Humorists and "The Idler"
HUMORISTS
AND "THE IDLER"
IN this number of The Idler is begun a serial story entitled "The Golden Fleece," which I think every reader will find of absorbing interest. It relates the wonderful adventures of an English earl who goes to America to pick up a needed fortune, unhappily encumbered with a girl. However, like so many of us who belong to the upper classes, he is quite willing to marry the girl provided she has enough money, which shows him a brave man, and therefore should enlist our sympathy at the very beginning. The writer is
David Graham Phillips.
Jason was born some time previous to the year one, and is therefore of recent enough origin to be mentioned in the Encyclopædia Britannica, so I am now enabled to write about him and perhaps win a prize of £3,000, instead of having to consult "Wisdom on the Hire System" at 6d. net.
Jason was a Greek, and was the ancestor of J. P. Morgan. He combined the White Star Line of Athens (trading between that town and the top of Mount Olympus) with the other shipping interests, and he named this navigation trust "The Argonauts Limited," registered under the Companies' Act of that day. Then Jason started in for the Golden Fleece, just as Morgan is doing to-day.
Mr. Phrixus, now, alas, no longer with us, had shorn the ram, whose fleece was of gold—spun gold, I imagine—and had hung it up to dry in the grove of Mars. Then he went away and forgot it. The late Phrixus was the originator of the Stock Exchange, and as that breed of sheep is not yet extinct, the investing lambs are shorn every day in London during office hours. For the information of those who have not seen the latest papers, I may add that Jason got the fleece after much trouble, but if you wish the particulars you must get a copy of "Wisdom while you Wait."
is a very striking story of to-day, and when it comes out in book form it ought to place David Graham Phillips very close to the top in the rank of modern novelists. The character drawing is superb, and if the rich girl of America resembles the portraits here drawn of her, we ought to put a heavy export duty on our unfortunate earls if we are to save them. The story throughout is enlivened by a delicious humour which alone should make the fortune of the serial. For some years Mr. Phillips was a journalist in Fleet Street, in which aristocratic thoroughfare he doubtless met the impoverished earl he describes so capitally. His books have proved so successful that he has now given up newspaper work, and "The Golden Fleece " is his latest production.
Gilbert Chesterton.
Mr. Chesterton has risen so rapidly into deserved fame as a satirist and humorist that he needs no introduction from me. Physically, he is a tremendous man, and he makes even the most courageous editor thankful that he is of evidently peaceful disposition. Harold Frederic, who was nearly as big, told me once that when he put on a rough ulster that reached to his heels, drew a sinister fur cap down over his brows, and took his thick blackthorn stick in his hand, he could sell a short story at once to any editor in London. Without these terrifying accessories Gilbert Chesterton sold me six stories that were not yet written. This is a risk that I do not often take. I buy no pigs in no pokes. With some difficulty I lured Mr. Chesterton into my den that we might talk casually about his future work. There he outlined for me a set of stories so original and so startling, that I knew instantly no writer living could make good the promise of the prospectus. Yet I was wrong. I have just read the first story, and it more than "makes good." It dropped in upon me during the most perplexing and anxious day of the year, but before I had read one page of the thirty which contains the story in typewriting, I had forgotten all my troubles and was living in a delightful topsy-turvy land roaring with joy. When I reached the end of the thirty typed pages, I realised that I held in my hand the most unique piece of real and original literature that had been written since "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." What must have been the exultation of the man (name unknown to me) when it dawned on him that he had hit upon the gold reef in the Transvaal? Was his exultation mitigated by fear that he had struck a pocket instead of a range of gold miles long? Such, I confess, is my own apprehension. It seems incredible that Chesterton can write another story that will equal
"The Extraordinary Adventures of Major Brown,"
not to mention five others. Robert Louis Stephenson was never able to produce the fellow to "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." Can the new Robert Louis produce half-a-dozen Major Browns? I don't know, but perhaps I may be in a position to inform you in the next number of The Idler.
When Mr. Chesterton took his departure from my room, I saw on the table a broad black note-book which I suspected belonged to him. I sprang to the balcony outside my window. Chesterton, with bowed head, was plowing his way up the middle of the street, utterly regardless of the traffic. I shouted after him and waved the black book. Cabmen took up the cry, but the absorbed man paid no attention to the cabmen, and refused to play Romeo to my Juliet. When he disappeared, I returned to my room and looked for his address in the book. It was not there, but the pages were filled with the most spirited pencil drawings I had ever seen. Thus I learned that Chesterton was artist as well as author. We are all Oliver Twists, and want more than is given us. I at once demanded that Chesterton should illustrate his own stories, and he has consented. So our modern Thackeray will be represented on the pages of this magazine by both pen and pencil. Those who examine the two pictures in this number representing Chesterton as he is, and Chesterton as he would like to be, may form some idea of the humour that is in store for them. The general title of Chesterton's series of stories is
and it will begin in an early issue of The Idler.
As this magazine is going to "present" (as Mr. Frohman would say) the greatest English humorist, it is only fair that it should present the greatest Scottish humorist as well. Scotland has ever been the home of true humour, and no country has a keener appreciation of true humour, in spite of the phrase about the surgical operation. I wish to give all sections of these islands a chance. Just now I am short an Irish humorist, but I am very confident of his early appearance. I am not so sure about Wales, and I know there is no humour on the serious three-legged Island of Man, so I shall not waste time searching for it there. The Spectator calls for an Irish Sir Walter Scott. If he should answer the call, I shall be very glad to acquire serial rights. But in the meantime I am very glad to have a Scottish Sir Walter in the person of
John Joy Bell.
Of course. Sir Walter never wrote anything precisely like the "Wee Macgreegor," but then neither did anybody else, so I don't just know with whom to compare Mr. Bell. I have said what I had to say about him and his work in an article which appears in the oldest and best of American illustrated weekly journals, Harper's Weekly, and in another part of this magazine. The well-known firm of Harper Brothers are his publishers in the United States, and Mr. Grant Richards in London. "Wee Macgreegor" seems to have swept over America like a cyclone. The interesting little chap, being inexperienced, forgot to copyright himself, and so he springs at once into the joy of a boy's life in being captured by the pirates. My New York correspondent states that there are no less than twenty different editions of "Wee Mac." on the market in America, besides the authorised edition which Harpers publish. The little fellow must be having an extraordinarily lively time over there.
The Idler will contain six episodes in the life of
himself. Bang will go saxpence, for every Scotsman must now take The Idler.
I read a book the other day entitled "An April Princess," and the moment I had finished the volume, I whistled unto myself a hansom, and drove to the residence of the author. Hansom is that hansom does, and because I got there so quickly I succeeded in obtaining eight charming and dainty stories. I would have missed them if I had taken a bus, for the editor of the Quarterly Review arrived just too late on the blue Atlas. A penny saved is not always a penny gained.
Miss Constance Smedley
has written eight very unique stories, which are as light and airy as choice bits of literary lace. Only once before has such confectionery appeared in The Idler, and that was ten or more years ago when I went to a legally furnished room in the Temple overlooking Tom Pinch's fountain and persuaded Anthony Hope to write a dozen stories for this magazine. They proved to be as sparkling and effervescent as the spray of the fountain outside, and perhaps the laughing water, dancing in the sunshine, sent some of its freshness through the open window to the writer's pen. Anthony Hope was practically an unknown man when the series began in this magazine, and he was one of the celebrities of earth when it had finished. Yet these twelve sketches were not what made him famous. In the interval he had released from his mind the "Prisoner of Zenda," and that grateful captive released Anthony Hope from his legal cell. One good turn deserves another. "Abandon Hope all ye who enter here" was not longer to be written over the door of his Temple room. From that moment to this the world of editors has been pursuing him.
Superficial critics will perhaps see in
some similarity to the lighter work of Anthony Hope, but the supposed similarity will prove more fancied than real. Miss Smedley's delightful stories are all her own (and mine by purchase); no one else could have written them.
In conversing with Miss Smedley I was somewhat shocked and suprised to learn that she imagined she could write "The Idlers' Club" better than I was doing it. I at once handed it over to her for three months. I am always willing to get out of a bus to oblige a lady. Thus I am now reduced, as you see, to the writing of advertisements. The literary life has its ups and downs.
It is stated in a recent book that Charles Dickens, when he was an editor, read 794 manuscripts and found only two that were worth consideration, and these two he had to rewrite before they were fit to print. This example is somewhat discouraging. I have either better luck, or people are writing more effectively than in those days, or I am not so particular as Dickens was, for the percentage of interesting composition seems higher now than the above figures would indicate. I am saying nothing about several unknown people who will, I think, come to the front. I don't want to mention any prospective geniuses on these pages until I am sure of them, and I must see more of the work of these unknowns before I venture to proclaim them.
In fact. The Idler threatens to become so attractive, that I fear I shall be compelled to subscribe for it myself.
This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
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