09 Not George Washington

by Unknown

  At the moment of writing Tom Blake is rapidly acquiring an assured position in the heart of the British poetry-loving public. This incident in his career should interest his numerous admirers. The world knows little of its greatest men.

  CHAPTER 11

  JULIAN’S IDEA (James Orlebar Cloyster’s narrative continued)

  I had been relating, on the morning after the Blake affair, the stirring episode of the previous night to Julian. He agreed with me that it was curious that our potato-thrower of Covent Garden market should have crossed my path again. But I noticed that, though he listened intently enough, he lay flat on his back in his hammock, not looking at me, but blinking at the ceiling; and when I had finished he turned his face towards the wall—which was unusual, since I generally lunched on his breakfast, as I was doing then, to the accompaniment of quite a flow of languid abuse.

  I was in particularly high spirits that morning, for I fancied that I had found a way out of my difficulty about Margaret. That subject being uppermost in my mind, I guessed at once what Julian’s trouble was.

  “I think you’d like to know, Julian,” I said, “whether I’d written to Guernsey.”

  “Well?”

  “It’s all right,” I said.

  “You’ve told her to come?”

  “No; but I’m able to take my respite without wounding her. That’s as good as writing, isn’t it? We agreed on that.”

  “Yes; that was the idea. If you could find a way of keeping her from knowing how well you were getting on with your writing, you were to take it. What’s your idea?”

  “I’ve hit on a very simple way out of the difficulty,” I said. “It came to me only this morning. All I need do is to sign my stuff with a pseudonym.”

  “You only thought of that this morning?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “My dear chap, I thought of it as soon as you told me of the fix you were in.”

  “You might have suggested it.”

  Julian slid to the floor, drained the almost empty teapot, rescued the last kidney, and began his breakfast.

  “I would have suggested it,” he said, “if the idea had been worth anything.”

  “What! What’s wrong with it?”

  “My dear man, it’s too risky. It’s not as though you kept to one form of literary work. You’re so confoundedly versatile. Let’s suppose you did sign your work with a nom de plume.”

  “Say, George Chandos.”

  “All right. George Chandos. Well, how long would it be, do you think, before paragraphs appeared, announcing to the public, not only of England but of the Channel Islands, that George Chandos was really Jimmy Cloyster?”

  “What rot!” I said. “Why the deuce should they want to write paragraphs about me? I’m not a celebrity. You’re talking through your hat, Julian.”

  Julian lit his pipe.

  “Not at all,” he said. “Count the number of people who must necessarily be in the secret from the beginning. There are your publishers, Prodder and Way. Then there are the editors of the magazine which publishes your Society dialogue bilge, and of all the newspapers, other than the Orb, in which your serious verse appears. My dear Jimmy, the news that you and George Chandos were the same man would go up and down Fleet Street and into the Barrel like wildfire. And after that the paragraphs.”

  I saw the truth of his reasoning before he had finished speaking. Once more my spirits fell to the point where they had been before I hit upon what I thought was such a bright scheme.

  Julian’s pipe had gone out while he was talking. He lit it again, and spoke through the smoke:

  “The weak point of your idea, of course, is that you and George Chandos are a single individual.”

  “But why should the editors know that? Why shouldn’t I simply send in my stuff, typed, by post, and never appear myself at all?”

  “My dear Jimmy, you know as well as I do that that wouldn’t work. It would do all right for a bit. Then one morning: ‘Dear Mr. Chandos,—I should be glad if you could make it convenient to call here some time between Tuesday and Thursday.—Yours faithfully. Editor of Something-or-other.’ Sooner or later a man who writes at all regularly for the papers is bound to meet the editors of them. A successful author can’t conduct all his business through the post. Of course, if you chucked London and went to live in the country–-“

  “I couldn’t,” I said. “I simply couldn’t do it. London’s got into my bones.”

  “It does,” said Julian.

  “I like the country, but I couldn’t live there. Besides, I don’t believe I could write there—not for long. All my ideas would go.”

  Julian nodded.

  “Just so,” he said. “Then exit George Chandos.”

  “My scheme is worthless, you think, then?”

  “As you state it, yes.”

  “You mean–-?” I prompted quickly, clutching at something in his tone which seemed to suggest that he did not consider the matter entirely hopeless.

  “I mean this. The weak spot in your idea, as I told you, is that you and George Chandos have the same body. Now, if you could manage to provide George with separate flesh and blood of his own, there’s no reason–-“

  “By Jove! you’ve hit it. Go on.”

  “Listen. Here is my rough draft of what I think might be a sound, working system. How many divisions does your work fall into, not counting the Orb?”

  I reflected.

  “Well, of course, I do a certain amount of odd work, but lately I’ve rather narrowed it down, and concentrated my output. It seemed to me a better plan than sowing stuff indiscriminately through all the papers in London.”

  “Well, how many stunts have you got? There’s your serious verse—one. And your Society stuff—two. Any more?”

  “Novels and short stories.”

  “Class them together—three. Any more?

  “No; that’s all.”

  “Very well, then. What you must do is to look about you, and pick carefully three men on whom you can rely. Divide your signed stuff between these three men. They will receive your copy, sign it with their own names, and see that it gets to wherever you want to send it. As far as the editorial world is concerned, and as far as the public is concerned, they will become actually the authors of the manuscripts which you have prepared for them to sign. They will forward you the cheques when they arrive, and keep accounts to which you will have access. I suppose you will have to pay them a commission on a scale to be fixed by mutual arrangement. As regards your unsigned work, there is nothing to prevent your doing that yourself—’On Your Way,’ I mean, whenever there’s any holiday work going: general articles, and light verse. I say, though, half a moment.”

  “Why, what?”

  “I’ve thought of a difficulty. The editors who have been taking your stuff hitherto may have a respect for the name of James Orlebar Cloyster which they may not extend to the name of John Smith or George Chandos, or whoever it is. I mean, it’s quite likely the withdrawal of the name will lead to the rejection of the manuscript.”

  “Oh no; that’s all right,” I said. “It’s the stuff they want, not the name. I don’t say that names don’t matter. They do. But only if they’re big names. Kipling might get a story rejected if he sent it in under a false name, which they’d have taken otherwise just because he was Kipling. What they want from me is the goods. I can shove any label on them I like. The editor will read my ghosts’ stuff, see it’s what he wants, and put it in. He may say, ‘It’s rather like Cloyster’s style,’ but he’ll certainly add, ‘Anyhow, it’s what I want.’ You can scratch that difficulty, Julian. Any more?”

  “I think not. Of course, there’s the objection that you’ll lose any celebrity you might have got. No one’ll say, ‘Oh, Mr. Cloyster, I enjoyed your last book so much!’”

  “And no one’ll say, ‘Oh, do you write, Mr. Cloyster? How interesting! What have you written? You must send me a copy.’”

  “That’s true. In any case, it�
��s celebrity against the respite, obscurity against Miss Goodwin. While the system is in operation you will be free but inglorious. You choose freedom? All right, then. Pass the matches.”

  Chapter 12

  THE FIRST GHOST (James Orlebar Cloyster’s narrative continued)

  Such was the suggestion Julian made; and I praised its ingenuity, little thinking how bitterly I should come to curse it in the future.

  I was immediately all anxiety to set the scheme working.

  “Will you be one of my three middlemen, Julian?” I asked.

  He shook his head.

  “Thanks!” he said; “it’s very good of you, but I daren’t encroach further on my hours of leisure. Skeffington’s Sloe Gin has already become an incubus.”

  I could not move him from this decision.

  It is not everybody who, in a moment of emergency, can put his hand on three men of his acquaintance capable of carrying through a more or less delicate business for him. Certainly I found a difficulty in making my selection. I ran over the list of my friends in my mind. Then I was compelled to take pencil and paper, and settle down seriously to what I now saw would be a task of some difficulty. After half an hour I read through my list, and could not help smiling. I had indeed a mixed lot of acquaintances. First came Julian and Malim, the two pillars of my world. I scratched them out. Julian had been asked and had refused; and, as for Malim, I shrank from exposing my absurd compositions to his critical eye. A man who could deal so trenchantly over a pipe and a whisky-and-soda with Established Reputations would hardly take kindly to seeing my work in print under his name. I wished it had been possible to secure him, but I did not disguise it from myself that it was not.

  The rest of the list was made up of members of the Barrel Club (impossible because of their inherent tendency to break out into personal paragraphs); writers like Fermin and Gresham, above me on the literary ladder, and consequently unapproachable in a matter of this kind; certain college friends, who had vanished into space, as men do on coming down from the ‘Varsity, leaving no address; John Hatton, Sidney Price, and Tom Blake.

  There were only three men in that list to whom I felt I could take my suggestion. Hatton was one, Price was another, and Blake was the third. Hatton should have my fiction, Price my Society stuff, Blake my serious verse.

  That evening I went off to the Temple to sound Hatton on the subject of signing my third book. The wretched sale of my first two had acted as something of a check to my enthusiasm for novel-writing. I had paused to take stock of my position. My first two novels had, I found on re-reading them, too much of the ‘Varsity tone in them to be popular. That is the mistake a man falls into through being at Cambridge or Oxford. He fancies unconsciously that the world is peopled with undergraduates. He forgets that what appeals to an undergraduate public may be Greek to the outside reader and, unfortunately, not compulsory Greek. The reviewers had dealt kindly with my two books (“this pleasant little squib,” “full of quiet humour,” “should amuse all who remember their undergraduate days”); but the great heart of the public had remained untouched, as had the great purse of the public. I had determined to adopt a different style. And now my third book was ready. It was called, When It Was Lurid, with the sub-title, A Tale of God and Allah. There was a piquant admixture of love, religion, and Eastern scenery which seemed to point to a record number of editions.

  I took the typescript of this book with me to the Temple.

  Hatton was in. I flung When It Was Lurid on the table, and sat down.

  “What’s this?” inquired Hatton, fingering the brown-paper parcel. “If it’s the corpse of a murdered editor, I think it’s only fair to let you know that I have a prejudice against having my rooms used as a cemetery. Go and throw him into the river.”

  “It’s anything but a corpse. It’s the most lively bit of writing ever done. There’s enough fire in that book to singe your tablecloth.”

  “You aren’t going to read it to me out loud?” he said anxiously.

  “No.”

  “Have I got to read it when you’re gone?”

  “Not unless you wish to.”

  “Then why, if I may ask, do you carry about a parcel which, I should say, weighs anything between one and two tons, simply to use it as a temporary table ornament? Is it the Sandow System?”

  “No,” I said; “it’s like this.”

  And suddenly it dawned on me that it was not going to be particularly easy to explain to Hatton just what it was that I wanted him to do.

  I made the thing clear at last, suppressing, of course, my reasons for the move. When he had grasped my meaning, he looked at me rather curiously.

  “Doesn’t it strike you,” he said, “that what you propose is slightly dishonourable?”

  “You mean that I have come deliberately to insult you, Hatton?”

  “Our conversation seems to be getting difficult, unless you grant that honour is not one immovable, intangible landmark, fixed for humanity, but that it is a commodity we all carry with us in varying forms.”

  “Personally, I believe that, as a help to identification, honour-impressions would be as useful as fingerprints.”

  “Good! You agree with me. Now, you may have a different view; but, in my opinion, if I were to pose as the writer of your books, and gained credit for a literary skill–-“

  I laughed.

  “You won’t get credit for literary skill out of the sort of books I want you to put your name to. They’re potboilers. You needn’t worry about Fame. You’ll be a martyr, not a hero.”

  “You may be right. You wrote the book. But, in any case, I should be more of a charlatan than I care about.”

  “You won’t do it?” I said. “I’m sorry. It would have been a great convenience to me.”

  “On the other hand,” continued Hatton, ignoring my remark, “there are arguments in favour of such a scheme as you suggest.”

  “Stout fellow!” I said encouragingly.

  “To examine the matter in its—er—financial—to suppose for a moment—briefly, what do I get out of it?”

  “Ten per cent.”

  He looked thoughtful.

  “The end shall justify the means,” he said. “The money you pay me can do something to help the awful, the continual poverty of Lambeth. Yes, James Cloyster, I will sign whatever you send me.”

  “Good for you,” I said.

  “And I shall come better out of the transaction than you.”

  No one would credit the way that man—a clergyman, too—haggled over terms. He ended by squeezing fifteen per cent out of me.

  Chapter 13

  THE SECOND GHOST (James Orlebar Cloyster’s narrative continued)

  The reasons which had led me to select Sidney Price as the sponsor of my Society dialogues will be immediately apparent to those who have read them. They were just the sort of things you would expect an insurance clerk to write. The humour was thin, the satire as cheap as the papers in which they appeared, and the vulgarity in exactly the right quantity for a public that ate it by the pound and asked for more. Every thing pointed to Sidney Price as the man.

  It was my intention to allow each of my three ghosts to imagine that he was alone in the business; so I did not get Price’s address from Hatton, who might have wondered why I wanted it, and had suspicions. I applied to the doorkeeper at Carnation Hall; and on the following evening I rang the front-door bell of The Hollyhocks, Belmont Park Road, Brixton.

  Whilst I was waiting on the step, I was able to get a view through the slats of the Venetian blind of the front ground-floor sitting-room. I could scarcely restrain a cry of pure aesthetic delight at what I saw within. Price was sitting on a horse-hair sofa with an arm round the waist of a rather good-looking girl. Her eyes were fixed on his. It was Edwin and Angelina in real life.

  Up till then I had suffered much discomfort from the illustrated record of their adventures in the comic papers. “Is there really,” I had often asked myself, “a body of men so gi
fted that they can construct the impossible details of the lives of nonexistent types purely from imagination? If such creative genius as theirs is unrecognized and ignored, what hope of recognition is there for one’s own work?” The thought had frequently saddened me; but here at last they were—Edwin and Angelina in the flesh!

  I took the gallant Sidney for a fifteen-minute stroll up and down the length of the Belmont Park Road. Poor Angelina! He came, as he expressed it, “like a bird.” Give him a sec. to slip on a pair of boots, he said, and he would be with me in two ticks.

  He was so busy getting his hat and stick from the stand in the passage that he quite forgot to tell the lady that he was going out, and, as we left, I saw her with the tail of my eye sitting stolidly on the sofa, still wearing patiently the expression of her comic-paper portraits.

  The task of explaining was easier than it had been with Hatton.

  “Sorry to drag you out, Price,” I said, as we went down the steps.

  “Don’t mention it, Mr. Cloyster,” he said. “Norah won’t mind a bit of a sit by herself. Looked in to have a chat, or is there anything I can do?”

  “It’s like this,” I said. “You know I write a good deal?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, it has occurred to me that, if I go on turning out quantities of stuff under my own name, there’s a danger of the public getting tired of me.”

  He nodded.

  “Now, I’m with you there, mind you,” he said. “‘Can’t have too much of a good thing,’ some chaps say. I say, ‘Yes, you can.’ Stands to reason a chap can’t go on writing and writing without making a bloomer every now and then. What he wants is to take his time over it. Look at all the real swells—’Erbert Spencer, Marie Corelli, and what not—you don’t find them pushing it out every day of the year. They wait a bit and have a look round, and then they start again when they’re ready. Stands to reason that’s the only way.”

  “Quite right,” I said; “but the difficulty, if you live by writing, is that you must turn out a good deal, or you don’t make enough to live on. I’ve got to go on getting stuff published, but I don’t want people to be always seeing my name about.”