]

'_THE HOUSE OF ELMORE_'

BY F. W. ROBINSON

[Illustration]

It is a far cry back to 1853, when dreams of writing a book had almost
reached the boundary line of 'probable events.' I was then a pale,
long-haired, consumptive-looking youth, who had been successful in prize
poems--for there were prize competitions even in those far-off days--and
in acrostics, and in the acceptance of one or two short stories, which
had been actually published in a magazine that did not pay for
contributions (it was edited by a clergyman of the Church of England,
and the chaplain to a real duke), which magazine has gone the way of
many magazines, and is now as extinct as the dodo. It was in the year
1853, or a month or two earlier, that I wrote my first novel--which,
upon a moderate computation, I think, would make four or five good-sized
library volumes, but I have never attempted to 'scale' the manuscript.
It is in my possession still, although I have not seen it for many
weary years. It is buried with a heap more rubbish in a respectable old
oak chest, the key of which is even lost to me. And yet that MS. was the
turning-point of my small literary career. And it is the history of that
manuscript which leads up to the publication of my first novel; my first
step, though I did not know it, and hence it is part and parcel of the
history of my first book--a link in the chain.

[Illustration: AT TWENTY]

[Illustration: drawing by Geo. Hutchinson

signed: Yours Very Truly,

F. W. Robinson

(_From a photograph by Elliott & Fry_)]

When that manuscript was completed, it was read aloud, night after
night, to an admiring audience of family members, and pronounced as fit
for publication as anything of Dickens or Thackeray or Bulwer, who were
then in the full swing of their mighty capacities. Alas! I was a better
judge than my partial and amiable critics. I had very grave
doubts--'qualms,' I think they are called--and I had read that it was
uphill work to get a book published, and swagger through the world as a
real live being who had actually written a novel. There was a faint
hope, that was all; and so, with my MS. under my arm, I strolled into
the palatial premises of Messrs. Hurst & Blackett ('successors to Henry
Colburn' they proudly designated themselves at that period), laid my
heavy parcel on the counter, and waited, with fear and trembling, for
some one to emerge from the galleries of books and rows of desks beyond,