"What royalty?" I asked.

"Five per cent.--on a three-and-six-penny book."

"Very well. Thank you!" I said.

"I'll give you fifteen per cent, after the sale of five thousand

copies," he added kindly.

O ironist!

I emerged from the web of the spider triumphant, an accepted author.

Exactly ten days had elapsed since I had first parted with my

manuscript. Once again life was plagiarizing fiction. I could not

believe that this thing was true. I simply could not believe it. "Oh!" I

reflected, incredulous, "Something's bound to happen. It can't really

come off. The publisher might die, and then----"

Protected by heaven on account of his good deeds, the publisher

felicitously survived; and after a delay of twelve months (twelve

centuries--during which I imagined that the universe hung motionless and

expectant in the void!) he accomplished his destiny by really and truly

publishing my book.

The impossible had occurred. I was no longer a mere journalist; I was an

author.

"After all, it's nothing!" I said, with that intense and unoriginal

humanity which distinguishes all of us. And in a blinding flash I saw

that an author was in essence the same thing as a grocer or a duke.

IX

My novel, under a new title, was published both in England and America.

I actually collected forty-one reviews, of it, and there must have been

many that escaped me. Of these forty-one, four were unfavourable, eleven

mingled praise and blame in about equal proportions, and twenty-six were

unmistakably favourable, a few of them being enthusiastic.

Yet I had practically no friends on the press. One friend I had, a man

of power, and he reviewed my book with an appreciation far too kind; but

his article came as a complete surprise to me. Another friend I had,

sub-editor of a society weekly, and he asked me for a copy of my book so

that he might "look after it" in the paper. Here is part of the result:

"He has all the young novelist's faults. . . . These are glaring faults;

for, given lack of interest, and unpleasant scenes, how can a book be

expected to be popular?"

A third friend I had, who knew the chief fiction-reviewer on a great

morning paper. He asked me for a special copy of my book, and quite on

his own initiative, undertook to arrange the affair. Here is part of the

result:

"There is not much to be said either for or against---- by Mr.----"

I had no other friends on the press, or friends who had friends on the

press.

I might easily butcher the reviews for your amusement, but this practice

is becoming trite. I will quote a single sentence which pleased me as

much as any:--"What our hero's fate was let those who care to know find

out, but let us assure them that in its discovery they will read of

London life and labour as it is, not as the bulk of romances paint it."

All the principal organs were surprisingly appreciative. And the

majority of the reviewers agreed that my knowledge of human nature was

exceptionally good, that my style was exceptionally good, that I had in

me the makings of a novelist, and that my present subject was weak. My

subject was not weak; but let that pass. When I reflect how my book

flouted the accepted canons of English fiction, and how many aspects of

it must have annoyed nine reviewers out of ten, I am compelled to the

conclusion that reviewers are a very good-natured class of persons. I

shall return to this interesting point later--after I have described how

I became a reviewer myself. The fact to be asserted is that I, quite

obscure and defenceless, was treated very well. I could afford to smile

from a high latitude at the remark of "The New York----" that "the story

and characters are commonplace in the extreme." I felt that I had not

lived in vain, and that kindred spirits were abroad in the land.

My profits from this book with the exceptional style and the exceptional

knowledge of human nature, exceeded the cost of having it typewritten by

the sum of one sovereign. Nor was I, nor am I, disposed to grumble at

this. Many a first book has cost its author a hundred pounds. I got a

new hat out of mine.

What I did grumble at was the dishonour of the prophet in his own

county. Here I must delicately recall that my novel was naturalistic,

and that it described the career of a young man alone in London. It had

no "realism" in the vulgar sense, as several critics admitted, but still

it was desperately exact in places, and I never surrounded the head of a

spade with the aureole of a sentimental implement. The organ of a great

seaport remarked: "We do not consider the book a healthy one. We say no

more." Now you must imagine this excessively modern novel put before a

set of estimable people whose ideas on fiction had been formed under the

influence of Dickens and Mrs. Henry Wood, and who had never changed

those ideas. Some of them, perhaps, had not read a novel for ten years

before they read mine. The result was appalling, frightful, tragical.

For months I hesitated to visit the town which had the foresight to bear

me, and which is going to be famous on that score. I was castigated in

the local paper. My nearest and dearest played nervously with their

bread when my novel was mentioned at dinner. A relative in a distant

continent troubled himself to inform me that the book was fragmentary

and absolutely worthless. The broader-minded merely wished that I had

never written the book. The discreet received it in silence. One

innocent person, for whom I have the warmest regard, thought that my

novel might be a suitable birthday present for his adolescent son. By

chance he perused the book himself on the birthday eve. I was told that

neither on that night nor on the next did he get a wink of sleep. His

adolescent son certainly never got my book.

Most authors, I have learnt on enquiry, have to suffer from this strange

lack of appreciation in the very circle where appreciation should be

kindest; if one fault isn't found, another is; but they draw a veil

across that dark aspect of the bright auctorial career. I, however, am

trying to do without veils, and hence I refer to the matter.

X

My chief resigned his position on the paper with intent to enliven other

spheres of activity. The news of his resignation was a blow to me. It

often happens that when an editor walks out of an office in the exercise

of free-will, the staff follows him under compulsion. In Fleet Street

there is no security of tenure unless one is ingenious enough to be the

proprietor of one's paper.

"I shall never get on with any one as I have got on with you," I said to

the chief.

"You needn't," he answered. "I'm sure they'll have the sense to give you

my place if you ask for it." "They" were a board of directors.

And they had the sense; they even had the sense not to wait until I

asked. I have before remarked that the thumb of my Fate has always been

turned up. Still on the glorious side of thirty, still young,

enthusiastic, and a prey to delightful illusions, I suddenly found

myself the editor of a London weekly paper. It was not a leading organ,

but it was a London weekly paper, and it had pretensions; at least I

had. My name was inscribed in various annuals of reference. I dined as

an editor with other editors. I remember one day sitting down to table

in a populous haunt of journalists with no less than four editors.

"Three years ago," I said to myself, "I should have deemed this an

impossible fairy tale." I know now that there are hundreds of persons in

London and elsewhere who regard even editors with gentle and

condescending toleration. One learns.

I needed a sub-editor, and my first act was to acquire one. I had the

whole world of struggling lady-journalists to select from: to choose was

an almost sublime function. For some months previously we had been

receiving paragraphs and articles from an outside contributor whose

_flair_ in the discovery of subjects, whose direct simplicity of style

and general tidiness of "copy," had always impressed me. I had never

seen her, and I knew nothing about her; but I decided that, if she

pleased, this lady should be my sub-editor. I wrote desiring her to

call, and she called. Without much preface I offered her the situation;

she accepted it.

"Who recommended me to you?" she asked.

"No one," I replied, in the rôle of Joseph Pulitzer; "I liked your

stuff."

It was a romantic scene. I mention it because I derived a child-like

enjoyment from that morning. Vanity was mixed up in it; but I argued--If

you are an editor, be an editor imaginatively. I seemed to resemble

Louis the Fifteenth beginning to reign after the death of the Regent,

but with no troublesome Fleury in the background.

"Now," I cried, "up goes the circulation!"

But circulations are not to be bullied into ascension. They will only

rise on the pinions of a carefully constructed policy. I thought I knew

all about journalism for women, and I found that I knew scarcely the

fringe of it. A man may be a sub-editor, or even an assistant-editor,

for half a lifetime, and yet remain ignorant of the true significance of

journalism. Those first months were months of experience in a very

poignant sense. The proprietary desired certain modifications in the

existing policy. O that mysterious "policy," which has to be created and

built up out of articles, paragraphs, and pictures! That

thrice-mysterious "public taste" which has to be aimed at in the dark

and hit! I soon learnt the difference between legislature and executive.

I could "execute" anything, from a eulogy of a philanthropic duchess to

a Paris fashion letter. I could instruct a fashion-artist as though I

knew what I was talking about. I could play Blucher at the Waterloo of

the advertisement-manager. I could interview a beauty and make her say

the things that a beauty must say in an interview. But to devise the

contents of an issue, to plan them, to balance them; to sail with this

wind and tack against that; to keep a sensitive cool finger on the

faintly beating pulse of the terrible many-headed patron; to walk in a

straight line through a forest black as midnight; to guess the riddle of

the circulation-book week by week; to know by instinct why Smiths sent

in a repeat-order, or why Simpkins' was ten quires less; to keep one eye

on the majestic march of the world, and the other on the vagaries of a

bazaar-reporter who has forgotten the law of libel: these things, and

seventy-seven others, are the real journalism. It is these things that

make editors sardonic, grey, unapproachable.

Unique among all suspenses is the suspense that occupies the editorial

mind between the moment of finally going to press and the moment of

examining the issue on the morning of publication. Errors, appalling and

disastrous errors, will creep in; and they are irremediable then. These

mishaps occur to the most exalted papers, to all papers, except perhaps

the "Voce della Verità," which, being the organ of the Pope, is

presumably infallible. Tales circulate in Fleet Street that make the

hair stand on end; and every editor says: "This might have happened to

_me_." Subtle beyond all subtleties is the magic and sinister change that

happens to your issue in the machine-room at the printers. You pass the

final page and all seems fair, attractive, clever, well-designed. . . . Ah!

But what you see is not what is on the paper; it is the

reflection of the bright image in your mind of what you intended! When

the last thousand is printed and the parcels are in the vans, then you

gaze at the unalterable thing, and you see it coldly as it actually is.

You see not what you intended, but what you have accomplished. And the

difference! It is like the chill, steely dawn after the vague poetry of

a moonlit night.

There is no peace for an editor. He may act the farce of taking a

holiday, but the worm of apprehension is always gnawing at the root of

pleasure. I once put my organ to bed and went off by a late train in a

perfect delirium of joyous anticipation of my holiday. I was recalled by

a telegram that a fire with a strong sense of ironic humour had burnt

the printing office to the ground and destroyed five-sixths of my entire

issue. In such crises something has to be done, and done quickly. You

cannot say to your public next week: "Kindly excuse the absence of the

last number, as there was a fire at the printers." Your public recks not

of fires, no more than the General Post Office, in its attitude towards

late clerks, recognizes the existence of fogs in winter. And herein

lies, for the true journalist, one of the principal charms of Fleet

Street. Herein lies the reason why an editor's life is at once

insufferable and worth living. There are no excuses. Every one knows

that if the crater of Highgate Hill were to burst and bury London in

lava to-morrow, the newspapers would show no trace of the disaster

except an account of it. That thought is fine, heroic, when an editor

thinks of it.

And if an editor knows not peace, he knows power. In Fleet Street, as in

other streets, the population divides itself into those who want

something and those who have something to bestow; those who are anxious

to give a lunch, and those who deign occasionally to accept a lunch;

those who have an axe to grind and those who possess the grindstone. The

change from the one position to the other was for me at first rather

disconcerting; I could not understand it; there was an apparent

unreality about it; I thought I must be mistaken; I said to myself:

"Surely this unusual ingratiating affability has nothing to do with the

accident that I am an editor." Then, like the rest of the owners of

grindstones, I grew accustomed to the ownership, and cynical withal,

cold, suspicious, and forbidding. I became bored by the excessive

complaisance that had once tickled and flattered me. (Nevertheless,

after I had ceased to be an editor I missed it; involuntarily I

continued to expect it.) The situation of the editor of a ladies' paper

is piquantly complicated, in this respect, by the fact that some women,

not many--but a few, have an extraordinary belief in, and make

unscrupulous use of, their feminine fascinations. The art of being "nice

to editors" is diligently practised by these few; often, I know, with

brilliant results. Sometimes I have sat in my office, with the charmer

opposite, and sardonically reflected: "You think I am revolving round

your little finger, madam, but you were never more mistaken in your

life." And yet, breathes there the man with soul so uniformly cold that

once or twice in such circumstances the woman was not right after all? I

cannot tell. The whole subject, the subject of that strange, disturbing,

distracting, emotional atmosphere of femininity which surrounds the male

in command of a group of more or less talented women, is of a supreme

delicacy. It could only be treated safely in a novel--one of the novels

which it is my fixed intention never to write. This I know and affirm,

that the average woman-journalist is the most loyal, earnest, and

teachable person under the sun. I begin to feel sentimental when I think

of her astounding earnestness, even in grasping the live coal of English

syntax. Syntax, bane of writing-women, I have spent scores of

ineffectual hours in trying to inoculate the ungrammatical sex against

your terrors! And how seriously they frowned, and how seriously I

talked; and all the while the eternal mystery of the origin and destiny

of all life lay thick and unnoticed about us!

These syntax-sittings led indirectly to a new development of my

activities. One day a man called on me with a letter of introduction. He

was a colonial of literary tastes. I asked in what manner I might serve

him.

"I want to know whether you would care to teach me journalism," he said.

"Teach you journalism!" I echoed, wondering by what unperceived alchemy

I myself, but yesterday a tyro, had been metamorphosed into a professor

of the most comprehensive of all crafts.

"I am told you are the best person to come to," he said.

"Why not?" I thought. "Why shouldn't I?" I have never refused work when

the pay has been good. I named a fee that might have frightened him, but

it did not. And so it fell out that I taught journalism to him, and to

others, for a year or two. This vocation suited me; I had an aptitude

for it; and my fame spread abroad. Some of the greatest experts in

London complimented me on my methods and my results. Other and more

ambitious schemes, however, induced me to abandon this lucrative field,

which was threatening to grow tiresome.

XI

I come now to a question only less delicate than that of the conflict of

sexes in journalism--the question of reviewing, which, however, I shall

treat with more freedom. If I have an aptitude for anything at all in

letters, it is for criticism. Whenever I read a work of imagination, I

am instantly filled with ideas concerning it; I form definite views

about its merit or demerit, and having formed them, I hold those views

with strong conviction. Denial of them rouses me; I must thump the table

in support of them; I must compel people to believe that what I say is

true; I cannot argue without getting serious in spite of myself. In

literature, but in nothing else, I am a propagandist; I am not content

to keep my opinion and let others keep theirs. To have a worthless book

in my house (save in the way of business), to know that any friend of

mine is enjoying it, actually distresses me. That book must go, the

pretensions of that book must be exposed, if I am to enjoy peace of

mind. Some may suspect that I am guilty here of the affectation of a

pose. Really it is not so. I often say to myself, after the heat of an

argument, a denunciation, or a defence: "What does it matter, fool? The

great mundane movement will continue, the terrestrial ball will roll

on." But will it? Something must matter, after all, or the mundane

movement emphatically would not continue. And the triumph of a good

book, and the ignominy of a bad book, matter to me.

The criticism of imaginative prose literature, which is my speciality,

is an over-crowded and not very remunerative field of activity. Every

intelligent mediocrity in Fleet Street thinks he can appraise a novel,

and most of them, judging from the papers, seem to make the attempt. And

so quite naturally the pay is as a rule contemptible. To enter this

field, therefore, with the intention of tilling it to a profitable

fiscal harvest is an enterprise in the nature of a forlorn hope. I

undertook it in innocence and high spirits, from a profound instinct. I

had something to say. Of late years I have come to the conclusion that

the chief characteristic of all bad reviewing is the absence of genuine

conviction, of a message, of a clear doctrine; the incompetent reviewer

has to invent his opinions.

I succeeded at first by dint of ignoring one of the elementary laws of

journalism, to-wit, that editors do not accept reviews from casual

outsiders. I wrote a short review of a French work and sent it to "The

Illustrated London News," always distinguished for its sound literary

criticism. Any expert would have told me that I was wasting labour and

postage. Nevertheless the review was accepted, printed, and handsomely

paid for. I then sent a review of a new edition of Edward Carpenter's

"Towards Democracy" to an evening paper, and this, too, achieved

publicity. After that, for some months, I made no progress. And then I

had the chance of a literary _causerie_ in a weekly paper: eight hundred

words a week, thirty pounds a year. I wrote a sample article--and I well

remember the incredible pains I took to show that Mrs. Lynn Linton's "In

Haste and at Leisure" was thoroughly bad--but my article was too

"literary." The editor with thirty pounds a year to spend on literary

criticism went in search of a confection less austere than mine. But I

was not baulked for long. The literary column of my own paper (of which

I was then only assistant-editor) was presented to me on my assurance

that I could liven it up: seven hundred words a week, at twelve and

sixpence. The stuff that I wrote was entirely unsuited to the taste of

our public; but it attracted attention from the seats of the mighty, and

it also attracted--final triumph of the despised reviewer!--publishers'

advertisements. I wrote this column every week for some years. And I got

another one to do, by asking for it. Then I selected some of my best and

wittiest reviews, and sent them to the editor of a well-known organ of

culture with a note suggesting that my pen ought to add to the charms of

his paper. An editor of sagacity and perspicacity, he admitted the

soundness of my suggestion without cavil, and the result was mutually

satisfactory. At the present time.[2] I am continually refusing critical

work. I reckon that on an average I review a book and a fraction of a

book every day of my life, Sundays included.

"Then," says the man in the street inevitably, "you must spend a very

large part of each day in reading new books." Not so. I fit my reviewing

into the odd unoccupied corners of my time, the main portions of which

are given to the manufacture of novels, plays, short stories, and longer

literary essays. I am an author of several sorts. I have various strings

to my bow. And I know my business. I write half a million words a year.

That is not excessive; but it is passable industry, and nowadays I make

a point of not working too hard. The half million words contain one or

two books, one or two plays, and numerous trifles not connected with

literary criticism; only about a hundred and fifty thousand words are

left for reviewing.

The sense of justice of the man in the street is revolted. "You do not

read through all the books that you pretend to criticize?" he hints. I

have never known a reviewer to answer this insinuation straightforwardly

in print, but I will answer it: No, I do not.

And the man in the street says, shocked: "You are unjust."

And I reply: "Not at all. I am merely an expert."

The performances of the expert in any craft will surprise and amaze the

inexpert. Come with me into my study and I will surprise and amaze you.

Have I been handling novels for bread-and-cheese all these years and not

learnt to judge them by any process quicker than that employed by you

who merely pick up a novel for relaxation after dinner? Assuming that

your taste is fairly sound, let us be confronted with the same new

novel, and I will show you, though you are a quick reader, that I can

anticipate your judgment of that novel by a minimum of fifty-five

minutes. The title-page--that conjunction of the title, the name of the

author, and the name of the publisher--speaks to me, telling me all

sorts of things. The very chapter-headings deliver a message of style.

The narrative everywhere discloses to me the merits and defects of the

writer; no author ever lived who could write a page without giving

himself away. The whole book, open it where I will, is murmurous with

indications for me. In the case of nine books of ten, to read them

through would be not a work of supererogation--it would be a sinful

waste of time on the part of a professional reviewer. The majority of

novels--and all these remarks apply only to novels--hold no surprise for

the professional reviewer. He can foretell them as the nautical almanac

foretells astronomical phenomena. The customary established popular

author seldom or never deviates from his appointed track, and it is the

customary established popular author upon whom chiefly the reviewer is a

parasite. New authors occasionally cause the reviewer to hesitate in his

swift verdicts, especially when the verdict is inclined to be

favourable. Certain publishers (that is to say, their "readers") have a

knack of acquiring new authors who can imitate real excellence in an

astonishing manner. In some cases the reviewer must needs deliberately

"get into" the book, in order not to be deceived by appearances, in

order to decide positively whether the author has genuine imaginative

power, and if so, whether that power is capable of a sustained effort.

But these difficult instances are rare. There remains the work of the

true artist, the work that the reviewer himself admires and enjoys: say

one book in fifty, or one in a hundred. The reviewer reads that through.

Brief reflection will convince any one that it would be economically

impossible for the reviewer to fulfil this extraordinary behest of the

man of the street to read every book through. Take your London morning

paper, and observe the column devoted to fiction of the day. It

comprises some fifteen hundred words, and the reviewer receives, if he

is well paid, three guineas for it. Five novels are discussed. Those

novels will amount to sixteen hundred pages of printed matter. Reading

at the rate of eight words a second, the reviewer would accomplish two

pages a minute, and sixteen hundred pages in thirteen hours and twenty

minutes. Add an hour and forty minutes for the composition, and we have

fifteen hours, or two days' work. Do you imagine that the reviewer of a

London morning paper is going to hire out his immortal soul, his

experience, his mere skill, at the rate of thirty-one and sixpence per

day on irregular jobs? Scarcely. He will earn his three guineas inside

three hours, and it will be well and truly earned. As a journeyman

author, with the ability and inclination to turn my pen in any direction

at request, I long ago established a rule never to work for less than

ten shillings an hour on piecework. If an editor commissioned an

article, he received from me as much fundamental brain-power and as much

time as the article demanded--up to the limit of his pay in terms of

hours at ten shillings apiece. But each year I raise my price per hour.

Of course, when I am working on my own initiative, for the sole

advancement of my artistic reputation, I ignore finance and think of

glory alone. It cannot, however, be too dearly understood that the

professional author, the man who depends entirely on his pen for the

continuance of breath, and whose income is at the mercy of an illness or

a headache, is eternally compromising between glory and something more

edible and warmer at nights. He labours in the first place for food,

shelter, tailors, a woman, European travel, horses, stalls at the opera,

good cigars, ambrosial evenings in restaurants; and he gives glory the

best chance he can. I am not speaking of geniuses with a mania for

posterity; I am speaking of human beings.

To return and to conclude this chapter. I feel convinced--nay, I

know--that on the whole novelists get a little more than justice at the

hands of their critics. I can recall many instances in which my praise

has, in the light of further consideration, exceeded the deserts of a

book; but very, very few in which I have cast a slur on genuine merit.

Critics usually display a tendency towards a too generous kindness,

particularly Scottish reviewers; it is almost a rule of the vocation.

Most authors, I think, recognize this pleasing fact. It is only the

minority, rabid for everlasting laudation, who carp; and, carping,

demand the scalps of multiple-reviewers as a terrible example and

warning to the smaller fry.

[Footnote 2: 1900.]

XII

Serial fiction is sold and bought just like any other fancy goods. It

has its wholesale houses, its commercial travellers--even its trusts and

"corners." An editor may for some reason desire the work of a particular

author; he may dangle gold before that author or that author's agent;

but if a corner has been established he will be met by polite regrets

and the information that Mr. So-and-So, or the Such-and-Such Syndicate,

is the proper quarter to apply to; then the editor is aware that he will

get what he wants solely by one method of payment--through the nose. A

considerable part of the fiction business is in the hand of a few large

syndicates--syndicates in name only, and middlemen in fact. They perform

a useful function. They will sell to the editor the entire rights of a

serial, or they will sell him the rights for a particular district--the

London district, the Manchester district, the John-o'-Groats

district--the price varying in direct ratio with the size of the

district. Many London papers are content to buy the London rights only

of a serial, or to buy the English rights as distinct from the Scottish

rights, or to buy the entire rights minus the rights of one or two large

provincial districts. Thus a serial may make its original appearance in

London only; or it may appear simultaneously in London and Manchester

only, or in London only in England and throughout Scotland, or in fifty

places at once in England and Scotland. And after a serial has appeared

for the first time and run its course, the weeklies of small and obscure

towns, the proud organs of all the little Pedlingtons, buy for a trifle

the right to reprint it. The serials of some authors survive in this

manner for years in the remote provinces; pick up the local sheet in a

country inn, and you may perhaps shudder again over the excitations of a

serial that you read in book form in the far-off nineties. So, all

editorial purses are suited, the syndicates reap much profit, and they

are in a position to pay their authors, both tame and wild, a just

emolument; upon occasion they can even be generous to the verge of an

imprudence.

When I was an editor, I found it convenient, economical, and

satisfactory to buy all my fiction from a large and powerful syndicate.

I got important "names," the names that one sees on the title-pages of

railway novels, at a moderate price, and it was nothing to me that my

serial was appearing also in Killicrankie, the Knockmilly-down

Mountains, or the Scilly Isles. The representative of the syndicate, a

man clothed with authority, called regularly; he displayed his dainty

novelties, his leading lines, his old favourites, his rising stars, his

dark horses, and his dead bargains; I turned them over, like a woman on

remnant-day at a draper's; and after the inevitable Oriental chaffering,

we came to terms. I bought Christmas stories in March, and seaside

fiction in December, and good solid Baring-Gould or Le Queux or L.T.

Meade all the year round.

Excellently as these ingenious narrative confections served their

purpose, I dreamed of something better. And in my dream a sudden and

beautiful thought accosted me: Why should all the buying be on one side?

And the next time the representative of the syndicate called upon me, I

met his overtures with another.

"Why should all the buying be on one side?" I said. "You know I am an

author." I added that if he had not seen any of my books, I must send

him copies. They were exquisitely different from his wares, but I said

nothing about that.

"Ah!" he parried firmly. "We never buy serials from editors."

I perceived that I was by no means the first astute editor who had tried

to mingle one sort of business with another. Still it was plain to me

that my good friend was finding it a little difficult to combine the

affability of a seller with the lofty disinclination of one who is

requested to buy in a crowded market.

"I should have thought," I remarked, with a diplomatic touch of

annoyance, "that you would buy wherever you could get good stuff."

"Oh, yes," he said, "of course we do. But----"

"Well," I continued, "I am writing a serial, and I can tell you it will

be a good one. I merely mention it to you. If you don't care for it, I

fancy I can discover some one who will."

Then, having caused to float between us, cloud-like, the significance of

the indisputable fact that there were other syndicates in the world, I

proceeded nonchalantly to the matter of his visit and gave him a good

order. He was an able merchant, but I had not moved in legal circles for

nothing. Business is business: and he as well as I knew that arbitrary

rules to the exclusion of editors must give way before this great and

sublime truth, the foundation of England's glory.

The next thing was to concoct the serial. I had entered into a compact

with myself that I would never "write down" to the public in a long

fiction. I was almost bound to pander to the vulgar taste, or at any

rate to a taste not refined, in my editing, in my articles, and in my

short stories, but I had sworn solemnly that I would keep the novel-form

unsullied for the pure exercise of the artist in me. What became of this

high compact? I merely ignored it. I tore it up and it was forgotten,

the instant I saw a chance of earning the money of shame. I devised

excuses, of course. I said that my drawing-room wanted new furniture; I

said that I might lift the sensational serial to a higher place, thus

serving the cause of art; I said--I don't know what I said, all to my

conscience. But I began the serial.

As an editor, I knew the qualities that a serial ought to possess. And I

knew specially that what most serials lacked was a large, central,

unifying, vivifying idea. I was very fortunate in lighting upon such an

idea for my first serial. There are no original themes; probably no

writer ever did invent an original theme; but my theme was a brilliant

imposture of originality. It had, too, grandeur and passion, and

fantasy, and it was inimical to none of the prejudices of the serial

reader. In truth it was a theme worthy of much better treatment than I

accorded to it. Throughout the composition of the tale, until nearly the

end, I had the uneasy feeling, familiar to all writers, that I was

frittering away a really good thing. But as the climax approached, the

situa-took hold of me, and in spite of myself I wrote my best. The tale

was divided into twelve instalments of five thousand words each, and I

composed it in twenty-four half-days. Each morning, as I walked down the

Thames Embankment, I contrived a chapter of two thousand five hundred

words, and each afternoon I wrote the chapter. An instinctive sense of

form helped me to plan the events into an imposing shape, and it needed

no abnormal inventive faculty to provide a thrill for the conclusion of

each section. Further, I was careful to begin the story on the first

page, without preliminaries, and to finish it abruptly when it was

finished. For the rest, I put in generous quantities of wealth, luxury,

feminine beauty, surprise, catastrophe, and genial, incurable optimism.

I was as satisfied with the result as I had been with the famous poem on

Courage. I felt sure that the syndicate had never supplied me with a

sensational serial half as good as mine, and I could conceive no plea

upon which they would be justified in refusing mine.

They bought it. We had a difference concerning the price. They offered

sixty pounds; I thought I might as well as not try to get a hundred, but

when I had lifted them up to seventy-five, the force of bluff would no

further go, and the bargain was closed. I saw that by writing serials I

could earn three guineas per half-day; I saw myself embarking upon a

life of what Ebenezer Jones called "sensation and event"; I saw my

prices increasing, even to three hundred pounds for a sixty thousand

word yarn--my imagination stopped there.

The lingering remains of an artistic conscience prompted me to sign this

eye-smiting work with a pseudonym. The syndicate, since my name was

quite unknown in their world, made no objection, and I invented several

aliases, none of which they liked. Then a friend presented me with a

gorgeous pseudonym--"Sampson Death." Surely, I thought, the syndicate

will appreciate the subtle power of that! But no! They averred that

their readers would be depressed by Sampson Death at the head of every

instalment.

"Why not sign your own name?" they suggested.

And I signed my own name. I, apprentice of Flaubert et Cie., stood forth

to the universe as a sensation-monger.

The syndicate stated that they would like to have the refusal of another

serial from my pen.

In correcting the proofs of the first one, I perceived all the

opportunities I had missed in it, and I had visions of a sensational

serial absolutely sublime in those qualities that should characterize a

sensational serial. I knew all about Eugène Sue, and something about

Wilkie Collins; but my ecstatic contemplation of an ideal serial soared

far beyond these. I imagined a serial decked with the profuse ornament

of an Eastern princess, a serial at once grandiose and witty, at once

modern and transcendental, a serial of which the interest should

gradually close on the reader like a vice until it became intolerable. I

saw the whole of London preoccupied with this serial instead of with

cricket and politics. I heard the dandiacal City youths discussing in

first-class compartments on the Underground what would happen next in

it. I witnessed a riot in Fleet Street because I had, accidentally on

purpose, delayed my copy for twenty-four hours, and the editor of the

"Daily----" had been compelled to come out with an apology. Lastly, I

heard the sigh of relief exhaled to heaven by a whole people, when in

the final instalment I solved the mystery, untied the knot, relieved the

cruel suspense.

Suck was my dream--a dream that I never realized, but which I believe to

be capable of realization. It is decades since even a second-class

imaginative genius devoted itself entirely to the cult of the literary

_frisson_. Sue excited a nation by admirable sensationalism. The feat

might be accomplished again, and in this era so prolific in Napoleons of

the press, it seems strange that no Napoleon has been able to organize

the sensational serial on a Napoleonic scale.

I did not realize my dream, but I was inspired by it. Once more I

received from the gods a plot scintillating with possibilities. It was

less fine than the previous one; it was of the earth earthly; but it

began with a scene quite unique in the annals of syndicates, and by this

time I knew a little better how to keep the fire burning. I lavished wit

and style on the thing, and there is no material splendour of modern

life that I left out. I plunged into it with all my energy and

enthusiasm, and wrote the fifteen instalments in fifteen days; I tried

to feel as much like Dumas _père_ as I could. But when I had done I

felt, physically, rather more like the fragile Shelley or some wan

curate than Dumas. I was a wreck.

The syndicate were willing to buy this serial, but they offered me no

increase of rates. I declined to accept the old terms, and then the

syndicate invited me to lunch. I made one of the greatest financial

mistakes of my life on that accurst day, and my only excuse is that I

was unaccustomed to being invited out to lunch by syndicates. I ought to

have known, with all my boasted knowledge of the world of business, that

syndicates do not invite almost unknown authors to lunch without

excellent reason. I had refused the syndicate's offer, and the syndicate

asked me to name a price for the entire rights of my tale. I named a

price; it was a good price for me, then; but the words were scarcely out

of my mouth before I saw that I had blundered. Too late! My terms were

quietly accepted. Let me cast no slightest aspersion upon the methods of

the syndicate: the bargain was completed before lunch had commenced.

The syndicate disposed of the whole first serial rights of my tale to a

well-known London weekly. The proprietors of the paper engaged a

first-class artist to illustrate it, they issued a special circular

about it, they advertised it every week on 800 railway stations. The

editor of the paper wrote me an extremely appreciative letter as to the

effect of the serial from his point of view. The syndicate informed a

friend of mine that it was the best serial they had ever had. After

running in London it overran the provincial press like a locust-swarm.

It was, in a word, a boom. It came out in volume form, and immediately

went into a second edition; it still sells. It was the first of my books

that "The Times" ever condescended to review; the "Spectator" took it

seriously in a column and a quarter; and my friends took it seriously. I

even received cables from foreign lands with offers to buy translation

rights. I became known as the author of that serial. And all this, save

for an insignificant trifle, to the profit of an exceedingly astute

syndicate!

Subsequently I wrote other serials, but never again with the same verve.

I found an outlet for my energies more amusing and more remunerative

than the concoction of serials; and I am a serialist no longer.

XIII

While yet an assistant-editor, I became a dramatic critic through the

unwillingness of my chief to attend a theatrical matinée performance

given, by some forlorn little society, now defunct, for the rejuvenation

of the English drama. My notice of the performance amused him, and soon

afterwards he suggested that I should do our dramatic column in his

stead. Behold me a "first-nighter"! When, with my best possible air of

nonchalance and custom, I sauntered into my stall on a Lyceum first

night, I glanced at the first rows of the pit with cold and aloof

disdain. "Don't you wish you were me?" I thought behind that

supercilious mask. "You have stood for hours imprisoned between parallel

iron railings. Many times I have stood with you. But never again,

miserable pittites!" Nevertheless I was by no means comfortable in my

stall. Around me were dozens of famous or notorious faces, the leading

representatives of all that is glittering and factitious in the city of

wealth, pleasure, and smartness. And everybody seemed to know everybody

else. I alone seemed to be left out in the cold. My exasperated

self-conscious fancy perceived in every haughty stare the enquiry: "Who

is this whipper-snapper in the dress-suit that obviously cost four

guineas in Cheapside?" I knew not a soul in that brilliant resort.

During the intervals I went into the foyer and listened to the phrases

which the critics tossed to each other over their liqueur-glasses. Never

was such a genial confusion of "Old Chap," "Old Man," "Old Boy," "Dear

Old Pal"! "Are they all blood-brothers?" I asked myself. The banality,

the perfect lack of any sort of aesthetic culture, which characterized

their remarks on the piece, astounded me. I said arrogantly: "If I don't

know more about the art of the theatre than the whole crowd of you put

together, I will go out and hang myself." Yet I was unspeakably proud to

be among them. In a corner I caught sight of a renowned novelist whose

work I respected. None noticed him, and he looked rather sorry for

himself. "You and I . . .!" I thought. I had not attended many first

nights before I discovered that the handful of theatrical critics whose

articles it is possible to read without fatigue, made a point of never

leaving their stalls. They were nobody's old chap, and nobody's old pal.

I copied their behaviour.

First on my own paper, and subsequently on two others, I practised

dramatic criticism for five or six years. Although I threw it up in the

end mainly from sheer lassitude, I enjoyed the work. It means late

nights, and late nights are perdition; but there is a meretricious

glamour about it that attracts the foolish moth in me, and this I am

bound to admit. My trifling influence over the public was decidedly on

the side of the angels. I gradually found that I possessed a coherent

theory of the drama, definite critical standards, and all the rest of

the apparatus; in short, that I had something to say. And my verdicts

had a satisfactory habit of coinciding with those of the two foremost

theatrical critics in London--perhaps in Europe (I need not name them).

It is a somewhat strange fact that I made scarcely any friends in the

theatre. After all those years of assiduous first-nighting, I was almost

as solitary in the auditorium on the evening when I bade a _blase_ adieu

to the critical bench as when I originally entered it. I fancied I had

wasted my time and impaired my constitution in emulating the

achievements of Théophile Gautier, Hazlitt, Francisque Sarcey and M.

Jules Lemaître, to say nothing of Dutton Cook and Mr. Clement Scott. My

health may have suffered; but, as it happened, I had not quite wasted my

time.

"Why don't you write a play yourself?"

This blunt question was put to me by a friend, an amateur actor, whom I

had asked to get up some little piece or other for an entertainment in

the Theatre Royal back-drawing-room of my house.

"Quite out of my line," I replied, and I was absolutely sincere. I had

no notion whatever of writing for the stage. I felt sure that I had not

the aptitude.

"Nonsense!" he Exclaimed. "It's as easy as falling off a log."

We argued, and I was on the point of refusing the suggestion, when the

spirit of wild adventure overcame me, and I gravely promised my friend

that I would compose a duologue if he and his wife would promise to

perform it at my party. The affair was arranged. I went to bed with the

conviction that in the near future I stood a fair chance of looking an

ass. However, I met with what I thought to be an amusing idea for a

curtain-raiser the next morning, and in the afternoon I wrote the piece

complete. I enjoyed writing it, and as I read it aloud to myself I

laughed at it. I discovered that I had violated the great canon of

dramatic art,--Never keep your audience in the dark, and this troubled

me (Paul Hervieu had not then demonstrated by his "L'Enigme" that

canon may be broken with impunity); but I could not be at the trouble of

reconstructing the whole play for the sake of an Aristotelian maxim. I

at once posted the original draft to my friend with this note: "Dear

----, Here is the play which last night I undertook to write for you."

The piece was admirably rendered to an audience of some thirty immortal

souls--of course very sympathetic immortal souls. My feelings, as the

situation which I had invented gradually developed into something alive

on that tiny make-shift stage, were peculiar and, in a way, alarming.

Every one who has driven a motor-car knows the uncanny sensation that

ensues when for the first time in your life you pull the starting lever,

and the Thing beneath you begins mysteriously and formidably to move. It

is at once an astonishment, a terror, and a delight. I felt like that as

I watched the progress of my first play. It was as though I had

unwittingly liberated an energy greater than I knew, actually created

something vital. This illusion of physical vitality is the exclusive

possession of the dramatist; the novelist, the poet, cannot share it.

The play was a delicious success. People laughed so much that some of my

most subtle jocosities were drowned in the appreciative cachinnation.

The final applause was memorable, at any rate to me. No mere good-nature

can simulate the unique ring of genuine applause, and this applause was

genuine. It was a microscopic triumph for me, but it was a triumph.

Every one said to me: "But you are a dramatist!" "Oh, no!" I replied

awkwardly; "this trifle is really nothing." But the still small voice of

my vigorous self-confidence said: "Yes, you are, and you ought to have

found it out years ago!" Among my audience was a publisher. He invited

me to write for him a little book of one-act farces for amateurs; his

terms were agreeable. I wrote three such farces, giving two days to

each, and the volume was duly published; no book of mine has cost me

less trouble. The reviews of it were lavish in praise of my "unfailing

wit"; the circulation was mediocre. I was asked by companies of amateur

actors up and down the country to assist at rehearsals of these pieces;

but I could never find the energy to comply, save once. I hankered after

the professional stage. By this time I could see that I was bound to

enter seriously into the manufacture of stage-plays. My readers will

have observed that once again in my history the inducement to embark for

a fresh port had been quite external and adventitious.

I had a young friend with an extraordinary turn for brilliant epigram

and an equally extraordinary gift for the devising of massive themes. He

showed me one day the manuscript of a play. My faith in my instinct for

form, whether in drama or fiction, was complete, and I saw instantly

that what this piece lacked was form, which means intelligibility. It

had everything except intelligibility. "Look here!" I said to him, "we

will write a play together, you and I. We can do something that will

knock spots off----" etc., etc. We determined upon a grand drawing-room

melodrama which should unite style with those qualities that make for

financial success on the British stage. In a few days my friend produced

a list of about a dozen "ideas" for the piece. I chose the two largest

and amalgamated them. In the confection of the plot, and also throughout

the entire process of manufacture, my experience as a dramatic critic

proved valuable. I believe my friend had only seen two plays in his

life. We accomplished our first act in a month or so, and when this was

done and the scenario of the other three written out, we informed each

other that the stuff was exceedingly good.

Part of my share in the play was to sell it. I knew but one man of any

importance in the theatrical world; he gave me an introduction to the

manager of a West End theatre second to none in prestige and wealth. The

introduction had weight; the manager intimated by letter that his sole

object in life was to serve me, and in the meantime he suggested an

appointment. I called one night with our first act and the scenario, and

amid the luxuriousness of the managerial room, the aroma of coffee, the

odour of Turkish cigarettes, I explained to that manager the true

greatness of our play. I have never been treated with a more distinguished

politeness; I might have been Victorien Sardou, or Ibsen . . . (no,

not Ibsen). In quite a few days the manager telephoned to my

office and asked me to call the same evening. He had read the

manuscript; he thought very highly of it, very highly. "But----" Woe!

Desolation! Dissipation of airy castles! It was preposterous on our part

to expect that our first play should be commissioned by a leading

theatre. But indeed we had expected this miracle. The fatal "But" arose

from a difficulty of casting the principal part; so the manager told me.

He was again remarkably courteous, and he assuaged the rigour of his

refusal by informing me that he was really in need of a curtain-raiser

with a part for a certain actress of his company; he fancied that we

could supply him with the desired _bibelot_; but he wanted it at once,

within a week. Within a week my partner and I had each written a one-act

play, and in less than a fortnight I received a third invitation to

discuss coffee, Turkish cigarettes, and plays. The manager began to talk

about the play which was under my own signature.

"Now, what is your idea of terms?" he said, walking to and fro.

"Can it be true," I thought, "that I have actually sold a play to this

famous manager?" In a moment my simple old ambitions burst like a Roman

candle into innumerable bright stars. I had been content hitherto with

the prospect of some fame, a thousand a year, and a few modest luxuries.

But I knew what the earnings of successful dramatists were. My thousand

increased tenfold; my mind dwelt on all the complex sybaritism of

European capitals; and I saw how I could make use of the unequalled

advertisement of theatrical renown to find a ready market for the most

artistic fiction that I was capable of writing. This new scheme of

things sprang into my brain instantaneously, full-grown.

I left the theatre an accepted dramatist.

It never rains but it pours. My kind manager mentioned our stylistic

drawing-room melodrama to another manager with such laudation that the

second manager was eager to see it. Having seen it, he was eager to buy

it. He gave us a hundred down to finish it in three months, and when we

had finished it he sealed a contract for production with another cheque

for a hundred. At the same period, through the mediation of the friend

who had first introduced me to this world where hundreds were thrown

about like fivers, I was commissioned by the most powerful theatrical

manager on earth to assist in the dramatization of a successful novel;

and this led to another commission of a similar nature, on more

remunerative terms. Then a certain management telegraphed for me (in the

theatre all business is done by telegraph and cable), and offered me a

commission to compress a five-act Old English comedy into three acts.

"We might have offered this to So-and-So or So-and-So," they said,

designating persons of importance. "But we preferred to come to you."

"I assume my name is to appear?" I said.

But my name was not to appear, and I begged to be allowed to decline the

work.

I suddenly found myself on terms of familiarity with some of the great

ones of the stage. I found myself invited into the Garrick Club, and

into the more Bohemian atmosphere of the Green Room Club. I became

accustomed to hearing the phrase: "You are the dramatist of the future."

One afternoon I was walking down Bedford Street when a hand was placed

on my shoulder, and a voice noted for its rich and beautiful quality

exclaimed: "How the d----l are you, my dear chap?" The speaker bears a

name famous throughout the English-speaking world.

"You are arriving!" I said to myself, naïvely proud of this greeting. I

had always understood that the theatrical "ring" was impenetrable to an

outsider; and yet I had stepped into the very middle of it without the

least trouble.

My collaborator and I then wrote a farce. "We can't expect to sell

everything," I said to him warningly, but I sold it quite easily. Indeed

I sold it, repurchased it, and sold it again, within the space of three

months.

Reasons of discretion prevent me from carrying my theatrical record

beyond this point.

I have not spoken of the artistic side of this play-concoction, because

it scarcely has any. My aim in writing plays, whether alone or in

collaboration, has always been strictly commercial.[3] I wanted money in

heaps, and I wanted advertisement for my books. Here and there, in the

comedies and farces in which I have been concerned, a little genuine

dramatic art has, I fancy, been introduced; but surreptitiously, and

quite unknown to the managers. I have never boasted of it in managerial

apartments. That I have amused myself while constructing these

arabesques of intrigue and epigram is indubitable, whether to my credit

or discredit as a serious person. I laugh constantly in writing a farce.

I have found it far easier to compose a commercial play than an artistic

novel. How our princes of the dramatic kingdom can contrive to spend two

years over a single piece, as they say they do, I cannot imagine. The

average play contains from eighteen to twenty thousand words; the

average novel contains eighty thousand; after all, writing is a question

of words. At the rate of a thousand words a day, one could write a play

three times over in a couple of months; prefix a month--thirty solid

days of old Time!--for the perfecting of the plot, and you will be able

to calculate the number of plays producible by an expert craftsman in a

year. And unsuccessful plays are decidedly more remunerative than many

successful novels. I am quite certain that the vast majority of failures

produced in the West End mean to their authors a minimum remuneration of

ten pounds per thousand words. In the fiction-mart ten pounds per

thousand is gilded opulence. I am neither Sardou, Sudermann, nor George

R. Sims, but I know what I am talking about, and I say that dramatic

composition for the market is child's play compared to the writing of

decent average fiction--provided one has an instinct for stage effect.

[Footnote 3: Once more written in 1900.]

XIV

It cuts me to the heart to compare English with American publishers to

the disadvantage, however slight, of the former; but the exigencies of a

truthful narrative demand from me this sacrifice of personal feeling to

the god in "the sleeping-car emblematic of British enterprise." The

representative of a great American firm came over to England on a

mission to cultivate personal relations with authors of repute and

profitableness. Among other documents of a similar nature, he had an

introduction to myself; I was not an author of repute and

profitableness, but I was decidedly in the movement and a useful sort of

person to know. We met and became friends, this ambassador and I; he

liked my work, a sure avenue to my esteem; I liked his genial

shrewdness. Shortly afterwards, there appeared in a certain paper an

unsigned article dealing, in a broad survey alleged to be masterly, with

the evolution of the literary market during the last thirty years. My

American publisher read the article--he read everything--and,

immediately deciding in his own mind that I was the author of it, he

wrote me an enthusiastic letter of appreciation. He had not been

deceived; I was the author of the article. Within the next few days it

happened that he encountered an English publisher who complained that he

could not find a satisfactory "reader." He informed the English

publisher of my existence, referred eulogistically to my article, and

gave his opinion that I was precisely the man whom the English publisher

needed. The English publisher had never heard of me (I do not blame him,

I merely record), but he was so moved by the American's oration that he

invited me to lunch at his club. I lunched at his club, in a discreet

street off Piccadilly (an aged and a sound wine!), and after lunch, my

host drew me out to talk at large on the subject of authors, publishers,

and cash, and the interplay of these three. I talked. I talked for a

very long while, enjoying it. The experience was a new one for me. The

publisher did not agree with all that I said, but he agreed with a good

deal of it, and at the close of the somewhat exhausting assize, in which

between us we had judged the value of nearly every literary reputation

in England, he offered me the post of principal reader to his firm, and

I accepted it.

It is, I believe, an historical fact that authors seldom attend the

funeral of a publisher's reader. They approve the sepulture, but do not,

save sometimes in a spirit of ferocious humour, lend to the procession

the dignity of their massive figures. Nevertheless, the publisher's

reader is the most benevolent person on earth. He is so perforce. He may

begin his labours in the slaughterous vein of the "Saturday Review"; but

time and the extraordinary level mediocrity of manuscripts soon cure him

of any such tendency. He comes to refuse but remains to accept. He must

accept something--or where is the justification of his existence? Often,

after a prolonged run of bad manuscripts, I have said to myself: "If I

don't get a chance to recommend something soon I shall be asked to

resign." I long to look on a manuscript and say that it is good, or that

there are golden sovereigns between the lines. Instead of searching for

faults I search for hidden excellences. No author ever had a more

lenient audience than I. If the author would only believe it, I want, I

actually desire, to be favourably impressed by his work. When I open the

parcel of typescript I beam on it with kindly eyes, and I think:

"Perhaps there is something really good here"; and in that state of mind

I commence the perusal. But there never is anything really good there.

In an experience not vast, but extending over some years, only one book

with even a touch of genius has passed through my hands; that book was

so faulty and so wilfully wild, that I could not unreservedly advise its

publication and my firm declined it; I do not think that the book has

been issued elsewhere. I have "discovered" only two authors of talent;

one of these is very slowly achieving a reputation; of the other I have

heard nothing since his first book, which resulted in a financial loss.

Time and increasing knowledge of the two facts have dissipated for me

the melancholy and affecting legend of literary talent going a-begging

because of the indifference of publishers. O young author of talent,

would that I could find you and make you understand how the publisher

yearns for you as the lover for his love! _Qua_ publisher's reader, I am

a sad man, a man confirmed in disappointment, a man in whom the

phenomenon of continued hope is almost irrational. When I look back

along the frightful vista of dull manuscripts that I have refused or

accepted, I tremble for the future of English literature (or should

tremble, did I not infallibly know that the future of English literature

is perfectly safe after all)! And yet I have by no means drunk the worst

of the cup of mediocrity. The watery milk of the manuscripts sent to my

employer has always been skimmed for me by others; I have had only the

cream to savour. I am asked sometimes why publishers publish so many bad

books; and my reply is: "Because they can't get better." And this is a

profound truth solemnly enunciated.

People have said to me: "_But you are so critical; you condemn

everything_." Such is the complaint of the laity against the initiate,

against the person who has diligently practised the cultivation of his

taste. And, roughly speaking, it is a well-founded and excusable

complaint. The person of fine taste does condemn nearly everything. He

takes his pleasure in a number of books so limited as to be almost

nothing in comparison with the total mass of production. Out of two

thousand novels issued in a year, he may really enjoy half-a-dozen at

the outside. And the one thousand nine hundred and ninety-four he lumps

together in a wholesale contempt which draws no distinctions. This is

right. This contributes to the preservation of a high standard. But the

laity will never be persuaded that it is just. The point I wish to make,

however, is that when I sit down to read for my publisher I first of all

forget my literary exclusiveness. I sink the aesthetic aristocrat and

become a plain man. By a deliberate act of imagination, I put myself in

the place, not of the typical average reader--for there is no such

person--but of a composite of the various _genera_ of average reader

known to publishing science. I _am_ that composite for the time; and,

being so, I remain quiescent and allow f the book to produce its own

effect on me. I employ no canons, rules, measures. Does the book bore

me--that condemns it. Does it interest me, ever so slightly--that is

enough to entitle it to further consideration. When I have decided that

it interests the imaginary composite whom I represent, then I become

myself again, and proceed scientifically to enquire why it has

interested, and why it has not interested more intensely; I proceed to

catalogue its good and bad qualities, to calculate its chances, to assay

its monetary worth.

The first gift of a publisher's reader should be imagination; without

imagination, the power to put himself in a position in which actually he

is not, fine taste is useless--indeed, it is worse than useless. The

ideal publisher's reader should have two perfections--perfect taste and

perfect knowledge of what the various kinds of other people deem to be

taste. Such qualifications, even in a form far from perfect, are rare. A

man is born with them; though they may be cultivated, they cannot either

of them be acquired. The remuneration of the publisher's reader ought,

therefore, to be high, lavish, princely. It it not. It has nothing

approaching these characteristics. Instead of being regarded as the

ultimate seat of directing energy, the brain within the publisher's

brain, the reader often exists as a sort of offshoot, an accident, an

external mechanism which must be employed because it is the custom to

employ it. As one reflects upon the experience and judgment which

readers must possess, the responsibility which weighs on them, and the

brooding hypochondriasis engendered by their mysterious calling, one

wonders that their salaries do not enable them to reside in Park Lane or

Carlton House Terrace. The truth is, that they exist precariously in

Walham Green, Camberwell, or out in the country where rents are low.

I have had no piquant adventures as a publisher's reader. The vocation

fails in piquancy: that is precisely where it does fail. Occasionally

when a manuscript comes from some established author who has been deemed

the private property of another house, there is the excitement of

discovering from the internal evidence of the manuscript, or from the

circumstantial evidence of public facts carefully collated, just why

that manuscript has been offered to my employer; and the discovered

reason is always either amusing or shameful. But such excitements are

rare, and not very thrilling after all. No! Reading for a publisher does

not foster the joy of life. I have never done it with enthusiasm; and,

frankly, I continue to do it more from habit than from inclination. One

learns too much in the rôle. The gilt is off the gingerbread, and the

bloom is off the rye, for a publisher's reader. The statistics of

circulations are before him; and no one who is aware of the actual

figures which literary advertisements are notoriously designed to

conceal can be called happy until he is dead.

XV

When I had been in London a decade, I stood aside from myself and

reviewed my situation with the god-like and detached impartiality of a

trained artistic observer. And what I saw was a young man who

pre-eminently knew his way about, and who was apt to be rather too

complacent over this fact; a young man with some brilliance but far more

shrewdness; a young man with a highly developed faculty for making a

little go a long way; a young man who was accustomed to be listened to

when he thought fit to speak, and who was decidedly more inclined to

settle questions than to raise them.

This young man had invaded the town as a clerk at twenty-five shillings

a week, paying six shillings a week for a bed-sitting room, threepence

for his breakfast, and sixpence for his vegetarian dinner. The curtain

falls on the prologue. Ten years elapse. The curtain rises on the figure

of an editor, novelist, dramatist, critic, connoisseur of all arts. See

him in his suburban residence, with its poplar-shaded garden, its

bicycle-house at the extremity thereof, and its horizon composed of the

District Railway Line. See the study, lined with two thousand books,

garnished with photogravures, and furnished with a writing-bureau and a

chair and nothing else. See the drawing-room with its artistic

wall-paper, its Kelmscotts, its water-colours of a pallid but

indubitable distinction, its grand piano on which are a Wagnerian score

and Bach's Two-part Inventions. See the bachelor's bedroom, so austere

and precise, wherein Boswell's "Johnson" and Baudelaire's "Fleurs du

Mal" exist peaceably together on the night-table. The entire machine

speaks with one voice, and it tells you that there are no flies on that

young man, that young man never gives the wrong change. He is in

the movement, he is correct; but at the same time he is not so simple as

not to smile with contemptuous toleration at all movements and all

correctness. He knows. He is a complete guide to art and life. His

innocent foible is never to be at a loss, and never to be carried

away--save now and then, because an occasional ecstasy is good for the

soul. His knowledge of the _coulisses_ of the various arts is wonderful.

He numbers painters, sculptors, musicians, architects, among his

intimate friends; and no artistic manifestation can possibly occur that

he is unable within twenty-four hours to assess at its true value. He is

terrible against _cabotins_, no matter where he finds them, and this

seems to be his hobby: to expose _cabotins_.

He is a young man of method; young men do not arrive without method at

the condition of being encyclopædias; his watch is as correct as his

judgments. He breakfasts at eight sharp, and his housekeeper sets the

kitchen clock five minutes fast, for he is a terrible Ivan at breakfast.

He glances at a couple of newspapers, first at the list of "publications

received," and then at the news. Of course he is not hoodwinked by

newspapers. He will meet the foreign editor of the "Daily ----" at lunch

and will learn the true inwardness of that exploded canard from Berlin.

Having assessed the newspapers, he may interpret to his own satisfaction

a movement from a Mozart piano sonata, and then he will brush his hat,

pick up sundry books, and pass sedately to the station. The

station-master is respectfully cordial, and quite ready to explain to

him the secret causation of delays, for his season-ticket is a white

one. He gets into a compartment with a stockbroker, a lawyer, or a

tea-merchant, and immediately falls to work; he does his minor reviewing

in the train, fostering or annihilating reputations while the antique

engine burrows beneath the squares of the West End; but his brain is not

so fully occupied that he cannot spare a corner of it to meditate upon

the extraordinary ignorance and simplicity of stockbrokers, lawyers, and

tea-merchants. He reaches his office, and for two or three hours

practises that occupation of watching other people work which is called

editing: a process always of ordering, of rectifying, of laying down the

law, of being looked up to, of showing how a thing ought to be done and

can be done, of being flattered and cajoled, of dispensing joy or

gloom--in short, the Jupiter and Shah of Persia business. He then

departs, as to church, to his grill-room, where for a few moments

himself and the cook hold an anxious consultation to decide which

particular chop or which particular steak out of a mass of chops and

steaks shall have the honour of sustaining him till tea-time. The place

is full of literary shahs and those about to be shahs. They are all in

the movement; they constitute the movement. They ride the comic-opera

whirlwinds of public opinion and direct the tea-cup storms of

popularity. The young man classes most of them with the stockbroker, the

lawyer, and the tea-merchant. With a few he fraternises, and these few

save their faces by appreciating the humour of the thing. Soon

afterwards he goes home, digging _en route_ the graves of more

reputations, and, surrounded by the two thousand volumes, he works in

seclusion at his various activities that he may triumph openly. He

descends to dinner stating that he has written so many thousand words,

and excellent words too--stylistic, dramatic, tender, witty. There may

be a theatrical first-night toward, in which case he returns to town and

sits in the seat of the languid for a space. Or he stays within doors

and discusses with excessively sophisticated friends the longevity of

illusions in ordinary people. At length he retires and reads himself to

sleep. His last thoughts are the long, long thoughts of his perfect

taste and tireless industry, and of the aesthetic darkness which covers

the earth. . . .

Such was the young man I inimically beheld. And I was not satisfied with

him. He was gorgeous, but not sufficiently gorgeous. He had done much in

ten years, and I excused his facile pride, but he had not done enough.

The curtain had risen on the first act of the drama of life, but the

action, the intrigue, the passion seemed to hesitate and halt. Was this

the artistic and creative life, this daily round? Was this the reality

of that which I had dreamed? Where was the sense of romance, the

consciousness of felicity? I felt that I had slipped into a groove which

wore deeper every day. It seemed to me that I was fettered and tied

down. I had grown weary of journalism. The necessity of being at a

certain place at a certain hour on so many days of the week grew irksome

to me; I regarded it as invasive of my rights as a freeborn Englishman,

as shameful and scarcely tolerable. Was I a horse that I should be

ridden on the curb by a Board of Directors? I objected to the theory of

proprietors. The occasional conferences with the Board, though conducted

with all the ritual of an extreme punctilio, were an indignity. The

suave requests of the chairman: "Will you kindly tell us----?" And my

defensive replies, and then the dismissal: "Thank you, Mr.----, I think

we need trouble you no further this morning." And my exit, irritated by

the thought that I was about to be discussed with the freedom that

Boards in conclave permit themselves. It was as bad as being bullied by

London University at an examination. I longed to tell this Board, with

whom I was so amicable on unofficial occasions, that they were using a

razor to cut firewood. I longed to tell them that the nursing of their

excellent and precious organ was seriously interfering with the

composition of great works and the manufacture of a dazzling reputation.

I longed to point out to them that the time would come when they would

mention to their friends with elaborate casualness and covert pride that

they had once employed me, the unique me, at a salary measurable in

hundreds.

Further, I was ill-pleased with literary London. "You have a literary

life here," an American editor once said to me. "There is a literary

circle, an atmosphere. . . . We have no such thing in New York." I

answered that no doubt we had; but I spoke without enthusiasm. I suppose

that if any one "moved in literary circles," I did, then. Yet I derived

small satisfaction from my inclusion within those circumferences. To me

there was a lack of ozone in the atmosphere which the American editor

found so invigorating. Be it understood that when I say "literary

circles," I do not in the least mean genteel Bohemia, the world of

informal At-Homes that are all formality, where the little lions growl

on their chains in a row against a drawing-room wall, and the hostess

congratulates herself that every single captive in the salon has "done

something." Such polite racketting, such discreet orgies of the higher

intellectuality, may suit the elegant triflers, the authors of

monographs on Velasquez, golf, Dante, asparagus, royalties, ping-pong,

and Empire; but the business men who write from ten to fifty thousands

words a week without chattering about it, have no use for the literary

menagerie. I lived among the real business men--and even so I was

dissatisfied. I believe too that they were dissatisfied, most of them.

There is an infection in the air of London, a zymotic influence which is

the mysterious cause of unnaturalness, pose, affectation, artificiality,

moral neuritis, and satiety. One loses grasp of the essentials in an

undue preoccupation with the vacuities which society has invented. The

distractions are too multiform. One never gets a chance to talk

common-sense with one's soul.

Thirdly, the rate at which I was making headway did not please me. My

reputation was growing, but only like a coral-reef. Many people had an

eye on me, as on one for whom the future held big things. Many people

took care to read almost all that I wrote. But my name had no

significance for the general public. The mention of my name would have

brought no recognizing smile to the average person who is "fond of

reading." I wanted to do something large, arresting, and decisive. And I

saw no chance of doing this. I had too many irons in the fire. I was

frittering myself away in a multitude of diverse activities of the pen.

I pondered upon these considerations for a long while. I saw only one

way out, and, at last, circumstances appearing to conspire to lead me

into that way, I wrote a letter to my Board of Directors and resigned my

editorial post. I had decided to abandon London, that delectable

paradise of my youthful desires. A To-let notice flourished suddenly in

my front-garden, and my world became aware that I was going to desert

it. The majority thought me rash and unwise, and predicted an

ignominious return to Fleet Street. But the minority upheld my

resolution. I reached down a map of England, and said that I must live

on a certain main-line at a certain minimum distance from London. This

fixed the neighbourhood of my future home. The next thing was to find

that home, and with the aid of friends and a bicycle I soon found it.

One fine wet day I stole out of London in a new quest of romance. No one

seemed to be fundamentally disturbed over my exodus. I remarked to

myself: "Either you are a far-seeing and bold fellow, or you are a fool.

Time will show which." And that night I slept, or failed to sleep, in a

house that was half a mile from the next house, three miles from a

station, and three miles from a town. I had left the haunts of men with

a vengeance, and incidentally I had left a regular income.

I ran over the list of our foremost writers: they nearly all lived in

the country.

XVI

When I had settled down into the landscape, bought my live-stock,

studied manuals on horses, riding, driving, hunting, dogs, poultry, and

wildflowers, learned to distinguish between wheat and barley and between

a six-year-old and an aged screw, shot a sparrow on the fence only to

find it was a redbreast, drunk the cherry-brandy of the Elizabethan inn,

played in the village cricket team, and ceased to feel self-conscious in

riding-breeches, I perceived with absolute certainty that I had made no

error; I knew that, come poverty or the riches of Indian short stories,

I should never again live permanently in London. I expanded, and in my

expansion I felt rather sorry for Londoners. I perceived, too, that the

country possessed commercial advantages which I had failed to appreciate

before. When you live two and a half miles from a railway you can cut a

dash on an income which in London spells omnibus instead of cab. For

myself I have a profound belief in the efficacy of cutting a dash. You

invite an influential friend down for the week-end. You meet him at the

station with a nice little grey mare in a phaeton, and an unimpeachable

Dalmatian running behind. The turn-out is nothing alone, but the

pedigree printed in the pinkiness of that dog's chaps and in the

exiguity of his tail, spotted to the last inch, would give tone to a

coster's cart. You see that your influential friend wishes to comment,

but as you gather up the reins you carefully begin to talk about the

weather and prices per thousand. You rush him home in twelve minutes,

skimming gate posts. On Monday morning, purposely running it fine, you

hurry him into a dog-cart behind a brown cob fresh from a pottle of

beans, and you whirl him back to the station in ten minutes, up-hill

half the way. You fling him into the train, with ten seconds to spare.

"This is how we do it in these parts," your studiously nonchalant face

says to him. He thinks. In a few hours Fleet Street becomes aware that

young So-and-so, who lately buried himself in the country, is alive and

lusty. Your stock rises. You go up one. You extort respect. You are

ticketed in the retentive brains of literary shahs as a success. And you

still have the dog left for another day.

In the country there is plenty of space and plenty of time, and no

damnable fixed relation between these two; in other words, a particular

hour does not imply a particular spot for you, and this is something to

an author. I found my days succeeding each other with a leisurely and

adorable monotony. I lingered over breakfast like a lord, perusing the

previous evening's papers with as much gusto as though they were hot

from the press. I looked sideways at my work, with a non-committal air,

as if saying; "I may do you or I may not. I shall see how I feel." I

went out for a walk, followed by dogs less spectacular than the

Dalmatian, to collect ideas. I had nothing to think about but my own

direct productiveness. I stopped to examine the progress of trees, to

discuss meteorology with roadmenders, to wonder why lambs always waggled

their tails during the act of taking sustenance. All was calmness,

serenity. The embryo of the article or the chapter faintly adumbrated

itself in my mind, assumed a form. One idea, then another; then an

altercation with the dogs, ending in castigation, disillusion, and

pessimism for them. Suddenly I exclaimed: "I think I've got enough to go

on with!" And I turned back homewards. I reached my study and sat down.

From my windows I beheld a magnificent panorama of hills. Now the

contemplation of hills is uplifting to the soul; it leads to inspiration

and induces nobility of character, but it has a tendency to interfere

with actual composition. I stared long at those hills. Should I work,

should I not work? A brief period always ensued when the odds were

tremendous against any work being done that day. Then I seized the pen

and wrote the title. Then another dreadful and disconcerting pause, all

ideas having scuttled away like mice to their holes. Well, I must put

something down, however ridiculous. I wrote a sentence, feeling first

that it would not serve and then that it would have to serve, anyway. I

glanced at the clock. Ten twenty-five! I watched the clock in a sort of

hypnotism that authors know of, till it showed ten-thirty. Then with a

horrible wrench I put the pen in the ink again . . . . Jove! Eleven

forty-five, and I had written seven hundred words. Not bad stuff that!

Indeed, very good! Time for a cigarette and a stroll round to hear

wisdom from the gardener. I resumed at twelve, and then in about two

minutes it was one o'clock and lunch time. After lunch, rest for the

weary and the digesting; slumber; another stroll. Arrival of the second

post on a Russian pony that cost fifty shillings. Tea, and perusal of

the morning paper. Then another spell of work, and the day was gone,

vanished, distilled away. And about five days made a week, and

forty-eight weeks a year.

No newspaper-proprietors, contributors, circulations, placards,

tape-machines, theatres, operas, concerts, picture-galleries, clubs,

restaurants, parties, Undergrounds! Nothing artificial, except myself

and my work! And nothing, save the fear of rent-day, to come between

myself and my work!

It was dull, you will tell me. But I tell you it was magnificent.

Monotony, solitude, are essential to the full activity of the artist.

Just as a horse is seen best when coursing alone over a great plain, so

the fierce and callous egotism of the artist comes to its perfection in

a vast expanse of custom, leisure, and apparently vacuous reverie. To

insist on forgetting his work, to keep his mind a blank until the work,

no longer to be held in check, rushes into that emptiness and fills it

up--that is one of the secrets of imaginative creation. Of course it is

not a recipe for every artist. I have known artists, and genuine ones,

who could keep their minds empty and suck in the beauty of the world for

evermore without the slightest difficulty; who only wrote, as the early

Britons hunted, when they were hungry and there was nothing in the pot.

But I was not of that species. On the contrary, the incurable habit of

industry, the itch for the pen, was my chiefest curse. To be

unproductive for more than a couple of days or so was to be miserable.

Like most writers I was frequently the victim of an illogical,

indefensible and causeless melancholy; but one kind of melancholy could

always be explained, and that was the melancholy of idleness. I could

never divert myself with hobbies. I did not read much, except in the way

of business. Two hours reading, even of Turgenev or Balzac or Montaigne,

wearied me out. An author once remarked to me; "_I know enough. I don't

read books, I write 'em_." It was a haughty and arrogant saying, but

there is a sense in which it was true. Often I have felt like that: "I

know enough, I feel enough. If my future is as long as my past, I shall

still not be able to put down the tenth part of what I have already

acquired." The consciousness of this, of what an extraordinary and

wonderful museum of perceptions and emotions my brain was, sustained me

many a time against the chagrins, the delays, and the defeats of the

artistic career. Often have I said inwardly: "World, when I talk with

you, dine with you, wrangle with you, love you, and hate you, I

condescend!" Every artist has said that. People call it conceit; people

may call it what they please. One of the greatest things a great man

said, is:--

I know I am august

I do not trouble my spirit to indicate itself or to be

understood . . .

I exist as I am, that is enough.

If no other in the world be aware I sit content.

And if each and all be aware I sit content.

Nevertheless, for me, the contentment of the ultimate line surpassed the

contentment of the penultimate. And therefore it was, perhaps, that I

descended on London from time to time like a wolf on the fold, and made

the world aware, and snatched its feverish joys for a space, and then,

surfeited and advertised, went back and relapsed into my long monotony.

And sometimes I would suddenly halt and address myself:

"You may be richer or you may be poorer; you may live in greater pomp

and luxury, or in less. The point is that you will always be,

essentially, what you are now. You have no real satisfaction to look

forward to except the satisfaction of continually inventing, fancying,

imagining, scribbling. Say another thirty years of these emotional

ingenuities, these interminable variations on the theme of beauty. Is it

good enough?"

And I answered: Yes.

But who knows? Who can preclude the regrets of the dying couch?

THE END