Signed. 'Tomorrow (Friday) I deliver number 12 of 'The Czar's Chief Spy' . 12 numbers at £4 are £48. I have received £20 which leaves a balance due of £28. I am staying at home to get on with the story but my wife will be in town tomorrow Friday and will call on you. If you can let her have a cheque for the £28 it will be a convenience.’
'Dear Madam [...] I am glad you like the number. It is so difficult to judge ones' own work. It is like a man building a home, a brick at a time - only those who stand a little way off & can tell how it looks. My wife will bring in No. 12 to-morrow and I shall finish the story before Easter. By the way is there any objection to printing my name?'
Signed. ‘My wife tells me you don’t care for the “Fag” - Before deciding will you try it on one or two of the youngsters – office boys for choice? I wrote the story when I was a boy myself and I think it has the boy’s point of view – They take themselves very seriously and what seems pompous and priggish to us seems all right to them. Charlie Brown – no bad judge of what the youngsters want - offered me £25 for the story a year or so after it appeared. I have an idea for a new serial more in the Duffer vein which I should like to submit to you later. The title I have in my mind is 'Max teh Magnificent'.'
Headed notepaper: The Aldine Publishing Company Ltd., 1, 2 and 3 Crown Court, Chancery Lane, London. Signed and annotated/corrected in hand. 'I have read the abbreviated edition of 'Barrington's Fag', and find that your alterations do not touch the weak points which I have indicted to you and which principally concern the construction of sentences. So serious are these short-comings, that I am afraid nothing short of re-writing the first instalment, including the dormitory fight, which is not at all good, and the careful editing of the second up to say the sixth will suffice. After that I notice you have settled down more into your stride and written with greater confidence. From this point, I think you might leave the necessary touching up to me, but the opening chapters require far more than I can possibly give at present. [...] Failing this, I am afraid I cannot promise early acceptance, for as I told you, I have already two serials in hand, though they do not quite meet my immediate requirements.'
Headed notepaper: The Aldine Publishing Company Ltd., 1, 2 and 3 Crown Court, Chancery Lane, London. Signed. 'In view of the Easter holidays I shall be glad to have another instal. of 'Captain's Fag' by Wednesday next. Perhaps it would be well to rewrite this so as to ensure a strong commencement.'
Headed notepaper: Yes or Not - One Penny Weekly, 11 Gough Square, Fleet Street, London. Signed. 'Make the story either two or three instalments if necessary, but not more than three.’
Headed notepaper: Ward Lock & Co. Limited Publishers, Warwick House, Salisbury Square, London. Jottings on verso. 'We have duly read and considered the MS of your story entitled 'A Regular Duffer' which you kindly submitted for our consideration, but regret to say that we cannot see our way to make an offer for the publication of the same.'
Headed notepaper: The Aldine Publishing Company Ltd., 1, 2 and 3 Crown Court, Chancery Lane, London. Signed. 'I will look into the cheque matter tomorrow, and let you have the balance due for 'The Captain's Fag'. As to your terms for a continuation of 'The Adventures of the Duffer' I am sorry that these are too far beyond us to warrant my discussing the matter further. No one regrets this more than I do, I can assure you.'
Headed paper: London Daily Mail, London Evening News, Fiction Department, 2 Carmelite House, Carmelite Street, London. Addressed to H A Allingham, 5 Broughton Road, Ealing. 'If you had kept your story, the first instalment of which I return herewith, to human interest, I fancy I could have made you an offer for it, but as it is, I am afraid it becomes altogether too wild and improbable for my requirements. I like the way in which you have written it, and I do not see why, if you will remember our talk the other day, you should not write us a really good story. I must impress on you that the interest be of humanity and not of wild and improbable schemes.' Signed.
