And I remember thinking that it was doubtless for this reason that the career of the literary periodical is so invariably short-lived. It is always the same thing. The paper is launched, fresh painted, with flags gaily fluttering. At the oars are to be seen renowned sailors: men who have ventured on noble hazards in the cause of letters. There is a shout of acclamation from the shore. “Never,” they say, “has a ship been launched under happier auspices. See how it cuts the waves! See how the oars rise and fall together! Of a surety it will win through safely to the fortunate islands.”
But before the ship is many miles from land, the watchers from the land observe signs of disquiet and dissension. The flags begin to droop. The sails are slack. The oarsmen no longer work in harmony. Some of them have indeed ceased to row at all and others are making arrangements to put back to shore while the waters are still smooth. The bright speed of that first passage is forgotten. The ship sways in midsea at the mercy of tide and current. The faithful few are hard put to it to keep the boat afloat. They can make no headway, and the watchers from the land lose interest and give their ears to the tales of some newer seaman who brings tidings by another route of merchandise and treasure and perilous journeyings.
A sad story, but one whose details have grown so familiar as to cease almost to sadden us. We talk of the literary market. How, we ask, can a private enterprise hope to enter the lists against the vested interests of printer and publisher and bookseller. If the editor has a number of friends, he can produce two or three good numbers. But if his contributors are paid at all, they receive remuneration at a rate so low as to amount practically to insult. And however much the artificers of the new world, the evangelists of the dawn of brotherhood, may speak of the sacred trusts of art, a man is loath to sell for three guineas a commodity for which elsewhere he can obtain fifteen. The editor of such a paper receives from an “established author” only those compositions that cannot be satisfactorily sold in the open market. For two reasons may such compositions be unmarketable. Either they are bad, or they are unsuited for family consumption. Indeed, the student of literary history will find that most of the contributions to such periodicals of a lasting æsthetic value are of a nature to justify their inclusion in “the index”; which is unfortunate commercially; for one does not particularly care to spend six shillings on a production that cannot be decently left about the house.
Unquestionably this is one of the main cross-currents that hinder the progress of the brave adventurers. But there are others, and I am not certain that the greatest of them is not the lack of harmony between the editor and the public. The magazine is a thing with which to pass the evening hours of half-past nine to eleven; and the man whose day has been spent among books, whose eyes are tired with the sight of print, would prefer, when his work is finished, to dance or play bridge or go to a theatre or a party. The dinner-jacket and white shirt into which we change after our evening bath is the symbol of a change of atmosphere. We have put away the traffic of the day’s business; and those of us whose livelihood depends on letters find it difficult to establish contact with the civil servant and the bank manager who is content after dinner to settle down happily before a solid scholarly review.
The editor has put his paper to bed; he leans back exhausted in his chair. “Thank God, that’s over,” he says; “and thank God,” he adds, “that I haven’t got to read it.”
That is the problem for an editor. If he prints what he would himself like to read at such a time, his choice will, as likely as not, fail to satisfy the man who has spent his day beside the telephone and whose ears are weary with listening to applications for an overdraft; while, if he prints what he feels his public would like to read, if he substitutes a standard of decision other than “I like” or “I don’t like it,” his paper will cease to be an expression of his own personality, and will be insincere. The ideal editor shares the tastes of the public that he is addressing.
And it was, I think, on that same evening that Clifford Bax asked me how the paper that I should myself most eagerly welcome would be constituted; and I answered that the paper would have to take the place of a friend, and that I should wish for such a paper as would reproduce the essence of the evening that we had spent together.
“We have talked,” I said, “much of cricket, of the great matches that we have seen and read of. We have wondered how we could persuade the M.C.C. to arrange a single-wicket match between Hearne and Woolley. We have fought old battles again, and have drawn weapons that have long lain rusty on the shelf. And we have spoken of our own achievements as may with complete propriety two such indifferent performers as ourselves. We need make no display of modesty. Our figures prove conclusively enough our quality. We do not apply to our cricket the standards that we apply to Hendren’s. We deal kindlily with one another, as reviewers do with those friendly, worthless little volumes of verse that do no one any harm and may quite conceivably cause innocent entertainment to their authors and their friends. So in my paper there could be some such talk of cricket.
“And as we have spoken of the technique of writing, and of the literary market, on these subjects should I commission articles. We have repeated a number of anecdotes, slightly scandalous ones for the most part, and the short story in my paper would not be sophisticated or obscure or modern: a piece of straightforward, concrete narrative that would aim less at vigour than at charm. I would have it a pretty, sentimental thing, with here and there a suggestion of wantonness, of riot. There would be personalities; for the peeping Tom that is in all of us clamours for satisfaction. And we pass a great deal of our time discussing the peculiarities of our acquaintances.
Each number should contain a character sketch of some public figure, and I should not object if it were malicious. It is a sign of vulgarity, I am told, to feel curious about the routine of other people’s lives. A number of critics dealt very harshly with Mrs Watts-Dunton’s little book on Swinburne. He was a poet, they said, a great poet. His work remains. That is all that matters. What purpose is served by this trivial gossip about boots and comforters and garters. Personally I found her book admirably entertaining. I felt, after reading it, that I knew Swinburne better than I had before. Routine is, after all, the framework of a man’s life; and it is interesting for a writer to learn how others work; at what time they write; how many words they write a day; whether they work steadily throughout the year, or in short bursts of intense concentration. It may dispel the illusion to watch a play from the wings of a theatre instead of from the stalls. But there are some things about the showman that can be only learnt behind the scenes. At any rate, that is the sort of stuff that I would like to read in my paper.”