“I met a pretty girl whom I had not seen for months. She informed me that she was engaged to be married, and when I asked for details, she replied, ‘He is not very rich in this world’s goods, but in morals, Mr. Vachell, he’s a millionaire.’ She married her moral millionaire, and about a year later I met her again. She was alone. Remembering her phrase, I said, ‘How is your moral millionaire?’ She replied instantly, ‘He’s bust!’ I heard later that she had just divorced him.”
And a short while ago he sent me one of the best newspaper bulls I remember, which appeared in the Western Daily Press review of Loot, on Dec. 19, 1913.
“Mr. Vachell, who is perhaps most widely known as the author of one of the best modern stories of school life, The Hell, in which Harrow is described,” etc.
Another of those whom the gods love is A. E. W. Mason, who met with success very early. Mason was a Dulwich boy, and a Trinity, Oxford, man, and was on the stage before he took to literature, to his permanent advantage, for it gave him that practical acquaintance with stage-craft which hastened his success as a dramatist.
From the moment that he published The Courtship of Morrice Buckler it was recognised that Mason was a romance-writer with the charm of an Anthony Hope. And his reputation has gone on increasing. The Four Feathers was a book of genius. Unlike most authors, Mason has remained a bachelor, consoling himself with yacht-sailing among the Hebrides when he grows tired of social distractions and politics. For some years he represented the important constituency of Coventry in Parliament as a Liberal. And he was one of the few Liberals who dared to be independent, which is probably the reason why he gave up politics. He was one of the most boyish-looking members in the House, blue-eyed, clean-shaven, fresh-coloured and slim. He has changed very little since he left Trinity. He is a charming public speaker, and his boyishness is one of his great charms in speaking. My friendship with Mason began on our first visit to Salcombe, the little Devonshire town on the wooded inlet which lies behind the Bolt Head. He had sailed into the inlet in a small yacht, and came to see me as an old Trinity man. Mason is one of the men who count.
Max Pemberton has had many successes in his half-century of life. Educated at Merchant Taylors, and Caius, Cambridge, he nearly got into the Cambridge boat. He started his literary life by editing one of the chief boys’ papers and writing boys’ books—his Iron Pirate had a prodigious vogue among future men. From this he soon passed to editing Cassell’s Magazine, which occupied ten of his fifty years, and writing novels, with their scenes laid in romantic and half-civilised countries—what one might call “Balkan” novels. In these he has hardly any rivals, because to an instinct for construction, and skill in dialogue and description, he adds unusual ingenuity in contriving plots and selecting subjects, and accuracy in handling facts. Pemberton’s novels present most vivid pictures of the far countries in which their scenes are laid.
I met him first at the Savage Club; we were sitting next to each other at dinner, and he introduced himself as the editor of Cassell’s Magazine, and asked if I felt disposed to write a series of Japanese stories for him—the stories which were afterwards worked up to When We were Lovers in Japan (Playing the Game). I was very much flattered by his proposal, and from that day to this we have remained intimate friends. This series was followed by the series of Sicilian stories which were worked up into my novel, Sicilian Lovers. In both series I was to give as much local colour as possible.
After this we began to go to each other’s houses, and I well remember the first time that we went to Pemberton’s, before he had moved to Fitzjohn’s Avenue. It was a Sunday evening, and he had asked us to meet poor Fletcher Robinson, who would have been one of the greatest journalists of the day if he had survived. He was born to it, for he was a nephew of old Sir John Robinson, who managed the Daily News for many years. He was, at the time of his death, assistant-editor of a great daily, and he was one of the persons whose death was attributed to incurring the displeasure of the celebrated Egyptian mummy in the British Museum. He was a huge, fair man, with curly sandy hair; he was beloved of society, and a poet as well as an editor.
The popular account of his death is that, not believing in the malignant powers of the celebrated mummy-case in the British Museum, he determined to make a slashing attack on the belief in the columns of the Daily Express, and went to the museum, and sent his photographer there, to collect the materials for that purpose: that he was then, although in the most perfect health, struck down mysteriously by some malady of which he died. The ancient Egyptians certainly seem to have been able to protect the tombs and coffins and bodies of their dead by active spiritual powers, which I respect. But in any case, the adage of chivalry, de mortuis nil nisi bonum, ought to prevent people from behaving unkindly to anything that concerns the dead.
We continued to see a good deal of the Pembertons till Max took Troston Hall in Suffolk because he found that London gaieties interfered with his work. But a few years later he felt drawn back to London, and took chambers in St. James’s, though he kept Troston on, and it was in those chambers that he wrote one of his great successes, the revue Hallo Ragtime—the best and most popular revue ever written.