Thank you for your letter just received. I was of course very interested in what you tell me - an interest not unmixed with gratification, because of the nice things you have to say about my work on Union Jack. It is now some years since I relinquished the editorship of that paper — or rather of its reincarnation Detective Weekly — after running it for fifteen years, and of course a lot has happened in that time, a good deal of which I can still remember which may be of interest to you.

Naturally I am always glad to meet so interested and knowledgeable a person as yourself, and would be able to discuss the events and personalities of those old days, now passed into history.

May I say meanwhile, I am very impressed by your interest and activities as such a dedicated hobbyist. This sort of hobby seems to me to involve a great deal of detective work, such as would be exercised by Sexton Blake himself, and much exchange of information with others likewise interested. Strangely, it was not till I had been running the paper for some years, that I ever heard there was any interest other than by the week-to-week reader, and then only in the vaguest way, aware merely of the fact there were such people as collectors. I have also learned that there is far more to this pursuit than just the accumulation of back numbers. In your own case, there is the additional achievement — on which you are to be much commended — of compiling the Gwyn Evans book, which I imagine must have been done by the 'Information Received' method.

I was Editor of the Union Jack when this erroneous claim was made, perpetrating it in my editorial page of the 1,000th number as far as I can recall, and perhaps on other occasions too. But those I have forgotten. However, in all instances it was my actual belief that Sexton Blake's initial appearance was in No. 2 of the Union Jack. There was a practical, but mistaken reason for that belief. In explaining the situation it should be emphasised that the editorial routine of producing a packed paper every week, with little assistance, hardly leaves time for research. An Editor's facilities are not those of the historian. But on this 1,000 number occasion I did consult the first U.J. volume, mainly for the purpose of obtaining the first Blake cover for reproduction. While doing this I turned up what my predecessor had to say in No. 1 about his forthcoming attraction in No. 2. Regrettably, I haven't copies of these pioneer issues handy at the moment and cannot quote verbatim, though perhaps one of your fellow collectors will be able to do so, incidentally shedding some light on the earliest Blake data question, and also on the literary origin of Sexton Blake himself.

Again relying on memory; he described the type of character this new detective was to be, suggesting that he was modelled on the Sherlock Holmes of Mr Conan Doyle (This was before Holmes' creator got his knighthood.) There was also other information, such as that the Union Jack would never publish stories of a kind to encourage boys to run off with their employer's money, which I quoted in the 1,000 editorial, but of which I likewise have no copy at hand, so cannot be more precise. The acknowledgment of Sexton Blake's literary paternity I judged better not to emphasise.

Now the implication about all this is that I knew nothing of any previous appearance of Blake in the Marvel, which is a fact. There was a volume of the Marvel on the same shelf as Vol. 1 of the Union Jack, but I doubt I ever even handled it. I was not interested in the Marvel. So that the assertion for which I was alone responsible — that Blake first saw print in our No. 2 was a genuine assertion. It was motivated by no wish to claim false credit, and the late Walter Dexter’s historic Marvel discovery was as much surprise to me as collectors generally. I was led astray by that deceptive editorial in No. 10.

It was a case of pure ignorance - inexcusable except that hard driven editors can only envy rather than emulate the leisured, scholarly approach of the collector. Had it been otherwise in my case, this dark suspicion of fact concealment and credit-stealing would never had arisen, but I am happy, even at this late stage, to be able to dissipate a mystery that threatened to remain ever unsolved.

Incidentally on this same subject, Mr W. H. Back, an early U.J. Editor and then Editorial Director of the Amalgamated Press, once told me that, at a time when he had been running a succession of adventure stories, and wished to feature another detective yarn, he looked through the file of past issues, and came across the forgotten No. 2 and a name that appealed to him. Thus Sexton Blake was resuscitated — for quite a while, as it turned out. It occurs to me that this anecdote may have been another factor leading me to the belief that Blake was born in no other paper than the Union Jack.

I was most interested to learn that you had recently met Edwy Searles Brooks. Next time you see him, give him my kind regards. I always had a very high opinion of his work on the Union Jack and consider him one of my best authors. You say that Edwy was surprised to learn that I am still alive? Well I could say the same for him, as I believe he is several years older than me! You certainly have me puzzled, when you say that Alfred Edgar took over The Nelson Lee from Harold May — first I have ever known about it. I knew Edgar very well indeed, by daily contact. A very clever writer, he was one of the very few Blake authors who really made a name for himself in later years. He wrote a play entitled 'The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse' which was a great hit at the Haymarket Theatre, made a lot of money, and went out to Hollywood to write film scripts.

The person I think who took over the Nelson Lee Library was H. T. (Jimmy) Cauldwell, and I should remember this clearly enough, because The Nelson Lee Library was produced in the same set of rooms, or department, at that time. Certainly I can say with complete confidence that Jimmy Cauldwell was producing the N. L. L. because they had moved his desk for some reason into a corner of my office — where he stayed for months and months, editing the Lee in my actual presence.

Coutts Armour was an Australian, big chap with a beard, who walked around like a swagman with sack on his shoulder — usually filled up with books he had bought down the Farringdon Street market. "Coutts Brisbane" and "Reid Whitley" were two of his pen-names. I first met him when I was editing Detective Library in 1919 in the same office as The Robin Hood and Praire Libraries run by Len Pratt — who afterwards ran the Sexton Blake Library for 35 years. Armour claimed to have originated from a famous English family steeped in history — hence his great interest in historical matters, in which he was a specialist, and really had good knowledge of this subject generally. Only trouble was that his A.P. Robin Hood stories were marred here and there by a kind of heavy-handed whimsicality he couldn't somehow bear to forgo. Armour's character was Dr. Ferraro — certainly not all that popular, like so many of the others. I don't know the circumstances of how he took over Gunga Dass from H. Gregory Hill (probably when Hill died in 1932). At that time I had far more important things on my mind — the change of Union Jack to Detective Weekly.

I would never seek to discount the story-telling ability of Gwyn Evans — in fact just the contrary, for it was because I estimated has work so highly that I bought has stories so often. The stimulating gusto of Evans was not lost on me but it is a fact — and an unrecognised fact — that his manuscripts meant for me a lot of corrective work — unfairly left for me to do. He was incredibly slapdash and irresponsible in these matters. Also, I was sometimes disappointed that the story hadn't turned out as brilliantly as it seemed in the first place. I say 'first place' because nobody will ever know, and I myself have forgotten, all the hours I have sat with him in pubs and places hammering out the details of an idea that I had given him for a story or series. The 'Onion Men' and 'Mr Mist' were two that come to mind — there must have been many more — including some of the highly esteemed Christmas stories. And, apart from initiating and polishing the story itself, there was the presentation of it in the paper, with all sorts of little ideas and garnishings that seem to all add up to the Golden Age of the Union Jack.

I was much amused to see that Maurice Bond in the first volume of the Collectors Digest praises and picks out a paragraph of Gwyn Evans which was my very own. He quotes a passage which is in my own typical if inferior style — and this, maybe, also indicates my opinion on those who claim to be able to identify an author’s style by just reading through a few paragraphs.