| His name is Dr. Fu Manchu and of course you know him, know his inscrutable look and
his pale rheumy eyes, hooded like an old hawk's. You know, too, that he would be a
pretty nasty fellow to meet, for evil, as we understand it, is to him a mere phrase. What
secrets are there in the depths of his oriental mind? You might as well cross-examine the
Sphinx. It is enough to say that he is Fu Manchu, and some millions of people in the world
know who Fu Manchu is.
A House in Clapham
For Fu Manchu, though he is an institution, saw the light of day in a lodging house in
Clapham. He put his creator, who was a struggling young writer, in Easy Street. And as Fu
Manchu would never die and would never lie down, he went on in his exuberant life from
book to book.
Up to date he has made a mere £150,000 for the young Irishman who created him. His
adventures have been translated into every European language. One has to go back to a
certain other young Irishman who created Sherlock Holmes to think of a parallel.
You want to know all about Fu Manchu? You want to know whether there is a Fu Manchu in
fact as well as fiction. You might hope to see him in Limehouse Causeway or down in
Liverpool's dockland. You might wonder whether he has muscled in on the warlord racket or
whether he has fixed one all-seeing-eye on Manchukuo. You might want to know whether he's
yellow or just the Yellow Peril.
He Just Happened
You would argue that somewhere there must be a counterpart, some village Fu Manchu who
has been born to blush unseen. You would say that this man whom we know so well couldn't
just have happened. He might have been touched up a bit, you will say, but there must have
been something to go on.
Well, you can ask the author. He's a very affable fellow and modest with it. He talks
of Fu Manchu as you or I would talk of the Smiths or the Robinsons, or the people next
door. Just that same air of nonchalant friendliness.
You can ask him and he will tell you in the most casual way that Fu Manchu just
happened, that he built him up as laboriously as a sculptor fashions a figure, putting on
a bit here and taking off a bit there, until, lo and behold! there it is in its
completeness.
How did the idea come? Well, it's a good story.
In those pre-Manchu days Sax Rohmer, a young Irishman, was doing what all young
Irishmen are supposed to do---that is to say, take London by storm. The storm was a lot
way farther off than next week's rent. He searched around for a plot, but no plot came.
One day was just like another, and there was not a great deal to show for it.
But let Sax Rohmer tell his own story:
"I was a young man and I was ambitious. I had written my first story at seventeen,
and I had not written another one; perhaps that was why.
Hoping and Arriving
"All the time I thought it would be very nice to be an author; you know the sort
of thing that appeals to young men in rooms in a London suburb. I suppose all young men in
lodgings want to be writers; the trouble is that there are so many lodgings!
"Looking back on those days I was happy enough. You know Stevenson's line about it
being better to travel hopefully that to arrive, though I don't think that's true. It
would be much better traveling hopefully if you knew you were going to arrive, some day,
somehow, somewhere.
"A few of us shared a studio in Clapham Old Town, and we liked to tell one another
what we were going to do when we were famous. We also told our guests. How we managed to
entertain I don't know. The pièce de résistance was roast potatoes and the other course
was shredded wheat. There was beer, of course.
Enter Planchette
"The illusion of fame never left me even at Clapham station. But don't put that
down or you will get lots of Claphamites writing in to say that beauty is in the eye of
the beholder or something of the sort.
"Well, one of the fellows and I bought a planchette board. We were always asking
it questions. I remember I asked it whether I should ever be a success as a writer of
fiction, and it said that I would. When I asked it in what direction it answered the one
word 'Chinaman.' We asked it again and still the answer was definitely
and unmistakenly 'Chinaman.' I couldn't understand it at all for I knew nothing in those
days about China or Chinamen.
Mr. Sax Rohmer's hands on the planchette board
that told him he would be a success as a writer,
and added the word "Chinaman."
The Chinaman developed into Dr. Fu Manchu.
I must have remembered that when I sat down to write a book some time afterwards. All
the usual types had been worked to death and so I lighted on the idea of a Chinaman, and
what a Chinaman he was going to be!
"He was to be rather tall and rather gaunt, with a tremendous cranial development
as befits a genius. So I began to build him up. Then I thought he ought to have some sort
of defect, so I made him have a kind of film over the eyes, as with a bird. It was a new
one on medical science and still is, but there it was. He was to be a great linguist---a
man who knew every civilised language and many dialects. He was to be absolutely
impersonal, not criminal according to his own way of thinking, for he was true to his
consuming desire to revoltionise civilisation. He was to be the embodiment of the idea
that the East has been gaining knowledge while we have been building machines, the supreme
master mind hovering on the border of madness, as so great a genius would.
He Caused Trouble
"That was how I turned him over in my mind. Well, when I began to write, it seemed
that I knew the man intimately. He assumed his own shape and there he was. He was a
success and has continued so. I have now written seven books about him---the Daily
Sketch is to publish the seventh---and from beginning to end and taking everything
into account I suppose he has made me about £150,000.
"He has brought me in a spot of bother as well. When I was in New York some years
ago the Chinese students at Columbia University organised a protest and, I believe, went
to the Chinese Consul about him; said he misrepresented the Chinese character. All I can
say is that Fu Manchu is Fu Manchu. He can't help that; no more than I can.
Well, that's the story of the sinister doctor of the Orient. Next time you see him
looking out at you with his inscrutable eyes you will know how he came to be there. |
