My First Book

I sent all my People into a Coal-mine

Whilst I am about 'Grace Forbeach,' it may be worth while to tell the story of the champion printer's error of my experience. I wrote at the close of the story:

'Are there no troubles now?' the lover asks.

'Not one, dear Frank. Not one.'

And then, in brackets, thus (   ) I set the words:

(White line.)

This was a technical instruction to the printer, and meant that one line of space should be left clear. The genius who had the copy in hand put the lover's speech in type correctly, and then, setting it out as if it were a line of verse, he gave me—

'Not one, dear Frank, not one white line!'

It was a custom in the printing office to suspend a leather medal by a leather bootlace round the neck of the man who had achieved the prize bêtise of the year. It was somewhere about midsummer at this time, but it was instantly and unanimously resolved that nothing better than this would or could be done by anybody. The compositors performed what they called a 'jerry' in the blunderer's honour, and invested him, after an animated fight, with the medal.

'Grace Forbeach' has been dead and buried for very nearly a score of years. It never saw book form, and I was never anxious that it should do so, but as it had grown out of 'Marsh Hall,' so my first book grew out of it, and, oddly enough, not only my first, but my second and my third. 'Joseph's Coat,' which made my fortune, and gave me such literary standing as I have, was built on one episode of that abortive story, and 'Val Strange' was constructed and written to lead up to the episode of the attempted suicide on Welbeck Head, which had formed the culminating point in the poem.

They invested him with the Medal

When I got to London I determined to try my hand anew, and, having learned by failure something more than success could ever have taught me, I built up my scheme before I started on my book. Having come to utter grief for want of a scheme to work on, I ran, in my eagerness to avoid that fault, into the opposite extreme, and built an iron-bound plot, which afterwards cost me very many weeks of u

I had completed the first volume when I received a commission to go out as special correspondent to the Russo-Turkish war. I left the MS. behind me, and for many months the scheme was banished from my mind. I went through those cities of the dead, Kesanlik, Calofar, Carlova, and Sopot. I watched the long-drawn artillery duel at the Shipka Pass, made the dreary month-long march in the rainy season from Orkhanié to Plevna, with the army of reinforcement, under Chefket Pasha and Chakir Pasha, lived in the besieged town until Osman drove away all foreign visitors, and sent out his wounded to sow the whole melancholy road with corpses. I put up on the heights of Tashkesen, and saw the stubborn defence of Mehemet Ali, and there was pounced upon by the Turkish authorities for a too faithful dealing with the story of the horrors of the war, and was deported to Constantinople. I had originally gone out for an American journal at the instance of a gentleman who exceeded his instructions in despatching me, and I was left high and dry in the Turkish capital without a pe

Consulting old Almanacs

The first volume of 'A Life's Atonement' had been written in the intervals of labour in the Gallery of the House of Commons, and such work as an active hack journalist can find among the magazines and the weekly society papers. I had been away a whole year, and everywhere my place was filled. It was obviously no use to a man in want of ready money to undertake the completion of a three-volume novel of which only one volume was written, and so I betook myself to the writing of short stories. The very first of these was blessed by a lucky accident. Mr. George Augustus Sala had begun to write for The Gentleman's Magazine a story called, if I remember rightly, 'Dr. Cupid.' Sala was suddenly summoned by the proprietors of the Daily Telegraph to undertake one of his i