As a matter of fact, mail for the Englishman, simply directed "Winston Churchill, Boston, Mass.," had been sent to his namesake's residence on Beacon Street. Later it was told that the American met the same embarrassment in London. "When I was staying at Brown's Hotel," he said to the Parliamentarian, "I found it almost impossible to get my mail. They compelled me to sign for it personally."
The Englishman, by the way, is the author of a romance in regard to which the London critics seem to hold an opinion similar to that which he admittedly holds in regard to the American's first novel—"The Celebrity."
Speaking of "The Celebrity" reminds us of the still prevalent notion that its contemptible hero is Mr. Richard Harding Davis. In fact we believe that the author was openly charged with having written the satire merely to pay a private grudge. We heard an echo of the charge as late as this year. Yet, more than two years ago Mr. Churchill, in a public letter, took pains specifically to deny the imputation. "The Celebrity" he said, in effect, was entirely an imaginary work. No one at all resembling the chief character had ever been met by him. So far from paying grudges, he had no grudge to pay. Indeed, the young writer grew so tender on the subject that the Colonial atmosphere of "Richard Carvel" was attributed to his desire to avoid contemporary themes. But the truth is, he completed "The Celebrity" while temporarily short of historical material for use in the history of Richard and his Dorothy. Twice he thoroughly revised "The Celebrity" before sending it to the publishers.
And who is this Winston Churchill? He is the son of Spalding Churchill of Maine and Emma Bell Blaine of St. Louis, and he was born in the Missouri metropolis on Nov. 10, 1871. The first sixteen years of his life were spent in his birthplace; and there, at Smith Academy, he prepared for college. The college proved to be the Naval Academy at Annapolis.
As a boy he was inclined to be uncommonly studious, but at the Naval Academy he developed a strong inclination towards athletics. It was largely owing to his energy and his enthusiasm that the cadets revived rowing. Like most other cadets, he learned to fence expertly; and you will find an intimate knowledge of this accomplishment in his treatment of one of the most dramatic scenes in "Richard Carvel." He took to horseback riding, also to golf and to tennis, in short, to all the pastimes that strengthen the body and enliven the mind. It is his devotion to physical exercise which has enabled him to work long and hard without distress.
He felt, before his graduation from Annapolis, that his place was at the writing table, not on the deck of a man-o'-war. Apropos of which he has said: "When a man is being trained for a definite career, it helps him to make up his mind as to his tastes and abilities. If he is sure he doesn't want to do that particular thing, he must know pretty definitely what he does want to do. When he throws over a certainty for a chance his heart must be firmly set on the kind of work involved in the chance. For this reason a technical school helps some men to find their vocation better than four years at a university, where the training is general."
In 1894 he became editor of the Army and Navy Journal. The following year he joined the staff of the Cosmopolitan at Irvington-on-the-Hudson. While working for the magazine he took as wife Miss Mabel Harlakenden Hall of St. Louis, whose fortune induced him to give up magazine work altogether and devote himself to the realization of his dreams.
Now if Churchill lacked either determination or genius the wealth that through marriage he became a sharer in would have have availed him little. He might have attracted some attention as a dilettante, or he might have done the things that a wealthy person alone can do—establish another Anglo-Saxon Review, for example, or publish small thoughts in editions de luxe. He would have succeeded if his wife had never brought him a copper. It would have taken him longer to succeed, that is all. Art is long, and life is short only to the poor fellow who must ascend the ladder round by round. But not all the money in the world can ease the labor of the brain.
Churchill's ambition, from the first moment that he felt the literary impulse, was to write a historical novel. Annapolis had fired his imagination. "Seeing those old houses," he once said, "which used to be the scenes of the gayest and happiest social life before the Revolution—they look as if the people had just gone out of them—and reading the history of the town as it used to be, interested me greatly in a certain aspect of the life of the colonial planters, which had not, it seemed to me, been fully and truthfully expressed in a novel. What I wanted to do in 'Richard Carvel' was to give a picture of the life of colonial Maryland and Virginia, with special reference to Annapolis, and to contrast the people who made it with the corresponding element in England. One of the things I wanted to bring out strongly was that, although the leading men in business, in professional life, and in politics, in both Maryland and London, came from the same stock, a few generations back, politically, the British had sunk into a state of gross corruption and degradation, while the Americans were men of the highest integrity and the cleanest motives, mindful of their legal and moral debt to Great Britain, but resolute not to endure more than a certain amount of injustice."
And how do you suppose Mr. Churchill prepared for the big task of writing a historical novel? He has answered the question himself: