Cumners Son and Other South Sea Folk | Page 2

Speaker', to which I have referred elsewhere, edited by Mr. Wemyss
Reid, afterwards Sir Wemyss Reid, and in which Mr. Quiller-Couch
was then writing a striking short story nearly every week. Up to that
time I had only interviewed two editors. One was Mr. Kinloch-Cooke,
now Sir Clement Kinloch-Cooke, who at that time was editor of the
'English Illustrated Magazine', and a very good, courteous, and
generous editor he was, and he had a very good magazine; the other
was an editor whose name I do not care to mention, because his
courtesy was not on the same expansive level as his vanity.
One bitter winter's day in 1891 I went to Wemyss Reid to tell him, if he
would hear me, that I had in my mind a series of short stories of
Australia and the South Seas, and to ask him if he could give them a
place in 'The Speaker'. It was a Friday afternoon, and as I went into the
smudgy little office I saw a gentleman with a small brown bag
emerging from another room.
At that moment I asked for Mr. Wemyss Reid. The gentleman with the
little brown bag stood and looked sharply at me, but with friendly if
penetrating eyes. "I am Wemyss Reid--you wish to see me?" he said.
"Will you give me five minutes?" I asked. "I am just going to the train,
but I will spare you a minute," he replied. He turned back into another
smudgy little room, put his bag on the table, and said: "Well?" I told
him quickly, eagerly, what I wished to do, and I said to him at last: "I
apologise for seeking you personally, but I was most anxious that my
work should be read by your own eyes, because I think I should be

contented with your judgment, whether it was favourable or
unfavourable." Taking up his bag again, he replied, "Send your stories
along. If I think they are what I want I will publish them. I will read
them myself." He turned the handle of the door, and then came back to
me and again looked me in the eyes. "If I cannot use them--and there
might be a hundred reasons why I could not, and none of them
derogatory to your work--" he said, "do not be discouraged. There are
many doors. Mine is only one. Knock at the others. Good luck to you."
I never saw Wemyss Reid again, but he made a friend who never forgot
him, and who mourned his death. It was not that he accepted my stories;
it was that he said what he did say to a young man who did not yet
know what his literary fortune might be. Well, I sent him a short story
called, 'An Epic in Yellow'. Proofs came by return of post. This story
was followed by 'The High Court of Budgery-Gar', 'Old Roses', 'My
Wife's Lovers', 'Derelict', 'Dibbs, R.N.', 'A Little Masquerade', and 'The
Stranger's Hut'. Most, if not all, of these appeared before the Pierre
stories were written.
They did not strike the imagination of the public in the same way as the
Pierre series, but they made many friends. They were mostly Australian,
and represented the life which for nearly four years I knew and studied
with that affection which only the young, open-eyed enthusiast, who
makes his first journey in the world, can give. In the same year, for
'Macmillan's Magazine', I wrote 'Barbara Golding' and 'A Pagan of the
South', which was originally published as 'The Woman in the Morgue'.
'A Friend of the Commune' was also published in the 'English
Illustrated Magazine', and 'The Blind Beggar and the Little Red Peg'
found a place in the 'National Observer' after W. E. Henley had ceased
to be its editor, and Mr. J. C. Vincent, also since dead, had taken his
place. 'The Lone Corvette' was published in 'The Westminster Gazette'
as late as 1893.
Of certain of these stories, particularly of the Australian group, I have
no doubt. They were lifted out of the life of that continent with
sympathy and care, and most of the incidents were those which had
come under my own observation. I published them at last in book form,

because I felt that no definitive edition of my books ought to
appear--and I had then a definitive edition in my mind--without these
stories which represented an early phase in my work. Whatever their
degree of merit, they possess freshness and individuality of outlook.
Others could no doubt have written them better, but none could have
written them with quite the same touch or turn or individuality; and,
after all, what we want in the art of fiction is not a story alone, not an
incident of life or