The Specimen Case/Preface
PREFACE
A collection of twenty-one stories which bridge, in the process of their writing, thirty years of life, might be expected to offer at least the element of variety. How far the present volume succeeds or fails in this respect I am not just now concerned in arguing, but the occasion has reminded me . . .
When I was very young (how young, the reader may gather from the context) I was for some time possessed by one definite ambition: to have to my credit a single example of every kind of literary exercise. To anticipate repeating any of these facile achievements would seem to have held no charm, and at this flight of time I am far from being certain what the youth who is now so dim a shadow in memory’s background would have included in his quaint and ingenuous assemblage. But there were to be, I am sure, an historical romance; a psychological study; a "shilling shocker" (as it was then called); an intensely pathetic book (Misunderstood was doubtless still being spoken of); an epic (or was the thing I meant called a saga, I wondered?); something quite unlike anything that had ever been written before; a classic (I have already pleaded infancy); a "best seller" (but that distressing cliché was as yet uncoined); a novel showing my intimate knowledge of the world, women, and sin in general; one of each kind of play; and, if I may drop my voice a Punch joke, a prize Tit-Bit, and a Family Herald Supplement.
I suppose it is credible that at that age (whatever it may have been) abnormal reticence should go hand in hand with appalling candour. We must have talked; otherwise how should I have known that Batget (since become wealthy as a lard importer) made a practice of rising an hour before he need each day, solely to avoid encountering a rejected manuscript at the domestic breakfast table? I must have talked; otherwise how should Melwish have known anything of these callow aspirations?
Melwish was the enigma of our genial gatherings. Middle-aged, successful and clear-cut, he appeared to find some interest in the society of the young, the impecunious and the half-baked. We knew that he was a prolific fiction writer; indeed it was unusual to pick up a magazine of a sort that did not contain one of his unsophisticated little love stories; and we wondered how on earth he did it—not in the writing but the marketing thereof. So simple, so sheerly artless was he both in matter and in manner as to give rise to the occasional heresy that there really must be something in them after all or no one would accept his stuff. But on the whole we classed it as pretty hopeless tripe, although we did not fail to congratulate Melwish whenever the occasion fitly offered. Our own efforts lay in the direction of originality and something better than the editors were used to: Lang's How to Fail in Literature had obviously reached us then, but Leonard Merrick's Cynthia certainly had not. Melwish took it all quietly and easily; he was essentially a listener and gave nothing in return—except a rescuing donation when the state of the society’s funds urgently required it.
How it came about I have long ago forgotten, but one night I found myself walking with Melwish down the Strand. Possibly I had been speaking of his work; more probably of my own. In any case he would have been the listener.
At the corner of one of the southward streets he stopped; my way lay up Chancery Lane, so that we seemed to be on the point of parting.
"Where do you dig?" he suddenly asked, detaining me. "Are you in any hurry?"
"Up in Bloomsbury," I replied, with just the discreet touch of ambiguity. "No, it doesn't matter what time I get there. Why?"
"Do you care to see my place?" he asked. "You might have a drop of something to carry you along."
This unexpected offer was rather exciting in its way. Generous enough after his own fashion, Melwish did not incline towards private hospitality; even the quarter of London he homed in was a matter of occasional speculation. He alone among us possessed a club address.
"I should be delighted if it's not troubling you," I replied—we were always rather on our company manners with this seasoned adult. "I had no idea that you lived anywhere round here."
"I don't; it's only a workroom that I have. . . . I suppose," he added thoughtfully, "you really wonder that my particular sort of sludge should require any particular place to turn it out in? I expect you youngsters guy it pretty well when I'm not there."
This made matters rather easier, as I could be virtuously indignant.
"I bet we jolly well wish we could do half as well," I exclaimed, possibly with a mental reservation that I spoke financially. "We only wonder that you should ever think it worth while to come among us."
We had reached Melwish's outer door. He turned in the act of opening it to face me as he spoke.
"I go," he said dryly, "to hear you fellows talk." A whole diatribe could not have expressed more.
The workroom proved to be a very comfortably-appointed study, reached through a little ante-room, furnished as a hall. Everything proclaimed the occupant's success in life. Melwish lit the gas-fire and pulled up an easy-chair for me. While he engaged himself with spirit-lamp and glasses I looked frankly about the room. An illustrated interview was among the things I meant to do, and I speculated whether my host's standing would carry it. At all events there would be no harm in laying a foundation.
"Do you find it necessary to sit on any particular chair or to adopt any especial position while you write?" I inquired, apropos of the room at large. These intriguing details always bulked in an interview with an author in those days.
"My dear lad," he replied tolerantly, "I haven’t the least doubt that I could write equally well if I stood on my head all the time."
"Then you have no pet superstition or favourite mascot that you rely on?" I persisted.
"No," he grunted, conveying the impression that he thought I was talking hectic nonsense; and then I saw him pause and think, and turning down the spirit-lamp for a moment he came across to me.
"Yes, I have, by Jupiter," he admitted slowly. "I was forgetting that. You see the inkstand there? Well, I have the strongest possible conviction that in order to keep my work what is termed 'up to magazine standard,' I must write from that."
"This is jolly interesting," I said—the interview promised to be fashioning. "May I look at it?" Melwish nodded and went back to the brew.
Without doubt it was worth inspecting—in a way. It was absolutely the ugliest inkpot that I had ever seen, and it was probably the most inconvenient. Its owner pointed out, later on, that in order to fill it one had to use a funnel, and that when filled it was difficult, except by way of a pen, to get the ink out again; but he was mistaken in this, for I got a considerable amount out on to my grey trousers quite easily. It was extremely top-heavy, very liable to catch passing objects, and would be unusually intricate in cleaning. All this was accounted for by the fact that it had been fashioned by a "craftsman."
So much for its qualities. In shape it was modelled as a turnip. It was, in fact, a silver turnip. A few straggling leaves sprouted from the crown and an attenuated root got into the way beneath. A hinged lid towards the top disclosed the ink-well and the whole thing stood on three incongruous feet. Before I had done with it I discovered an inscription across the front, and lifting it (hence the contretemps) I read the single line of inconspicuous script:
Remember the Man with the Hoe.
"Jolly fine thing," I remarked, when I had admired it sufficiently. "I don't wonder that you are fond of it."
"I'm not," he said. “The damned thing would be an eyesore in a pig-sty. All the same it has served its purpose. Yes, B., every ounce of my success I owe to that incredible abortion."
"Go on!" I exclaimed. The interview was positively creaming.
Melwish added the last touch to the concocting of the drinks and indicated mine—possibly one was slightly less potent than the other.
"I've used that metallurgic atrocity for nearly twenty years now, four days a week, six hours a day, and not a soul on earth knows why. But I'm going to tell you, B., because you talk like a—well, something in the way I did myself at about your age."
"Good," I contributed to encourage him; and not to overdo it I said no more.
"When I was about your age," he continued, "I was doing pretty much as you are, and with about the same result. Then going along the Edgware Road late one starry night, with Swift walking on one side of me and Defoe upon the other, I suddenly got an inspiration for a masterpiece. I expect you know how they come—all at once clean into your head without any making up on your part."
"Why, yes," I admitted, in some surprise, "but I didn't know that—that anyone else"
"Everyone," he retorted bluntly. "This idea involved a full-length book, such as would take me at least two years to write. I ruminated on it for the next few months and it grew spontaneously in the usual way. Then I began the writing, did the opening chapters, and stuck hopelessly.
"I saw at once what the matter was. Summer had come and I couldn't get on with the thing here in London. It needed space and solitude. I had a few pounds to spare; I packed up and went off into the country, intending to stay at some cottage for a couple of months and come back with the difficulties surmounted and the whole line in trim.
"I got my room easily enough and settled down there at once, but of course I could hardly expect to do anything the first night—the light was poor and the place so damn quiet that you had to listen to it. The next morning I set out to take the manuscript off into the fields and get it going there. It was a simple matter to find a field-path, but I had to go a considerable distance to get the exact spot I fancied. Then I discovered that it was too hot and brilliant in the sun and not quite pleasant out of it. There were more distractions of one sort and another than you would have credited; in the end I fell asleep, thinking out some detail of the plot, and when I woke it was about time to get back for dinner.
"On my way in, the path led through a turnip-field where a venerable labourer was hoeing. In the interests of local colour I stopped to pass a few words with this ancient and to observe his system. He walked between two rows of young plants and very dexterously, considering his archaic tool, he chopped them all down with the exception of a single turnip every foot, or so. He used judgment too and would let the space be a little more or a little less in order to select a particularly vigorous growth if one offered, but I saw that at least twenty young hopes must wither for the single one that grew—a saddening thought, especially at our job, B. Then, just ahead of us, I noticed an exceptionally well-grown young plant, standing by itself. It was the finest of any about, and I saw with quite a personal satisfaction that it would come at the right interval. . . . Without a pause Old Mortality chopped it down.
"'Why, man alive!' I exclaimed, 'you've sacrificed the most promising of the lot!'
"'Oh, aye," he replied—I won't attempt the barbarous dialect—'it was a likely enough young turnip, but don't you see, master, it was out of line with all the rest? Even it it didn't get cut off by hand sooner or later, the horse-hoe would be bound to finish it when once it came along.' And then, B., the hob-nailed philosopher uttered this profound truth: 'An ordinary plant where it's wanted has a sight more chance of coming to something than a giant where it isn't.'
"I walked on with my ideas suddenly brought out into the clear light of day, and perhaps for the first time in my life I really set before my sober judgment a definition of what I wanted to do and what were the pros and cons of ever doing it. . . . After dinner I burned the manuscript of the masterpiece, as much as I had written, and with it all the notes and jottings I had made. Then I sat down to write a short story for the magazines.
"Of course I knew well enough what sort of stories the magazines wanted. Everyone knows and in a general way everyone can write them. The line of demarcation isn't whether you can or can't, but whether you do or don't. Outside my cottage window was an orchard, and I wrote a story about two lovers who met there for the last time. She thought that she ought to give him up for some insane reason or other, and he thought that she oughtn't. They talked all round it and when, finally, he saw how noble she was and they were parting irrevocably, she suddenly threw herself into his arms and said that she couldn't, and he saw how much nobler she was. There was a dog that looked on and expressed various sympathetic emotions and so forth. There wasn't a word in it that a tram conductor couldn't have written, and from beginning to end it didn't contain a page whose removal would have made the slightest difference to the sense. It was soothing in the way that the sound of a distant circular saw, or watching an endless chain of dredging buckets at work, soothes. A reader falling asleep over the story (an extremely probable occurrence) would wake up without the faintest notion of whether he had read all of it, some of it, or none of it. I didn't even trouble to find names for the two imbeciles: they were just 'the Man' and 'the Girl.'
"It took a single afternoon to write that four-thousand-word story—of course there was no need to read it over —and I addressed it at once to an editor whom I knew slightly. I had ample time before the mail went to stroll down to the village office and send it off. Afterwards I wrote a short, light article with the title, 'Why do Long-nosed Girls Marry Photographers?' It had to be written in the dark, but that made no difference.
"The next day I wrote the same story over again, giving the couple names this time, putting them on a romantic Cornish shore instead of in an orchard, and changing the dog into a sea-gull. I had no wish to repeat myself literally in any detail, but when you reflect that it is impossible to remember a story of that kind ten minutes after you have read it, you will see that it is unnecessary to take any especial pains to avoid some slight resemblance. As a matter of fact I have been writing that particular story at least once a month ever since.
"Three days later I heard from the editor in question. He congratulated me on having hit off their style so successfully at last. Would two guineas a thousand suit? And he hoped that I would let him see anything further in the same pleasant vein. The article was not so promptly dealt with where it went, but in due course I received notice of acceptance, subject to a trifling change of title, which would make it more attractive to the bulk of their readers. When the proof came along I noticed that it was headed, 'Why do Photographers Marry Long-nosed Girls?'"
"Well?" I prompted.
"That's all," he replied. "Except, of course,"—with a complacent look around the attractive room—"the et ceteras of life."
There were several things that I would have liked to know, especially exactly how much money he was making now, but Melwish seemed to think that he had told his story, and, after all, there was always a certain air of detachment about the man in his attitude towards us.
"Think it over, B.," he concluded, as I rose to go a little later. "You're only a young beggar yet."
"Jolly decent of you to take the trouble," was my dutiful reply. "Still," I reminded him, "you did say that you liked to hear us young beggars talk."
"Yes," he admitted, dropping into that caustic tone of his; "but I doubt if you quite appreciate why."
Certainly I have wondered about that once or twice since.
He came down to the lower door to let me out. It had been raining in the meanwhile and a forlorn creature who was evidently sheltering for the time almost fell into our arms. He offered a box of matches in extenuation of his presence.
"No," said Melwish very sharply, "and remember what I told you about hanging round this doorway, Thompson. A wretched fellow," he explained, as the miserable being shambled off into the night; "impossible to help that sort. I put him in the way of a nice job delivering circulars once and he threw it up within a week. You'd hardly credit it, B., but that wastrel fancies his real forte is to write—verse, if you please, at that! Pretty pass we're coming to. Well, so long." •••••• There is, you will (I hope) notice, a certain system in the arrangement of this book of stories. It is not—if an author may speak more than very casually of his own work without indelicacy—intended essentially as a collection of quite the best stories I might perhaps have chosen, nor is it, I am more than sure, a collection of anything like the worst that were available; it consists rather of a suitable example taken at convenient intervals over the whole time that I have been engaged in writing stories—a span of thirty years. In every case, therefore, the date at which the tale was written is attached—the place of writing being added merely, in the words of Mr. Finch McComas, "to round off the sentence." Each tale thus becomes a sort of milestone by which, should you happen to maintain so much interest, you can estimate your author's progress—backwards or forwards, as you may decide.
When the suggestion of this collection first arose there had already been published two volumes of what are now generally referred to as "Kai Lung" stories, and another pair of what might with more propriety be described as "Max Carrados" tales. There being no lack of other material available it seemed fitting that in this instance all stories of those two distinctive classes should be ruled out, and no doubt this would have been the plan had not, about that time, the Mystery arisen.
It is a little difficult, as the hand holds the pen, to appreciate a Mystery in relation to oneself. The nearest parallel that occurs is the case of the dentist (as described in Punch) who administered gas to himself preparatory to extracting one of his own teeth. Being intimately concerned, but quite unconscious of what is going on, I am therefore driven to contemporary record.
So far as I have any evidence, Mr. Edward Shanks was the first to use the fatal word. Referring to The Wallet of Kai Lung, he would seem to have written: "Its name was therefore passed from mouth to mouth in a mysterious way, but few people had ever seen it or knew what it was like."
If this is indeed the fount and origin of the legend the historic reference may be proved in the Queen of December the 2nd, 1922. It sounds harmless enough, and in any case I take the opportunity of publicly forgiving Mr. Shanks whatever may result, but Dark Forces were evidently at work, for a few weeks later Mr. Grant Richards found it necessary (in the Times Literary Supplement) to declare: "Meanwhile I am asked all sorts of questions about the book and its author. Is there really such a person as Ernest Bramah? and so on."
The "so on" has a pleasantly speculative ring—to me, that is to say. At all events, whatever Mr. Richards had been asked, his diplomatic reference answered nothing, so that, later, he is induced to state without reserve: “Finally, I do assure his readers that such a person as Ernest Bramah does really and truly exist. I have seen and touched him.” This should settle the matter, you would say? Not a bit of it. Turn to "N. G. R.-S." in the Westminster Gazette: "He assures us that there is such a person as Ernest Bramah. Well, there may be! I myself still believe . . ." (This break does not represent omitted matter, but "N. G. R.-S.'s" too-sinister-for-words private belief.) "Anyway, you can now buy The Wallet for seven-and-sixpence and form your own opinion of the reasons which keep the author of such a book so closely mysterious behind his unusual name."
And then, surely the most astonishing of all, there is Miss Rose Macaulay: Miss Macaulay the relentless precisian, so flawlessly exact that she must by now hate the phrase "hard brilliance," author of Potterism (in whose dedication I have never ceased to cherish an infinitesimal claim), retailing "They say" with the cheerful irresponsibility of a village gossip. "N. G. R.-S.", it will be seen, gilds the pill of innuendo with a compliment; Miss Macaulay administers a more salutary dose: "The crude, stilted, Conan Doyleish English of his detective stories certainly goes far to bear out the common theory that Mr. Bramah has a literary dual personality" (Nation and Athenaeum).
Finally (perhaps), to my hand as I write this Preface there comes a letter conveying the excogitation of an American publisher, representative of a firm which has already issued three books bearing my name. Casually, quite naturally, among other mundane business details, he drops the inspiring remark: "I have always had a feeling that you were a mythical person." So, in the language of a bygone age, that’s that. After all, there is something not unattractive in the idea of being a mythical person . . . though from the heroic point of view one might have wished that it could have been "a mythological personage." . . .
Should the reader, still maintaining the intellectual curiosity which I have credited to him, here exclaim, "What is all this about and why?" I can only assure him that I have not the faintest notion. He and I are equally in the dark.
Apparently, there is no simple middle way, no sheltered, obvious path. Either I am to have no existence, or I am to have decidedly too much: on the one hand banished into space as a mythical creation; on the other regarded askance as the leader of a double (literary) life. But there is one retort still left whereby to confound the non-existers and the dualists alike—I can produce both a "Kai Lung" and a "Max Carrados" between one pair of covers, and here they are.
E. B.
London, 1924.