Adrien Leroy
By Charles Garvice
It was a cold night in early spring, and the West End streets were nearly deserted. The great shutters of the shops were being drawn down with a dull rumble, and every moment the pavements grew more dreary looking as the glories of the plate-glass windows were hidden.
Tired workers with haggard faces were making their way homeward; to them, the day was at an end. But to the occupants of the whirring taxis and smart motors, as they sped westward, the round of their day was but halfway through; for them, the great ones of the earth, the all-important hour of dinner was at hand.
At the entrance of one of the most luxurious clubs in Pall Mall two men, in immaculate evening dress, stood carelessly surveying the hurrying throngs of people.
“Seven,” said one, as the hour struck from the nearest church. “I thought Standon said seven.”
“Yes, and like a woman, meant half-past,” returned the other, hiding a yawn.
“Stan’s too young to value his dinner properly, but Leroy ought to have been punctual. Oh, here is Stan!” as a slight, well-dressed man sprang hastily from a smart motor and came towards them.
“Hello!” said the newcomer, shaking hands, “you two fellows first? I hope I’m not late, Shelton.”
“Of course you’re late,” growled Shelton, with characteristic pessimism. “You always are, and Leroy is worse. Come along, we may as well wait inside as in this beastly draught.”
Genre: Fiction And Literature | Religion
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Charles Garvice
Charles Garvice (24 August 1850 – 1 March 1920) was a prolific British writer of over 150 romance novels, who also used the female pseudonym Caroline Hart. He was a popular author in the UK, and the United States and translated around the world. He was ‘the most successful novelist in England’, according to Arnold Bennett in 1910. He published novels selling over seven million copies worldwide by 1914, and since 1913 he was selling 1.75 million books annually, a pace which he maintained at least until his death. Despite his enormous success, he was poorly received by literary critics and is almost forgotten today.
Biography
Charles Andrew Garvice was born on 24 August 1850 in or around Stepney, London, England, the son of Mira Winter and Andrew John Garvice, a bricklayer. In 1872, he married Elizabeth Jones and had two sons and six daughters. Garvice suffered a cerebral hemorrhage on 21 February 1920 and was in a coma for eight days until his death on 1 March 1920.
Until recently not much has been known about Garvice’s personal life. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography said “Little .. is known of his family origins and personal life. Obscurity envelops.” John Sutherland in the Companion to Victorian Literature said “Little is known of Garvice’s life.” In 2010, English freelance author and editor Steve Holland did an exhaustive search of baptismal records, genealogy databases, and census records to build a picture of his early life.
Garvice is buried in Richmond Cemetery. W. Somerset Maugham, who met him at The Garrick, described Garvice as “a modest, unassuming, well-mannered man. I am convinced that when he sat down to turn out another of his innumerable books, he wrote as one inspired, with all his heart and soul.”
Writing career
Garvice got his professional start as a journalist. His first novel, Maurice Durant (1875), was marginally successful in serialized form, but when published as a novel, it was a “dismal failure”. He concluded it was too long and too expensive for popular sales – this early experience taught him about the business side of writing. He would spend the next 23 years writing serialized stories for the periodicals of George Munro. Magazine stories included A Modern Juliet, Woven in Fate’s Loom, On Love’s Altar, His Love So True, and A Relenting Fate. The unexpected success of Just a Girl (1895) in America brought him attention in the UK and encouragement to resume his career as a novelist – from then on every novel he published became a best-seller in England. He reworked many of his magazine stories as novels, and by 1913, Garvice was selling 1.75 million books annually, a pace which he maintained at least until his death. Garvice published over 150 novels, selling over seven million copies worldwide by 1914. Just a Girl was filmed in 1916. According to Garvice’s agent Eveleigh Nash, Garvice’s books were as “numerous in the shops and on the railway bookstalls as the leaves of Vallombrosa.” He was ‘the most successful novelist in England’, according to Arnold Bennett in 1910.
In 1904, capitalizing on his wealth as a best-selling author, Garvice bought a farm estate in Devon, where he wanted to work the land in “the genuine, dirty, Devonshire fashion.” Like the characters in his novels, he romantically dreamed of a life happily ever after, lord of a country manor. He wrote about it in his one non-fiction book A Farm in Creamland.
Charles Garvice
