Kennaston turned to the publishers’ advertisements. Dapley & Pildriff at that time were urging every one to read White Sepulchers, the author of which had made public the momentous discovery that all churchgoers were not immaculate persons. Paige Ticknor’s Sons were announcing a new edition of The Apostates, a scathing arraignment of plutocratic iniquities, which was heralded as certain to sear the soul to its core, more than rival Thackeray, and turn our highest social circles inside out. Then the Gayvery Company offered Through the Transom, a daring study of “feminism,” compiled to all appearance under rather novel conditions, inasmuch as the brilliant young author had, according to the advertisements, written every sentence with his jaws set and his soul on fire. The majority of Leeds, McKibble & Todd’s adjectives were devoted to Sarah’s Secret, the prize-winner in the firm’s $15,000 contest—a “sprightly romance of the greenwood,” whose undoubted aim, Kennaston deduced from tentative dips into its meandering balderdash, was to become the most sought-after book, in all institutes devoted to care of the feeble-minded. And Stuyvesant & Brothers were superlatively acclaiming The Silent Brotherhood, the latest masterpiece of a pornographically gifted genius, who had edifyingly shown that he ranked religion above literature, by retiring from the ministry to write novels.
Kennaston laughed—upon which side of the mouth, it were too curious to inquire. Momentarily he thought of printing the book at his own expense. But here the years of poverty had left indelible traces. Kennaston had too often walked because he had not carfare, for a dollar ever again to seem to him an inconsiderable matter. Comfortably reassured as to pecuniary needs for the future, he had not the least desire to control more money than actually showed in his bank-balances: but, even so, he often smiled to note how unwillingly he spent money. So now he shrugged, and sent out his loved romance again.
An unlikely thing happened: the book was accepted for publication. The Baxon-Muir Company had no prodigious faith in The Audit at Storisende, as a commercial venture; but their “readers,” in common with most of the “readers” for the firms who had rejected it, were not lacking in discernment of its merits as an admirable piece of writing. And the more optimistic among them protested even to foresee a possibility of the book’s selling. The vast public that reads for pastime, they contended, was beginning to grow a little tired of being told how bad was this-or-that economic condition: and pretty much everything had been “daringly exposed,” to the point of weariness, from the inconsistencies of our clergy to the uncleanliness of our sausage. In addition, they considered the surprising success of Mr. Marmaduke Fennel’s eighteenth-century story, For Love of a Lady, as compared with the more moderate sales of Miss Elspeth Lancaster’s In Scarlet Sidon, that candid romance of the brothel; deducing therefrom that the “gadzooks” and “by’r lady” type of reading-matter was ready to revive in vogue. At all events, the Baxon-Muir Company, after holding a rather unusual number of conferences, declared their willingness to publish this book; and in due course they did publish it.
There were before this, however, for Kennaston many glad hours of dabbling with proofsheets: the tale seemed so different, and so infernally good, in print. Kennaston never in his life found any other playthings comparable to those first wide-margined “galley proofs” of The Audit at Storisende. Here was the word, vexatiously repeated within three lines, which must be replaced by a synonym; and the clause which, when transposed, made the whole sentence gain in force and comeliness; and the curt sentence whose addition gave clarity to the paragraph, much as a pinch of alum clears turbid water; and the vaguely unsatisfactory adjective, for which a jet of inspiration suggested a substitute, of vastly different meaning, in the light of whose inevitable aptness you marveled over your preliminary obtuseness:—all these slight triumphs, one by one, first gladdened Kennaston’s labor and tickled his self-complacency. He could see no fault in the book.
His publishers had clearer eyes. His Preface, for one matter, they insisted on transposing to the rear of the volume, where it now figures as the book’s tolerably famous Colophon—that curious exposition of Kennaston’s creed as artist. Then, for a title, The Audit at Storisende was editorially adjudged abominable: people would not know how to pronounce Storisende, and in consequence would hold back from discussing the romance or even asking for it at bookdealers. Men Who Loved Ettarre was Kennaston’s ensuing suggestion; but the Baxon-Muir Company showed no fixed confidence in their patrons’ ability to pronounce Ettarre, either. Would it not be possible, they inquired, to change the heroine’s name?—and Kennaston assented. Thus it was that in the end his book came to be called Men Who Loved Alison.
But to Kennaston her name stayed always Ettarre....
The book was delivered to the world, which received the gift without excitement. The book was delivered to reviewers, who found in it a well-intentioned echo of Mr. Maurice Hewlett’s earlier mediæval tales. And there for a month or some six weeks, the matter rested.
Then one propitious morning an indignant gentlewoman in Brooklyn wrote to The New York Sphere a letter which was duly printed in that journal’s widely circulated Sunday supplement, The Literary Masterpieces of This Week, to denounce the loathsome and depraved indecency of the nineteenth and twentieth chapters, in which—while treating of Sir Guiron’s imprisonment in the Sacred Grove of Caer Idryn, and the worship accorded there to the sigil of Scoteia—Kennaston had touched upon some of the perverse refinements of antique sexual relations. The following week brought forth a full page of letters. Two of these, as Kennaston afterward learned, were contributed by the “publicity man” of the Baxon-Muir Company, and all arraigned obscenities which Kennaston could neither remember or on re-reading his book discover. Later in this journal, as in other newspapers, appeared still more denunciations. An up-to-the-minute bishop expostulated from the pulpit against the story’s vicious tendencies, demanding that it be suppressed. Thereafter it was no longer on sale in the large department-stores alone, but was equally procurable at all the bookstands in hotels and railway stations. Even the author’s acquaintances began to read it. And the Delaunays (then at the height of their vogue as exponents of the “new” dances) introduced “the Alison amble”; and from Tampa to Seattle, in certain syndicated cartoons of generally appealing idiocy, newspaper readers were privileged to see one hero of the series knock the other heels over head with a copy of Kennaston’s romance. And women wore the “Alison aigrette” for a whole season; and a new brand of cheap tobacco christened in her honor had presently made her name at least familiar in saloons. Men Who Loved Alison became, in fine, the novel of the hour. It was one of those rare miracles such as sometimes palm off a well-written book upon the vast public that reads for pastime.
And shortly afterward Mr. Booth Tarkington published another of his delightful romances: one forgets at this distance of time just which it was: but, like all the others, it was exquisitely done, and sold neck and neck with Men Who Loved Alison; so that for a while it looked almost as if the American reading public was coming to condone adroit and careful composition.