Posted by Yuletide Kid on March 14, 2007 at 15:17:10 from 68.221.54.65:
Dear Farnoholics--
Whilst abed recovering from a flu most exotic, I came upon this from James Mackay's excellent biography 'Robert Service: Vagabond of Verse' (page 216):
... Another friend of this period (Paris 1913) was the novelist Jeffrey (Mackay's mistake, not mine) Farnol, who had the same English publisher as Robert (did he, Pat?). When he offered 'The Broad Highway' to Fisher Unwin he was told that it was too lengthy. Savagely he tore out a chunk from the middle, saying, "That will make it short enough." Even then, it was overlong, but the publisher accepted it and it was an immediate success. "In Paris society he wore a huge pair of knee-high boots, but despite them he was gay and ebullient as if he had on dancing pumps."
Unfortunately Mackay is rather loose with his pronouns in this paragrpah. I presume that the "he" in the last sentence was Jeffery Farnol, not Robert Service, as Service was of the shy and retiring type and the source would seem to be Robert Service, himself.
As ever,
The Yuletide Kid