Cumner's Son & Other South Sea Folk: Introduction

Introduction

In a Foreword to Donovan Pasha, published in 1902, I used the following
words:

"It is now twelve years since I began giving to the public tales of life
in lands well known to me. The first of them were drawn from Australia
and the islands of the southern Pacific, where I had lived and roamed in
the middle and late eighties. . . . Those tales of the Far South were
given out with some prodigality. They did not appear in book form,
however; for at the time I was sending out these antipodean sketches I
was also writing--far from the scenes where they were laid--a series of
Canadian tales, many of which appeared in the 'Independent' of New York,
in the 'National Observer', edited by Mr. Henley, and in the 'Illustrated
London News'. On the suggestion of my friend Mr. Henley, the Canadian
tales, Pierre and His People, were published first; with the result that
the stories of the southern hemisphere were withheld from publication,
though they have been privately printed and duly copyrighted. Some day I
may send them forth, but meanwhile I am content to keep them in my care."

These stories made the collection published eventually under the title of
Cumner's Son, in 1910. They were thus kept for nearly twenty years
without being given to the public in book form. In 1910 I decided,
however, that they should go out and find their place with my readers.
The first story in the book, Cumner's Son, which represents about four
times the length of an ordinary short story, was published in Harper's
Weekly, midway between 1890 and 1900. All the earlier stories belonged to
1890, 1891, 1892, and 1893. The first of these to be published was 'A
Sable Spartan', 'An Amiable Revenge', 'A Vulgar Fraction', and 'How Pango
Wango Was Annexed'. They were written before the Pierre series, and were
instantly accepted by Mr. Frederick Greenwood, that great journalistic
figure of whom the British public still takes note, and for whom it has
an admiring memory, because of his rare gifts as an editor and publicist,
and by a political section of the public, because Mr. Greenwood
recommended to Disraeli the purchase of the Suez Canal shares. Seventeen
years after publishing these stories I had occasion to write to Frederick
Greenwood, and in my letter I said: "I can never forget that you gave me
a leg up in my first struggle for recognition in the literary world." His
reply was characteristic; it was in keeping with the modest, magnanimous
nature of the man. He said: "I cannot remember that there was any day
when you required a leg up."

While still contributing to the 'Anti-Jacobin', which had a short life
and not a very merry one, I turned my attention to a weekly called 'The
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 soul simply as an incident, but the incident as seen with the eye--and
that eye as truthful and direct as possible--of one individual
personality. George Meredith and Robert Louis Stevenson might each have
chosen the same subject and the same story, and each have produced a
masterpiece, and yet the world of difference between the way it was
presented by each was the world of difference between the eyes that saw.
So I am content to let these stories speak little or much, but still to
speak for me.

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