One day, when I was small, my grandmother called me to her knee, and asked me if I knew where the White House was. No doubt I did, for I not only knew the town well, being a truant, but the green country for many a mile around. However, I did not know the house by name, and shook my head, at the same time looking at her with some anxiety, thinking that the White House was a place to whitewash the souls of wicked boys. Then she began to describe its beautiful situation, its numerous windows, the long drive through trees and the acres of green land that surrounded it. Did I know it now? I should think I did. It stood a long way back off a main road, and we truants often passed it. And we knew the apple orchard which belonged to that house, but was a long way from it; and it was less than a week before my grandmother asked this question, that I and a boy called "Trousers" had trespassed on the land, and filled our pockets and open shirts with red apples. So, when she continued talking about this house, I became a great deal confused, thinking that someone had been to her making enquiries of me; and I only had one thought to console me—"Trousers" was guilty also. My relief can be imagined when I found that such was not the case, but that my grandmother was thinking of her own days of childhood and, having no one else near, could not contain herself, but must make a confidant of a thoughtless boy, or—to use her own words—"a little black and a rodney." She was looking at the child that was dead in her, and could not feel me tremble at her knee, nor see my colour come and go. However, when I began to see that she knew nothing of my doings, and began to speak of her own childhood, I gradually became interested.

The White House, it seemed, had once belonged to a relative, and my grandmother had lived there for several months as a little girl. Now, my grandmother was an only child, and that she was allowed out of her mother's care for several months seemed strange. Perhaps it was owing to domestic strife. Her mother had married a worthless fellow who had at last drunk himself to death. So, I suppose she sent her only child away while she took steps to get rid of him and make a comfortable home of her own. Having a little property, and being a woman of great spirit, she ordered him out of the house and dared him to enter again. After which she started a small private school and, having the rent of four little houses, lived happy with her only child. No doubt she had come of good birth and was well educated. It was much against her wish that her daughter married my grandfather, in spite of his being captain of his own vessel—because of his want of education. Nevertheless, she lived to see her daughter married to an honest and affectionate man, even though his grammar was bad, and his roaring voice was not ashamed of it.

However, what interested me now was to hear from my grandmother that the lady at the White House had not only been very beautiful, but had been clever enough to write a book. As to her looks, my grandmother said that she and her husband made such a fine pair that even people that met them often turned and looked after them. They were both very tall, he being six feet three inches, and she being six feet; and they looked so stately that people made their admiration heard. My grandmother said that they were so fond of each other that they always walked arm-in-arm, as when lovers; and for this reason they were admired by those who would otherwise have frowned on their rich clothes and proud grace. But one day, when they had returned from riding, he, in assisting her from her horse, squeezed her breast, and this accident somehow caused her death. Such was my grandmother's account of former occupants of the White House. When I told these things to "Trousers," saying that we ought not to have robbed that orchard, he claimed that we had a right to the apples, because my grandmother used to live there. It was a great consolation to hear this, but still, I claimed the only right, and trusted that he would not lead others there on the sly.

But what I mean to say is this—the wonderful effect it had on me, young as I was, to hear that a relative of mine, however distant, had written a book! My feelings will be understood by all those who remember what books were to them as children. To children books do not reach millions, nor thousands; and when they have a book they think it is the first and last copy, and never dream that there are thousands more. It would be very hard to describe a child's opinion of a book, but there are thousands of grown people who are as innocent of the business side of literature, and who are still children in their knowledge of books. In fact, speaking of my own experience, I did not know until three or four years ago but what books must be published on their merit, and could not be published otherwise. I did not know, what I know so well now, that any person with money can publish a book, and that merit has little to do with it before publication, however much it may assist it after. Even now, speaking as the author of five books, I am still being surprised at the business side of literature. I find that books are pleasant things to brood on in an egg state, but that they are no sooner hatched and begin to move than they fill one with disgust and disappointment; and the author feels like the hen that without knowing hatched a brood of ducklings and, to her disgust, saw them run into the water.

Even in those early days I had made up my mind to write a book, so that it can be imagined what a sacred place the White House became to me. Day after day I thought of the lovely tall lady; and it was not her height, grace, or beauty, nor her wealth and social position that were uppermost in my thoughts—but that she had written a book! Time and again I asked my grandmother the name of it, but she could not tell. Of course I was too young to think of enquiring the author's name, and going to libraries, and trying to trace it that way. Very few grown people would have had sense enough for that.

Thinking of these things has led me to the contrast of literature as it seems to the young, and what it really is to a man of experience. You could never persuade a young man—and very few old men—that he could be one of the best writers of the day and yet starve, had he not the assistance of private means. "True," people say, "men of genius have starved, but the fault was that they were not recognized in their day." But the real truth is that a man may be so much recognized that the world's praise of his work would make a very large book indeed, and yet he may not have a second shirt to his back. It would be impossible to make people believe that a man could be so famous as to be invited to the houses of the great and yet be so shabby in appearance that beggars meet him on the road and, taking him for one of themselves, say, "Hallo! mate; what's yer luck?" And that when he did meet people of consequence, he had to sneak into back slums at night and sleep in a common lodging-house. People could not be made to believe any of these things while a man lives, but after he is dead they will believe anything.

XXXVII