Chapter One
I BEGIN AT THE BEGINNING
I hardly know where to begin, because, as I grow older, I find it more and more difficult to know what really is the beginning of anything. Causes are all mixed up, and things that seem afterwards to have a bearing were not at the time important enough to be noted. And it is probably ten to one that some factors have been completely forgotten. I suppose nobody can tell all of what happened or tell any of it with absolute accuracy. At least, as I look on at life, any attempt to record it on paper seems hopeless. Things happen, you don't know why—and you try to use your judgment while they are happening, but even if you are very clever, you don't know whether your judgment was the best judgment. All you can observe is how things end—when they do end.
And yet I know that character—whatever that is—probably is more important than circumstances. There's an old vulgar song, something about, "It isn't what you do, it's how you take things." These aren't the words, but that is the idea. It's the same thing that my father used to say to me: "Play fair, Ted—and then if you lose, why, you must grin and bear it." I know this isn't a novel philosophy; it is a useful one. Original ideas are not necessarily helpful. An honest platitude has better sticking powers.
I must try to tell a little about the beginning. My name is Edward Jevons and I was born in New York City, but I have never had the pleasure of living in what, for lack of a better term, I shall call my native town. At the age of six, when Her Majesty Queen Victoria was seated upon the comfortable throne of those days, I was taken by my father and mother to live in England. From the age of six to the age of eighteen I was a cockney and grew up in London. In all that time my eyes did not see America.
I have nothing but pleasant memories of this childhood in London. We were not a fashionable family; we knew nothing of the wealthy Anglo-American set in London; but we had a comfortable house out Hampstead way, and, as the saying is, "did ourselves rather well." We also had a little villa in the country, near a golf-course, in Hertfordshire. The country place we rented for the summers.
My father was a business man, but he had tried his hand, in earlier life, at writing—I believe with some success. Business was more profitable than writing—and he abandoned the latter. He kept up, however, many of his literary friendships, and our house was frequented by writers of more or less fame and a few theatre people. I thus became early infected with a desire to write—a wish which my father encouraged. He took a good deal of pains over training me in observation and in arousing in me what he called, "a curiosity about life"—without which, he said, no one could write anything worth while. In the evenings I would bring him my day's work and he would discuss it seriously with me over a pipe.
My early recollections of my mother are more vague. She was a woman of strong will who rather frightened me with her direct ways of getting what she wanted. Instead of waiting to see what would happen, she took a hand in making things happen to suit her. I could never quite approve the energy she put into having her own way. My way never seemed to me important enough to make a special fuss over getting it. One could always think to please one's self—which was a happier solution than to try to do the impossible. I was always shy in my mother's presence. She, on the other hand, had a ferocious devotion to me that was terrifying. I can remember being scolded and wept over for my coldness. It wasn't that; I couldn't explain things. I don't know whether my father understood me—sometimes I thought he did and at other times I was certain he did not. I was an only son.
My sister, Frances, was much younger. I liked her very much—except when she interfered with the things in my room (I am speaking now as I remember her when a child), and then we quarrelled gorgeously. My mother always took my part, and poor Frances would end in tears. Secretly I enjoyed Frances' obvious hero-worship and the fact that I could make her cry. I was skilled in subtle ways of bullying her—teasing is perhaps a better word. Frances is one of the few persons who has ever taken me seriously. As a boy I took advantage of this to harrow her feelings. She was not, however, an important part of my life, because of the difference in our ages.