Last week the same MS. came back to me—much aged and the worse for wear—with a note that the author did not mind if I altered the ending as I had suggested. But two years is two years. And in the interval, while the MS. was travelling round to every other office, the subject-matter had got out of date.
It is never politic to be touchy if by chance some misguided editor does offer a word of criticism!
If you want your work published, and there is no loss of principle involved, conform to the publisher's requirements as gracefully as you can, even though, in your heart of hearts, you consider him woefully lacking in discernment.
And you can comfort yourself, meanwhile, with the thought that when you are safely ensconced upon Olympian heights, you will even things up a little, and get back all of your own. I know one proprietress of several rejected MSS. who vows that whenever she "gets there," she will sit on the topmost pinnacle, and make all publishers and editors (including myself) walk up to her on their knees, dropping curtsies all the way!
A Popular Delusion
I was making for my office one day when a sportive-looking girl stopped me on the stairs. "Just give this story to the editor will you, please?" she began. "Give it right into her hands, won't you; don't let any underling get hold of it."
I agreed.
"And—I say—just tell her from me that she's to read it herself, every word of it; I won't be put off with some assistant tossing it aside half read. I know their tricks."
One very popular delusion is that there is a conspiracy among the assistants in an office to keep MSS., and especially good MSS., from the eye of the chief! People will resort to all sorts of devices with the idea of ensuring MSS. reaching the editor's own hands. They are marked "personal," and "strictly private," or "please forward, if away"; and I had one endorsed, "Not to be opened by any one but the Editor."
Yet what is gained by all this, save a definite amount of delay? In any well-organised office, work has to follow a certain routine; MSS. have to be entered up by clerks as received, the stamps sent for return postage have to be checked and duly noted by the proper department, etc. Why delay the handling of the MS. for a few weeks by having it so addressed that it may follow the editor to the North Pole, and back, before it is opened, if the endorsements were obeyed?—which of course they are not.