Poor Lascelles Wraxall, clever writer and editor, press-man and literary adviser, real Bohemian and true friend--indeed, everybody's friend but his own--I look back at him with feelings of deep gratitude. He was a rolling stone, and when I met him for the first time in my life, years afterwards, he had left Marlborough Street for the Crimea; he had been given a commission in the Turkish Contingent at Kertch; he had come back anathematising the Service, and 'chock full' of grievances against the Government, and he became once more editor and sub-editor, and publisher's hack even, until he stepped into his baronetcy--an empty title, for he had sold the reversion of the estates for a mere song long ago--and became special correspondent in Austria for the _Daily Telegraph_. And in Vienna he died, young in years still--not forty, I think--closing a life that only wanted one turn more of 'application,' I have often thought, to have achieved very great distinction. There are still a few writing men about who remember Lascelles Wraxall, but they are 'the boys of the old brigade.'
It was to Lascelles Wraxall I sent, when finished, 'The House of Elmore,' as the reader may very easily guess. Wraxall had stepped so much out of his groove--for the busy literary man that he was--to take me by the hand, and point the way along 'the perilous road;' he had given me so many kind words, that I wrote my hardest to complete my new story before I should fade from his recollection. The book was finished in five weeks, and in hot haste, and for months again I was left wondering what the outcome of it all was to be; whether Wraxall was reading my story, or whether--oh, horror!--some other reader less kindly disposed, and more austere and critical, and hard to please, had been told off to sit in judgment upon my second MS.
I went back to chess for a distraction till the fate of that book was pronounced or sealed--it was always chess in the hours of my distress and anxiety--and I once again faced Charles Kenny, and once again wondered if he knew, and how much he knew, whilst he was deep in his king's gambit or his giuoco piano; but he was not even aware that I had sent in a second story, I learned afterwards. And then at last came the judgment--the pleasant, if formal, notice from Marlborough Street that the novel had been favourably reported upon by the reader, and that Messrs. Hurst & Blackett would be pleased to see me at Marlborough Street to talk the matter of its publication over with me. Ah! what a letter that was!--what a surprise, after all!--what a good omen!