by A. A. Milne
‘Well!’ said Reginald. ‘I never knew that!’
‘Lots of things people don’t know. I didn’t know you’d written a book.’
‘Oh?’ said Reginald pinkly. ‘Well, I—er——’
‘Mother’s been reading it.’
Reginald was too surprised, too pleased, too flattered to say anything. This was authorship. Only now had he realized what it meant. Mr. Pump’s ‘third large impression’—well, we all know what that means. We aren’t taken in by that. A hundred copies or so bought by the circulating libraries and never circulated. But here, in his own territory, a bedridden old woman had actually—— Three pounds a week he gave Edwards. Edwards had probably heard about it from the kitchen—Mrs. Hosken or Alice—and had bought it for his mother. Seven-and-sixpence out of three pounds! It was monstrous! He ought to have given her a copy. But then who would have guessed that she would want to read it?
‘Tell you how it was,’ said Edwards. ‘Young Mitchell, up at the station, comes down to us of an evening, like. See, he gets papers left behind in the trains or handed to him by gentlemen coming out. Mother likes a read—nothing else to do. So young Mitchell brings his papers and all when he comes, like. Other day sure enough there’s a book in the carriage so he brings it along. “Here, Charlie,” he says, “this by your gentleman?” “Well, it might be,” I said, but I didn’t know like as you wrote books. Well it was, you see—long of Mother reading out bits to me, and you’d got the garden and all. That’s how it was.’
‘I see,’ said Reginald. ‘Well——’ and he went off.
He always had to say that ‘Well’ when he left Edwards or Challinor. There seemed to be no other way of going. ‘Well——’ meant ‘Well, I’m a very busy man and can’t stop talking to you all day,’ or it meant, ‘Well, you’re a very busy man, at least you ought to be, and you can’t stop talking to me all day.’ Reginald hated saying it, it seemed so stupid and unnecessary, and yet, dash it, you couldn’t just leave the man.
So that’s how it was. His own copy which he had bought at Victoria and thrown away in the train! Forced on Mrs. Edwards who had nothing else to do but read. No doubt if you’re bedridden, even a Wellard is better than nothing.
Yes, and that reminded him—curse that fellow Edwards. Did Reginald say in plain understandable English, ‘No pale yellow snap-dragons this year’? He did. And what does Edwards say? ‘Thought you’d like just a few.’ It was always the way. Tell your cook you don’t like onions, and she thinks you mean you don’t like a lot of onions. Tell your gardener you don’t like yellow snap-dragons, and he thinks you’d like just a few of them. We all hedge so much, we are all so afraid of committing ourselves, that when we hear a definite statement we suspect that there is some reservation attached to it.
Anyhow, she had read the book. What on earth can she have made of it?
He must find Sylvia and tell her . . .
Or not?
Well, what did it matter what she said, when she looked so lovely saying it?
He told Sylvia. ‘I say who do you think’s read Bindweed? Old Mrs. Edwards.’
‘Fancy!’ said Sylvia. ‘I expect Mrs. Hosken told Edwards, and he bought it for her. He’s a tremendous admirer of yours, really.’
Reginald looked at her fondly.
‘I wish you’d always wear that dress,’ he said.
‘Do you like it, darling?’
‘I love it. You look so utterly and adorably feminine.’
Sylvia looked at him, and dropped her eyes.
‘Do you remember what you said in your dedication?’ she said softly.
‘Yes.’
‘It was true, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
She put up a hand and ruffled his hair.
‘Almost time to get it cut again,’ she said. ‘I think I’ll come up with you, darling.’
‘Oh do! What fun!’
‘Friday?’
‘Rather. Think of a good place for lunch.’ And then after a pause, ‘Well——’ and he moved away.
No, damn it, not ‘Well——’ to Sylvia. Horrible. He came back quickly, kissed her, laughed and went off.
Chapter Four
I
TO write a book, thought Reginald; what an achievement! The labour of it. The physical labour of the hundred thousand words, any words, put down on paper. Then the anguish, the despair, the exhilaration of finding the right words. A hundred thousand words to be chosen, each one of which could be bettered by a better man. How had he dared to do it? How had he contrived to do it? And then when he had done it—all those pages, those hundreds of pages, written by him—out it goes into the world, and nobody minds. Splash it goes . . . and then not a ripple. Not a ripple in London, not a ripple in the country. It is as if he had never written it.
Well, not quite. Sylvia loved it . . . did she? . . . and it had helped Mrs. Edwards to get through a few long hours on her way to the churchyard.
So thought Reginald; but then he did not know what Raglan and Lord Ormsby were doing.
They were a curious couple. Raglan liked being near Ormsby, because he liked being next to money, and Ormsby liked being near Raglan, because he liked being close to culture. Raglan was not merely cultured, he was Culture, just as Ormsby was not merely rich, he was Money. So they went about together, and one was master and one servant, but nobody knew which.
Raglan had never written a novel; nor a play; nor a poem; nor a short story. He had hardly written an essay whose subject he had invented for himself. He lived on other writers, as the fruit-farmer lives on fruit-trees. The apple-tree grows the apple, but the farmer is the authority; for how little the apple-tree knows (or cares) of the processes it went through to produce the apple; how little it knows of the apple after it is grown. Raglan introduced other writers to the world; apologized for them, classified them, analysed them, collated them, cross-indexed them, rinsed them, put them through the mangle, and hung them up to dry. When he wrote of Thomas Dekker or Nicholas Breton or George Colman the younger, you felt that three more celebrities, Dekker, Breton and Colman, had now written about Raglan; that he was by that the more famous. The announcement of his edition of Hudibras as ‘probably Ambrose Raglan’s masterpiece’ left open the possibility that Butler might have written it after all, but summed up the position very fairly. You felt that if Butler were alive, he would say, ‘After you, my dear fellow,’ as they joined the ladies. Nobody had heard of Butler but had heard of Raglan; thousands had heard of Raglan who had never heard of Butler. Whether it would be so in three hundred years’ time was not yet known.
Ormsby owned newspapers and racehorses. By virtue of the former he was ‘Robert, first Baron Ormsby’, by virtue of the latter he was ‘good old Bob’. He had a nose like a small button, stiff upstanding hair, a thick neck and a cleft in his chin. There was no vulgarity, no indecency, no treachery too low for his papers, but since business is business, and he had won the Derby, and smoked habitually a cigar so long that the indication of it in a cartoon was enough to identify the owner, he was a national figure, and therefore, in himself, a model of English respectability. But on one point, poor fellow, he was queer. He had this odd fancy for books.
He had asked Raglan to come and see him. Raglan came. Doubtless Ormsby was starting a new literary monthly and wished him to edit it. Given a free hand he might consent. But he would stand no interference from a vulgar fellow like Ormsby.
‘How do you do, Mr. Raglan. Pleased to meet you. Smoke?’
Raglan flinched at the cigar offered, and with a murmur, Oxford and polite, took out his cigarette-case.
‘Light? Now then, let’s get down to it. Don’t know if you read my papers, don’t suppose you do. Go racing at all?’
Mr. Raglan’s gentle smile made it clear that he didn’t.
‘Right. But if you did, you’d know that my Racing Corresp
ondent is the greatest living expert in England to-day. Cricket? Football? You don’t? Well, ask any of your friends. Any cricketer or footballer would tell you. Married? Well, any of your lady friends. They’d tell you. Fashions, Flying, Cricket, Motoring, whatever it is, there’s just one question I ask myself. Who is the greatest living expert in England to-day? Mr. Blasted Brown? Then I want Mr. Blasted Brown for my paper. And I get ’im.’
‘A very sound policy, I should say,’ said Raglan kindly, watching his cigarette smoke up to the ceiling.
“I’m going to develop the literary side. Always meant to, but had to get the other sides working first. So I look round for the greatest living expert on Literature in England to-day. Everybody tells me the same. Ambrose Raglan.’
Raglan gave his high little laugh and fingered his little beard. How right everybody was.
‘I’m going to have book talk daily, just as I have racing talk. I want you to edit that. At least I want your name. We’ll get somebody else to do it, but you can keep an eye on him. What I really want from you is a weekly article on books, syndicated to all my papers. How does it strike you?’
‘Well,’ said Raglan with a little smile, ‘I hardly think——’
‘I’ll give you £5,000 a year,’ said Ormsby, and then, before Raglan could recover, added carelessly, ‘Same as I give my Racing Correspondent.’
Five thousand a year! Who could refuse? (Even if the Racing Correspondent got it too.) Jonson and the Poetasters might deserve all which other critics had so carefully said about it, but one did not make five thousand a year with books like this. Five thousand! Who could refuse?
‘You allow me a free hand?’ he asked as negligently as he could, but the hand was trembling.
‘We shan’t quarrel about that,’ said Ormsby, getting up. ‘Come along and I’ll show you the shop.’
They didn’t quarrel. But a month later Ormsby sent for the greatest living expert on Literature and opened his heart to him.
‘Look here, Raglan. You’ve got the wrong idea.’ He flicked at the papers on his desk. ‘This literary page, why d’you think I do it?’
Raglan smiled in his faintly amused way.
‘Really, I have been wondering. It can hardly be profitable. A feeling for the complete newspaper, perhaps.’
‘Complete nothing. There are only two reasons why anything goes into my paper. One, because the public wants it. And if the public doesn’t want it, Two, because I want it. Now then, is the public interested in the sexual apparatus of the sponge? No. Well, do I look as if I were? No. Well, that’s why sponges go on making love to each other and having small sponges however they dam well please, and we say nothing about it in our papers. Well, now, is the public interested in books? No. Not yet. Am I? Yes! And it’s my ambition, Raglan,’ and he thumped his desk, ‘to bring books into every home, to make every man want a book on his Saturday night, as much as he wants a—well, anything else.’
‘A very praiseworthy ambition.’
‘Right.’ He pulled a paper in front of him and flicked over the pages. ‘I want people to read books. Now then, November the 17th, that’s last Friday. Fireside Friends. Edited by Ambrose Raglan. Book of the Week. Reviewed by Ambrose Raglan. Here it is. Seventeenth Century Ceramics, by Pierre Dupleix, however you pronounce it, translated by—Hell matters who. Three guineas. Right.’ He flicked over another page. ‘Now here’s my Racing Expert’s tip for the Woodbury Stakes—Elysium. Right. Now how many people d’you think got up from their breakfast-tables on Friday and said, “I must put five bob on Elysium”? Thousands. Beaten a short head, but that’s not the point. And how many people got up from their breakfast-tables on Friday and said, “I must put three guineas on Seventeenth Century Ceramics by this hell-be-jiggered Frenchman”? Not one blasted soul. Well, that’s not bringing literature into the home, old man. Honest-to-God it’s not.’
Raglan had never been called ‘old man’ before, at least not since he was a young boy. Coming from a peer and a millionaire, it warmed him.
‘Surely it’s the publisher’s business to sell his books, not ours?’ he suggested.
At the ‘ours’ Ormsby also felt warmed suddenly. Raglan, with that word, had taken the paper under his cultured wing. It was his child now, not a stranger to whom he was giving a correspondence course.
‘Look here, Raglan—sorry, have a cigar? No? I’m not doing this for money. You can’t go on doing things for money all the time. Why did I spent the week-end—well, never mind that. Any dam way I didn’t do it for money. On the contrary—and then a pearl necklace on the top of that. Well, I’m doing this because I’m grateful to books. When I was fourteen I had bought and read every book that Dickens ever wrote.’ He repeated it again slowly, and Raglan shivered. ‘I was earning ten shillings a week, and took seven home to my mother.’ He murmured to himself again. ‘Every Hell-be-jiggered book, on three shillings a week,’ and added aloud, ‘But of course that’s nothing to you, because you’re a real book lover.’
Raglan, who hadn’t bought a book for twenty years, wondered uncomfortably if he was. But why buy books when publishers and editors and authors give them to you?
Ormsby was flicking open more of his papers, and murmuring to himself.
‘The Life of Thomas Heywood, thirty bob—Pastoral Poets of the Renaissance, Limited edition, five guineas—The Aesthetic of Vorticism, five bob—you had a cheap one there, but hardly catchy—and now this Seventeenth Century God-save-us. See what I mean, old man?’ He was silent for a moment, and then said, almost shyly, ‘Don’t mind my asking you, but these books—well, these four, just as an example—do you really enjoy them? I just wondered. Get as much blood-and-bones from ’em as I got from Pickwick?’
‘It’s a different sort of enjoyment, perhaps.’
‘Oh, quite, quite,’ said Ormsby quickly. ‘A dam fool question to ask. Well now, what it comes to is this. I want people to get up from their breakfast-tables, or get out of their trains, whenever they read the paper, and say “Dammit, I can’t miss that book. If Ambrose Raglan recommends it, that’s good enough for me.” Well but, dear old man, they aren’t going to say that of the—what’s its blasted name?—The Aesthetic of Vorticism. Now, are they?’
Raglan laughed; the most genuine laugh he had achieved in that office.
‘Not offended?’ said Ormsby quickly.
‘Not a bit. Go on.’
‘Well, this is how it is. I should like to feel that every one of my readers was going to read every one of Dickens’s books, same as I did. Too late. You can’t make ’em now. They say, Stands to reason modern authors write better than Dickens, with all these years more progress. Look at trains—and flying. Very well, then, I say, let ’em think so. And the long and short of it is that you’ve got to find a book for ’em every week—better than Dickens.’
‘Great novels aren’t written every week. Or are they?’
‘I dare say not. But some book is the book of the week, and I say that whatever book you choose has got to be a book that ordinary people can read. People who put their five shillings on a horse and write letters to the Press signed Ratepayer. Well, that’s how it is. Think it over, old man.’
Old man Raglan thought it over. Money was dear to him, but his reputation was also dear. It was his business to lead the literary fashion of the moment, not to follow it. Yet since literary fashions went round in circles, who was to tell whether one was a leader or a follower? Let him imagine himself starting a crusade in favour of the old-fashioned English novel. Gradually, of course; making it clear from which point in the circle he started. Ahead of the newest fashion; so far ahead that he had now got round to Dickens again. . . .
And now eighteen months later Raglan was enjoying it. He had power and popularity (and, at last, money), where before he had only had a jealous admiration. A new novel, recommended by him, added by that fifteen thousand to its sale. To b
e able to put, once a week, a thousand pounds into an author’s pocket, and Heaven knows how much more into a publisher’s, gave him a new complacence. And when he also put, on his own head, a grey top-hat of the latest fashion, and went racing with his friend Lord Ormsby, he felt that he was almost a figure in the old-fashioned English novel himself. Unique. The cultured sportsman.
You may imagine him then, one day in May, looking at the pile of books on his table, and wondering which was to be ‘The Book of the Week’ this time . . . No . . . No . . . Oh, no! . . . A first novel, if possible . . . And certainly not a Pump. But Wellard, though. He’d heard that name somewhere. Last week at lunch, of course. Would that be the man? Looked as if he might write . . . Said he was a countryman, though, didn’t he, and knew nothing about . . .
He read, standing, for five minutes. . . .
Then he read, sitting down, for five minutes. . . .
Then he got up, put on his hat (not the Ascot one) and went home with Bindweed under the arm.
He had found the book of the week.
II
For business purposes Mr. Pump wore a long beard, an old-fashioned frock-coat and a black silk hat with a curly brim. It established confidence in young authors. The frock-coat and the beard spoke of the days when his firm, had it been in existence, would undoubtedly have published for Thackeray and Trollope; the curliness of the hat’s brim reminded you that even a firm with history behind it must adopt up-to-date methods. Since Mr. Pump took his beard and his frock-coat round with the plate on the one day of the week when he was not publishing, he may be said to have lived in an atmosphere of respectability; and since he was publishing on the six days of the week when he was not taking round the plate, he may also be said to have lived with an air of sidelong calculation in his eye.
But Mr. Pump was not a hypocrite. He was a religious man, whose religion was too sacred a thing to be carried into his business. The top-hat which he hung up in his office was not the top-hat which he prayed into before placing it, thus hallowed, between his feet, even if the frock-coat and the aspect of benevolence were the same. He had two top-hats, and one hat-box for them. On the Monday morning he put God reverently away for the week and took out Mammon. On the Sunday morning he came back—gratefully or hopefully, according to business done—to God. No man can serve two masters simultaneously.
