“I think I’ll write.”
“You can’t write,” said his father. “You’ve not had a University education.”
He went into his father’s business, but as he continued to write stories, and as some of them continued to get accepted, this arrangement was a failure. At this time his favorite recreation was cycling. “All the highroads and byroads of Kent, Surrey and Sussex became familiar to me. I wheeled between the flowery hedgerows and quenched my thirst at the wayside taverns. It was then, while watching villagers wending their way to church, that I first saw the Ancient. There he was, tall hat, smock-frock, shrewd, wrinkled face, and gnarled hands grasping his knobbly staff just as I have described him in The Broad Highway. And that was the first inception of the book, though it was not until several years afterward that it came to be written.” Black George was fashioned out of his own time spent at the Birmingham forge.
Farnol wasn’t yet twenty-one when he married Blanche Hawley, daughter of F. Hughson Hawley, a New York artist. The pair set out for America. The bride of seventeen had been sent to England on a visit. It was hoped that Mr. Hawley would take the news well. It was also hoped that Jeffery might sell stories more successfully in the United States. He had a negligible amount of money. The seven, and more than seven, lean years were beginning.
iii
Mr. Hawley received them well. In an interview a year ago[11] Mr. Farnol, recalling the New York period, is quoted as saying:
“I hadn’t a cent in the world. My wife had paid for the wedding ring and the honeymoon, and it seemed to me that after that it was up to me to do something. It has been said that her father remained adamant when we arrived, but that isn’t true. I’m expecting a knock on the bean from him when he reads that. On the contrary, I found him a delightful old cove, and we were forgiven.
JEFFERY FARNOL
Photograph by E. Hoppé, London.