COMRADES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 103, 3 May 1930, Page 4 (Supplement)

COMRADES.

SUCCESSFUL MARRIAGES. WIFE AND SECRETARY TO A FAMOUS AUTHOR. (By MRS. EDGAR WALLACE.) I can say—with justifiable pride—that I have had the best training of any woman to become a helpful wife. Mind you, I don't say I am the most helpful type of wife —only that I have had more chances than any other woman I know. For years before I married Edgar Wallace, I acted as his secretary. During these years I learnt how to work for him —I learnt how to understand his way of working, and hence his own personality. My mind adapted itself to his thinking processes. Our relations now rest on the basis thus gradually built up. Little by little I learnt to attend to the practical side of his life's , work and to make conditions easy for his creative genius. •I haven't any idea why Edgar chose me out of the number of young women that applied for the post of secretary to him. He tells me it was because I could do arithmetic. Most of the other young women wanted to become his secretary because they knew he was the coming journalist and writer. They had literary ambitions of their own —and I suppose secretly hoped that they would be able to advise or inspire him, their future chief. I had no such romantic ideas, I knew I could no more write a story than ride a kangaroo, and I told him so. I said that I was an efficient typist and bookkeeper. And that was exactly what he wanted. My first week's work was a revelation to me. I realised I was the secretary to no ordinary journalist. I had worked for journalists before, but this man beat all records in the,rate at which he turned out brilliant and finished articles and stories. He would begin early ill tlie morning—B.3o usually, and then, till lunch time there was a steady stream of dictation. He used to pace the room like a hungry tiger, dictating his articles, his stories, his plots to me. I used to take them straight down on my typewriter because he had not the patience to let me transcribe from shorthand. After a short break for lunch we used to go on again, Edgar^—or Mr. Wallace, as he was then—dictating hour after hour with scarcely a break, till late into the night. We used to go on till he had finished —it was often one or two in the morning before I closed my desk. The Value of Peace. I learnt in the first week, too, that Edgar valued peace more than anything else on earth. He hated the telephone, the door bell, anything in fact that signalled visitors or interruption. It was my business to preserve his peace, to allow nothing to come between him and his work. This was the most difficult task of many I had to undertake for him. If it did nothing else for me, it developed my imagination. When insistent visitors would refuse to be put off with, "Mr. Wallace is in the country" or "Mr. Wallace is out of town," I used to confide as though it were a very great secret, "Mr. Wallace left for India this morning," or "Mr. Wallace is in bed with a broken head." I enjoyed working for Edgar Wallace more than I enjoyed working before. It was an education to me to see his masterly handling of things. He trained me, too, to act quickly and to be thorough even at tasks that I disliked. He never slacked, and he never expected mo to slack. ' People are still incredulous when I say that he wrote twelve novels in a year. But it is a fact that he still turns out material sufficient for that number today. The only difference is that some of his work has been diverted into other channels as, for example, toward the theatre and the screen. Appeal To Judgment. I think the first and greatest compliment Edgar Wallace ever paid me was when he asked for my opinion on an idea he was working out for a novel. 1 was greatly flattered. But still I knew that I must show sound judgment, or he would never ask me again. The idea for the story appealed to me, but I did not like the way he intended carrying it out. I told him bo, and to my surprise he agreed with me. He carried out my suggested alterations and, that book, "Bones Of The River," was one of the earliest to bring him international popularity. .Edgar ever since has asked for my opinion on whatever novel or play lie contemplates writing. He values my criticism—because he says, it is essentially practical. I worked for Edgar Wallace from 1917 till 1921 and then I marrjid him and, contrary to most people's expectations, I did not stop ( working for him. _ His work had grown as much mine as his by then. I knew it inside out—my part of it. He could not possibly have managed (without me, and I had no intention of leading a domestic life—for I'm not cut out for that. I continued typing his stories, listening to his ideas, criticising them, and keeping people away from him —in a word, 1 kept my secretarial post. Indeed, after I married Edgar Wallace I found I had even more to do than in the days when I could hand in my resignation without going to law about it! Edgar had begun writing plays by then in all earnest. As I was always detailed off to do the practical side of things J. was told I had to manage the entire business of these plays he intended producing. I had been well trained, so I didn't give in" to my desire to say that which the majority of wives in my place might have been tempted to say, "But I don't know how . . ." Managing Plays. I began to learn instead the A B C of the theatre business. People who belong in the theatrical world have been born and bred to it, whereas I had only the vague knowledge of the outsider. Experienced theatrical managers know the comparative value of every producer, every leading lady, every leading man, in short, they understand the details of stage production and do much of their work mechanically and with little effort. On the other hand for me, an outsider, to learn it all in a hurry, was a great deal more difficult than it sounds. Nevertheless, it was all left to me. It was I that engaged managers, assistant producers, stars and the lesser lights of the cast. It was I who had to draw up contracts and adjust the infinitely delicate matter of salaries. The training given me by my former chief and present husband was not

wasted, however, and I was soon at home in the work. Besides all this, I was in charge of the art direction of the play. I had to supervise every detail of the dresses worn on the stage and every article of furniture tjiat went to a set. There were specialists, of 'course, who worked under me, but I had to organise their activities and pass the final word on their work, for the full responsibility rested on me. Edgar, on the other hand, did the actual producing. showed-the actors how he wanted each line said, and indicated every movement on the stage, although even here I was called in to pass judgment. I think Edgar would like me to have done some of the producing myself, but I am horribly shy, and I should never have dared . tell a great actor or actress-—before a number of other great actors and actresses —of their stage faults. A Successful Venture. The first play we managed together was really my choice. Edgar had Written several plays, and he ached to put one of them on the stage. He chose one which I thought would prove a complete failure, so I suggested instead a favourite of mine. He was a little sceptical, but as my judgment so far had been. pretty good he decided to take a chance. That play was " The Squeaker," and' it was, as everyone knows, an enormous success. Edgar was so penitent for having doubted my taste for a minute that he gave me a present—a two-seater Rolls Royt'e—to make up for it. I am afraid this all reads as though Edgar and I had no common interests save that of his work. It would indeed be a very poor state of affairs if I had not been able to become something more than a super secretary after I married. But that isn't the case, for Edgar and I do enjoy and share the lighter side of life as well. We don't always work. There are times when we spend whole days together in our country house at Bourne End. Then Edgar lies stretched luxuriously on a deck chair doing nothing at all save pulling Penelope's

gold curls, and I remonstrate or encourage as I think fair. Penslope is our little daughter, and the naughtiest rascal six years of life could make her. We have one ruling passion in common—we love the turf, and on our " off days" there is nothing that thrills us more than going to the races. And I encourage Edgar to take "off days." Perhaps this is where I have helped him most, for Edgar never knew when to stop working, and I made him realise the truth of the old saying, " All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy," which applies even to the indefatigable Edgar Wallace.— ("Star" and AA.&.S.)?