CHAPTER IX

ON THE MAKING OF BOOKS

ONCE I thought the grandest thing in the world would be to write a book. It appeared the acme of desire. To see one’s name on a cover, oh, the joy of it! I trembled with fear and pride when that wondrous end was attained. I almost took that first book to bed with me. I wasn’t very old or very sedate, and so that little volume made me childish with glee.

Well, I thought to myself, “I’ll never give away a single copy. If anyone wants it they must get it from a library or spend three-and-sixpence on it themselves.” I kept to my resolve, because honestly afraid that if an utterly unknown young writer made presents of her little venture, kind folk (!) would say she could not sell the work, so distributed it amongst friends. A year or two afterwards, when A Girl’s Ride in Iceland had gone through two or three editions, and appeared on the bookstalls at a shilling, then—but not till then—did its author feel justified in sending presentation copies, with some words and her name inscribed on the fly-leaf. This was not churlish, but reasoned out. Cheap sales of goods mean deterioration; but cheap editions of books denote the popularity of the originals. On that first venture I received a ten per cent royalty.

And now after years of labour and experience, so many and great to me are the hardships, the struggles, the worries, the endless detail and annoyances of producing a book, that I always feel inclined to take off my hat figuratively, or drop a curtsey, to every fellow-author.

Strange as it may seem, every volume of mine has caused me sleepless nights of ever-increasing anxiety. Hyde Park, for instance, was written twice over from cover to cover—a little matter of about a hundred thousand words, re-arranged and practically rewritten.

I have generally worked myself into a perfect fever of anxiety by the day of publication, and even when those kindly, delightful reviews have appeared, my misery has not abated. Treated more than generously by both critic and public, I have naught to complain of. I have made far more money by my pen than I ever deserved—three hundred pounds advance on a twenty-five per cent royalty, is “nae so bad,” as our Northern friends would say. Columns of excellent reviews have appeared in the best papers of many lands. Yet I know the anxiety of it all, the rejection of articles, the return of “copy” from magazines, the weary, weary waiting when weeks seem years, after one has worked at break-neck speed; and although literature—no, I must not call anything I have done by such a stupendous name—although writing is a feverish joy, it is generally ill-paid, and the greater the rubbish, the more money it brings in. It certainly has done so in everything I have written. Serious work receives the least remuneration.

Major Martin Hume and other kind critics have told me I have “written two books that will live.” All I can say is those books (the last two on the list) have cost me ten times the work for less reward and much less public acknowledgment than the others. Serious work may live, but it seldom pays. Rubbish may pay, but it never lives.

Here is the list of thirteen books—the children of my pen—and various editions and translations of these have been published. But the newspaper and magazine articles number thousands, they cannot be counted.

So many people have asked me how a writer works or plans out a day, that a sketch of an ordinary writer’s ordinary day may be of interest.

For years I have been called with a cup of tea at seven o’clock. Between then and getting up, thoughts have chased one another in quick succession. As a composer composes without a piano, so a writer writes without a pen. It is the thinking that does it. The arranging of facts and settling the sequence of events. It is the length of a book that wears one out, the necessity of keeping up the interest and working up to some definite end.

Breakfast at half-past eight, and a glance at the papers. To the kitchen as the clock struck nine, and then, every order given for the day, the flowers arranged, and so on. Nine-thirty heralded the arrival of my secretary, and from then till luncheon I was a hard-working woman. After luncheon, I could afford to be a “laidy,” not before.

At one time I had three secretaries, one Spanish and two English, and kept them all busy. On other occasions, I perforce worked ten hours a day. But as a rule four to five hours’ steady grind accomplished all that was necessary. One can do an immense amount in that time if one sticks to it.

It is fairly easy to give advice on how to write for the papers: journalism can be taught as a school task to a great extent, but with books it is different. We all have to serve our apprenticeship for ourselves, to learn how to balance our subject, to work out our theme, and finally to make a readable volume. It seems to me book-making is more a gift than anything else. Artists learn to draw, but they never learn to paint. Colour is an inspiration. Drawing requires work. The same applies to a book. We can all learn the mechanical part; but I don’t honestly think that anyone can write a book that people will read, unless they have some special gift that way. Books must be individual.

All this perhaps sounds pedantic, but the dozens and dozens of young men and women, who have written to me asking for advice, show how many, from milk-maids to hotel-lift boys, are interested in the subject. People, who can neither write nor spell, have strange ideas that God has sent them special literary powers, and hope to sit on the top of the ladder of fame without putting a foot on the bottom rung. ’Tis a laborious ladder to climb in all the arts; but it has its rewards. Public praise counts for little, the real pleasure is the knowledge within ourselves that we have given of our best. It does not satisfy; but it pleases.

To produce a book or a picture is a stupendous effort. It claims all the power of thought and of concentration that is in us. It demands enthusiasm, determination, the conquest of idleness and self. We may not produce a great book or a great picture, but it is our supremest effort at that time, and when done, we feel like a squeezed lemon.

“Writers are so dull,” is a frequent remark. So they may well be—at times. So are artists, or musicians, or any creative workers. Their life’s blood is given to their work.

Another saddening result of giving one’s self wholly (as a worker should) to a task until success crowns one’s efforts is that it often arouses the envy of onlookers, and mostly of those who would not take the least trouble to compete.

Yes: it is fairly certain that the more one achieves in any walk of life, the more jealousy one encounters. A pretty woman is called hideous by some; a woman with charm—that indefinable attraction we all love—is dubbed a minx. Brilliant wit calls forth much condemnation. Success of work and brain is belittled by the envious. So while nothing succeeds like success, no one makes more enemies than the one who wins.

Every little victory brings a new enemy. When one hears the “catty” things people say, one can but wonder what catty things are said about one’s self. People say malicious things, suggest improprieties without foundation, assert motives that have never been born. In fact, Society is often cruel and hard. It eats and drinks too much, gets overwrought and tired, and says nasty things it does not mean.

The life of many an ordinary Society man or woman is despicable. They are the people who are “too busy” to do anything useful, whose lives are no good to anyone, and therefore boring to themselves.

Better work and be busy with something tangible, than idle life away in social dissipation. Yet how good and kind and generous most people are, and how hard many of them work for the good of others!

The vicissitudes of writers are many. I once suffered the loss in the post of an entire chapter of a manuscript. That missing link never turned up, and as I stupidly had kept no copy, while the rough notes thereof were of the roughest order, it was considerably difficult to rewrite the passages; indeed, impossible to remember the exact details of what the missing fragment formerly contained. Oh, the exasperation of it!—it was a thankless, dreary task.

How on earth Carlyle ever wrote his French Revolution over again is a marvel which fills me with admiration, whenever anything brings back the memory of all that labour which the second edition of that silly little chapter of an ordinary book cost me.

Work, too, is often wasted. Full of enthusiasm, after a peep at the gorgeous Eastern life on my return from Morocco in the ’nineties, I started a novel, which was nearly completed when the agent discovered there was already a somewhat similar book on the market. The appended letters speak for themselves and show the generosity of a man like Grant Allen in replying to a young and almost unknown author:

Still, that book was never finished. I had lost heart.

The same thing happened again in regard to a play in 1907. Everyone seemed to be making vast sums by writing plays and naturally an energetic woman wished to have a shot, too. I sketched out a most elaborate plot, laid partly in England and partly in America, and was brimming over with enthusiasm about it. Then I went gaily to the first night of Sutro’s play, John Glayde’s Honour, at the St. James’s Theatre, and lo and behold, the whole of my story unfolded itself on the stage.

Sutro’s play ran for about a year. Mine was never completed.

After one has passed the critical age of twenty—I say critical, as many a man and woman have made or marred their future by that time—the love of books, the real honest pleasure of reading, the insatiable craving for knowledge takes fast hold of us, and we begin to realise, as we study even one single subject, what a vast field lies open before us. Unfortunately, the enormous number of cheap newspapers that have appeared on every side within the last few years have done much to interfere with more profound reading; but it is quite unnecessary for this to be the case, for there ought to be time for both. Newspapers are excellent amusement, and sometimes afford much information in odd moments, such as on journeys by train, or long rides in omnibuses, and at other periods of the day’s existence. But there are the evenings, and unless people are professionally engaged during that time, there is no greater pleasure or amusement than in the perusal of some sound book. Literature is so cheap nowadays, that it is within the scope of everyone.

Besides, what a great field is Literature! A vast mass of education can be gleaned from the pleasantest reading. It is a poor book, indeed, from which we can obtain neither amusement nor instruction.

It is strange how even a humble writer like myself gets quoted; more often than not, without payment or acknowledgment. A certain well-known author wrote a book which was literally a réchauffé of one of mine; but beyond my name appearing in the preface as “one of the works consulted,” no further acknowledgment was made. Whole articles have appeared with new headlines. Pages and pages have been embodied in other people’s work without any acknowledgment whatever.

I remember two instances, however, where I was most graciously asked for the right of reproduction. I say “graciously” advisedly, because I should never have seen the publications, and never have known the articles were used.

One was a letter from the head teacher of the great Military College near Berlin, Lichtenfelde, who asked if an article on Mexico might be used in the new English Reading-book, then in preparation for the students.

The other was a request for permission to transcribe an article on the Silent Sisterhood at Biarritz into Braille for the blind. That again was a thing I should never have been likely to come across.

Speaking of translations reminds me of the lack of emancipation of Germany as recently as Christmas, 1906. Porfirio Diaz had just been translated. It was being well advertised and well reviewed, all the result, probably, of a long article that had appeared a few months before in the Preussische Jahrbücher, the leading political magazine of the Fatherland, which had suggested that the book was of such value they hoped to see a German translation.

Having many friends in Germany, I thought I would go over for a month, let my boys join me for Christmas at Bonn, where we would visit Dr. von Rottenburg (mentioned in an earlier chapter), and afterwards snow-shoe and skate in the Thüringian Mountains.

On my dressing-table when I arrived in Berlin was a copy of Diaz, with the publisher’s compliments. It was charmingly and most artistically got up, and what cost a guinea here was only twelve shillings there.

But I at once noticed the name attached was Alec Tweedie. There was no “Mrs.” nor “Frau.” I peeped inside. Again the man’s name, without the feminine prefix.

Next morning my esteemed publisher, who represented one of the most important houses in Germany, called to make my acquaintance.

I congratulated him on the get-up of the book, and the excellent translation. “But why,” I said, “did you put ‘Alec Tweedie’ on the volume without a prefix?”

He hummed and hawed.

“That is a man’s name,” I continued, “my husband’s name, and I am a woman.”

“That is true, Gnädige Frau, we preferred to put a man’s name on the cover. You see a big historical, biographical work like that with a woman’s name upon it would be seriously handicapped in Germany. Fifty years ago, aye, twenty years ago in England, you women were hiding your identity under the manly names of George Eliot, George Trafford, George anything. Well, we are still in that condition in Germany, not as regards novels, but as regards more serious work.”

True, O publisher, and yet with all this female emancipation, with all the Reform Kleider which stand for advancement in Germany, it really was amusing.

Five years later the girls of the Fatherland were reading risky books and taken to see risky plays, such was the rapidity with which the pendulum of ultra-propriety swung the other way.

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THE close of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth was the subject of much notice both in drawing-room talks and articles in the papers. The latter recapitulated all that the march of science and civilisation had effected. Private persons spoke gaily or piously anent “turning over a new leaf.”

For me? Well, it was much the same as with the rest of nature. My life went on through 1900 with only this difference, that it had grown—grown certainly in the past years of striving to put forth one’s self.

Personally the end of the old century marked a new departure, and was the starting-point of much interesting public work—work, by the way, that only a few short years before might not have seemed so enticing to the then young Society woman as it was now to the thoroughly interested worker.

In 1899 the International Council of Women, under that brilliant worker the Countess of Aberdeen, had met in London. It was a tremendous undertaking, and I served on several of the committees. The one, however, which took most of my time and thought was the Agricultural Section, for which I was the Convener, and finally took the chair. It seems a funny thing for a writer to have taken the chair at the proceedings of an Agricultural Section, but this was the outcome of the pamphlet on butter-making, and the endless articles I had then written about women taking up dairy-work in this country.

The Agricultural Section was a novelty, and, I am glad to say, proved a success. I never felt more nervous in my life, although supported on the platform by many able people, among them the Earl of Aberdeen. Viscount Templetown sat next to me, and primed me in what to say, rang bells when the allotted space of time had been filled by some speaker, and generally acted as call-boy and prompter combined. And Professor James Robertson, Agricultural Commissioner of Canada, travelled to this country purposely to speak for me. I felt terribly impressed by the solemnity of the entertainment, the whole section being a new departure.

I continually received little notes from the audience asking questions or offering to speak. One of them ran, “Please pass me down that beautiful hat.” Utterly amazed at such a thing, I read and re-read the sentence. I seemed to know the writing. I looked again, and found a little “Hy. F.”

“Good heavens!” I thought. “Harry Furniss is here making caricatures of the proceedings.”

Truly enough, the picture appeared in a paper the following week.

One thing leads to another. At the Paris Exhibition of 1900 a Woman’s Section was inaugurated, and a few people were invited by the Minister of Commerce of the French Republic from England to go over and speak on different subjects. Accordingly to Paris I went, and for twelve minutes inflicted upon those poor, dear French people a speech which I read in French, entitled “L’Agriculture et les femmes en Grande Bretagne.” Since those days cultured women have energetically taken up dairying, chicken-rearing, and egg-collecting, to say nothing of many branches of horticulture in which they have proved themselves eminently successful.

But while these international courtesies and gatherings were in process the tragedies of war were being enacted in South Africa, and deep anxiety and sorrow prevailed throughout the British Empire.

Only a few weeks after the relief of Kimberley and Ladysmith Queen Victoria came to London for a couple of days. She had a splendid reception as she drove through the chief streets, a marvellous demonstration of unorganised loyalty. After our sad reverses early in the Transvaal War England went wild at the favourable turn of events, and London continued its jubilation during Her Majesty’s stay.

The Queen visited the City—it was on March 8th, 1900—and, in accordance with the ancient custom, the Lord Mayor awaited Her Majesty’s arrival at the City boundaries. On this occasion the Embankment was the route taken by the Royal procession, and the Lord Mayor—Sir Alfred Newton—stood in the road by the Temple Gardens and presented the Queen with the City sword in its pearl scabbard, offering a welcome “on behalf of your ancient and most loyal City.” It was an impressive scene. The great City dignitary is privileged to wear an earl’s robe when receiving a crowned head, and he was surrounded by his Sheriffs, the City Marshal, the Sword-bearer, and the members of the Common Council.

After taking the sword—which was presented to the Corporation by Queen Elizabeth—in both hands, Queen Victoria returned it to the Lord Mayor “for safe keeping,” adding in her beautiful voice and faultless diction, “My Lord Mayor, I wish to thank you for all the City has done.” This, of course, alluded to the formation of the City Imperial Volunteer Corps, which had started some weeks before for South Africa.

The next day, March 9th, 1900, a luncheon party was given at the Mansion House by the Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress to the members of the Executive Committee of the International Associations of the Press. Among others I received an invitation.

When an alderman is elected Lord Mayor, he and his family take up their residence at the Mansion House for a year. There is a charming suite of apartments at the top of the house for their reception, and all they have to take with them is their private house-linen; everything else is found. The servants are supplied, but as the Lord Mayor pro tem. pays their wages, he can dismiss them at his pleasure. This rarely occurs, however, especially among the upper servants, who positively nurse the Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress and steer them clear of shoals during their year of office.

Arrived at the state door of the Mansion House, where magnificent servants in blue velvet and gold trappings, white silk, and powdered heads, took our cloaks, the guests ascended the red-carpeted staircase to the chief corridor. Here, at the far end, between two splendid thrones, stood the Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress. The former wore a black Court dress, with his chain of office, and a wonderful locket of diamonds and enamel. On my name being announced, he most graciously shook hands, and remarked, “I believe I am to have the pleasure of sitting next you.” Evidently a Lord Mayor is not devoid of tact, judging by this small incident.

The City Marshal, resplendent in scarlet uniform, the Mace-bearer in black robes with sable cap, many well-known City dignitaries, and various officials stood around; among others being Mr. Sheriff (afterwards Alderman Sir) William Treloar, who was later a most popular Lord Mayor himself.

Some hundred and fifty people had been received when luncheon was announced. The Lord Mayor offered his arm to Mademoiselle Humbert, the daughter of one of the French Deputies and editor of L’Éclair, and the late Sir Hugh Gilzean Reid, one of the originators of evening papers, was allotted to me. We formed into a procession and marched to the big banqueting hall. A long table was arrayed down the room. At the side centre sat the Lord Mayor, in a veritable throne of red velvet and gilding. It was a magnificent setting, for behind him, along a large part of the room, a sort of red-baize-covered sideboard was erected, which literally groaned under gold plate. Tankards, cups, swords, and bowls in number were here displayed, the collection of hundreds of years of City wealth.

We began with the renowned turtle soup, and I ventured to ask the Lord Mayor if that were part of the City religion, at which he laughed.

“Almost,” he said. “But I think to-day it has been given for luncheon, a somewhat unusual affair, in honour of our foreign friends.” He was both affable and charming. During the meal a perfect budget of papers was brought in for his signature. He did not even look at their contents—there were too many of them—but merely signed. Thereupon I remarked:

“You may be signing away your birthright.”

“Oh,” he replied, “the Mansion House is a network of officialism, and all these papers have gone through the proper office, been enquired into, and passed; I have, therefore, nothing to do with them but sign my name.” Gorgeous flunkeys placed the papers before him and gorgeous flunkeys bore them away.

The luncheon was not particularly good, except the turtle soup, though it was well served. All the plates and silver bore the City arms. Beautiful yellow tulips stood in golden vases down the table. Certainly the foreign visitors ought to have been impressed by the solid magnificence of a City banquet. The Lord Mayor made a happy, though evidently unprepared speech, and regretted that he was not master of each of the sixteen languages represented by the different nationalities sitting round the table, but he did give a few phrases in French and German, much to the delight of the foreigners.

“What is the most difficult part of being Lord Mayor?” I asked.

“The dinners,” was his surprising reply. “It is a case of dining out practically every night, and as the Lord Mayor goes everywhere in his official capacity, he is always expected to say something. How is it possible to say anything with any sense in it six times a week?”

He seemed delighted with the Queen’s visit and showed the sword which had been used for the ceremony. The next day the announcement appeared in the papers that Her Majesty, in recognition of her City reception, had been pleased to confer a baronetcy upon him, and knighthood upon the Sheriffs.

I had a long talk after the luncheon with Sir William Agnew, who said, “I have now collected all my pictures for the Paris Exhibition, and flatter myself they are the finest collection of representative English art that has ever been brought together, considering the number—Gainsborough, Raeburn, Romney, Constable, Turner, Watts, Burne-Jones are among them, and several are insured for from £10,000 to £15,000 apiece. But I have never before found such difficulty in obtaining the loan of pictures. In several cases I received an answer in the affirmative until I mentioned Paris. ‘Oh no, my dear fellow! I am not going to let my picture go there,’ has been the reply.

“There is no doubt about it,” he continued, “that the attitude of the French Press lately towards the Queen, and their comments on the Transvaal War, have caused a very bitter feeling in this country, and in several instances I have had to make it a personal favour to myself to get the pictures at all. Indeed, the fear has been so great that the exhibition might be burnt down, or the canvases cut and destroyed, that I almost gave up all idea of a representative English collection in despair; and, although I have insured the pictures for a large sum from their owner’s door till their ultimate return, I shall not be happy in my mind until the exhibition is over and they are back again. The present mistrust of the French people is extraordinary, and the sort of feeling current that we may go to war with France has made it very difficult.”

A few years later the influence of King Edward did much to create a better understanding with France.

The Lord Mayor’s documents coming in for signature reminded me of a millionaire, who has much to do with the issue of shares and can sign his name fourteen or fifteen hundred times in an hour.

“I often do that,” he said; “in fact, two or three times in a year. But the greatest number of times I ever signed my name in a week was once in Paris when we were bringing out a new company; then I signed my name thirty-three thousand times in one week.”

“How on earth do you manage it?” I exclaimed. “Does a secretary pass the papers before you and blot them as you sign?”

“I have no secretary and no one blots them,” he replied. “A book, containing from one to three hundred documents, is put before me, and I lift each one with my left hand while I sign with my right. I don’t stop to blot them, they blot themselves—or smudge,” he laughed; “and as each book is completed I throw it on the floor and take up another from the table beside me. Every hour or so one of the clerks comes in, and wheels the signed books away on a trolley and places another bundle on the table. I sometimes sign my name for three hours straight off, which means four thousand to four thousand five hundred signatures without rising from my seat.”

“I am going to assist at a bazaar,” I exclaimed, “and I really think it would be a splendid idea to put you in a little room dressed up in gorgeous Eastern attire, charge sixpence for admission, and write in large letters on the outside: “‘The man who can sign his name fifteen hundred times in an hour!’ We should make quite a lot of money.”

He laughed. Writer’s cramp never troubled him.

When the day came that I really was overpowered with work, that my table was strewn with commissions, that I had secretaries hard at it, sorting, arranging, looking out photographs or figures; as I dictated between whiles and they typed, a horrible pain, like hot sand, came in my eyes. At first intermittently, then more frequently, till at last a hideous dread of blindness—like my father’s—seized hold of me. Off to Sir Anderson Critchett I went. “Overwork, overstrain; you must give up your work for a time.” “I can’t,” I replied. “Then you must be responsible for the consequences.” Lotions, blisters behind the ears, brought improvement, but still that hot, burning sand was there.

To Sir John Tweedy I then repaired. “Inflammation of the eyes from overwork; you must rest the eyes. Never work at night, and always wear a black shade when possible.”

So I gained nothing fresh from him. Both gave me exactly the same advice and warned me of danger.

I wore that hideous shade for a year, tore it off the moment a stranger appeared—never went out at night. The glaring lights of the theatre had become positive torture; but, in spite of all, I managed somehow to keep up my work and write another book.

Gradually, by resting my eyes whenever possible, never reading unless obliged, and sitting much in the dark, my eyes became better and remain better.

And thus the last days of the great Century of Progress sped into the realm of past ages. But when the newcomer crossed the threshold of Time, with all the new century’s opportunities and hopes, I was far away under the Southern Cross amid the brilliant colouring and luxuriant vegetation of the tropics.

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ONE day in July, 1900, I was explaining to my small boys that I was going off through Canada and America to Mexico to write a new book, to make some more money for bread and butter and school bills.

One of them appeared distressed at the idea. At last, after a pause, he said:

“Why don’t you go and sit in that shop in Regent Street with your hair hanging down, like those three girls do?”

I looked surprised.

“It would not be so tiring as travelling all that long way and writing another big book,” he explained, “and you would make just as much money, I am sure.”

Lovely idea!

But I dared not accept his suggestion, kindly meant though it was.

A letter I wrote to a woman friend in 1900 has just come into my hands. It says:

N.B.—I went to Mexico shortly after—alone, quite alone, on a twenty-five-thousand-mile journey.

Why did I choose Mexico to visit and write about? Because with all the world before me that land seemed to offer a more historic past than almost any other country on God’s earth; and was there not a spice of danger and romance lurking amongst its hills and valleys?

I left London in July, and, after halting in Canada and the United States, landed in Mexico on November 1st, 1900, and returned to England in April, 1901. Between those dates I had travelled some twenty-five thousand miles, had spent thirty-nine nights in moving trains, and many more in private Pullman-cars in railway sidings. I had lived a life of luxury and ease and had roughed it to nigh unendurable straits. Besides which I was constantly sending home articles to the English Press.

It was a several months’ journey from Liverpool to Quebec, through Canada to Niagara, then to New York, Chicago, Washington, and Philadelphia; and onward, onward to Mexico. Before leaving America, however, I turned aside when I found myself only fifty miles from Galveston, which, about ten weeks previously, had been visited by its historic and terrible storm. Heart-rending were the sights that met my eyes and the tales that were poured into my ears. Eight thousand people had perished in that terrible hurricane, their bodies were even then being cremated on the shore. Rows of small houses literally stood on their heads, while on the beach pianos, tramcars, saucepans, sewing-machines, baths, and perambulators lay in wild confusion.

Resuming my journey I soon passed the Mexican frontier, and there had my first experience in ranch life; there, too, a “norther,” or dust-storm, made me long for the comparative comfort of a London fog. Eyes, nose, mouth, ears, were all choked with hard, sharp, cutting sandy dust. My raven locks were grey and no longer suitable for exhibition in the shop in Regent Street. Next came another long railway journey to Mexico City, with the President of the line in his private train, with various entertainments on the way, including a bull-fight and a cock-fight, and much interested amusement at the customs of the people. Mexico City was reached just in time for me to see the celebrations of the Feast Day of the Lady of Guadaloupe, the patron saint of Mexico. It was a wonderful sight, and the story reminded me of Lourdes, though it is of much earlier origin and the pilgrimage of far greater magnitude.

The welcome tendered to me in the capital was delightful.

The Christmas customs were, of course, of great interest; Madame Diaz, the wife of that great President, invited me to her posada. A most enjoyable and novel evening. One of my most valued treasures is the little bonbonnière she gave me on that occasion.

Many varied experiences followed; rides lasting two or three weeks through that marvellous country to see old Aztec ruins; life at tobacco, sugar, tea, or coffee haciendas; to say nothing of the national customs, traditions, and superstitions on every side. The President gave me a guard of forty rurales (soldiers), and, as the opportunity of penetrating remote parts was great, twenty-two gentlemen of all nationalities, from Cabinet Ministers to clerks, joined us. We were sixty-three all told, and, though I rode astride like a man, I was the only woman.

Perhaps the most thrilling and exciting moment on my various travels was that spent on a trolley-car in Southern Mexico. Along those distant tracks barely two or three trains pass in a day, and hundreds, aye, thousands, of miles of railway have to be kept in repair. It is usual for the engineers to run along the line in a little open wagon, known as a trolley-car, which is worked by hand by four or six men, and covers the ground at a good pace. It can stop at any moment, and be lifted bodily off the line should a train require to pass.

Naturally, one sees the scenery magnificently from a car of this kind, for there is nothing before one. I was sitting in front with an engineer on each side of me. We had just come through one of the most magnificent passes in the world of engineering, and had, indeed, at that moment crossed a bridge, a slender, fragile thing. Some two or three hundred feet below it the water gurgled in a rushing stream. Parrots shrieked overhead, terrapins floated on the water, and monkeys swung from tree to tree. There was a precipice on one side, a high, rocky hill on the other, and just room for this mountainous line to crawl round the rocks.

We were all telling stories and chatting cheerfully: the next thing I knew was that the man on my right seized me by the neck, as if he suddenly wished to strangle me, and somehow he and I fell together a tangled mass down the side of the precipice.

When I looked up—luckily caught in the shrubs—an enormous engine was towering over my head, the grid-like rails of the cow-catcher looking ominous and weird above me. The splintered platform of the trolley-car was rushing down the mountain-side, and our iron wheels were running off in different directions. It was a marvel we were not all killed.

It had happened in this wise.

As we turned a sharp corner an engine suddenly bore down on us—one of those great black, high American locomotives, neither varnished nor painted. The engineers, accustomed to the ominous sound, luckily heard it before it was quite upon us. Hence, I was violently dragged from what, in another second, would have been instantaneous death. The natives all jumped off in some wonderful manner, also being accustomed to the sound; but our trolley-car was smashed to smithereens.

It was a ghastly experience. By the time I regained my equilibrium, and saw the horrible accident to our frail little carriage and learnt the awful danger we had just come through, I realised that I had just experienced one of the most perilous moments of my life.

I should have sat there oblivious and literally courted death. We never know life’s real dangers till they are past, hence the courage of the battlefield or shipwreck. We only worry over what we but partially understand, hence the anxiety so often experienced before sitting in the dentist’s chair. Anticipation is so much sharper than realisation.

This was not my only narrow escape, for I was blessed with the proverbial three.

While visiting at the hacienda of the Governor of one of the Southern States we, one day after lunch, amused ourselves by shooting at bottles with the rifles of the rurales. After a time my hostess and I had wandered away for a stroll, and, as we returned, a ricochet bullet slid off a bottle and buried itself in my womanly “Adam’s apple.” A red streak ran down my collar, I opened my mouth and literally gasped, choking; everybody thought I was dead. But it proved nothing, and in a few minutes I could breathe and speak again and was washed clean.

My third escape was a terrible illness, contracted when riding in the tropics, and caused either by venomous bites or poisonous ivy. Never shall I forget the awful loneliness of those days and nights fighting with death in a Mexican hotel.

Of all the marvellous sights, the magnificent scenery, the many-coloured birds and flowers rivalling each other in gorgeousness, I need not write here. But, far beyond everything, the scene that left the deepest impression on my mind was in Southern Mexico. It was a visit to the Caves of Cacahuimilpa, one of the greatest wonders of the world, and the Governor of the State organised an expedition for me to see them. Numberless Indians from far and wide had joined my party, glad of the opportunity of going inside the wondrous caves which they hold in such superstitious dread. Candles were distributed to the company, which by now must have been swelled to something like a couple of hundred people. All was ready.

The descent was easy, for a roadway had been made; but it was really very impressive to see so many individuals solemnly marching two and two into impenetrable blackness to the strain of martial music. Each person carried a long lighted candle, but before we returned to our starting-point, six and a half hours later, these candles had nearly burnt out.

The caves were originally formed by a river, the waterline of which is distinctly visible, while in places the ground is marked with wave ripples like the sand of a beach. Then, again, many stones are round and polished, the result of constant rolling by water; and, still more wonderful, two rivers flow beneath them, probably through caves just as marvellous, which no man had then dared penetrate.

I believe we went through seven caverns, and our numerous lights barely made a flicker in the intense gloom—they were nothing in that vast space. Rockets were sent up. Rockets which were known to ascend two hundred and fifty feet, but which nowhere reached the roof; the height is probably somewhere between five and six hundred feet. Think of a stone roof at that altitude without any supports.

The size alone appalled, but the stalactites and stalagmites almost petrified one with amazement. Many of them have joined, making rude pillars a couple of hundred feet high and perhaps a hundred feet in diameter at the base. Others have formed grotesque shapes. A seal upon the ground is positively life-like: a couple of monster Indian idols: faces and forms innumerable; here an old woman bent nearly double, there a man with a basket on his head, thrones fit for kings, organs with every pipe visible, which, when tapped, send forth deep tones. It was all so great, so wonderful, so marvellous; I felt all the time as if I were in some strange cathedral, greater, grander, and more impressive than any I had ever entered. Its aspect of power and strength paralysed me, not with fear, but with admiration.

At times it was terribly stiff climbing and several of the party had nasty falls in the uncertain light; at others it was a case of sitting down and sliding, in order to get from one boulder to another; but it was worth it all to see such a sight, to realise the Power that made those caves, to bow before the Almighty Hand which had accomplished such work, even in millions of years. There hung those great stone roofs without support of any kind—what architect could have performed such a miracle? There stood those majestic pillars embedded in rocks above and below; there hung yards and yards of stalactites weighing tons, and yet no stay or girder kept them in place. It was a lesson, a chapter in religion, something solemn and soul-stirring, something never to be forgotten; one of the Creator’s great mysteries, where every few yards presented some fresh revelation.

My knees were trembling, every rag of clothing I wore was as wet as when first taken from the washerwoman’s tub, yet I struggled on, fascinated, bewildered, awed, by the sights which met me at every step. Think of it. Stumbling along for four and a half hours, even then not reaching the end, and, though we returned by the easiest and quickest way, it was two hours more before we found the exit.

In one of the caves the Governor proposed my health, and the party gave three cheers, which resounded again and again in that wonderful subterranean chamber, deep down in the bowels of the earth, with a mountain above and a couple of rivers below. The military band of Cacahuimilpa accompanied us, and the effect produced by their music was stupendous. No words can give any idea of the volume of sound, because the largest band in the world could not succeed in producing the same effect of resonance in the open air which ten performers caused in those vast silent chambers.

It is impossible to describe the immense grandeur of Cacahuimilpa.

Man is speechless in such majestic surroundings; but in this all-pervading silence surely the voice of God speaks.

Hot, tired, and overpowered we were plodding homewards, when a letter was handed to a member of the party by a mounted soldier, who, seeing our lights approaching the entrance, had dared to venture into the grottos to deliver his missive. We were all surprised at the man’s arrival, and more surprised to find he carried an envelope. It turned out to be a telegram which had followed our party from a village forty miles distant, and had been sent on by special horseman with instructions to overtake us at all speed. Was ever telegram delivered amid stranger surroundings, to a more cosmopolitan collection of humanity assembled in the bowels of the earth, far, far away from civilisation?

What news that telegram contained! It had travelled seven thousand miles across land and sea; it had arrived at a moment when we were all overawed by stupendous grandeur and thoroughly worn out with fatigue. At the first glance it seemed impossible to read. Men, accustomed to the vagaries of foreign telegraph clerks when dealing with the English language, found, however, no difficulty in deciphering its meaning.

Then the Governor spoke a word. Every Indian doffed his hat and bent his eyes, as Colonel Alarcon walked solemnly towards me, and in deep tone, with evident feeling, explained that the President of Mexico had sent on the news to tell the English señora—

“QUEEN VICTORIA IS DEAD.”

A historic telegram, truly, announcing a national calamity, and received amidst the wildest possible surroundings in the strangest possible way.

The Queen was dead. The English-speaking people had lost her who had been their figure-head for sixty-three years. The monarch, to whom the whole world paid homage as a woman and respect as a Queen, had died at Osborne on the previous day, while we, wandering over Aztec ruins at Xochicalco, had not even heard of her illness.

Impressed as we were by the mystic grandeur of the caves, amazed at the wonders of nature, this solemn news seemed to fit the serious thoughts of the day, thoughts which had grown in intensity with each succeeding hour. Cacahuimilpa appeared a fitting spot in which to hear of a great public loss. Time and place for once were in no wise “out of tune.”

It was dark and the way steep as we rode back to the village in silence.

Like the proverbial bad penny, I rolled home again with my pocket full of notes on men, women, and things. I had collected my material, written bits in railway trains, on steamboats, and almost in the saddle, and as soon as I felt well enough, put together Mexico as I saw It.

The beginning of the manuscript was sent off to the publishers in the June following, just two months after landing at home, and the remainder was printed, chapter by chapter, as I managed to finish each: a most terrible and anxious manner of proceeding and one certainly not to be recommended. The first proof of Mexico as I saw It was returned on July 10th; the slips, or galleys, finished on August 10th; the whole was paged and passed for press on September 10th. It appeared in October at a guinea net, the illustrations mostly from my own camera. So I was just six months in Mexico, and just six more getting out the book; in my own souvenir copy there is written on the fly-leaf: “It is done, but it has nearly done for me.”

Reviews were more than kind, but then the subject was new, so people found it interesting. As Frederic Harrison wrote in the Positivist Review: “The marvellous restoration of Mexico, from being a hot-bed of anarchy and the victim of superstition to its present condition of one of the best governed and most enlightened of modern countries, has often attracted the attention of political observers. In Mrs. Alec Tweedie’s most interesting volume we find suggestive sketches of the institution of the Republic, and a personal character of the President, General Porfirio Diaz, the noble statesman who has achieved such triumphs.” How could one help being gratified that other influential organs of public opinion felt with me the “fascinations of the Southern haciendas and of the natives of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec,” and held the information, that had been zealously collected, of practical and informing value?

On the hospitality of the President it is only necessary to say that, looking back to those records of 1900-1, I find this expression—warm from the heart—respecting General and Madame Diaz:

Five years later I returned to Mexico and wrote the Life of the President.

The first time I left the country I was limping with pain after a serious illness of blood-poisoning—the second time I left almost limping again, but that was from the weight of the precious documents I bore away.

No one knew but the President, his wife, and three of his Ministers, what important material I was taking with me, or that I was going to write the Life of General Diaz from his diaries and notes. It was published in England and America in February, 1906, and reprinted with additions two months later. One kindly critic said: “It is a romance, a history, a biography, one of the most thrilling stories of real life ever written.” Later it was translated into German and Spanish. I was so pressed with work at that time I had one Spanish and two English secretaries constantly employed—I often sat at my desk for nine or ten hours a day, and rarely went to any social entertainment except an occasional public dinner.

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THE fact of having committed a book into printer’s ink lays one open to curious correspondence. I am sure there are autograph hunters who seek the appearance of each new writer, in order to mark her down, as eagerly as ever angler watched for a trout rising to his fly. Some ask directly and are unashamed; others wrap up their request by desiring some piece of information. Happily it has not yet become a recognised custom for a writer to be asked by people entirely unknown to her to give them her books, but I have experienced even such modest requests. One circumstance was perhaps a little unusual.

From far-away Mussoorie, in the North-West Provinces of India, came a letter one day. It was dated “January,” after the season at the hill station was over, by some exile compelled to stay on through the dreariness of a deserted health resort, to live through the monotonously dull days and watch the successive falls of snow on the mountains. My correspondent had been reading about myself and my books in a popular monthly which had reached her, and became emboldened to ask “if the writer would lend her a copy of A Girl’s Ride in Iceland, which she would carefully return.” As she covered the thin pages of her foreign note-paper her boldness grew, for next she “confessed” that she would like to possess the book; and she wound up with a suggestion that if my name “was written on the fly-leaf, signifying that the book was a gift to her by the author, it would add to its value.”

I believe in this instance I did weakly send the book, autographed fly-leaf and all. One feels sympathetic towards a lonely woman compatriot left stranded on an Indian hill-top, thinking perchance of a friendly Christmas-time at home, with one’s own people, shops and shows to amuse and cheer one.

“A bibliophilic favour” was on another occasion requested. This time my correspondent was nearer home: