New-York tribune., 1921-03-06
Three Famous Literary Partnerships Are Ended
Husbands and Wives
Who Collaborated
on Fiction
BY Samuel Abbott

By Samuel Abbott
~ HE recent deaths Of Egerton
Castle and c. N. Williamson
suggest a trinity Of literary
osrtnerships in each of which a
wife was an able and sympathetic
+ ,ouaborator with her husband. The
ihird couple was Thomas W. and
Nary E. Hanshew, broken by death
few years ago but kept alive to-
day in the carrying on to compile
ton by the wife Of few odd plots
not fully wrought out in the days
II actual cooperation
There is distinct gradation in
qalues in the case of the three
teams, if such they may be called.
No one who has been in touch with
British fiction during the last quar-
ter century will deny that the
Castles easily rank first, followed
quite closely by the Williamsons,
and with the Hanshews an indiffer-
ent third.
Of the Old Chivalry
Egerton Castle was a proper fig-
srs Of man. physically and intel
:ectually In him was no little OF
the mood and the blood of the mer
who marched to Senlac with Harold
or crossed swords with adventurers
Of Europe in the days Of the Bor-
gias and the Roi Soleil of France.
His forerunner might have been the
Admirable Crichton. 1t was not
strange that he, lover and a his
.orian Of the sword, should have
found his first heroes in character
whose right hands knew the hill,
Of rapier or a saber. 1t was q
warrant of his ability to handle the
weapon of his fancy, his being
chosen without question to captain
the British saber team at the Oly1n-
ric games of 1908.
In 1884, at the age Of twenty-six,
Castle wrote his first book, a treatise
a. the art of fencing, entitled
Schools and Masters of Fence. This
Has followed almost Immediately
b. his popular public lecture on
The Story of Swordsmarship." In
1885 he joined the staff of The Sat
urday Review, and it was during his
literary residence with this journal
that he completed his first novel,
Consequences, bit of work that
displayed but a glimmer of what
he had in him to bring forth.
The First Romance
His Light of Scarthey, 1895, in
splred, perhaps, by Blackmore's
sprnghaven, was an ambitious try
at romantic novel. Where Black
more wrote of the menace of Ma
po!eon in 1903 Castle projected
against the famous Hundred Days of
1913 the Lancashire coast and a
lighthouse, that of Scarthey. There
was much whirling adventure in the
book, especially in the doings of
daredevil smugglers and privateers.
The marriage of Egerton Castle
and Mary Sweetman gave English
aetlon a new note. Just what each
contributed in the blending of ideas
snd Ideals cannot be estimated. A
close study of the chapters of any
one OF their many novels fails to un-
cover the trail of either writer in
'he path of the plot. That the man
imagined and gave form to the
heroic factors of composition and
'ne woman fashioned the softer fig
uFes OF old custom and youthful
love Is fair guess. Their initial
novel, The Pride of Jennico,
sormed the heights of popularity.
When read to-day it holds it's own
remarkably well. Set it on a shelf
Win Hopes The Prisoner of Zenda,
meyman's The Story of Francis
eiudde and Mason's The Four
.eashers and you'll have a long look
''' . quartet of rattling good adven-
'urs yarns to dislodge them.
Jennico's Pride
Following the Zenda motif. the
Issues transferred an Englishman,
ssptain Basil Jennico, to Moravia
~ ITO. The captain was a scion
y. IA old family, and his inheritance
vast estate in the country lust