Each man or woman who joined the staff, Hugh included, had been given a brief history of the firm to read, written by an elderly compositor now living off a pension (granted by the firm to all old employees, as part of its fixed policy). It gave a full account of Josiah Brown, founder of the firm, whose marble bust stood at the head of the main staircase of the huge offices in Holborn. It gave only a few words to Edwin Summers, who had stayed with the firm but a short while, and none of whose descendants were to be found in its employment to-day. It recorded how Mr. Gladstone had so strongly approved of Josiah’s policy that he had overborne the objections of his regular publishers in order to allow the new firm the honour of publishing his Essay upon the advantages of religious education in schools. It told a totally apocryphal anecdote to the effect that Charles Bradlaugh, the great atheist, had been struck silent in the midst of a passionate oration by the voice of Josiah crying out “Blasphemer!” It noted how he had been disappointed of male offspring, though the Lord had blessed him with seven daughters, of whom but one married. Her husband was Mr. Aloysius Cotton, who had been educated in the Roman heresy, but shortly after meeting Miss Rebecca Brown became an Anglican, a very low Church Evangelical. (Josiah was a Methodist.) After fifteen years’ work in the firm, Mr. Cotton took the name of Brown-Cotton and became a junior partner. He succeeded to sole control of the firm on his father-in-law’s death, which occurred at the age of eighty-three. On his death at seventy-two, the firm passed to his sons, Mr. Herbert, Mr. Albert and Mr. Gilbert. He left some shares, but no right to interfere, to his daughter Leonora, married to a tea-broker named Hopkins; and instructed his sons to find employment for any of her sons who desired to enter the business in due course. One, Reginald, did so; he was Hugh’s immediate superior.
Mr. Herbert, made Sir Herbert in 1911 by Mr. Asquith, was the head of the firm, in title and in fact. His brothers’ photographs, greatly enlarged and framed in silver, hung in the reception room. His portrait, painted in oils by an A.R.A., was in the boardroom. It was not hung; in the rebuilding of the offices in 1920, it was actually built into the fabric of the wall and could not be removed without tearing down the structure. He controlled the policy of the firm and supervised every department. Mr. Albert concerned himself almost wholly with the accounting side; he was a placid, bald man with pale blue eyes. Mr. Gilbert did not come to the office regularly. He was unmarried, with longish dark hair, and lived alone in a large house at Purley, where he gave musical evenings at which he himself played the piano. It was understood that he was artistic; he was asked his opinion upon the typography and the jackets of the new books; and no catalogue went out without his approval. He attended board meetings and supported the opinions of Sir Herbert.
Sir Herbert, tall, white-moustached, a little bent with age but still impressive, carried on the profitable policies of Josiah Brown and Aloysius Brown-Cotton. Hugh had only once had a lengthy interview with him, but that was enough. The old man was as clear in exposition as he was immovable in judgment. Nor had this judgment been wrong; throughout three long lives the same general policy had made money; and at this day it was supported consciously by three men whom their colleagues admitted to be among the most successful publishers in London. “My Uncles,” as Reginald Hopkins always referred to them, were a triumvirate who passed assured verdicts on every form of printed matter except daily papers, who had been until recently always right, and who still had no conception that they would not always be right. Whole areas of literature fell under their condemnation: “my uncles” warned Reginald when Hugh once rashly spoke of D. H. Lawrence, “consider that a great deal of modern fiction would have been better left unwritten.”
Sir Herbert had explained to Hugh that he was never to forget that the great British reading public was deeply moral. It was not, perhaps, as consciously religious as it had been, but all the same the annual balance (“which my brother Albert will show you if you care to see it”) showed that the most substantially profitable section of the firm’s list was the large theological section. Some of these books, which were still on the list, had cost the firm originally no more than a couple of hundred pounds’ payment to a struggling clergyman who had been deeply grateful for it; and had then sold for as many as thirty years and were still asked for. Next to them, and possibly soon to become more valuable, were the educational books, headed by the famous series of Elementary, Intermediate and Advanced Dictionaries. More aleatory (Hugh blinked at the word) in Sir Herbert’s opinion, but still profitable were the series of magazines with which Sir Herbert hoped that Mr. Rolandson would henceforward specially concern himself. They ranged from Wireless for Boys to True Stories of the Empire, and from In the Steps of Our Lord to Science for You. These three main lines, Sir Herbert explained, were what brought in the bread and butter. Year after year, orders for them could be predicted; they had stood the test of time, and though the firm was far from unenterprising or unreceptive of new ideas, it could not fail to remember that the opinion of the British public was that in this sphere at least the old ideas were best.
“I was almost forgetting,” he continued with a benevolent smile, “what is after all the department which certainly gives the most honest and simple pleasure, and, though it is far from being the largest, has in several years given the highest percentage return per book. I mean our juvenile department. My grandfather, Josiah Brown, really started it with some moral tales for children, which I’m afraid would make the modern child chuckle: and annuals which were unique until Mr. Blackie copied them.” As he made this outrageous charge against a highly respectable rival firm, Sir Herbert did not seem angry; he spoke indulgently, as headmaster might of a promising but pretentious schoolboy. “I remember well how pleased I was when father said my suggestion to call them the Bumper Annuals was a good one though for some reason he did not adopt it. I felt I was on the way to becoming a real publisher. Ah-ah.” He sighed and resumed. “Then and then only, my dear Rolandson, we come to the biography and fiction, which alone the reviewers seem to notice and which, despite their considerable number, really play a relatively small part in assuring the prosperity of the firm. I think you know this part of our list fairly well. Now tell me, what strikes you about it particularly?”
This was an appalling question to be fired at a junior employee by the head of the firm. Hugh sought round desperately for something not too inane to say. What was the list like? Well, the biographies were mostly of builders of empire, established literary figures, well-known political characters (all reputable), written by honest craftsmen and rather on the dull side. None of them was a debunking or a “fictionalized” biography. The fiction list contained several good stodgy names of older novelists, safe for a first printing of five thousand each time, a big number of simple romantic woman writers, a few Wild Westerns, and some detective novels of the puzzle type. How could you sum that up politely? He played for safety: “Well, I had always regarded it as a very solid list, sir.”
“Yes, that is a fair comment,” Sir Herbert smiled; it seemed that the answer was all right. But to prevent any mishaps Sir Herbert took charge of the course of the conversation henceforward himself. “I wonder if you have observed what gives our list its solidity. What is the common feature which runs through all sections, and is to be found as much in the religious section, where you would expect it, as in the fiction where perhaps you might not? It is, that all our books have a moral basis—a Christian philosophy and aim, using the word Christian in the very widest sense. I do believe, and I trust you will not ridicule this” (Hugh would never have dreamed of doing such a thing) “that what is good religion is also good business. The public, despite certain flurries of fashion, does not want pornography and mocking. We don’t publish risqué novels. We don’t issue a series of biographies of King Charles’s mistresses, written by hack journalists to order, like our colleagues who live a little further east. We decline politely the offers we get of American gangster stories. Sometimes my brother Gilbert tells me we
go absurdly far. He was pulling my leg outrageously only yesterday because in Miss Nina Opal’s new novel an oath by an Indian captain is given as Ddash-N. He asked me if I felt it safe to spell out the words ‘Oh bother.’ I told him—only in fun, of course— that he would be asking me to print out in full the word Mr. Bernard Shaw tried to popularize some years ago in a play called Pygmalion. It was a very witty play.
“Don’t let me give you the idea that we are narrow-minded. I am not in the least afraid of the Captain’s oath, though I don’t use it myself. My education taught me to give the word its original meaning, and if I said a man was damned I would mean I thought he was on the way to eternal fire; and that seems an extremely violent term to throw about in daily conversation. We aren’t narrow in politics; in fact, we only yesterday decided to approach Mr. J. R. Clynes with a proposal to write a book on Socialism; and we shall be delighted to publish it if it can be arranged. We aren’t narrow in religion; if a scientific book, written in decent terms and the product of honest thought, led its author, for example, to deny the truth of revealed religion, neither my brothers nor I would consider that alone a reason for declining it. I admit I might have a certain private prejudice against it; but I would not allow that to influence me. I hope not, anyway. We are not narrow even in matters of sex; we long ago dropped the ban on the mention of divorce except for reprobation, on which my father insisted.
“But we believe this. Every publisher has an individual responsibility to see that his books are fit for all to read. No firm can limit the circulation of its books. You may label a book ‘for adults only,’ or ‘for doctors only.’ That is quite meaningless. Even if all booksellers were scrupulous, there are innumerable libraries which cannot supervise withdrawals and many of which don’t try to. So we try to keep off our lists anything that encourages a love of blood and slaughter. These sickening stories of gangster massacres—just consider what effect they are likely to have on a boy of fifteen, for example, sent out to earn his living—say, in London as a van boy. Or on an older man of twenty-five or so, unemployed and with a grievance against society which is by no means wholly unfounded. Tacking on a happy ending is no good; he reads the story and learns to admire the Big Shot. And he ends up in Thames Police Court, convicted of some sordid little crime and wrecked for life. And as for these sex novels—well, there is nothing, nothing in the world, more likely to destroy the happiness and future prospects of a young man or woman than to have learnt a frivolous attitude to unchastity. Believe me, I am not quite an old fogy; I have been young; and I do know what I am talking about.”
Sir Herbert spoke with great emphasis and a trace of embarrassment. Perhaps he was conscious, as he stood against the mantelpiece underneath a large framed portrait of Mr. Asquith, that he was an imposing figure of a silver-haired old man, but he was not acting. There was real earnestness in his voice; he seemed as he continued almost to be imploring Hugh to assure him that these views still seemed sound to the younger generation.
“My nephew Reginald,” he said, “will be giving you great latitude in the work he will hand over to you. I do want to feel sure in my mind that you will care for these magazines as the firm would wish you to. I hope you will share these ideals and help us to carry them out. May I have that assurance from you?”
Hugh gave him the promise he wanted, and was not insincere as he did so.
§
Hugh’s club foot prevented him going to the war, “Mr. Reginald” (Hugh sometimes expected the staff to refer to him as “Master Reginald” to distinguish him from the Olympian uncles) joined the Army in 1940. More responsibility, and more frequent interviews with Sir Herbert, resulted; Hugh was now in general charge of half of the variegated periodicals which Reginald had controlled. The other half was under the control of his most immediate rival, a woman of fifty, Cornelia Shotter. He knew little about her, except that she was pious and did not dissemble her dislike for him. Each of them was of opinion that Mr. Reginald’s work could have been devolved on the one alone, without the other’s assistance; but Hugh was less obviously irritated by that belief than Miss Shotter.
As the size of the magazines was progressively reduced by paper rationing, Sir Herbert correspondingly reduced the amount of material provided by outside authors. Soon no more than 5 per cent., all over, was provided by writers not on the payroll of the firm. Hugh was not asked to write any more than he had been, nor were the Wireless consultant, the Home Problems consultant, the Religious adviser and the rest of the industrious gentlemen and ladies who had desks in the office and provided a named amount of satisfactory copy each month; but, because they wrote the same amount, their contributions were proportionately larger. The only material which Sir Herbert felt could not be satisfactorily written in the office to order was the fiction. And this was no inconsiderable expense: several magazines had either a serial or short stories; one was nothing but fiction. He considered but rejected a scheme put up by Mr. Albert for changing the contracts of those who like Hugh had shown an aptitude for fiction, and requiring them to turn in a proportion of fiction in the material that might be demanded of them. He told his brother it was an immoral proposition, and the two had as near to a quarrel as they ever did. The most that he would agree to do was to send a memorandum to each member of the staff who had shown any ability to write the sort of stories that were needed, in which he said that the firm would welcome even more eagerly than before anything that they could offer, but that as before this work would be paid for separately. Hugh, who had written two or three adequate short stories, received this note and set ardently to work to provide all the fiction he could. He needed money badly. Not only was his mother in poorer health than ever—the track of some of the raiders in the London blitzes had gone straight over Croxburn, and the A.A. racket as well as jettisoned bombs had wrecked her nerve—but he now had a mistress. Renata was not expensive—indeed, she vetoed whenever she could his least expenditure—but she could not invariably refuse what he brought. Flowers, chocolates and cigarettes when there were such things, cinema tickets, fares, new clothes for himself to feed his new found vanity, half shares in a very rare week-end or night away. Adultery may or may not be sinful, but is never cheap.
In November, 1941, he had a long session with Sir Herbert which for the first time offered him the hope of a considerable increase of income. It opened inauspiciously. He submitted to him an idea for a romantic serial by one of their most reliable authors, Mrs. Blodwen Griffiths.
It was an adaptation of an idea he had read somewhere—he no longer remembered where. It was to be about a thyroid deficient, a young man who was cast aside on a desert island with his girl friend; and realized that without his thyroid extract he would shortly become an imbecile. It had seemed an excellent idea. But Sir Herbert dismissed it as “morbid,” and as inclining to immorality; then perceiving how cast down Rolandson was, sought for a way to comfort him. “I am very sorry to put aside so promising an idea—a brilliant suggestion which does you every credit, my boy,” he said, “but I cannot see how we could make it acceptable. No, I really cannot.” He paused. “You offered a suggestion the other day which I would far rather take up. I am trying to recall exactly what it was.”
“Arsenical egg,” said Hugh Rolandson, distinctly.
“I beg your pardon?” said Sir Herbert, frowning.
“It was an idea suggested to me by a young woman I know,” Hugh explained. “It was to be a murder story in which the villain injected eggs with arsenic, using a hypodermic syringe through the shell. So he was able to have an alibi for when the victim ate an egg and was poisoned. But I asked a chemist and he tells me that the arsenic would make the white of the egg set at once, and you couldn’t get away with it. I’m afraid it’s no good, sir.” He spoke depressedly.
Sir Herbert’s kind heart was troubled. “I wish we could get something that you could write yourself,” he said. “Something which would use the magnificent possibilities of modern science. You do that so well. Som
ething on the lines of the early H. G. Wells stories. Or Jules Verne, if that name means anything to you.”
It did not, but Hugh had an idea. “I have got a plot,” he said, “but it seemed to me too fantastic. However, if you think we could do with something on these lines …”
“Let me hear it, please,” said Sir Herbert.
“I haven’t got it worked out yet,” said Hugh. “But so far as I’ve gone, it’s this. The man who writes the book writes it about a friend of his, an eccentric but brilliant scientist. The scientist is primarily an astronomer, and for that reason has become a great expert on telescopes, lenses, photography, light, and all that. He has built himself the finest telescope ever made, far better than the Mount Wilson one, and it is mounted on a peak in the South American Andes, among the wild Indian tribes of Ecuador.”
“Good,” said Sir Herbert.
“One day the hero gets a wire from the scientist. Come at once, it says. Well, we pass over his various travels and adventures, until at last he comes to the scientist, alone with his vast telescope, strange instruments and valuable stores, in the middle of tribes who use poison arrows and juju, or voodoo, or whatever it is in Ecuador. And then the scientist tells him a wonderful story.
“You know, sir, that light travels infinitely fast, but that the distances in space are so enormous that what we see in the stars is what happened hundreds of years ago. I believe that it has been worked out that the nearest star is one called Alpha Centauri, and that what we see there is what happened in the days of Julius Cœsar. I’ll look that up to make sure, but that is the general idea. Of course, all we can see is the chemical composition of the star, which is found out by breaking up the light into a spectrum. But that’s because it’s so far away and our instruments are so weak. The light travels on, undimmed and unchanged in space; and everything is there, if only we could see it.
Somebody at the Door Page 18
