She wrote her first novel when only fifteen; but this she candidly admitted never saw the light.
In my early writing days I remember asking Mrs. Riddell for an introduction.
“What?” she replied. “Introductions are no good; the best and only introduction to an editor is a good article.”
How right she was!
Mrs. Riddell once told me she collected the whole of a three-volume novel in her head—all novels were then in three volumes—and for weeks and months she worried out the story. When it was quite complete she wrote the last, or the most telling chapter of the book, first. For instance, Beryl’s death scene in George Geith was set down just as it appeared in print three years subsequently.
As I have said, it was my privilege to know Mrs. J. H. Riddell from my childhood. She was an old and valued friend of my father, and in the curious jumbling of early recollections I recall eating my first ice at her house at Hampstead, and being obliged to confess, with a cold lump of surprise on my tongue, “It isn’t as nice as I ’spected.” A remark she recalled with amusement years afterwards.
I do not suppose I was more than five years of age at that time, but I can remember perfectly well the kindly and charming face of the hostess, and her dark brown hair, which she wore in a loose curl hanging behind each ear.
Her Hampstead home existed in Mrs. Riddell’s palmy days; she went through much subsequent trouble, backing a bill for a friend, paying debts for her husband, keeping a paralysed brother whose health necessitated constant care, and who was for many years a heavy drag upon her purse, all of which brought incessant anxiety upon the authoress. My father and my husband helped her substantially many times—so when they both died so suddenly she was even more handicapped by Fortune. She nobly struggled on until the year 1900, when, as already mentioned, I made a personal application to Mr. Balfour, then Prime Minister, for a sum of money towards purchasing an annuity for her. Much correspondence ensued, and, thanks to the courtesy of Mr. Balfour, a cheque for three hundred pounds was finally handed to me from the Civil List. Through the help of Mr. J. M. Barrie, a further couple of hundred pounds was obtained from the Royal Literary Fund. This, with some kindly contributions from my own personal friends, among whom may be mentioned Sir W. S. Gilbert, Mrs. Humphry Ward, Justin Huntley McCarthy, E. W. Hornung, and Anthony Hope Hawkins, was, however, found to be too small a sum to buy an annuity of real value, and, accordingly, I made that bold suggestion to the Society of Authors. It was finally agreed that I should hand over three hundred pounds direct to them, in consideration of their granting her a pension for life, the Society retaining the three hundred at her death.
Mrs. Riddell thus became the first pensioner of the Society of Authors, of which she was one of the original members; and time after time she expressed to me her gratitude for that sixty pounds a year, her own private income being practically nil. The Society conferred a great benefit in bestowing this pension, and, at the same time, must feel proud to know it was given to one so worthy to claim it in the world of literature.
Her struggles to work were magnificent, and she actually published her last book after she was seventy years of age. Nearly fifty years of penmanship is indeed a record. During the last months of her life she suffered much pain from cancer, and was constantly in her bed, not being able to write at all, and to read but little. I constantly went to see her, and wondered at her patience and grieved at her poverty and suffering.