But all this is by the way.
I was very young when I wrote my first book. By a lucky chance it
excited attention, and various persons sought my acquaintance.
It is not without melancholy that I wander among my recollections of
the world of letters in London when first, bashful but eager, I was
introduced to it. It is long since I frequented it, and if the novels
that describe its present singularities are accurate much in it is now
changed. The venue is different. Chelsea and Bloomsbury have taken the
place of Hampstead, Notting Hill Gate, and High Street, Kensington.
Then it was a distinction to be under forty, but now to be more than
twenty-five is absurd. I think in those days we were a little shy of
our emotions, and the fear of ridicule tempered the more obvious forms
of pretentiousness. I do not believe that there was in that genteel
Bohemia an intensive culture of chastity, but I do not remember so
crude a promiscuity as seems to be practised in the present day. We did
not think it hypocritical to draw over our vagaries the curtain of a
decent silence. The spade was not invariably called a bloody shovel.
Woman had not yet altogether come into her own.
I lived near Victoria Station, and I recall long excursions by bus to
the hospitable houses of the literary. In my timidity I wandered up and
down the street while I screwed up my courage to ring the bell; and
then, sick with apprehension, was ushered into an airless room full of
people. I was introduced to this celebrated person after that one, and
the kind words they said about my book made me excessively
uncomfortable. I felt they expected me to say clever things, and I
never could think of any till after the party was over. I tried to
conceal my embarrassment by handing round cups of tea and rather
ill-cut bread-and-butter. I wanted no one to take notice of me, so that
I could observe these famous creatures at my ease and listen to the
clever things they said.
I have a recollection of large, unbending women with great noses and
rapacious eyes, who wore their clothes as though they were armour; and
of little, mouse-like spinsters, with soft voices and a shrewd glance.
I never ceased to be fascinated by their persistence in eating buttered
toast with their gloves on, and I observed with admiration the
unconcern with which they wiped their fingers on their chair when they
thought no one was looking. It must have been bad for the furniture,
but I suppose the hostess took her revenge on the furniture of her
friends when, in turn, she visited them. Some of them were dressed
fashionably, and they said they couldn’t for the life of them see why
you should be dowdy just because you had written a novel; if you had a
neat figure you might as well make the most of it, and a smart shoe on
a small foot had never prevented an editor from taking your “stuff.”
But others thought this frivolous, and they wore “art fabrics” and
barbaric jewelry. The men were seldom eccentric in appearance. They
tried to look as little like authors as possible. They wished to be
taken for men of the world, and could have passed anywhere for the
managing clerks of a city firm. They always seemed a little tired. I
had never known writers before, and I found them very strange, but I do
not think they ever seemed to me quite real.
I remember that I thought their conversation brilliant, and I used to
listen with astonishment to the stinging humour with which they would
tear a brother-author to pieces the moment that his back was turned.
The artist has this advantage over the rest of the world, that his
friends offer not only their appearance and their character to his
satire, but also their work. I despaired of ever expressing myself with
such aptness or with such fluency. In those days conversation was still
cultivated as an art; a neat repartee was more highly valued than the
crackling of thorns under a pot; and the epigram, not yet a mechanical
appliance by which the dull may achieve a semblance of wit, gave
sprightliness to the small talk of the urbane. It is sad that I can
remember nothing of all this scintillation. But I think the
conversation never settled down so comfortably as when it turned to the
details of the trade which was the other side of the art we practised.
When we had done discussing the merits of the latest book, it was
natural to wonder how many copies had been sold, what advance the
author had received, and how much he was likely to make out of it. Then
we would speak of this publisher and of that, comparing the generosity
of one with the meanness of another; we would argue whether it was
better to go to one who gave handsome royalties or to another who
“pushed” a book for all it was worth. Some advertised badly and some
well. Some were modern and some were old-fashioned. Then we would talk
of agents and the offers they had obtained for us; of editors and the
sort of contributions they welcomed, how much they paid a thousand, and
whether they paid promptly or otherwise. To me it was all very
romantic. It gave me an intimate sense of being a member of some mystic
brotherhood.