The first friend I consulted about capital suggested £20,000. He was very rich, but said that he would only put cash in equal to what I myself would. I put down £5,000, and he followed suit. I subsequently added more. The rest of the capital was found by various friends.
My friends subsequently said that as I supplied the editorial brains I ought not to have supplied the largest share of the capital!
I was requested by my friends to introduce a business man, accustomed to publishing, and leave all business arrangements to him. My friends brought in two. Yet I am held responsible for the business arrangements made!
Few new periodicals have caused more interest. The scene at the railway stations and book-stalls was unparalleled. We could not print quick enough to supply the demand. 140,000 copies went off in a few days—which, for a threepenny humorous journal, is a record.
It is said I wrote the journal myself. I never wrote one line in it from the first number to the last. I had the best writers money could procure, and I venture to say it was the best-written paper of its class ever produced in England.
It is said I illustrated it all myself!
I had in the first number alone George du Maurier, Bernard Partridge, Fred Barnard, A. C. Corbould, W. Ralston, J. F. Sullivan, G. Ashton, W. D. Almond, J. B. Yeats, and myself. Ten artists!—eight of whom have contributed to Punch. In subsequent numbers I added work by Sir Frank Lockwood, Arthur Hopkins, Gordon Browne, W. Maud, W. F. Thomas, C. Richardson, Louis Wain, G. Montbard, James Greig, "Rab," Max Cowper, J. H. Roberts, René Bull, S. Adamson, J. E. Donnison, W. H. Overend, Charles Burton Barber, A. T. Elwes, Hal Hurst, F. Miller, E. F. Skinner, George Morrow, J. Jellicoe, A. Greenbank, and others—in all nearly forty artists, and this in six months!
I have another inaccuracy to nail to the counter of Dame False Rumour's shop. That I stopped Lika Joko because it was a failure.
The facts about this incident are brief and instructive.
Mr. Astor stopped his artistic weekly, the Pall Mall Budget, suddenly. It so happened it was printed in the same office as Lika Joko. This very paper, which had prevented me accepting the editorship of the proposed new sixpenny weekly paper, and had driven me into publishing a threepenny weekly, was "put to bed" (to use a printer's phrase) week after week side by side with mine. I was sent for one Saturday morning. The expensive sixpenny child was to die that day. Could I not adopt it? There was a chance—splendid circulation, splendid returns for advertisements.