Though cherishing the strongest Republican principles, Mayne Reid was by no means a leveller, but in many things the very opposite to what the expression of his opinions would lead one to suppose. He was an enigma, which only one in the close contact of everyday life with him could solve.
His name rarely figured at literary gatherings, but he sometimes attended the Geographical or Zoological Societies’ meetings; in fact, he avoided rather than sought literary society.
Before commencing a new book, Captain Mayne Reid would thoroughly study his subject and work out the plot. He would make rough drafts at first, which were afterwards thrown away.
He had no skill with the pencil, but would make curious figures like hieroglyphics in his manuscript, intended to represent objects described, but bearing to all but himself a merely imaginary resemblance.
His mode of writing was peculiar. He rarely sat at a table, but reclined on a couch, arrayed in dressing-gown and slippers, with a portable desk and fur robe thrown across his knees even in hot weather, and a cigar between his lips—which was constantly going out and being re-lighted—while the floor all around him was strewed with matches. Latterly, after he became a cripple, the dressing-gown was discarded for a large Norfolk jacket, made from his own sheep’s wool; and he would sit and write at the window in a large arm-chair with an improvised table in front of him resting on his knees, upon which at night he would have a couple of candles placed, the inevitable cigar, matches, and whisky toddy being the accessories.
He had a singular habit of reading in bed, with newspapers, manuscript, and a lighted candle on his pillow. At least a score or more of times he has been found in the morning with the paper burnt to black tinder all round him, but neither himself nor the bed-clothes in the slightest singed.
The Mexican hero was never an idle man; and after his sword was sheathed in its scabbard, his pen never rested. His brain was as active as ever till within a fortnight of his death.
On October 22nd, 1883, Mayne Reid had fought his last battle.
An irregular block of white marble, on which is carved a sword and pen crossing each other, and these words from “The Scalp Hunters:—”