IN 1877, when I was living in Twickenham, near London, my sister Una happened to be describing a queer character she had met that day: she had a gift for making swift and vivid portraits in words. “He was a little Rumpty-Dudget of a man,” she said, concluding her description. She may have meant to say, “Rumpelstiltskin,” the name of a dwarf immortalised in the Grimm fairy-tales, with which we had been familiar in our childhood. But her variation struck me soundly, and I said to myself, I’ll write a story about him!
But, in truth, the story, upon that inspiration, wrote itself. I had a fine time with it, and my own children, to whom it was read in manuscript, heartily approved it. Then Alexander Strahan, the publisher, and the first editor of the famous Contemporary Review, saw it and proclaimed, with many a Scottish burr, that it was “a varra fine piece of worrk, my boy, and does ye credit,” and he carried it off and published it in his new magazine for children. Afterward, the eminent firm of Longmans, Green and Longmans, of Paternoster Row, hard by Saint Paul’s, in London, considered it and said, “If you can collect half a dozen others of the same sort, we would be glad to issue them in a volume.” It was easy for me, in the late ’70’s, to do that, though now that I am in the late seventies myself, I should beg off.
So a little green-and-gold book was printed. It was called “Yellow-Cap, and Other Fairy Tales,” and bore the great Longmans’ imprint. And they sold, I believe, a great many of them; but the only story in the collection about which readers afterward wrote to me, was “Rumpty-Dudget’s Tower”; and today, after nearly five and forty years, I still receive occasional kind words on the subject. My mischievous little dwarf manifested vitality.
Of course, the Longmans volume has long been out of print. But in the latter part of 1878, I came back to America, after a twelve-year stay abroad, and found my friend Richard Watson Gilder riding high as editor of The Century, and subordinate to him a delightful young fellow named Clark, who was conducting a magazine for young people. They had seen Rumpty-Dudget and wanted to republish it in the latter periodical. So I sold them the American copyright, and thought I was doing well. Could I not write a dozen as good or better tales whenever I had a mind to? Such is the self-confidence of an author whose years are but thirty-six!
Soon, letters began to come from children and from their mothers, saying pleasant things about the story, and asking for more like it. But things which I thought of more importance occupied me, and I postponed complying with their requests: besides, my sister Una had gone to Heaven, and could no longer inspire me with her word. Letters continued to come, however, and presently they were from mothers who had been children when the story first appeared, and now wanted the old story for children of their own, and asked me to publish it in book form. I began to regret not having kept my American copyright, because when I suggested its return to me by the Century people, they would reply that they intended, when they could get down to it, to reprint the story themselves. So I was fain to wait, and to bid my correspondents to do likewise.
But editors die in the course of time, and properties change hands, and I myself lost track of the matter, though those letters still kept on arriving from time to time. I wish I had kept them; there must have been hundreds. The children who had become mothers were grandmothers now and wanted the story for their grandchildren: but nothing could be done. Poor Rumpty-Dudget was buried beyond digging-up again—so it seemed. Would a tribe of great-grandchildren arise, once more miraculously knowing about the story, and demanding its resurrection?
At all events, about the first of the New Year, I got a letter from Frederick A. Stokes Company of New York, in consequence of which negotiations took place, leading up to the publication of the present little volume. Rumpty-Dudget Redivivus! He bears a bad character in the tale, but there must really be something good in him. And now he makes his bow to little persons who were not born into this world until nearly half a century after he left it. When I look at the list of the year’s books, it strikes me that he appears in strange and alien company. But that is not my affair: I choose to feel complimented on his account, and I hope he will make new friends.
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