A FAMOUS LITERARY PARTNERSHIP.

Evening Star, Issue 9774, 2 August 1895, Page 4

A FAMOUS LITERARY PARTNERSHIP.

One of the moat successful instances of the collaborating system that has been witnessed in our time (writes Mr Percy Fitzgerald) is that of Besant and Rice. For James Rice, the quondam partner of Besant, I had a great liking—he was a cheery, straightforward man, a Jew, as I suspect. He had run thrugh a fortune in the sporting way, and had now turned to literature. He had bought for a song ‘ Once a Week,’ then become a sort of common “rag,” whose office was at a tumble-down place, a third floor in Fleet street, with hardly any furniture. I recollect my first visit there, when a queer mau—a partner of his—came out drying his hands, with a towel. This did not promise well. 1 began a story in it called ‘The Foragers.’ Our first interview was grotesque enough, the two men sitting solemnly opposite while I explained the plot of the story. The business partner did not think much of it, and Rice gravely put questions;: “And now that Mrs Forager, what does she do?” as though it were a real person. He wrote himself for the journal a rather feeble story called ‘ The Mortimers,’ which staggered along for some months; also a tale called ‘ The Cambridge Freshman,’ founded on his own reminiscences of college days. . . . Falling in with Mr Besant he began their system of collaborating wi.h the story of ‘ Ready Money Mortiboy,’ which appeared in ‘Once a Week.’ This “caught on,” as it is called, and attracted attention. Ho once described to me their method. They were great friends, and used to meet at nights over the fire and talk out their story. Rice was full of suggestions in a general way, though but an indifferent workman. It is plain, of course, from what Besant has since written, that he did all the “writing” and the general details. Rice; no doubt, struck out this and that idea in their discussions. I often met him afterwards, when he was full of spirit and of plans. He knew how to “work” the thing perfectly, and made sound contracts in the colonial and American markets. He and Besant went out to the States-were entertained right royally, passed free over all (he railways, saw the booksellers, and had altogether great success. These were the palmy days of “foreign rights,” when a good deal of money was to be made in that way. Rice died rather suddenly, and I was sorry for him.