Harlan Ellison, sir? Lor’ bless you. Of course I remember Harlan Ellison. Why if it wasn’t for Harlan Ellison, I doubt I’d even be in this line of work.
I first met Harlan Ellison in Paris in 1927. Gertrude Stein introduced us at one of her parties. “You boys will get on,” she said. “Harlan’s a writer. Not a great writer, like I am. But I hear he makes up stories.”
Harlan looked her in the eye, and told her exactly what he thought of her writing. It took him fifteen minutes and he never repeated himself once. When he finished, the whole room applauded. Gertie got Alice B. Toklas to throw us out into the rain, and we stumbled around Paris, clutching a couple of wet baguettes and a half a bottle of an indifferent Bordeaux.
“Where are the snows of yesteryear?” I asked Harlan.
He pulled out a map from an inside pocket, and showed me.
“I would never have guessed that was where they end up,” I told him.
“Nobody does,” he said.
Harlan knew all kinds of stuff like that. He was braver than lions, wiser than owls, and he taught me a trick with three cards which, he said, would prove an infallible method of making money if I was down on my luck.
The next time I saw Harlan Ellison was in London, in 1932. I was working in the music halls, which were still going fairly strong, though they weren’t what they used to be. I had worked up a mentalist’s act, in a small way. I wasn’t exactly bottom of the bill—that was Señor Moon and his Amazing Performing Budgerigar—but I was down there. That was until Harlan came along. He found me at the Hackney Empire vainly trying to intuit the serial number on a temperance crusader’s ten-shilling note. “Give up this mentalism nonsense, and stick with me, kiddo,” he said. “You’ve got a drummer’s hands, and I’m a man needs a drummer. Together, we’ll go places.”
We went to Goole and Stoke Poges and Accrington and Bournemouth. We went to Eastbourne and Southsea and Penzance and Torquay. We were doing literature: dramatic storytelling on the seafront to move and entertain the ice-cream-licking multitudes, wooing them away from the baggy-trousered clowns and the can-can girls, the minstrel shows and the photographer’s monkey.
We were the hit of the season wherever we went. I’d bang my drum to gather the people around, and Harlan would get up there and tell them one of his stories—there was one about a fellow who was the Paladin of the Lost Hour, another about a man who rowed Christopher Columbus ashore. Afterwards I would pass the hat around, or simply take the money from the hands of the stunned holidaymakers, who would tend simply to stand there when Harlan had finished, their mouths agape, until the arrival of the Punch and Judy man would send them fleeing to the whelk stall in confusion.
One evening, in a fish and chip shop in Blackpool, Harlan confided his plans to me. “I’m going to go to America,” he told me. “That’s where they’ll appreciate me.”
“But, Harlan,” I told him, “we’ve got a great career here, performing on the seafronts. That new dramatic monologue of yours about the chappie who had no mouth but had to scream anyway—there was almost thirty bob in the hat after that!”
“America,” said Harlan. “That’s where it’s at, Neil.”
“You’ll have to find someone else to work the seafronts of America with, then,” I told him. “I’m staying here. Anyway, what’s America got you won’t find in Skegness, or Margate, or Brighton? They’re all in a hurry in America. They’ll not stand still long enough for you to tell them one of your stories. That one about the mind-reading fellow in the prison, why it must have taken you almost two hours to tell.”
“That,” said Harlan, “is the simplicity of my plan. Instead of going from town to town, I shall write down my stories, for people to read. All across America they’ll be reading my stories. America first, and then the world.”
I must have looked a little dubious, for he picked up a battered saveloy from my plate and used it to draw a map of America with little arrows coming out of it on the table, using the vinegary tomato catsup as paint.
“Besides,” asked Harlan, “where else am I going to find true love?”
“Glasgow?” I suggested bravely (for I “died” once as a mentalist at the Glasgow Empire), but he was obviously no longer listening.
He ate my battered saveloy and we headed back to the streets of Blackpool. When we got to the seafront I banged my little drum until we had gathered together a small crowd, and Harlan proceeded to tell them a story about a week in the life of a man who accidentally telephoned his own house, and he answered the telephone.
There was almost fifty shillings in the hat at the end of that story. We split the proceeds, and Harlan caught the next train to Liverpool, where he said he thought he could work his passage on a steamer, telling stories to the people on board. There was one about a boy and his dog he thought would go over particularly well.
I hear he’s doing all right in the New World. Well, here’s to him. And as an occasional toiler in the fields of literature myself, I often have cause to remember, with pleasure, all the things I learned back then from Harlan Ellison.
I’m still using them now.
Anyway, sir. Three cards. Round and round and round they go, and where they stop, nobody knows. Are you feeling lucky today? D’you think you can find the lady?
I wrote this for the ReaderCon 11 program book, 1999. It is not to be factually relied on.