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_ 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. _
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