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E. W. HORNUNG
Ernest William Hornung was born at Marton near Middlesbrough, North Yorkshire, in 1866. He came to Australia in 1884, spending two years as a tutor in the Riverina before returning to England. It was enough time to provide Hornung with the material for several novels. The first, The Bride from the Bush (London, Smith & Elder; New York, United States Book Company) was published in 1890. In 1891 he began writing for a newly established journal, The Strand Magazine, where he became acquainted with Arthur Conan Doyle. In 1893 Hornung married Doyle’s sister, Constance.
Hornung published over a dozen novels and collections of short stories in the 1890s but his greatest fame came with The Amateur Cracksman (London, Methuen) in 1899. Raffles, the gentleman thief, was introduced in this collection of short stories. There was much in common with Sherlock Holmes, not the least of which was a Watson-like associate and chronicler by the name of Bu
The well-bred champion cricketer who lapses into crime to supplement his income is now a well-known creation. Though subsequent adventures remained thoroughly English, Raffles’ first adventure on the wrong side of the law occurred in Yea, Victoria and forms the basis for ‘Le Premier Pas’.
Raffles’ fame outlived his creator. Hornung died at St Jean de Luz in the Pyrenees in 1921. Another writer, Barry Perowne, continued the series and did quite a good job of it. Hornung also created an Australian version of Raffles. In his novel Stingaree (London, Chatto & Windus and New York, Scribners, 1905), the main character is a gentleman bushranger with a pure heart, a monocle, a love of Gilbert and Sullivan and a dashing white charger called Barmaid.
‘Le Premier Pas’ is far more than Raffles’ rare brush with antipodean law and order. It is well regarded as one of Hornung’s best stories – or should that be one Bu
Le Premier Pas
That night he told me the story of his earliest crime. Not since the fateful morning of the Ides of March, when he had just mentioned it as an unreported incident of a certain cricket tour, had I succeeded in getting a word out of Raffles on the subject. It was not for want of trying. He would shake his head and watch his cigarette smoke thoughtfully; a subtle look in his eyes, half cynical, half wistful, as though the decent honest days that were no more had their merits after all. Raffles would plan a fresh enormity, or glory in the last, with the unmitigated enthusiasm of the artist. It was impossible to imagine one throb or twitter of compunction beneath those frankly egoistic and infectious transports. And yet the ghost of a dead remorse seemed still to visit him with the memory of his first felony, so that I had given the story up long before the night of our return from Milchester. Cricket, however, was in the air, and Raffle’s cricket bag back where he sometimes kept it, in the fender, with the remains of an old Orient label still adhering to the leather. My eyes had been on this label for some time, and I suppose his eyes had been on mine, for all at once he asked me if I still burned to hear that yarn.
‘It’s no use,’ I replied. ‘You won’t spin it. I must imagine it for myself.’
‘How can you?’
‘Oh, I begin to know your methods.’
‘You take it I went with my eyes open, as I do now, eh?’
‘I can’t imagine your doing otherwise.’
‘My dear Bu
His chair wheeled back into the books as he sprang up with sudden energy. There was quite an indignant glitter in his eyes.
‘I can’t believe that,’ said I craftily. ‘I can’t pay you such a poor compliment.’
‘Then you must be a fool -’
He broke off, stared hard at me, and in a trice stood smiling in his own despite.
‘Or a better knave than I thought you, Bu
The whisky tinkled, the syphon fizzed, and ice plopped home; and seated there in his pyjamas, with the inevitable cigarette, Raffles told me the story that I had given up hoping to hear. The windows were wide open; the sounds of Piccadilly floated in at first. Long before he finished, the last wheels had rattled, the last brawler was removed, we alone broke the quiet of the summer night.
‘… No, they do you very well indeed. You pay for nothing but drinks, so to speak, but I’m afraid mine were of a comprehensive character. I had started in a hole; I ought really to have refused the invitation. Then we all went to the Melbourne Cup, and I had the certain wi
‘The surgeon who fixed me up happened to ask me if I was any relation of Raffles of the National Bank, and the pure luck of it almost took my breath away. A relation who was a high official in one of the banks, who would finance me on my mere name – could anything be better? I made up my mind that this Raffles was the man I wanted, and was awfully sold to find next moment that he wasn’t a high official at all. Nor had the doctor so much as met him, but had merely read of him in co
‘I’ll do more,’ says the doctor. ‘I’ll give you the name of the branch he’s been promoted to, for I think I heard they’d moved him up already.’ And the next day he brought me the name of the township of Yea, some fifty miles north of Melbourne; but, with the vagueness which characterised all his information, he was unable to say whether I should find my relative there or not.
‘He’s a single man and his initials are W.F.,’ said the doctor, who was certain enough of the immaterial points. ‘He left his old post several days ago, but it appears he’s not due at the new one till the New Year. No doubt he’ll go before then to take things over and settle in. You might find him up there and you might not. If I were you I should write.’
‘That’ll lose two days,’ said I, ‘and more if he isn’t there,’ for I’d grown quite keen on this up-country manager, and I felt that if I could get at him while the holidays were still on, a little conviviality might help matters considerably.