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Mr. Hawley received them well. In an interview a year ago[11] Mr. Farnol, recalling the New York period, is quoted as saying:
“I hadn’t a cent in the world. My wife had paid for the wedding ring and the honeymoon, and it seemed to me that after that it was up to me to do something. It has been said that her father remained adamant when we arrived, but that isn’t true. I’m expecting a knock on the bean from him when he reads that. On the contrary, I found him a delightful old cove, and we were forgiven.
JEFFERY FARNOL
Photograph by E. Hoppé, London.
“After that I went to work, living alone in a room at Thirty-eighth Street and Tenth Avenue. One night, about 3 o’clock in the morning, I came across a man down by the river whose face was all covered with blood.
“‘What’s the matter?’ I asked him.
“‘I’m dying, kid, I’m dying!’ he told me.
“I took him home and fixed him up. It turned out that he was the leader of a notorious gang. I’ve never known a finer chap than he. I’ve found out in this life that if you scratch deep enough you’ll always find true worth.
“About a week after that night he came around and took me to a notorious saloon. He took me into the back room and introduced me to the bunch. Several of them have gone to the chair since, but they were good fellows.[12] I’ve gone into that saloon without a nickel in my pocket, and looking it. I’ve had one of the gang say to me: ‘Stony up against it, kid? Will a fiver help?’ and before I could know what happened the gang would have taken up a collection of $25 and given it to me.[13]
“My wife was living with her family at that time, but often she would come to bring me baskets with chicken and all sorts of delightful little delicacies. The neighborhood was a terrible one in those days, and I was afraid at first to have her come there. I told some of the boys about it. They told me never to worry again. They arranged that an unseen bodyguard should follow her from the street car and escort her to my room and back again when she was ready to leave.... She believed in me even then when it meant more to me than anything in the world. People don’t know it, but I am naturally a timid man. She gave me confidence in myself, and with it came the ability to succeed.”
The room at Thirty-eighth Street and Tenth Avenue was a studio, “dismal, rat-haunted,” where a job as a painter of theatrical scenery compelled him to spend a great many of his nights and days. In intervals of scene-painting he began The Broad Highway. “I met O. Henry several times in the offices of Ainslee’s Magazine. I think it was Will Irwin who introduced us. O. Henry was unusually taciturn for an American, and I—well, I am an Englishman. So though we saw each other frequently, never more than ‘How d’ ye do’ passed between us.
“The pleasantest recollections I have of those old days was the time I spent in dabbling in painting and theatricals at the old Astor Theatre. One day a down-and-out young man got past the doorkeeper and strolled on the stage. ‘I’ve got a fortune here in my pocket,’ he said. ‘We all have that,’ I replied.
“The young fellow said he had been a cub reporter in Chicago, but now he was hungry and looking for a job. Finally he got the attention of the producer at the theatre. He pulled out a manuscript and began reading. The producer at first paid no attention, but gradually became more and more interested. When the first act had been read the producer said, ‘All right, I’ll take it.’ The starving dramatist was Eugene Walter and the manuscript was that of ‘Paid in Full.’”[14]
Farnol wrote in the studio and also at Mr. Hawley’s home, in Englewood, New Jersey. When The Broad Highway was the best seller, Mr. Hawley rounded out the picture of the New York period.[15] “Farnol,” he said, “is a dreamer and a bookworm, and has just about as much practical idea of time and money as that type is popularly supposed to have. He kept right on writing, and night was the time he had to do it. Many a time when I’ve been detained late with a press of work I’d get home at midnight or thereabouts to find a light supper waiting for me and Jeffery up working, only waiting to be called to entertain me while I ate. For he is the most entertaining talker I’ve ever known and loves to talk. His natural speech is the phraseology in The Broad Highway.[16] It has become natural to him through many years of living with the characters in the books of that period he loves so well. And he is a born storyteller. He always kept us sitting overtime at meals, just as he used to keep me sitting up till 2 or 3 o’clock in the morning on the occasion of the midnight suppers. When he gets to spinning a yarn, whether telling it or writing it, he loses all knowledge of the flight of time. Often when I’ve come down to breakfast before catching my early train to New York I’ve found him just finishing his night’s work, fresh and enthusiastic. Even when his days are full of leisure he likes best to work at night. Then, he says, his brain is clearer, and there are no interruptions. His power of concentration and absorption is the most marvellous thing I’ve ever encountered. I remember once taking him to the Players Club with me for luncheon. After luncheon he wandered into the library and was delighted to see the work of Aphra Behn, an early writer I’d never heard of, but belonging to his favorite period and well known to him. I left him there renewing her acquaintance with delight. I forgot all about him, but chancing to go back for dinner, on entering the library to my amazement I saw him sitting there in exactly the same posture in which I’d left him hours before. He didn’t know whether ten minutes or as many hours had elapsed.”
Farnol succeeded in selling a number of short stories and had some work as an illustrator. He wrote two light romances, My Lady Caprice and The Money Moon, which magazines bought. For two years he put all his spare time on The Broad Highway, the history of which is among the curiosities of book publishing.