'I Believe' and other essays Part 19

This is by no means intended as an apologia for the sort of tales I write. I know that it is my duty to write them, the duty I owe to my own convictions, and however badly I write them I am doing my best.

No, I am not apologizing for my point of view. I am only trying to suggest that even in my greatest artistic failures my artistic standpoint can't be a.s.sailed. Any critic who says that because I write as a Christian and that _therefore (and for that reason only)_ my books are inartistic, is wrong.

I have headed this article "An Author's Post-Bag" et cetera. Probably you will be wondering when I am going to justify the t.i.tle. I will begin to do so now.

Post-time is always a recurring wonder to me. The lowest cla.s.ses of all, the people who don't get letters, are incapable of experiencing more than a third of the sensations which the highly-organized life of our time has to offer us.

A novelist, and I have no reason to think that I am any exception to the rule, receives a very varied correspondence. The business side of his operations is more extensive than the layman would suppose. The writer whose output is regular and whose work is in demand has an almost daily letter to receive from his agent. There is the question of a serial for this or that paper, an editor wants a short story, a publisher is writing impatient letters to the agent for a book that is overdue, "close times" for various books have to be arranged so that they do not clash between various publishers--he is confronted every day with an infinity of detail which even such an experienced and a.s.siduous agent as I myself am fortunate to possess cannot save him.

When the business letters have been read, there is his own private correspondence, and then the great ma.s.s of communications from people whom one has never heard of and never seen. It is of these letters that I would speak, and of their varied appeals to one's pocket, one's vanity, the sense of grat.i.tude and the feeling of anger.

As Cowper said, "None but an author knows an author's cares," and not the least of them is the number of letters he receives asking for money. There is a rooted idea in the general mind that fame and fortune come immediately a writer publishes his first book. A novelist is popularly supposed to be a man of affluence in the twentieth century, just as in the eighteenth century he was known to be a pauper. "All the vices of the gambler and of the beggar were blended with those of the author. The prizes in the wretched lottery of bookmaking were scarcely less ruinous than the blanks. If good fortune came, it came in such a manner that it was almost certain to be abused. After months of starvation and despair, a full third night or a well-received dedication filled the pocket of the lean, ragged, unwashed poet with guineas.... A week of taverns soon qualified him for another year of night cellars." Well, we have progressed since then certainly. There are beds to sleep in, food to eat and fire upon the hearth for most of us. Nevertheless the ordinary novelist is nearly always a poor man, sometimes bitter poor. I _know_ what I am talking about and there is not an author, agent or publisher who would not say the same. For the first book I ever wrote I received ten pounds, and this was paid in two instalments. Until four years ago thirty pounds was the largest sum I had received for a long novel.

The word "royalty" has a fine sound. It is a purple word and opens vistas to the outsider of luxury and ease. Yet in its literary application it is the biggest humbug and liar of a word that ever masqueraded for what it is not. There are plenty of "royalties" that will not pay the third-cla.s.s return fare between London and Penzance.

A great personal friend of mine, a man of culture and real love of human event, wrote his first novel three years ago. He had something definite to say, knew how to say it, and had a first-rate plot. For months and months I saw him toiling lovingly at his novel. When it was written he found a publisher willing to produce it, and it duly appeared. In almost every case the reviews were extremely laudatory.

Papers of position and weight praised it unreservedly, to all appearances the book was a definite success--a minor success, no doubt, but a success. From first to last his earnings realized five pounds, and neither he nor I have reason to believe that his publisher cheated him in the matter of sales. Here is the written testimony of what I say, given by an author who died after producing four or five really excellent and successful novels.

"Take, then, an unusually lucky instance, literally a novel whose success is extraordinary, a novel which has sold 2500 copies. I repeat that this is an extraordinary success. Not one book out of fifteen will do as well. But let us consider it. The author has worked upon it for--at the very least--six months. It is published. Twenty-five hundred copies are sold. Then the sale stops. And by the word stop one means cessation in the completest sense of the word. There are people--I know plenty of them--who suppose that when a book is spoken of as having stopped selling, a generality is intended, that merely a falling off of the initial demand has occurred. Error. When a book--a novel--stops selling, it stops with a definiteness of an engine when the fire goes out. It stops with a suddenness that is appalling, and thereafter not a copy, not one single, solitary copy is sold. And do not for an instant suppose that ever after the interest may be revived. A dead book can no more be resuscitated than a dead dog.

"But to go back. The 2500 have been sold. The extraordinary, the marvellous has been achieved. What does the author get out of it? A royalty of ten per cent. Eighty-three pounds six shillings and eightpence for six months' hard work. Roughly less than 3 9_s._ 0_d._ a week. An expert carpenter will easily make much more than that, and the carpenter has infinitely the best of it in that he can keep the work up year in and year out, where the novelist must wait for a new idea, and the novel writer must then jockey and manoeuvre for publication. Two novels a year is about as much as the writer can turn out and yet keep a marketable standard. Even admitting that both the novels sell 2500 copies there is only 166 13_s._ 4_d._ of profit. One may well ask the question: Is fiction writing a money-making profession?

"The astonishing thing about the affair is that a novel may make a veritable stir, almost a sensation, and yet fail to sell very largely.

"There is so-and-so's book. Everywhere you go you hear about it. Your friends have read it. It is in demand at the libraries. You don't pick up a paper that does not contain a review of the story in question. It is in the 'Book of the Month' column. It is even, even--the pinnacle of achievement--in that shining roster, the list of best sellers of the week.

"Why, of course, the author is growing rich! Ah, at last he has arrived! No doubt he will build a country house out of his royalties.

Lucky fellow; one envies him.

"Catch him unawares and what is he doing? As like as not writing unsigned book reviews at thirty shillings a week in order to pay his lodging bill--and glad of the chance."

This is absolutely and literally true.

Yet novelists are perhaps more pestered than any other people by requests for help. A writer who, like myself, can live in fair comfort by means of unceasing labour, but is not even a well-to-do man, to say nothing of a "wealthy one," receives innumerable letters to which he is quite unable to reply as the applicants would wish, but which are most distressing to read. At a time when I certainly had not a hundred pounds in the world, I received the following letter--of course I suppress the name and address.

"---- Vicarage, "----shire.

"MY DEAR SIR,

"Thank you a thousand times for _When it was Dark_. I am now looking forward to Friday, when your next book begins in the _Daily Mail_. I have been reading about you to-day and have taken courage to ask your help. You say 'Let nothing disturb thee,' etc. How can I help it in such trouble as mine. My husband has failed in health from years of hard work, and out of an income of _under_ 200 a year we are paying a curate 100. At this moment we are in _extremes_. My boy is reading for Holy Orders, and we are in need of funds for his expenses.

He has been two years a licensed lay reader, and is a thorough Catholic and has the highest testimonials. Will you help me in my need to-day with a donation. I can give references, and for any help I shall be so thankful. Please forgive me for troubling you."

I have no doubt that this appeal is quite genuine, and a very poignant comment it is upon the way in which the priests of the Church of England are paid. This type of letter is not a pleasant one to receive when one is sitting down to work. The imagination with which one is endowed and by which one earns one's bread, is not a faculty very easy to discipline or to control, and the power which should be devoted to the chapter one is engaged upon wanders away and constructs a picture of want and sorrow which one is quite powerless to alleviate.

Nor is it once or twice that such letters as this arrive. Here is a far more piteous doc.u.ment still, if it is genuine. I think that when you have read it you will agree with me that it is genuine enough.

There is nothing of the ordinary begging letter about it; and if the writer could invent such a story, he ought not to be so hopelessly unable to earn a single halfpenny by his pen. It is to be observed also that in this case the writer wants work, not money.

"London, N.

"DEAR SIR,

"About two years ago I arrived in England from Australia, with the object of striving to gain a footing in literature, but so far have been unsuccessful. I have written two novels and numerous short stories and articles, but I have ever had them rejected, and all I can show for my work is a pile of publishers' letters. My resources long since gave out, and I worked myself into the lowest poverty, and then I was prostrated by a long illness. Knowing, sir, that you have had much to do with journalistic work, I decided to write and ask you if you knew of any one in the city--or elsewhere--to whom you could refer me for some employment. I am practically dest.i.tute, and knowing no one in London makes it extremely difficult for me to get anything to do. About six months ago I was turned out of my lodgings owing to arrears of rent, and then I commenced tramping the country in the hope of getting work. I managed to get three weeks' hop-picking, but nothing else, and so for a while I tramped aimlessly about, being exposed to all kinds of weather, sleeping in haystacks, or wherever else offered, until at last my health again gave way.

It was then that I called on a well-known novelist, and he was very kind and a.s.sisted me, at the same time expressing a wish to see my works. They were sent for, and duly forwarded on to his agents, and I have been advised to write books for boys, the agent expressing his opinion that I would succeed in this, but as I am situated writing is out of the question. When I met this novelist my health failed utterly, and I was compelled to go into the infirmary for a while, and whilst there he wrote telling me to try and get some practice in journalistic work and to study for a while until I gained a little more experience.

"I think he is out of England at present, but he gave me permission to use his letter as a reference if I needed it.

Well, sir, I returned to London about a month ago, and managed to get a few days' work envelope addressing at Morgan and Scott's, in Paternoster Row, but so far I have been unable to find anything else to do. I am very anxious to get some work immediately, and if you could help me in this I should be indeed grateful. I care not of what nature the employment may be, manual or otherwise, if I can only get it at once.

"Apologizing for troubling you,

"I am, "Dear Sir, "Yours faithfully."

Some time ago a drawing appeared in the _Daily Mail_ of a Cornish cottage where I was then living. Within a week, by a curious coincidence, I received _three_ water-colour drawings of the place, made from the sketch in the newspaper. Two were excellent, and accompanied by the kindest letters; they hang on my walls now. The third was by no means a work of art, to say the very least of it, and this letter came with it:--

"North Kensington.

"I am sending you a copy of the cottage I have painted from the sketch in the _Daily Mail_ of November 16 last, if you will accept it.

"I must explain that I am only a very poor hand at such work.

The fact of the matter is that through much _illness_ and _lost trade_ that I am left very _badly off_, and seeing the sketch and account of your work, thought perhaps if I could paint a few copies and you would introduce the matter to your many friends I could sell some to them, which would a.s.sist me to earn something, my health being bad and getting on to seventy years of age it is not much I can do. You will understand that I do not know anything of the appearance of the country around the cottage. I have not been in that part, so all I have put in is imaginary. Will you please say what you think to it, and how much you think I could sell them for. I have not means to buy canvas so have painted on card. Your kind a.s.sistance in this matter will great oblige

"Yours truly."

I have quoted but three letters from a vast pile of others. "Que vivre est difficile o mon coeur fatigue!" says the French poet, and n.o.body knows it better than the English novelist. But with the best will in the world we cannot help everybody. Charity begins at home, its sun rises there and should set abroad, but it is limited by the purse of the giver. Among all the contents of his post-bag such letters are the most distressing to the author, and add enormously to a difficult and often very thankless task.

But such letters as these and all worries _ejusdem generis_ are, after all, only a small portion of my post-bag. During the last year or two I have received hundreds and hundreds of letters from all parts of the world--letters which have given me inexpressible happiness. I think I may be forgiven for quoting some of them here. The real reward of an author's labours lies in the sympathy and appreciation of his readers, and in that alone. When, moreover, a writer works with a definite object in view, the purpose of leading others to believe what he himself believes, such letters are indeed a strong stay and holdfast which console for any amount of misrepresentation and bring a veritable oil of joy for mourning.

A priest writes:--

"SIR

"I don't ask you because I know you will pardon a stranger for addressing you, and I shall not say much. And the little I mean to say I hardly know how to express. Some few years ago I was a vicar in----. Now I am sick in body and soul. I had lost all my faith, but I have been reading _Made in His Image_, and to-day I prayed for the first time for more than a year, and tears came, and I don't know if you heard my voice calling to you.

"I should like to see you. _Can it be?_

"Yours, "DE PROFUNDIS."

A gentleman from Hull tells me:--

"DEAR SIR,

"You will please pardon the intrusion of this letter. I am a Sunday School teacher, and have been a Christian for three years.

"A month ago, as a result of reading the _Clarion_ and Haeckel, I became disturbed in my mind, and wished to resign my cla.s.s. I sought the a.s.sistance of my minister. Instead of answering my doubts himself he placed a copy of _When it was Dark_ in my hand, telling me to read it prayerfully, and go to him again.

The following evening I completed the reading of a book whose influence will live with me. My dear sir, I feel I cannot thank you half enough, and I shall never cease to thank G.o.d that the book was written.

"I saw my minister, not with any doubts this time, but with my faith renewed, and with a fixed determination to work harder for my Divine Master.

"I expect you will receive many letters expressing thanks, but I cannot refrain from adding my humble testimony.

"Allow me to remain, sir,