As Secretary to the Admiralty, and afterward Minister of War, many important visitors used to call on him in his big room at the top of Cassell’s, where he was one of the Directors. I sat opposite, correcting proofs of school books and advertisements, writing fairy tales in spare moments, and listening to Arnold-Forster’s conversation. He treated distinguished admirals, generals, and colonels as though they were office boys, so that they perspired in his presence, and were sometimes deeply affronted, but, on the other hand, as a proof of chivalry, he treated office boys and printers’ devils as though they were distinguished admirals, generals, and colonels, with a most particular courtesy.
I saw him achieve the almost incredible feat of dictating a complete history of England as he paced up and down his room, with hardly a note. It is true that his patient secretary had to fill in the dates afterward, and verify the “facts,” which were often wrong, but the result was certainly the most vivid and illuminating history of England ever written for young people, and Rudyard Kipling wrote to him that it was one of the few books that had kept him out of bed all night.
To me Arnold-Forster was the soul of kindness, and encouraged me to write my first book, “Founders of the Empire,” which is still selling in English schools, after twenty years, though I make no profit thereby.
At twenty-three years of age, I heard of a new job, and applied for it. It was the position of managing editor of the Tillotsons’ Literary Syndicate, in the North of England. The audacity of my application alarmed me as I wrote the letter, and I excused myself, as I remember, in the final sentence. “As Pitt said,” I wrote, “I am guilty of the damnable crime of being a Young Man.”
That sentence gained me the position, as I afterward heard. The Tillotsons were three young brothers who believed in youth. They were amused and captured by that phrase of mine. So I went North for a time, with my young wife.
It was a great experience in the market of literary wares. My task was to buy fiction and articles for syndicating in the provincial and colonial press, and my judgment was put to test of the sales list.
I “spotted” some winners who are now famous. Among them I remember was Arnold Bennett. He sent in a story called “The Grand Babylon Hotel”—his first romance—and I read it with the conviction that it was first-class melodrama. He asked a paltry price, which I accepted, and then I asked him to lunch in London—the joy of seeing London again!—and made him an offer for the book rights. He agreed to that fee, but afterward, when the book was immensely successful, he grieved over his bad bargain, and in one of his later books he warned all authors against a pale-faced young man, with his third finger deeply stained by nicotine, who had a habit of asking authors to lunch and robbing them over the coffee cups. Later in life he forgave me.
Although I had hard work as editor in Bolton of the Black Country—the city was ugly, but the people kind—it was there that I found my pen, and whatever quality it has.
I wrote an immense number of articles on every kind of subject, to be syndicated in the provincial press, and I made a surprising success with a weekly essay called “Knowledge is Power.” Like Francis Bacon, “I took all knowledge for my province” by “swotting up” the great masters of drama, poetry, novels, essays, philosophy, and art. It was my own education, condensed into short essays, written with the simplicity, sincerity, and enthusiasm of youth, for people with less chances than myself. I began to get letters from all parts of the earth, partly for the reason that the articles appeared in The Weekly Scotsman, among other papers, which goes wherever a Scottish heart beats. Correspondents confided in me, as in an old wise man—the secrets of their lives, their hopes and ambitions, their desire to know the strangest and quaintest things. Old ladies sent me cakes, flowers, and innumerable verses. Young men asked me how they could become the Lord Mayor’s coachman (that was an actual question!), or find the way to Heaven.
Meanwhile Fleet Street called to me with an alluring voice. Kind as the people were to me in Bolton—beyond all words kind—I sickened for London. One night I wrote a letter to Alfred Harmsworth, founder of The Daily Mail, and afterward Lord Northcliffe. Almost by return post he asked me to call on him, and I took the chance.