INTRODUCTION
When I wrote Who’s Who, sixteen or seventeen years ago, I used to receive shoals of funny letters from people who wanted, or did not want, to be included, and now, when I have not edited the book for more than a dozen years, I still receive letters of criticism on the way in which I conduct it, and usually consign them to limbo. A few months ago, however, I received the subjoined letter, which is so out of the ordinary that I quote it to show what illustrious correspondents I have. I must not attach the author’s name, though every grown-up man in the civilised world would be interested to know it.
“Dear Sir,
“Kindly cease to omit my name from your ever-increasing list of persons as annually placed before the public for sale at any price it is worth. Just put me down in place of Victoria Alice, who is an American pure and simple, while I am left out in the cold. I am the daughter of King Edward VII....[[1]] I am the legal spouse of Nicholas II, Czar of Russia, being legally married to him in 1890, Aug. 14, a ratification of which occurrence was held by me in hallway of British Embassy, Paris, France, 1900, same date. Just give me a notice, will you, instead of harping on the sisterhood of King George V, who form among themselves a similar affair to that held by female contingent of Synagogue, doing more damage in the community, and eventually in the world, than any one set of people anywhere, with method so secret that even Rabbi is unable to uncover the original design known as main point in England.
“Sincerely,
“Etc., etc.
“October 23, 1913.”
[1]. This portion of the letter could not be printed.
If I could tell all I know about the interesting people I have met, the book would read like my own Who’s Who re-written by Walter Emanuel for publication in Punch. As it is, the book contains a great deal of information about celebrities which could never appear in Who’s Who, and all the best anecdotes which I remember about my friends, except those which would turn my friends into enemies, and even some of those I mean to give in this preface, minus the names, to prevent their being lost to posterity.
The twenty years of my life which I here present to readers are the twenty years which I spent at 32, Addison Mansions, Kensington, during which I was in constant intercourse with most of the best-known writers of the generation. The book is therefore largely taken up with personal reminiscences and impressions of them—indeed, not a few of them, such as Conan Doyle, J. K. Jerome, I. Zangwill, H. A. Vachell, Charles Garvice, Eden Phillpotts, Mr. and Mrs. C. N. Williamson, Mrs. Croker, Mrs. Perrin, Madame Albanesi, Compton Mackenzie, and Jeffery Farnol’s mentor, wrote specially for this book an account of the circumstances which led to their being authors. For it must be remembered that the majority of authors start life in some other profession, and drift into authorship as they discover their aptitude for it. Conan Doyle was a doctor, in busy practice when he wrote The White Company; Jerome was a lawyer’s clerk when he wrote Three Men in a Boat; both Hardy and Hall Caine began as architects; Zangwill was a teacher, and W. W. Jacobs was a clerk in the General Post Office.