistake not to feed well—cost me about thirty shillings a week. Altogether I could live very well indeed on about £250 a year. Practically I spent more, because I travelled whenever I could get away, and bought books, and was fond of good claret. The great thing in literary work is always the same—to be independent: not to worry about money, and not to be compelled to go pot-boiling. I could afford to be anxious about the work and not to be anxious at all about money. And I think that the happiest circumstance of my literary career is that when the money became an object, the money began to come in. While I wanted but little, the income was small.
During this time I was simply making my way alone without any literary acquaintance at all, and quite apart from any literary circles. I have never belonged to any cénacle, “school,” or Bohemian set. My friends were few: one or two of the old Cambridge lot, a stray Mauritian or two, an old schoolfellow or two. We got up whist in my chambers. I went to the theatre a good deal; to society I certainly did not belong in any sense. And as I was perfectly happy with my private work in my chambers and with such solace of company as offered, I might have continued to the end in this seclusion and solitude, but for the hand of fate, which kindly pulled me out.
My travels at this period were, like my daily life, principally alone. I went about France a good deal—in Normandy, down the Loire, in the unpromising parts of Picardy, about Fontainebleau and across country to Orleans and the neighbourhood. At home I wandered about the Lakes and about Northumberland; visited cathedrals and seaports, watching and observing; I sat in parlours of country inns and listened. The talk of the people, their opinions and their views, amused and interested me. At the time I had no thought of using this material, and so most of it was wasted; but some remained by me.
For a week-end journey I sometimes had a companion in the person of S. L——. He was a barrister without practice, a scholar who neither wrote nor lectured. He read a great deal and had no ambition to reproduce his learning; there was no man of my acquaintance who had a wider knowledge, a better memory, or a sounder critical taste. This critical taste, indeed, he carried into everything; it made him unhappy if his steak at a country inn was not well cooked and well served, and on the important subject of port wine he was really great. Except when he was on one of these journeys he used to get up every afternoon at half-past one, breakfast on coffee and bread and jam—but the jam had to come from his mother’s house in the country; at dinner he worked his way through the wine-lists either of club or tavern and always took port after dinner; he would sit in my chambers as late as I allowed him, and he used to go to bed habitually at four. This was his daily life, and he carried it on with the utmost regularity till his death, which happened at the age of fifty-five.
For many years it was my custom to go for a walk in midwinter. My friend Guthrie was my companion in these expeditions. We would be away three or four days, carrying a handbag over the shoulder, taking the train for a convenient distance out of town, and mapping out our walk beforehand so as to give ourselves, if possible, four hours before lunch and about two or three after lunch. Thus I remember a walk we took starting from Newbury, in Wiltshire, to Marlborough, and from Marlborough along the Wans Dyke to Devizes; another from Bath to Glastonbury by way of Radstock, and from Glastonbury to Bridgewater; another from Penzance to Falmouth by way of Helston; and another from Newnham, in Gloucestershire, to Ross, Monmouth, Tintern, and Chepstow—an excellent walk. The exhilaration of such a walk when the weather was frosty and clear cannot be described; the only objection was the long and deadly dulness of the evenings. One got in at about five, dinner was served at seven; what was to be done between seven and ten—the earliest hour at which one could go to bed? There was nothing for it but the smoking-room and the local company, or the billiard-room and the local funny man.
In 1873, in consequence of the publication of The French Humorists, I received an invitation to write for the Saturday Review. I contributed “middles”—i.e., essays on social matters—to this paper, not regularly, but occasionally, when a good subject came to me. I also reviewed a little for them, but not much. I always disliked reviewing, having an invincible dislike to “slating” an author, or to “log-rolling.” I continued to write for the paper till its change of hands in 1894.
In 1871 I brought out the History of Jerusalem, the period covered being from the siege by Titus to modern times. Palmer was my collaborateur. He contributed the history from Moslem sources which had never before been searched and read for the purpose. I contributed the history as narrated in the Chronicles, which were also nearly new material. The book went out of print, but the sale of the whole edition showed a loss! For many years the book was not to be procured. But it was never dead. At last the publisher consented to issue a second edition subject to the condition of my guarantee of a sale of three hundred copies. To prevent any possible error about this guarantee, I simply took them all at trade price, and put the book in the lists of the Palestine Exploration Fund. The second edition went off at once, and a third edition followed. At the same time I took over from the publisher The French Humorists, with the intention of revising, adding to, and improving it for a new edition should the opportunity ever occur.
In 1875—I think—I contributed a volume to Blackwood’s Foreign Classics on Rabelais. I also contributed about this time to Blackwood’s Series of Foreign Classics, edited by Mrs. Oliphant, a volume on Rabelais. I had a little passage of arms with the editor, who tried to insist that Rabelais, as a Franciscan Friar, had to go about the town en quête, begging for the fraternity. She did not understand that long before his time the rule had been crystallised and the practice and custom of the Franciscans modified. The begging of the house simply consisted in the placing of boxes in shops and public places, while the income of the brethren was chiefly made up by Church dues, masses, funerals, and bequests. I followed up the volume with a volume of selections from Rabelais newly translated. I found, however, that it was impossible to make Rabelais popular. The allegorical method appeals to very few, unless the allegory is so simple as to lie quite on the surface. I wrote also a few articles for the Encyclopædia Britannica, the most important of which was a paper on Froissart. I wonder if anyone else has ever read Froissart’s poems.
In 1873 I joined the Savile Club, then full of young writers, young dons, and young scientific men; but for sometime I hardly used the club at all and was quite unknown to the members. Perhaps to live so retired a life—to spend the evenings alone in solitary chambers, working till eleven o’clock—was a mistake. On the other hand, as I was fated, as it appeared, about this time to write novels, it was just as well to avoid the narrowing influences of the club smoking-room. After my marriage the club smoking-room was farther off than ever, except on Saturdays, when I began to attend the luncheon party and to sit in the circle round the fire afterwards; but always as an occasional guest, never as one of the two or three sets of writers and journalists who belonged to that circle. There was generally very good talk at the Savile: sometimes clever talk, sometimes amusing talk; one always came away pleased, and often with new light on different subjects and new thoughts.
Among the men one met on Saturdays were Palmer, always bubbling over with irrepressible mirth—a school-boy to the end; Charles Leland (Hans Breitmann), full of experiences; Walter Herries Pollock, then the assistant editor of the Saturday Review; Gordon Wigan, always ready to personate someone else; Charles Brookfield, as fine a raconteur as his father; Edmund Gosse, fast becoming one of the brightest of living talkers; Saintsbury, solid and full of knowledge, a critic to the finger tips, whether of a bottle of port, or a mutton chop, or a poet; H.E. Watts, formerly editor of the Melbourne Argus, and translator of Don Quixote; Duffield of the broken nose, who also translated Don Quixote; Robert Louis Stevenson, then young, and as singularly handsome as he was clever and attractive. Many other of my friends and acquaintances joined the club afterwards, but these are the members most associated in my memory with the Saturday afternoons.
I remember two Saturday afternoons especially. On one of them I had a French novel in my pocket. I had just bought it—a book by the author of Contes à Ninon. The circle broke up early, and I began to read the novel. I read it till it was time to go home; I read it in the train; after dinner I read it all the evening. Next day, being Sunday, I read it all the morning and all the afternoon—I finished it in the evening. On Monday, with the magic and the excitement of the story still upon me, I wrote a leading article on the Parisian workman as presented by this book. I took it to the editor of the Daily News. He looked it through. “I wish I could take it,” he said; “but it is too strong—too strong.” I dare say it was too strong, for the book was L’Assommoir; but I have always regretted that the article did not appear. The second Saturday afternoon was one spent in reading the proofs of an unpublished story. James Payn sent it to me asking for my opinion. The book was by a new hand. It was called Vice Versâ. That was an afternoon to stand out in one’s memory.
In 1879–81 I became editor of a series of biographies called, ambitiously, the New Plutarch. Leland gave me a life of Abraham Lincoln; Palmer a life of the Caliph Haroun al Raschid; Conder a life of Judas Maccabæus; and Miss Janet Tucker a life of Joan of Arc. I myself wrote a life of Coligny. Rice undertook the life of Whittington and collected certain notes; but as his illness prevented him from making use of these, I took them over and made the biography a peg for a brief and popular study of mediæval London, putting Rice’s name on the title page in acknowledgment of his notes—as I explained in the preface. The series was not successful. After ten years or so I managed to get my two volumes into my own hands again and transferred them to Messrs. Chatto & Windus, where they are still, I believe, alive and in demand. The life of Coligny gave offence to High Church people, but that mattered very little. One can never write anything honest and with conviction without offending someone. I am always pleased to think that I was enabled to present the life of this great man to English readers.
During the last eighteen years or so, I have been chiefly occupied with fiction. In 1885 or thereabouts I found myself unable to discharge the duties of my office at the Palestine Exploration Fund, although they had become very light. I had practically got through with the survey of Western Palestine of which I was director, and my office was continually crowded with editors and publishers and visitors, who came to me not on account of their interest in Palestine. I therefore left off drawing the salary. This left me free to come and go as I liked, and I carried on the correspondence. But this could not last long. The cranks who once had amused me now wasted my time and exasperated me; I had no patience with the multitudes who came with a coin or a lamp. I was compelled to give it up. And so I went out after all into the open without any prop except the money I had made. At the age of fifty, with a big bundle of books and papers behind me, I turned to literature as a profession. But it already gave me an income which would be called handsome even at the bar.
In 1891 I produced the first of four books on London. They were called respectively London, Westminster, South London, and East London. I shall talk about them and about my London work generally in another chapter.a
I have anticipated events, because it seemed best to keep separate the history of my career as a novelist.