I don't know what it was that made him write originally. Perhaps it was his name—Delancey Woburn sounds like the author—or the hero—of a serial. Or it may have been that his exuberant desire for self-expression had burst through the four walls of practical professions. He had, I believe, considered the stage and the church. Journalism would have seemed to me the obvious outlet but he preferred literature. "Creation is such fun," he would explain, beaming. And, of course, he was tremendously successful. Delancey was designed on a pattern of success.
That was one of the obvious defects I was talking about. Delancey has missed his failures. He has fought and been defeated but he has never longed and been frustrated. In his case, romance is realism. He has only known happy endings.
Naturally he is not an interesting writer. How could he be? And, naturally, he is a successful one. How could he help it? Delancey writes for magazines in England and America. I, myself, never read magazines, but occasionally he sends me one and every twenty stories (I think it is twenty) become a book. The English ones were about scapegraces and irresistible ne'er-do-wells, ancestral homes with frayed carpets and faded hangings in which penniless woman-haters (the last of a noble line) sit and brood, living alone with equally gruff, woman-hating family retainers. Sometimes, too, there was an absent-minded dreamer, and villainous business men worked indefatigably in the interests of their own ultimate frustration.
But this, of course, would never do for America where there isn't a market for ne'er-do-wells, frayed carpets inspire no glamour, and dreamers who before the war were despised as harmless, are now damned as dangerous. No, America must have her special line and no one better than Delancey knew how to mix the fragrance of true love with the flavour of Wall Street and serve at the right temperature.
He wasn't proud of his writing—or, rather, he wasn't proud of it with every one. In his heart of hearts, what he wanted was not the applause of the public, but the faith of a coterie, to be a martyr, misunderstood by the many, worshipped by the few. A Bloomsbury hero, a Chelsea King! "We confess that as a writer Mr. Delancey Woburn is altogether too rarefied for our taste. His work is far too impregnated by the stamp of a tiny clique of rather self-conscious superintellectuals. Reading his books, we feel as if we had suddenly entered a room full of people who know one another very well. In other words, we feel out of it."
What would not Delancey have given for a review that began like that! Instead of which the best that he could hope for in "shorter notices" would be an announcement that "Mr. Woburn's many admirers will no doubt find his last book eminently to their taste. He provides a lavish supply of the features they are accustomed to look for in his work."
Poor Delancey, his stories did sell so well! And there was his flat in Grafton Street with the beautiful new taffetas curtains and the cigars that had just arrived from Havana, with his own initials on.
So from week to week he put off becoming an artist and one year (after a four-month love affair and two lacquer cabinets) he made a lecture tour in America.
"Was it a success?" I asked wearily (Delancey's success is always such a terribly foregone conclusion).
"Tremendous," he beamed. "I was careful to be a little dull because then they think they're learning something." But he was out of love, the flat was overcrowded, money continued to pour in and he knew terribly well that he was not making a contribution to contemporary literature.