Quite a prominent place among the authoresses who used to assemble on those evenings at Addison Mansions is occupied by novelists who began as my secretaries, and whom I trained to write.
I have been singularly fortunate in my choice of them. Not only have they given me so much satisfaction as secretaries that I have only had to send one away for inefficiency, and none for any other reason, but they have made such good use of the opportunities they had for observing the ways of book-writing, that in the twenty-seven years since the first came to me, they have between them had more than twenty-seven books published and paid for by leading firms like Hutchinson, Heinemann, Methuen, Hurst & Blackett, Constable & Co., Chatto & Windus, Eveleigh Nash, Mills & Boon and Stanley Paul.
My first secretary was Norma Lorimer, who came to us in her teens, before our memorable journey to America, Canada and the Far East. She has accompanied us on every important journey we ever made in Europe, Asia, Africa and America since I returned from Australia. When typewriting came in, she ceased to be my secretary, because she was never a typist, but she continued to live with us, and act as hostess, since my wife’s health has never permitted her to undertake the strain of managing the large literary, artistic and theatrical receptions which we held weekly for a good many years.
During that period Miss Lorimer made an immense circle of friends, which included practically every one in our acquaintance. Men like Fisher of the Literary World, and Robert Barr urged her to write a book for years before she could persuade herself to put pen to paper, though seeing so many of my books put together, and transcribing when they were finished, had familiarised her with the process of book-making, and though she had assisted me at every stage, in sight-seeing with an armful of guide-books, in making copious notes, in studying all the available authorities on the subject, and in digesting and arranging the information if it was a travel-book, or in giving her advice about the story if it was a novel. She must have been with us quite ten years before she published her first book, A Sweet Disorder. Since then, besides the two books in which she collaborated with me, Queer Things about Sicily and More Queer Things about Japan, she has brought out Josiah’s Wife, Mirry-Ann, By the Waters of Sicily, Catherine Sterling, On Etna, By the Waters of Carthage, The Pagan Woman, By the Waters of Egypt, By the Waters of Italy, The Second Woman, A Wife out of Egypt, and By the Waters of Germany.
It gives me great satisfaction to think that she was my pupil in writing, for most of these books will stand reading again and again for the admirable sayings and analyses of life with which they are strewn, as well as for their stories, and the knowledge displayed in them. They are redolent with the atmosphere of the Isle of Man, Japan, Italy, Sicily, Tunis and Egypt, and one of them, Josiah’s Wife, contains a brilliant picture of America, where she lived with us for nearly three years.
Miss Lorimer comes of a very clever family. Her uncle, James Lorimer, was Professor of International Law in the Edinburgh University, and wrote some of the standard books upon the subject. He was a man of international reputation. His hobby was the restoration of Kellie Castle in Fifeshire, which he acquired from Lord Kellie and Mar, and, as the Latin inscription sets forth, “rescued it from the bats and the owls.” Living at Kellie was the inspiration of three of his clever children. His youngest son, now Sir Robert Lorimer, has become the most famous living Scottish architect. He had the high honour of building the Chapel of the Knights of the Thistle in St. Giles’ Cathedral, Edinburgh. His second son, J. H. Lorimer, the Scottish Academician, is recognised as one of the soundest painters of the day. One daughter, Lady im Thurn, caught the trick of the beautiful moulded plaster ceilings at Kellie, done by a wandering band of Italian artists in the seventeenth century, and was entrusted with the execution of the moulded plaster ceilings which Lord Bute had made for his House of Falkland. Another daughter is an author, and the other married Sir David Chalmers, the only man who ever earned two pensions as Chief Justice of two tropical colonies.
My next secretary was Miss Maude (Mary) Chester Craven, who had quarrelled with her stepfather, and was seeking to make her own way in the world.
She was a singularly clever girl, very much interested in literature, with a great sense of humour, and a great idea of “copy.” Had she come to me later, when I was writing the various volumes of Queer Things series, I should have been able to make better use of her help. She was most generous and self-sacrificing, and when she had thrown herself into the subject, you could hardly get her away from the papers. And she was very well read on certain subjects.
A few years after she left me she wrote an excellent book called Famous Beauties of Two Reigns. Since then she has found a niche all to herself in book-producing—teaching people who have led interesting lives, and have good stories to tell, but have had no literary experience, how to put their biographies together and editing them herself. The books produced in this way have proved some of the greatest sensations of our times. Lady Cardigan led off, followed by the adventurous ex-Crown Princess of Saxony, and Lord Rossmore’s racy recollections came as an entr’acte to the drama of Meyerling as narrated by Countess Larisch.
Editing these books has made Miss Craven—she is now Mrs. Charles ffoulkes, wife of the Master of the Armour of the Tower of London—an admirable raconteur, and she told me that the late M. Charles Sauerwein, directeur of Le Matin, had offered her a large sum to write her reminiscences of her “sitters,” but conscientious scruples prevented her from accepting the tempting offer, as to disclose all she knew would have caused trouble in London and elsewhere.