When I asked Mrs. Perrin what started her in a literary career, she said—
“I think I took to writing from sheer need of occupation. When I married my husband in India, as a girl of eighteen, we were sent to a place in the jungle where he had charge of an enormous aqueduct which was under construction. He had several Coopers Hill assistants under him, not one of whom was married, and I was the only English woman in the locality. There was no station—or permanent settlement; our houses were temporary erections of mud, and we were miles from the railway. The landscape consisted of a sea of yellow grass about the height of a man, and there was only one road, which lay behind our bungalow—the grand trunk road that is the backbone of India. I began to write here, just to amuse myself, and then when we went to less isolated spots, I gained confidence and used to send little articles and turn-overs to the Pioneer—the principal Indian daily paper. These were nearly always accepted, and so I took courage and wrote a novel called Into Temptation, which ran through that prehistoric magazine London Society, long ago defunct. The book came out in two volumes and had very fair notices. Then I wrote another called Late in Life, which ran serially in an Indian weekly, off-shoot of the Pioneer, and in England through the Belgravia, and then came out in two volumes. So you may imagine—or rather, realise—how long ago I began! Both these novels are now to appear revised and corrected in Messrs. Methuen’s 7d. series.
“However, I did not receive the financial encouragement I had hoped for from these first efforts, and I lost heart. For nearly ten years I wrote nothing but a few Indian short stories. Then when my husband was offered an appointment at home, and we retired before we had ‘done’ our full time in India, I collected these stories, and they came out under the title of East of Suez. The book was a success and since then I have written and have been published steadily.
“I am deeply interested in India, in the people and their religions, and histories and social systems, and as I was sixteen years in the country I had an opportunity of receiving lasting impressions, and of gaining invaluable experience. I come of a family which has been officially connected with India for five generations. My great grandfather was with Lord Cornwallis, on his staff, at the taking of Seringapatam, and the surrender to Lord Cornwallis of Tippoo Sahib’s two little sons as hostages. He was afterwards Chairman of the old East India Company—known in those days as John Company.
“I cannot think of anything more anecdotal in my experience as a novelist—I can only remember the disappointments and the difficulties of what success I have made, at which, perhaps, I may now bring myself to smile, but I do not think they would be interesting if related!”
A few years ago Mrs. Steel was also one of the most prominent figures in London literary society. She had written On the Face of the Waters, one of the finest historical novels in the language; she was a hard and earnest worker in all sorts of movements, and as a fighting speaker there were few to match her. She could make a good set speech, but her set speeches were nothing to the oratory of which she was capable if, when she was totally unprepared, indignation stung her into springing to her feet to denounce the offender. Then her words came as blows come from a man who hits another man because he is incensed beyond endurance. A face full of life and expression added force to her words.
Since Mrs. Steel settled down on an estate in Wales, she has been little in London. But in those days she had a sort of country house on the Notting Hill slope of Campden Hill. She is a keen politician, and not long ago sold the opening page of On the Face of the Waters as her subscription to the Women’s Cause.
Another author lost to London is Sarah Grand. She used to be our neighbour; she shared a flat in the Abingdon Road with her step-son, Haldane McFall, the art critic, and author of that remarkable novel, The Wooings of Jezebel Pettyfer. I met her soon after the success of The Heavenly Twins—a young woman with indignant blue eyes, very reserved, but with a rare charm of manner behind her reserve. I was introduced to her, I think, by Heinemann, who was often at our at-homes. He had, as I understood, purchased The Heavenly Twins from her ready printed, copyright and all for a hundred pounds, but when the success came had torn up the agreement, and substituted a royalty agreement, paying the royalties from the beginning. She had already, I gathered, received twelve times the original sum in royalties.
Alfred Walford often came to see us—his wife, Mrs. L. B. Walford, more occasionally, since she was the mother of a large family as well as many books, and they lived in Essex. Alfred Walford used to chaff himself about his connection with literature being to produce the paper on which it was printed. He was a paper-maker; and she, at that time, was the favourite novelist of the Colonies. She was the daughter of that Colquhoun of Luss who wrote that famous book The Moor and the Loch.
The gentle-faced “Miss Thackeray,” the great novelist’s daughter, now the widow of Sir Richmond Ritchie, I did not know in those days, but I used to meet her afterwards at Lady Lindsay’s. There was a time when her Old Kensington was my favourite novel.