[Illustration: Drawing with signature below:
I sat down on the spot, and wrote something which took a prize in the weekly competition. This emboldened me to enter for the great stakes.
[Illustration: I SAT DOWN AND WROTE SOMETHING]
There were various events. I resolved to enter for two. One was a short novel, and the other a comedietta. The '5_l._ humorous story' competition I did not go in for; but when the last day of sending in MSS. for that had passed, I reproached myself with not having despatched one of my manuscripts. Modesty had prevented me sending in old work, as I felt assured it would stand no chance, but when it was too late I was annoyed with myself for having thrown away a possibility. After all I could have lost nothing. Then I discovered that I had mistaken the last date, and that there was still a day. In the joyful reaction I selected a story called 'Professor Grimmer,' and sent it in. Judge of my amazement when this got the prize (5_l._), and was published in serial form running through three numbers of _Society_. Last year, at a Press dinner, I found myself next to Mr. Arthur Goddard, who told me he had acted as Competition Editor, and that quite a number of now well-known people had taken part in these admirable competitions. My painfully laboured novel only got honourable mention, and my comedietta was lost in the post.
But I was now at the height of literary fame, and success stimulated me to fresh work. I still marvel when I think of the amount of rubbish I turned out in my seventeenth and eighteenth years, in the scanty leisure of a harassed pupil-teacher at an elementary school, working hard in the evenings for a degree at the London University to boot. There was a fellow pupil-teacher (let us call him Y.) who believed in me, and who had a little money with which to back his belief. I was for starting a comic paper. The name was to be _Grimaldi_, and I was to write it all every week.
'But don't you think your invention would give way ultimately?' asked Y. It was the only time he ever doubted me.
'By that time I shall be able to afford a staff,' I replied triumphantly.
Y. was convinced. But before the comic paper was born, Y. had another happy thought. He suggested that if I wrote a Jewish story, we might make enough to finance the comic paper. I was quite willing. If he had suggested an epic, I should have written it.