Dick died; our friend died; he had his faults—but he was Dick; and he died. And alas! his history was all told and done with; the manuscript finished; the last wrangle over; the fatal word, the melancholy word, Finis, written below the last line.
'THE FAMILY SCAPEGRACE'
BY JAMES PAYN
I HAD written a great many short stories and articles in all sorts of publications, from Eliza Cook's Journal to the Westminster Review, before I ventured upon writing a novel; and the appearance of them I have since had cause to regret. Not at all because they were 'immature,' and still less because I am ashamed of them—on the contrary, I still think them rather good—but because the majority of them were not made the most of from a literary point of view, and also went very cheap. As a friend observed to me, who was much my senior, and whose advice was therefore treated with contempt, 'You are like an extravagant cook, who wastes too much material on a single dish.' The entrées of the story-teller—his early and tentative essays in Fiction—if he has really any turn for his calling, are generally open to this criticism. Later on, he becomes more economical (sometimes, indeed, a good deal too much so, because, alas! there is so little in the cupboard), and has a much finer sense of proportion.
I don't know how many years I went on writing narratives of school and college life, and spinning short stories, like a literary spider, out of my own interior, but I don't remember that it was ever borne in upon me that the reservoir could hardly hold out for ever, and that it was time to be doing something on a more permanent and extended scale. The cause of that act of prudence and sagacity was owing mainly to a travelling menagerie. I had had in my mind, for some time, to write a sort of autobiography (of which character first novels almost always consist, or at least partake), but had in truth abstained from doing so on the not unreasonable ground that my life had been wholly destitute of incidents of public interest. True, I had mended that matter by the wholly gratuitous invention of a cheerless home and a wicked sister, but I had hitherto found nothing more attractive to descant upon than my own domestic wrongs. Even if they had existed, it was doubtful whether they would have aroused public indignation, and I mistrusted my powers of making them exist. What I wanted was a dramatic situation or two (a 'plot,' the evolution of which by no means comes by nature, though the germ is often an inspiration, was at that time beyond me), and especially the opportunity of observation.
My own slender experiences were used up, and imagination had no material to work upon; one can't blow even glass out of nothing at all. Just in the nick of time arrived in Edinburgh, where I was then editing Chambers's Journal, Tickeracandua, 'the African Lion Tamer.' At that time (though I have seen a great deal of them since) lions were entirely out of my line, and also tamers; but this gentleman was a most attractive specimen of his class. Handsome, frank, and intelligent, he took my fancy from the first, and we became great friends. 'His actual height,' says my notebook, 'could scarcely have been less than six feet two, while it was artificially increased by a circlet of cock's feathers set in a coronet, which the majority of enraptured beholders believed to be of virgin gold. A leopard skin, worn after the fashion of a Scotch plaid, set off a jerkin of green leather, while his legs were encased in huge jack boots.' This, of course, was his performing dress, and I used to wonder how the leopards (with whom he had a great deal to do) liked his wearing their relative's cast-off clothing. In the 'leopard-hunt' (twice a day) these animals raced over him as he stood erect, and each, as it 'took off' from his shoulder, left its mark there with its claws. He was so good as to show me his shoulder, which looked as if he had been profusely vaccinated in the wrong place. A much more dangerous, if less painful, experience was his daily (and nightly) doings with the lions. There were two of them, with a lioness of an uncertain temper, who jumped through hoops at his imperious bidding with many a growl and snarl of remonstrance.
