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you had a whacking great studio in which to do your work. And she worked there, and she had on the floor beside her - she was working away at illustrations - a typescript. And I said, "What's that?" And she said, "Oh, it's the latest Grey Rabbit book." So I picked it up and read it and I said, "Any chump could write this," or words to that effect. (It's incorrect, because any chump can't do it!) But she immediately said, "Well, if you think you can do it, why don't you do one? You write one, and I'll illustrate it for you." So I went out and bought myself a Woolworth notebook, and I wrote it in longhand. The only thing I did to make it a bit different was to do a little drawing of a mouse or some flowers, or something - daisies, I think - on the front of it, and I painted "Potter Pinner Meadow, by Mollie Kaye" on the cover. And I sent it in like that to Collins.
Billy Collins himself used to come in on Friday evening - he'd go down to a house in the country every weekend - and say, "Anything that you think is worthwhile taking down?" And they'd give him two manuscripts, or whatever they thought was any good. And he'd take them down and read them to his children (one of them told me only the other day that he remembered having my book read to him, which I thought was rather nice). Billy only took mine that weekend because it was so small! He told me afterwards that he had asked, "What's this?" and his secretary picked it up and threw it in the wastebasket and said, "Some idiot who doesn't know that you must send in a manuscript typed, one-side-of-the-paper-only, doubled spacing. Billy stooped and picked it out because he was going to a party and he was dressed in rather a nice suit, and he thought it wouldn't spoil the fit of his suit, which I always thought was rather nice. He put it in his pocket and took it down, and he read it that weekend to his children - straight out of the Woolworth notebook.
That was when you enrolled in the lending library?
M M Kaye: Well, that was what was called a "tuppenny library." You didn't enrol, you just produced tuppence, and you asked for a book. If you had ideas about what kind of a book you wanted, you had a look `round. I merely used to hand in my tuppence and say, "Give me a book." They never had anything really very good - they never had the expensive books, or anything. Seven and six was the cost of a new novel, so you never got a new novel. There were very few paperbacks in those days - but there were three-and-sixpenny editions, cheaper hardcover editions, so they had some of those, and some of what were known in those days simply as Penguins (when you said, "I want a Penguin," you meant any paperback, because there were no others). I think they cost sixpence.
That was in the late thirties, wasn't it'?
M M Kaye: This was about '37, '38, you see. I read those in the evening, and it took me about an evening to read them - they were mostly romances. And an awful lot of thrillers - murder stories. I was still a Chelsea Illustrator; during the day I was working, and I had friends around, but I did find the evenings - alone, and on my own in London - extremely long and dreary, and I was very upset, because I wasn't feeling particularly, social. I'd been devoted to my father, and I missed him like hell. So, rather than sit around in gloom, I wanted something to occupy my mind. Having drawn all day, I used to read in the evening merely for something to do. Most of the stuff I was reading was total rubbish, and of some of them I used to think, "Well, for goodness sake, I couldn't write worse."
And it was then that it occurred to me that whoever wrote these books was probably being paid a great deal more than I was with my drawings. So I thought to myself, "I'll try." So I sat down and wrote one. I sent it off and immediately got 65 pounds from Hutchinson. It was called Six Bars at Seven, and it was my very first effort. Why on earth they published it, I don't know. By the time it came out, in '39, we were practically involved in a war - and my book was all about a noble fellow who managed to foil the villains who were proposing to start World War II.
And it was shortly after that - before you could write another one - that you went back to India, am I right?
M M Kaye: Well, Hutchinson gave me an advance, you see. The 65 pounds was more than enough to pay my passage. I didn't take a return fare, which I could have done - I took it one way only, hoping I would make enough on the books to be able to get back. I got to India and went straight up to Simla to see my sister, who'd been married before my father died, as I wanted to see my first nephew. I'd also been invited by a girl whose parents were going out to the Andaman Islands, because her father was being sent as chief commissioner of the Andamans. Oddly enough, my father, years before, had had a very great friend who was chief commissioner of the Andamans (who) used to write these lyrical descriptions of the islands to daddy - so I had a very romantic idea about the Andamans, which was quite correct, as it turned out.
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