“I can believe it of him. But I’m landed with his paper. It has cost me twenty-live pounds. I meant to print it, and I mean to print it, but I mean now to sell it when it is printed.” Sam left Stewart to suppose that, had Travers not died, he would have distributed that pamphlet free. “Money,” he added, “is a necessity.”
He had taken the right line. Stewart’s instinctive generosity was touched, and he meant to give this lame dog a lift over the stile. “I see where your journalist comes in. All right, Branstone, you can count on me.”
“On you?” said Sam. “Oh, I couldn’t ask it of you.”
“You didn’t ask,” replied Stewart naively. “I offer. I may edit the Manchester Warden, but Zeus nods sometimes, ’busmen have been known to take a holiday, and there is a paper called the Sunday Judge in whose chaste columns I have written under the name of Percy Persiflage. Send me a proof of that pamphlet and Percy shall stamp upon it. He will say that no decent person could read it without being revolted, and the pamphlet will boom. It’s the Sunday-paper public that you want, and... No, Percy shall not stamp. Percy shall bless. He will be moved to admiration of Mr. Adams’ earnestness, he will applaud the high moral purpose, and will do the rest by correspondence. Get your sisters and your cousins and your aunts to pitch in letters on either side, and I’ll see they get printed. I make this alteration because of the bookstalls.”
“The bookstalls?” asked Sam vaguely.
“This problem of distribution,” said Stewart impressively, “is the most difficult question of modern life. The producer is here, you; the consumer (we hope) is everywhere, and the problem is to bring your pamphlet to the thirsting consumer. The answer is the bookstall, but the bookstalls are cautious. When I say bookstalls I mean the right bookstalls. You will never see your money back if the only bookstalls which will exhibit your pamphlet are those which sell atrociously printed paperbacked editions of ‘Nana’ and ‘Fanny Hill.’ You must flourish on the bookstalls, and they banned ‘Esther Waters.’ The bookstalls, Branstone, are going to call for tact, and tact shall begin with Percy’s appreciation.”
“Or earlier,” said Sam.
“Earlier?”
“I hadn’t thought of the bookstalls, but this may help there, as well as in other ways. I mean, as far as Manchester is concerned, and if we get it on the stalls here, they can’t very well refuse it in other places.”
“Manchester being Manchester, it isn’t likely,” said Stewart. “What’s your idea?”