PRESS AND PUBLIC
At length arrived the eve of the consummation of Mr. Onions Winter's
mercantile labours. Forty thousand copies of _A Question of Cubits_ (No.
8 of the Satin Library) had been printed, and already, twenty-four hours
before they were to shine in booksellers' shops and on the counters of
libraries, every copy had been sold to the trade and a second edition
was in the press. Thus, it was certain that one immortal soul per
thousand of the entire British race would read Henry's story. In
literature, when nine hundred and ninety-nine souls ignore you, but the
thousandth buys your work, or at least borrows it--that is called
enormous popularity. Henry retired to bed in Dawes Road that night sure
of his enormous popularity. But he did not dream of the devoted army of
forty thousand admirers. He dreamt of the reviews, some of which he knew
were to appear on the day of publication itself. A hundred copies of _A
Question of Cubits_ had been sent out for review, and in his dreams he
saw a hundred highly-educated men, who had given their lives to the
study of fiction, bending anxiously over the tome and seeking with
conscientious care the precise phrases in which most accurately to
express their expert appreciation of it. He dreamt much of the reviewer
of the _Daily Tribune_, his favourite morning paper, whom he pictured as
a man of forty-five or so, with gold-rimmed spectacles and an air of
generous enthusiasm. He hoped great things from the article in the
_Daily Tribune_ (which, by a strange accident, had completely ignored
_Love in Babylon_), and when he arose in the morning (he had been lying
awake a long time waiting to hear the scamper of the newsboy on the
steps) he discovered that his hopes were happily realized. The _Daily
Tribune_ had given nearly a column of praise to _A Question of Cubits_,
had quoted some choice extracts, had drawn special attention to the
wonderful originality of the plot, and asserted that the story was an
advance, 'if an advance were possible,' on the author's previous book.
His mother and Aunt Annie consumed the review at breakfast with an
excellent appetite, and lauded the insight of the critic.
What had happened at the offices of the _Daily Tribune_ was this. At the
very moment when Henry was dreaming of its reviewer--namely, half-past
eleven p.m.--its editor was gesticulating and shouting at the end of a
speaking-tube:
'Haven't had proof of that review of a book called _A Question of
Cubits_, or some such idiotic title! Send it down at once, instantly. Do
you hear? What? Nonsense!'
The editor sprang away from the tube, and dashed into the middle of a
vast mass of papers on his desk, turning them all over, first in heaps,
then singly. He then sprang in succession to various side-tables and
served their contents in the same manner.
'I tell you I sent it up myself before dinner,' he roared into the tube.
'It's Mr. Clackmannan's "copy"--you know that peculiar paper he writes
on. Just look about. Oh, conf----!'
Then the editor rang a bell.
'Send Mr. Heeky to me, quick!' he commanded the messenger-boy.
'I'm just finishing that leaderette,' began Mr. Heeley, when he obeyed
the summons. Mr. Heeley was a young man who had published a book of
verse.
'Never mind the leaderette,' said the editor. 'Run across to the other
shop yourself, and see if they've got a copy of _A Question of
Cubits_--yes, that's it, _A Question of Cubits_--and do me fifteen
inches on it at once. I've lost Clackmannan's "copy."' (The 'other shop'
was a wing occupied by a separate journal belonging to the proprietors
of the _Tribune_.)
'What, that thing!' exclaimed Mr. Heeley. 'Won't it do to-morrow? You
know I hate messing my hands with that sort of piffle.'
'No, it won't do to-morrow. I met Onions Winter at dinner on Saturday
night, and I told him I'd review it on the day of publication. And when
I promise a thing I promise it. Cut, my son! And I say'--the editor
recalled Mr. Heeley, who was gloomily departing--'We're under no
obligations to anyone. Write what you think, but, all the same, no
antics, no spleen. You've got to learn yet that that isn't our
speciality. You're not on the _Whitehall_ now.'
'Oh, all right, chief--all right!' Mr. Heeley concurred.
Five minutes later Mr. Heeley entered what he called his private
boudoir, bearing a satinesque volume.
'Here, boys,' he cried to two other young men who were already there,
smoking clay pipes--'here's a lark! The chief wants fifteen inches on
this charming and pathetic art-work as quick as you can. And no antics,
he says. Here, Jack, here's fifty pages for you'--Mr. Heeley ripped the
beautiful inoffensive volume ruthlessly in pieces--and here's fifty for
you, Clementina. Tell me your parts of the plot I'll deal with the first
fifty my noble self.'
Presently, after laughter, snipping out of pages with scissors, and some
unseemly language, Mr. Heeley began to write.
'Oh, he's shot up to six foot eight!' exclaimed Jack, interrupting the
scribe.
'Snow!' observed the bearded man styled Clementina. 'He dies in the
snow. Listen.' He read a passage from Henry's final scene, ending with
'His spirit had passed.' 'Chuck me the scissors, Jack.'
Mr. Heeley paused, looked up, and then drew his pen through what he had
written.
'I say, boys,'he almost whispered, 'I'll praise it, eh? I'll take it
seriously. It'll be simply delicious.'
'What about the chief?'
'Oh, the chief won't notice it! It'll be just for us three, and a few at
the club.'
Then there was hard scribbling, and pasting of extracts into blank
spaces, and more laughter.
'"If an advance were possible,"' Clementina read, over Mr. Heeley's
shoulder. 'You'll give the show away, you fool!'
'No, I shan't, Clemmy, my boy,' said Mr. Heeley judicially. 'They'll
stand simply anything. I bet you what you like Onions Winter quotes that
all over the place.'
And he handed the last sheet of the review to a messenger, and ran off
to the editorial room to report that instructions had been executed.
Jack and Clementina relighted their pipes with select bits of _A
Question of Cubits_, and threw the remaining debris of the volume into
the waste-paper basket. The hour was twenty minutes past midnight....
The great majority of the reviews were exceedingly favourable, and even
where praise was diluted with blame, the blame was administered with
respect, as a dentist might respectfully pain a prince in pulling his
tooth out. The public had voted for Henry, and the press, organ of
public opinion, displayed a wise discretion. The daring freshness of
Henry's plot, his inventive power, his skill in 'creating atmosphere,'
his gift for pathos, his unfailing wholesomeness, and his knack in the
management of narrative, were noted and eulogized in dozens of articles.
Nearly every reviewer prophesied brilliant success for him; several
admitted frankly that his equipment revealed genius of the first rank. A
mere handful of papers scorned him. Prominent among this handful was the
_Whitehall Gazette_. The distinguished mouthpiece of the superior
classes dealt with _A Question of Cubits_ at the foot of a column, in a
brief paragraph headed 'Our Worst Fears realized.' The paragraph, which
was nothing but a summary of the plot, concluded in these terms: 'So he
expired, every inch of him, in the snow, a victim to the British
Public's rapacious appetite for the sentimental.'
The rudeness of the _Whitehall Gazette_, however, did nothing whatever
to impair the wondrous vogue which Henry now began to enjoy. His first
boom had been great, but it was a trifle compared to his second. The
title of the new book became a catchword. When a little man was seen
walking with a tall woman, people exclaimed: 'It's a question of
cubits.' When the recruiting regulations of the British army were
relaxed, people also exclaimed: 'It's a question of cubits.' During a
famous royal procession, sightseers trying to see the sight over the
heads of a crowd five deep shouted to each other all along the route:
'It's a question of cubits.' Exceptionally tall men were nicknamed
'Gerald' by their friends. Henry's Gerald, by the way, had died as
doorkeeper at a restaurant called the Trianon. The Trianon was at once
recognised as the Louvre, and the tall commissionaire at the Louvre
thereby trebled his former renown. 'Not dead in the snow yet?' the wits
of the West End would greet him on descending from their hansoms, and he
would reply, infinitely gratified: 'No, sir. No snow, sir.' A
music-hall star of no mean eminence sang a song with the refrain:
'You may think what you like,
You may say what you like,
It was simply a question of cubits.'
The lyric related the history of a new suit of clothes that was worn by
everyone except the person who had ordered it.
Those benefactors of humanity, the leading advertisers, used 'A Question
of Cubits' for their own exalted ends. A firm of manufacturers of
high-heeled shoes played with it for a month in various forms. The
proprietors of an unrivalled cheap cigarette disbursed thousands of
pounds in order to familiarize the public with certain facts. As thus:
'A Question of Cubits. Every hour of every day we sell as many
cigarettes as, if placed on end one on the top of the other, would make
a column as lofty as the Eiffel Tower. Owing to the fact that cigarettes
are not once mentioned in _A Question of Cubits_, we regret to say that
the author has not authorized us to assert that he was thinking of our
cigarettes when he wrote Chapter VII. of that popular novel.'
Editors and publishers cried in vain for Henry. They could get from him
neither interviews, short stories, nor novels. They could only get
polite references to Mark Snyder. And Mark Snyder had made his
unalterable plans for the exploitation of this most wonderful racehorse
that he had ever trained for the Fame Stakes. The supply of chatty
paragraphs concerning the hero and the book of the day would have
utterly failed had not Mr. Onions Winter courageously come to the rescue
and allowed himself to be interviewed. And even then respectable
journals were reduced to this sort of paragraph: 'Apropos of Mr.
Knight's phenomenal book, it may not be generally known what the exact
measure of a cubit is. There have been three different cubits--the
Scriptural, the Roman, and the English. Of these, the first-named,' etc.
So the thing ran on.
And at the back of it all, supporting it all, was the steady and
prodigious sale of the book, the genuine enthusiasm for it of the
average sensible, healthy-minded woman and man.
Finally, the information leaked out that Macalistairs had made august
and successful overtures for the reception of Henry into their fold.
Sir Hugh Macalistair, the head of the firm, was (at that time) the only
publisher who had ever been knighted. And the history of Macalistairs
was the history of all that was greatest and purest in English
literature during the nineteenth century. Without Macalistairs, English
literature since Scott would have been nowhere. Henry was to write a
long novel in due course, and Macalistairs were to have the world's
rights of the book, and were to use it as a serial in their venerable
and lusty _Magazine_, and to pay Henry, on delivery of the manuscript,
eight thousand pounds, of which six thousand was to count as in advance
of royalties on the book.
Mr. Onions Winter was very angry at what he termed an ungrateful
desertion. The unfortunate man died a year or two later of appendicitis,
and his last words were that he, and he alone, had 'discovered' Henry.