“Yet for a settled income of ten thousand a year, and no worry, no abuse, and no insults, I do not think any of us would exchange our job. I suppose we are all born gamblers—it is worth risking the half-dozen failures for the one success.
“And the work itself, as I said—one only wishes one’s readers enjoyed it half as much; circulations would be fabulous. Three Men in a Boat I started as a guide to the Thames. It occurred to us—George, Charles and myself—when we were pulling up and down, how interesting and improving it would be to know something about the history of the famous places through which we passed; a little botany might also be thrown in. I thought that other men in boats might also like information on this subject, and would willingly pay for it. So I read up Dugdale, and a vast number of local guides, together with a little poetry and some memoirs. I really knew quite a lot about the Thames by the time I had done, and with a pile of notes in front of me, I started. I think I had a vague idea of making it a modern ‘Sandford and Merton.’ I thought George would ask questions, and Harry intersperse philosophical remarks. But George and Harry would not; I could not see them sitting there and doing it. So gradually they came to have their own way, and the book as a guide to the Thames is, I suppose, the least satisfactory work on the market.
“I suppose, like Mrs. Gummidge, I felt it more. It must have been about five years before I succeeded in getting anything of mine accepted. The regularity with which the complimenting editor returned my manuscripts grew monotonous, grew heart-breaking. But, after all, it was The Times newspaper which accepted my first contribution. Some correspondence on the subject of the nude in Art made me angry, and I wrote a letter intended to be ironic. It attracted quite a lot of comment, and, fired by this success, I wrote to The Times on other topics. The Saturday Review praised their irony and humour, and Frank Harris invited me a little later to contribute. But we differed, I think, upon the subject of women.
“The Passing of the Third Floor Back I wrote for David Warfield, the American actor, and discussed the matter with David Belasco in the train, when I was on a lecturing tour in America. I read him and Warfield the play at the Belasco Theatre in New York. It was after the performance was over, and we three had the great empty theatre to ourselves. Then we went to Lamb’s Club, and Warfield, I think, had macaroni, and Belasco and I had kidneys and lager beer, and discussed arrangements. Firstly Anderson was to draw sketches of the characters, and it was while he was doing this in his studio at Folkestone that Forbes-Robertson dropped in for a chat. Percy Anderson talked to him about the play, and Forbes-Robertson took up the manuscript and read it. Belasco was a little nervous about the play. I did not like the idea of forcing it upon him, and other small difficulties had arisen, so, having heard from Percy Anderson that he had talked to Forbes-Robertson about the play, I thought I would go and see him. He, too, was nervous about it, but said that he felt that he must risk it. We produced it at Harrogate, for quite a nice, respectable audience, and they took it throughout as a farce. One or two critics came down from London, and commiserated with Forbes-Robertson on his luck.
“It was the miners of Blackpool who put heart into us; they understood the thing, and were enthusiastic. Then we produced it at St. James’, and, with one or two exceptions, it was besieged with a chorus of condemnation—deplorable, contemptible, absurd, were a few of the adjectives employed, and Forbes-Robertson hastened on the rehearsals for another play. A few days later, King Edward VII, passing through London on his way to Scotland, devoted his one night in London to seeing the piece. He said it was not the sort of thing he expected from Jerome, but he liked it. And about the same time strange people began to come, who did not know what the St. James’ Theatre was, and did not quite know what to do when they got there, and they liked it, too.”
I first met Zangwill—Israel Zangwill—at one of the old pothouse dinners of the Vagabond Club. He had not long given up editing Ariel, and was already known for his biting wit as a speaker. When the lean, arrestive figure of the Jewish ex-schoolmaster craned over an assemblage, there was always an attentive silence. He had not yet immortalised himself by those inimitable etchings of Jewish life, in which the graver and the acid were employed so ruthlessly—the Tragedies and Comedies of the Ghetto. But he was in sympathies already a novelist, for on that particular occasion he was upbraiding Robert Buchanan for forsaking literature for the drama. His own eyes have wandered to the stage since then. The curly black hair—an orator’s hair—the sallow complexion of the South, the pallor of the student, the eagle nose, the assertive smile, the confident paradox—how well I can recall them! He was a young man in those days.
Jerome was always a thorough believer in Zangwill. And he showed his judgment by making him his first serialist in To-day. He paid him five hundred pounds for the serial rights of the first of those remarkable novels of Jewish life, as much, I believe, as he paid for the serial rights of Ebb-Tide, the book R. L. Stevenson wrote in collaboration with his step-son, Lloyd Osbourne.
Zangwill was a very constant and much-appreciated visitor at our at-homes, as was that encyclopædia of knowledge, his brother Louis. And their sisters sometimes came with them. They all lived together in those days at Kilburn. I remember going to a party at their house to meet Sir Frederick Cowen, the musician, which had a most comical finish. There were six of us left, and only one hansom between us. Three got inside, two sat on the splash-board, and Heinemann spread himself on the roof in front of the man, and kept filling the skylight with his face, like a Japanese Oni. Phil May sat in the middle inside. He was very excited, and we were trying to keep him quiet, so as not to draw the attention of the police to the fact that the hansom was carrying more than it was licensed for. When we got to the Edgware Road, he began to yell for the police, and a stalwart constable signalled to the cabby to heave to. He advanced to the side of the cab. “What is the trouble, sir?” he asked, preparing to rescue the artist from the literary men among whom he had fallen.
Phil gave one of his knowing smiles, and said, “I want to go to Piccadilly Circus, and they are trying to take me home.”
But to return to our Zangwills. Louis Zangwill had not yet shown his strength as a writer, but any one who had tested it, marvelled at the width of his knowledge. In those days Israel Zangwill favoured Slapton Sands for his summer holidays. We met him there. He used to wander about in a black coat and white duck trousers, gathering inspiration. The sunshine and scenery inspired him to be a perfectly delightful companion. We once met him yet further afield—at Venice. Norma Lorimer and I came upon him and Bernard Sickert, the artist, in the Casa Remer, an adorable old palace, with an open courtyard and a processional stair, on the Grand Canal. It was quite unspoiled by repairs in those days. It contained a curio-dealer by the water’s edge, and at the head of the staircase was a large room in which a very beautiful young Jewish girl sat sewing for some sweating tailor. We had landed and made an archæological excursion up the staircase, when we discovered her. She arose, and with proper presence of mind, and with a total absence of mauvaise haute, conducted us to the curio shop kept by papa. There we met Zangwill and Sickert. We were all of us tempted by some very beautiful mediæval iron gates, which would have been a glory in any nobleman’s park, but as we none of us had a park, and even the six hundred francs he wanted for them, added to the cost of transport to England, would have been a considerable sum for any of us, we denied ourselves, and Zangwill gave a dinner in honour of the event, at a tiny restaurant on a screwy little canal behind the Piazza of San Marco. The food and the wine were excellent, and we sat on till the moon was high, and Venice, on those small old canals, looked like a theatrical representation of itself for The Merchant of Venice. Then we wandered back to the Piazza to Florian’s, the café whose proud boast it is that it has never closed its doors day or night for four hundred years. If you are sleeping in Venice on a summer night—and, in spite of its noise and its mosquitoes, is there anything more adorable than Venice on a summer night?—you will find that the habit is not confined to Florian’s.