When my novel had been typewritten and I read it in cold blood, I was absolutely unable to decide whether it was very good, good, medium, bad, or very bad. I could not criticize it. All I knew was that certain sentences, in the vein of the écriture artiste, persisted beautifully in my mind, like fine lines from a favourite poet. I loosed the brave poor thing into the world over a post-office counter. "What chance has it, in the fray?" I exclaimed. My novel had become nothing but a parcel. Thus it went in search of its fate.
I have described the composition of my first book in detail as realistic as I can make it, partly because a few years ago the leading novelists of the day seemed to enter into a conspiracy to sentimentalize the first book episode in their brilliant careers.
[VIII]
"Will you step this way?" said the publisher's manager, and after coasting by many shelves loaded with scores of copies of the same book laid flat in piles—to an author the most depressing sight in the world—I was ushered into the sanctum, the star-chamber, the den, the web of the spider.
I beheld the publisher, whose name is a household word wherever the English language is written for posterity. Even at that time his imprint flamed on the title-pages of one or two works of a deathless nature. My manuscript lay on an occasional table by his side, and I had the curious illusion that he was posing for his photograph with my manuscript. As I glanced at it I could not help thinking that its presence there bordered on the miraculous. I had parted with it at a post-office. It had been stamped, sorted, chucked into a van, whirled through the perilous traffic of London's centre, chucked out of a van, sorted again, and delivered with many other similar parcels at the publisher's. The publisher had said: "Send this to So-and-so to read." Then more perils by road and rail, more risks of extinction and disorientation. Then So-and-so, probably a curt man, with a palate cloyed by the sickliness of many manuscripts, and a short way with new authors, had read it or pretended to read it. Then finally the third ordeal of locomotion. And there it was, I saw it once more, safe!
We discussed the weather and new reputations. I was nervous, and I think the publisher was nervous, too. At length, in a manner mysterious and inexplicable, the talk shifted to my manuscript. The publisher permitted himself a few compliments of the guarded sort. "But there's no money in it, you know," he said.
"I suppose not," I assented. ("You are an ass for assenting to that," I said to myself.)
"I invariably lose money over new authors," he remarked, as if I was to blame.
"You didn't lose much over Mrs.——," I replied, naming one of his notorious successes.
"Oh, well!" he said, "of course——. But I didn't make so much as you think, perhaps. Publishing is a very funny business." And then he added: "Do you think your novel will succeed like Mrs.——'s?"