Author of "The Gates Ajar," "A Singular Life," etc.
"THE GATES AJAR" WITH THE CRITICS AND THE PUBLIC.—THE AUTHOR'S FIRST STUDY.—READING REVIEWS OF ONE'S OWN BOOKS.—CORRESPONDENCE WITH READERS OF "THE GATES AJAR."
As was said in the last paper, "The Gates Ajar" was written without hope or expectation of any especial success, and when the happy storm broke in truth, I was the most astonished girl in North America.
From the day when Mr. Fields's thoughtful note reached the Andover post-office, that miracle of which we read often in fiction, and sometimes in literary history, touched the young writer's life; and it began over again, as a new form of organization.
As I look back upon them, the next few years seem to have been a series of amazing phantasmagoria. Indeed, at the time, they were scarcely more substantial. A phantom among phantoms, I was borne along. Incredulous of the facts, and dubious of my own identity, I whirled through readjustments of scene, of society, of purposes, of hopes, and now, at last, of ambitions; and always of hard work, and plenty of it. Really, I think the gospel of work then, as always, and to all of us, was salvation from a good deal of nonsense incident to the situation.
I have been told that the American circulation of the book, which has remained below one hundred thousand, was rather more than that in Great Britain. Translations, of course, were manifold. The French, the German, the Dutch, the Italian have been conscientiously sent to the author; some others, I think, have not. More applications to republish my books have reached me from Germany than from any other country. For a while, with the tenderness of a novice in such experience, I kept all these foreign curiosities on my book-shelves; but the throes of several New England "movings" have scattered their ashes.
Not long ago I came across a tiny pamphlet in which I used to feel more honest pride than in any edition of "The Gates Ajar" which it has ever been my fortune to handle. It is a sickly yellow thing, covered with a coarse design of some kind, in which the wings of a particularly sprawly angel predominate.
The print is abhorrent, and the paper such as any respectable publisher would prepare to be condemned for in this world and in that to come. In fact, the entire book was thus given out by one of the most enterprising of English pirates, as an advertisement for a patent medicine. I have never traced the chemical history of the drug; but it has pleased my fancy to suppose it to be the one in which Mrs. Holt, the mother of Felix, dealt so largely; and whose sale Felix put forth his mighty conscience to suppress.
Of course, owing to the state of our copyright laws at that time, all this foreign publication was piratical; and most of it brought no visible consequence to the author, beyond that cold tribute to personal vanity on which our unlucky race is expected to feed. I should make an exception. The house of Sampson, Low and Company honorably offered me, at a very early date, a certain recognition of their editions. Other reputable English houses since, in the case of succeeding books, have passed contracts of a gentlemanly nature, with the disproportionately grateful author, who was, of course, entirely at their mercy. When an American writer compares the sturdy figures of the foreign circulation with the attenuated numerals of such visible returns as reach him, he is more puzzled in his mind than surfeited in his purse. But the relation of foreign publishers to "home talent" is an ancient and honorable conundrum, which it is not for this paper or its writer to solve.
Nevertheless, I found the patent medicine "Gates Ajar" delicious, and used to compare it with Messrs. Fields and Osgood's edition de luxe with an undisguised delight, which I found it difficult to induce the best of publishers to share.