Mr. Stanley Weyman, whose first book, The House of the Wolf, was published in those pages, comes first to my mind, and those who have read my husband’s Eminent Victorians will recollect the striking proof of the accuracy of his critical faculty in the incident of Mr. Weyman’s bringing him two letters—written with an interval of many years—in which he criticized a play of that brilliant novelist’s in almost identical words, although the first letter was written openly to the author and the second—in forgetfulness of the fact—to a theatrical agent who had not divulged the playwright’s name.
Robert Louis Stevenson was one of his cherished contributors, and I recall an angry rebuke from that great man to the Editor, who had dared to strike out a word in the title of one of his articles at the moment of going to press; it is pleasant to add that a placated and highly amused reply followed on Joe’s deft and short method of extricating himself from the position: “My dear Stevenson—You see, I knew that the extra word was a slip of the pen,” he wrote, “for I should as soon have expected you to talk of female bitches as of male dogs. Yours etc.”
Sir James Barrie wrote one of his early essays for the English Illustrated Magazine, and in a kindred branch of the adventure—that of illustration—Mr. Hugh Thomson was discovered by Joe—a poor Irish lad living on the scanty pay of advertisements for a business firm, and devoting all his leisure to flights of fancy in the most delicate realms of the humorous eighteenth century subjects in which he has always excelled. Joe confessed to me on the day when the boy sought an interview, with his portfolio under his arm, that he did not at first believe he had done the drawings himself. But he gave him a subject, and when he returned with it after a day or two his doubts were set at rest, and he offered him the post which he held for so long with distinction.
The relations between editor and artist were always affectionate and I have two letters from the latter—one to Joe and one to myself—full of a touching gratitude such as perhaps only an Irishman could have expressed. The one quoted below is of later date.
27, Perham Road,
West Kensington,
February 5th, 1909.
Dear Mr. Comyns Carr,
It is only now that we have contrived to get a reading of your delightful book “Some Eminent Victorians,” and it has literally staggered me (with delight) to find myself in such company. I so rarely see a soul that I was entirely ignorant, and never dreamt of it. We had of course read such reviews of the book as came our way and had rejoiced in the whole-hearted pleasure with which the notices were charged but we never suspected that in a corner of the book you had propped me up. My wife is more than ever confirmed in her opinion that you are the most delightful author that ever lived, and she is already looking forward, frugally, to the time when the libraries will be selling off their soiled copies of books when she hopes to secure Some Eminent Victorians and ME for her very own. Possibly you might think it forward in me if I told you what a genuine delight it is to read the book for the way it is written. Your pages on Bright and the orators are as eloquent as they. But it is all the most entertaining book we have read for ages. Below is a memory of the famous interview you had with the suspicious character from Ireland. I think I have caught the bannisters well, as also Lacour waiting outside.