These funny incidents were constantly occurring. Sometimes Mrs Reid would be supposed to be in no way related to Captain Reid, and would hear all kinds of remarks and comments passed upon the gallant Captain-author, which she would afterwards relate for his amusement.
Captain Reid used to say he could not have endured having an old wife. On one occasion, when attending a large public soirée, a somewhat elderly dame of his acquaintance attached herself to him, and promenaded the room by his side for a great part of the evening. Mrs Reid wondered what was making her husband look so savage. He came across the room to her saying: “I want you to keep close by me for the rest of the evening, or people will be taking that old thing for my wife!”
He was proud of his wife, and liked to have her remain his “Child Wife” to the end of the chapter.
“The Hunter’s Feast” and “The Forest Exiles” were now written, the latter being his next boys’ book for Christmas 1854.
“The Bush Boys,” published in 1855, was the first of Captain Mayne Reid’s South African books for boys. It was dedicated “To three very dear young friends, Franz, Louis and Vilma; the children of a still older friend, the friend of freedom, of virtue, and of truth—Louis Kossuth, by their sincere well-wisher, Mayne Reid.”
Captain Reid had commenced “The Quadroon” some time before, and laid the Mss. away in his desk. It was finally published in three volumes, 1856, and was a very popular book. It was dramatised shortly after its first appearance, and performed at the City of London Theatre. Some years later, when a controversy arose as to the source of Mr Boucicault’s drama of “The Octoroon,” Mayne Reid sent the following letter to the Athenaeum, on December 14th, 1861:
“During a residence of many years—commencing in 1839, and ending, with intervals of absence, in 1848—the author of ‘The Quadroon’ was an eye-witness of nearly a score of slave auctions, at which beautiful Quadroon girls were sold in bankruptcy, and bought up, too, notoriously with the motives that actuated the ‘Gayarre’ of his tale; and upon such actual incidents was the story of ‘The Quadroon’ founded. Most of the book was written in 1852; but, as truthfully stated in its preface, in consequence of the appearance of ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ its publication was postponed until 1856. The writing of it was finished early in 1855.
“With regard to ‘The Quadroon’ and the Adelphi drama, the resemblance is just that which must ever exist between a melodrama and the romance from which it is taken; and when ‘The Octoroon’ was first produced in New York—January, 1860—its scenes and characters were at once identified by the newspaper critics of that city as being transcripts from the pages of ‘The Quadroon.’ Some of its scenes as at present performed are original—at least, they are not from ‘The Quadroon’—but these introduced incidents are generally believed not to have improved the story; and one of them—the poisoning of the heroine—Mr Boucicault has had the good taste to alter, restoring the beautiful Quadroon to the happier destiny to which the romance had consigned her. It might be equally in good taste if the clever dramatist were to come out before the public with a frank avowal of the source whence his drama has been drawn.”
Soon after his marriage Captain Mayne Reid took up his abode in Buckinghamshire, at Gerrards Cross, about 20 miles from London. The greater number of his works were written in this rural retreat.
