A Communication to My Friends, Chapter 2

London: Nonesuch Press, 13 June 1933, pages 12-27, 4,278 words

II

One of the hardships of writing A Communication to My Friends, which is the story of how literature hailed me, is the existence of a little book called Confessions of a Young Man, for in this book I tell how, in my early childhood, whilst driving in a family coach from Mayo into Galway, I heard a cry, or shall I call it echo-augury, and accepting quotation as a lesser evil than paraphrase, I will quote:

"Scene: A great family coach, drawn by two powerful country horses, lumbers along a narrow Irish road. The ever-recurrent signs — long ranges of blue mountains, the streak of bog, the rotting cabin, the flock of plover rising from the desolate water. Inside the coach there are two children. They wear new jackets and neckties; their faces are pale with sleep, and the rolling of the coach makes them feel a little sick. It is seven o'clock in the morning. Opposite the children are their parents, and they are talking of a novel the world is reading. Did Lady Audley murder her husband? Lady Audley! What a beautiful name! And she, who is a slender, pale, fairy-like woman, killed her husband. Such thoughts flash through the boy's mind; his imagination is stirred and quickened, and he begs for an explanation. The coach lumbers along, it arrives at its destination, and Lady Audley is forgotten in the delight of tearing down fruit trees and killing a cat.

"But when we returned home I took the first opportunity of stealing the novel in question. I read it eagerly, passionately, vehemently. I read its successor and its successor. I read until I came to a book called The Doctor's Wife — a lady who loved Shelley and Byron. There was magic, there was revelation in the name, and Shelley became my soul's divinity. Why did I love Shelley? Why not attracted to Byron? Shelley! That crystal name, and his poetry also crystalline. I must see it. I must know him. Escaping from the schoolroom, I ransacked the library, and at last my ardour was rewarded. The book — a small pocket edition in red boards, no doubt long out of print — opened at the 'Sensitive Plant.' Was I disappointed? I think I had expected to understand better; but I had no difficulty in assuming that I was satisfied and delighted. And henceforth the little volume never left my pocket, and I read the dazzling stanzas by the shores of a pale green Irish lake, comprehending little, and loving a great deal."

Of Lady Audley's Secret and its successors I retain no more than a few words here and there, a glimpse of the heroine, a murderer in The Doctor's Wife who cannot find the key of a trunk belonging to the murdered man — that impressed me — and remained a faint memory of a detective novel. A more distinct memory was the name of the publisher, Tinsley. His name haunted in my recollection long after nine-tenths of the book had faded out of it, and now that I had come to write a story myself it seemed to me a foregone conclusion that I should publish A Modern Lover with Tinsley at Catherine Street. A successful publisher he certainly must have been, and probably still was. Whether a lover of literature or a huckster of novels sold on barrows at thirty-one-and-sixpence I had no faintest notion. I was attracted by the name only. The mysterious power that names have for us possessed me the moment I crossed the gangway and stood by the taffrail so that I might see the coasts of France vanish into the night mist for the last time perhaps. I am naturally pessimistic. Pessimism gives me courage.

"We shall have a stormy night passage," somebody cried in my hearing, and this certainly was more than an 'echo-augury,' for we had just cleared the harbour and the ship was rising and plunging. "I am afraid we shall," I answered, and walked up the deck, for I had little wish for talk and only hoped that I should not be sea-sick, and to keep my mind off that sad subject I admired the large spaces of sea with a wave coming on, rising higher and higher as it came and shaking the ship from end to end when it struck her. Strange the sea is, I said, and how it came into existence. I asked myself feebly, was it before the land or after the land, and why was it allowed to carve the land into islands and capes and cliffs, and many other things which I had no stomach to remember. It would have been better to have gone below and to have forgotten all about A Modern Lover, but I was intent on seeing the great cliffs of Dover rise out of the horizon. Sometimes I saw them, sometimes they disappeared into the clouds, but at last the shore was certain and the vessel came to a standstill, and on enquiry from a passenger ill as myself I learned that our ship was turning round to back into the harbour stern :first. The passengers came up and crowded, all eager to cross the gangway and to hasten down the pier to the customs. A miserable place is Dover pier, with a shockingly bad statue put up by the local Phidias — someone was stabbing somebody or firing at him with a rifle,I know not which. I had no bag to examine and was eager to get into the train, but in the train was no amelioration. The engine must have been a very little one, with not much more strength than a donkey, so slowly did the train creep up the acclivities. At the top of each it trundled along, bringing us of course at every turn of the wheels nearer to London, and the country cleared up, the fields drew out and I dare say some cattle were grazing, but after a stormy passage we had no eyes for the observation of natural things — I speak for the other passengers as well as for myself. A wretched crowd we were, and right glad to see the grey mournful Thames and the multitudinous city drawing out on a dark grey sky, barely visible. The cry "Tickets, please; tickets, please" was welcome. We were on Charing Cross Bridge and everybody I am sure in that train hoped the bridge would not break through by the weight of the train, for once in the water there would be no chance of being saved.

These few lines will remind a good many of the terrors of this passage, and the bleakness of the Charing Cross Hotel was all we had to hope for. I ordered a bed and a cup of chocolate but the chocolate brought was that preparation of cocoa for which it is claimed that 'An extra spoonful will produce chocolate,' a lying device for which I had the manager called up to explain. In the midst of all this bleakness a note had to he written to Mr. Tinsley and given to the porter, who was bribed with half-a-­crown to see that it was handed into Mr. Tinsley's office before ten o'clock, and this done I turned from the cocoa-chocolate with nausea. Tea was preferable. We tire of many things in life but I never heard of anybody tiring of tea, and refreshed by a cup I slept for several hours and arrived at Catherine Street, Strand, shortly after three.

"I have come from France," I said to the clerk. "I sent a letter this morning from the Charing Cross Hotel to Mr. Tinsley saying that I would call on him at three o'clock and that I hoped he would be able to see me at that time." "Ah, you are the gentleman who was to arrive from France this morning?" and I heard with satisfaction that Mr. Tinsley had left word that I was to be brought over to the Gaiety Bar. It seemed strange for a publisher to meet an author in a drinking saloon, but I accepted the appointment as part and parcel of my mis­sion and followed the clerk through swing doors into a long gallery where actors and journalists leaned over a marble counter drinking and talking to the barmaids or to each other. Other Bohemians, writers and painters, sat in upholstered nooks, but what a descent,I said to myself, from the Nouvelle Athènes. In an hour from now Manet and Dégas, Pissaro and Renoir will be there. The moody Duranty, whose novels don't sell but who is admired for his style, I can see in my imagination surrounded by poets. Hennique is there with Alexis, talking about the new play to be given at the end of the week at the Variétés, and all of them have an occasional thought for me. But I stiffened my mind to its purpose. The Gaiety Bar shows how London takes a hint from Paris in the building of a café, I was thinking, when the clerk returned to say that he had found Mr. Tinsley with friends. I saw a man rising to meet me. I had expected something less like a cheesemonger. "I am very glad to see you, sir, will you please to take a seat," he said, moving to give me room, and when I was seated he said, "Give it a name." I had never heard the expression before, and it was explained to me that it meant whisky and water. I answered that I never drank at three o'clock in the day and I applied my eyes to the reading of the faces of the crowd.

My arrival had interrupted their desultory conversation, but it was soon picked up and I expected to hear a literary discussion arise, but I only heard of the prices that might be expected from the different newspapers for occasional articles, and at the end of a few minutes Mr. Tinsley turned to me and said, "Are you sure you won't take anything? It will help you to forget your seasickness," but I shook my head and gave ear to the authors that sat around their publisher. I heard many names that had drifted across the Channel through the medium of the Tauchnitz edition — Black and Reade, Miss Braddon and Mrs. Henry Wood. "Once I had them all," Mr.Tinsley cried in a doleful voice, "sooner or later they will come back to me.” A gruff man with a huge beard said, “Yes, Bill, you had them all, and that is perhaps why you haven't got them now." A roar of laughter greeted the pun, which Mr. Tinsley began to resent, and there was a moment when I was afraid that I would be expelled with the crowd from the bar-room by a large chucker-out whom the waiter had called to his assistance. "That fellow Byron Webber, a friend of twenty years, has insulted me. What does he mean, except that I cheated an author. I never had a dispute with an author except one, a difference of opinion it was. I defy Byron Webber to tell me of another." "And who is Byron Webber?" I said. "A small newspaper supplies him with pocket money, but his main income is from the lodging house which his wife runs in Notting Hill." The words fell on the ears of Byron Webber, who returned quickly from the counter to tell his friend of twenty years what he thought of him. "Gentlemen, gentlemen," said the chucker-out, and suddenly the people round began to talk of something else and Mr. Tinsley and I left the bar-room and went across the street to his publishing office.

"Well, sir," said Mr. Tinsley as he lifted the flap of the counter and took me into his parlour, redolent of cod-fish and chickens. Bringing home the dinner to Streatham, I thought, and having taken a chair I told him that I would like to talk of the MS. which I had brought with me, saying that I had lived in France and had learned from the French school of novelists, especially from Zola. Whatever one might think of his point of view, I continued, which often was common, he certainly had more talent in linking a story together than Daudet. "Yes; the story is the main thing," Mr. Tinsley interjected, and he asked me which of all the French novelists had the largest trade subscription. "Zola, of course," I answered, and whilst listening and answering Mr. Tinsley's questions regarding the money there was in literature, my thoughts ranged over Zola's novels, stopping at an anecdote that had always amused me and that seemed applic­able to Tinsley himself.

A ne'er-do-well had wandered in and out of many trades and had returned, a failure, to his parents' eating-house. Two ducks were roasting before the fire. He watched them with increasing attention until rich gravy began to flow out of their back-sides, and it was then that the truth was revealed to him — he was a cook by vocation. But before I could satisfy myself with the application of the story to Mr. Tinsley, he suddenly broke in, "I am afraid the Sunday dinner I am bringing home to my family offends your nostrils,” and removing the basket, asked me to tell him the name of the novel I proposed to publish with him.

I mentioned the name, A Modem Lover, and he replied that the name would attract a great many readers but he feared that the librarians might take exception to it, especially if there were a divorce, or a woman living apart from her husband, or a husband living apart from his wife. “The libraries are essentially domestic, they have established a censorship, and this is possible because novels are not published at popular prices as with you in France. In France a novel costs three francs and a half, and here the novel is printed in three volumes and costs thirty-one-and-sixpence." "But you will break the censorship?" "I don't know, but it will be broken one day or another," he said. "Some two or three successful novelists, if they combined, could do it. Christie Murray is a coming man. You don't know him?" I answered that I had not that privilege, adding that I had only just arrived in London, and I begged him to tell me more about the censorship exercised by the libraries, a subject in which I was specially interested, and he spoke at length. "The whole system is unjust, not only to authors, but to the publishers," and he told a long story of the persecution he had been subjected to. At last, wearying of the sound of his own voice, he said, "Tell 'me the gist of your story," and I told him that Lewis Seymour was a painter who had had the good fortune to meet Mrs. Bentham in a picture dealer's shop and had been taken down by her to decorate her ballroom in Sussex. "A risky story, but all depends upon the treatment, and if you will leave your manuscript with me, sir, I will give it to a reader on whose judgment I place great reliance. He will mark any passages that he thinks doubtful and perhaps we may come to terms regarding them." "I called on you, Mr. Tinsley, for your name has crossed the Channel as a successful publisher. Moreover I wished to thank you for your edition of Lady Audley' s Secret, for it brought me, by a circuitous route it is true, to Shelley. Many thanks for having granted me so much of your time. You have other clients to see and perhaps some day when you have read my MS. you will tell me more about the censorship and how it acts on authors and publishers alike. From what I have heard from you I feel that sooner or later we shall have to abolish the censorship. But who is going to abolish it?" and we both laughed as we parted, I to the Gaiety Bar, yielding myself to a presentiment that I would find in the great gallery material for A Mummer's Wife.

As I walked up and down scanning the various faces I came very quickly to distinguish between the journalists and the mummers. "The journalists will help me with paragraphs," I said, "but that will be later. For the moment mummers are my quest, actors returning from long tours in the north of England. As I hesitated, uncertain how to introduce myself to a group telling droll stories, I heard a great voice behind me, a voice that I seemed to know, and turning I found myself face to face with the burly Byron. "What have you done with Bill Tinsley?" he asked. "You have left your manuscript with him?" "The parcel I had in my hand when I had the pleasure of making your acquaintance, Mr. Webber, was the MS. of a novel I wrote in France. I call it A Modern Lover." "A good title, but I am afraid it will get Bill into trouble with the librarians.” "Does he exaggerate the censorship?" "No, he doesn't, a novelist is turned down for a very little. Mudie is a more liberal minded man, but Mr. Faux hopes to keep his library free from all books that parents think unsuitable for their daughters to read. If you mean to publish a novel with a title like that you should feel a little nervous about Smith and Mudie."

I liked Byron's outspokenness and felt an intimacy springing up between me and this long-bodied, short-legged man with a cheerful rubicund face peering through a huge black beard. Perhaps the fellow feeling sprang from the fact that I had never seen anything like him before. However this may be, the words came to my lips easily which suggested that we should adjourn to an empty compartment yonder where we could talk at our ease. "Tinsley may be able to get your book past Mudie and Smith. If he does you will make money, for your book will attract, I hear that even from the title, but their money is in the thirty-one-and-sixpenny novel and it is a closed burrow. Even the two-volume novel enters with difficulty." "Good God," said I. "Mr. Tinsley told me he was going to give it to a reader on whose judgment he sets great reliance, and by the deletion of a few passages I may get it passed into both libraries." "But will they buy in sufficient numbers?" Byron asked. "I have another novel sketched out and all the characters decided on." "And what may the title be?" "A Mummer's Wife." "An excellent title but — ” Byron became thoughtful and I waited. He said, "Drawing-Rooms and actors are incompatible, and if Tinsley, after he has got his reader's report, decides that your book is too risky, I advise you to see Mr. Vizetelly about it."

"Mr. Vizetelly?" I said, "and who is he? His name is Italian." “Many generations back he was Italian, or Jew," Byron answered, "but he is an English writer and journalist. He was a correspondent of the Times when Queen Victoria went to visit the Empress Eugénie in the Tuilleries, and he was much appreciated. He is an author too. He has written some historical works. The story of The Diamond Necklace is a classic and will always be referred to when the story of the disappearance of the necklace comes to be talked about for one reason or another. Life, you see, is always a recurrence. A wheel has only a certain number of spokes and they come round in turn." This philosophical expression seemed strange on Byron's jovial visage, and thinking his mission with me finished he picked up his black bag containing manuscripts of the articles he had to read for the little journal he edited across the way. "But I must detain you, Mr. Webber. Do you know Mr. Vizetelly well, and if you do, will you give me a letter of introduction?" "Know him well, I have known him all my life. No introduction is needed. I am going home to Notting Hill. Do you go up Catherine Street and find him for yourself. Tell him you have come from France, where you lived ten or a dozen years. That will interest him. He will look upon you first perhaps as a translator — he is like a hawk, with fixed inquisitive eyes. As thin as a rake you will find him, too small for his clothes," and I went up the street trying to fill in the sketch myself till I came to the number at which I had been told to call.

A clerk, who I discovered afterwards was his son, called up a tube and led me upstairs, and when the door was opened I saw an old man between sixty and seventy, truly gaunt and grey, and yet with a strange vitality in his eyes, which fixed themselves upon me. "Sit down, will you, sir. You have come to me about a manuscript?" "Yes, and no. I was advised to come to you to talk not of the story which I left with Tinsley, but of a story which I consider of greater importance," and whilst he listened I wondered, so like a relic of the Middle Ages he became at every moment, looking like an old engraving, and in imagination I saw him dressed in a long cloak trimmed with fur standing before a high desk writing a letter — so Holbein would certainly have painted him, the portrait of Erasmus by Holbein in the Louvre. I thought of Quintin Matsys' picture of two misers, one counting gold and the other reading from a ledger, but Quintin Matsys'  version was crabbed, more archaic. Vizetelly kept Dürer in my mind, but I could not think of any picture in which Dürer would have utilized him. Yet I am sure Dürer would have utilized him. He would not have looked upon the narrow head, divided by a long gnarled nose, with eyes peering through spectacles steadfastly, without at least making a note of it in a sketch book.

I noticed the worn shirt buttoned about his wrinkled throat and the black cloth jacket and loose shabby trousers falling with a suspicion of drapery about his long legs. He listened to me as if he were interested in what I said and asked me questions about Zola and Maupassant and the difficulty of the translation of certain words. "But," he said, "you have not come to talk to me about Zola, though perhaps later on I may have some questions to ask you about his life and work. I have published half a dozen of his novels and intend to publish them all." He passed across to me his catalogue, drawing my attention to the number of Zola's works he had published, and when I had looked through them and told him an old story about Alphonse Karr which of course he must have known since .boyhood, "A polite old man," I said to myself, "as polite as a sixteenth century philosopher, full of formula and courtesy and intelligence that burns and gleams through his spectacles."

"So you have been in at Mr. Tinsley's," he said. "He has had great luck in his life but he has squandered his luck." I suggested that there were ups and downs in literature, but Vizetelly said, "To restore him to his former prosperity I am afraid we should have to remove the Gaiety Bar," and a faint smile passed over his parchment-like face, and he began to look to me in the grace of his age like a withered birch tree. "Not many years are before him, but I hope to publish with him," I thought, and I complimented him on the success of The Diamond Necklace and he told me some interesting anecdotes about the year when he went to Paris as correspondent for the Times — how they had sawn three inches off the legs of one of the finest marqueterie tables of the great French designer of furniture whose name I have forgotten — Vizetelly had it on the tip of his tongue — the excuse being that Queen Victoria would need a table on which to rest her book when she retired to bed — for such a need as that a work of art was sacrificed. So prolific was the old man that I almost despaired, but he found an attentive listener, and at last said, "But I am detaining you, sir."

“l came to tell you that I had another novel in my mind, the story of a mummer, the head of an opera company, who lodges at a linen draper's shop and rescues the pretty draperess from selling reels of cotton and pocket handkerchiefs." "He puts her on the stage," Vizetelly interjected. "Yes." "And in what town does all this happen?" "I hadn't considered which town, somewhere in the north of England." "A great deal of the success of your book depends upon the town and I hope you will make a significant choice. You must not rely on the luck of a chance thought, you must go in search of everything," and as he spoke I foresaw myself spending the best part of three or four afternoons in the Gaiety Bar, encircled by mummers telling me the adventures that had befallen them.