To some extent I had the wires greased for me by my brother, Cosmo Hamilton, and it was his influence, and his expert touches to my little drama “Menders of Nets,” which caused it to be produced at the Royalty Theater, with a distinguished cast, including the beautiful Beryl Faber and that great actor Arthur Holmes-Gore. It was well received, and I had visions of motor cars and other fruits of success, which suddenly withered when the announcement was made that the play was to be withdrawn after a few performances. What had happened was an ultimatum presented to Otho Stuart, the manager of the Royalty Theater, by Albert Chevalier who, in the same bill, was playing another one-act drama, called “The House.” My “Menders of Nets” played for something over an hour, and ended in a tragic scene in a fisherman’s cottage. When the curtain rang up again for Albert Chevalier, the second play began with gloom and tragedy in the same key as mine, and the audience had had enough of this kind of atmosphere. “Either ‘Menders of Nets’ must be changed,” said Chevalier, “or I withdraw ‘The House.’” That, anyhow, was the explanation given to me, and off came my piece.
This blow was followed by another, more amazing. Three other one-act plays of mine were accepted by a gentleman reputed to be enormously rich, who took one of the London theaters for a “triple bill” season. Unfortunately, before the production of my little plays, he was overwhelmed in debt, abandoned his theatrical schemes, and departed for the Continent with the only copies of my three efforts, which I have not seen or heard of from that day to this.
Drama seemed to me too hazardous an adventure for a man who has to pay the current expenses of life, and I turned to other forms of writing to keep the little old pot boiling on the domestic hearth. I became for a time a literary “ghost.”
It is ironical and amusing that three books of mine which achieved considerable financial success and obtained great and favorable publicity were published under another man’s name. He wanted _kudos_, and I wanted a certain amount of ready cash, in order to pay the rent and other necessities of life. I agreed readily to write a book for him--and afterward two more--for a certain fixed sum. As it happened, I think he not only obtained the _kudos_, but a fair profit as well. As I had been well paid, I was perfectly content.