Tales of a Literary Agency, I

...Even today I detest shaving myself...

...I said let John, the office boy, do it...

...Miss Ethel Mayne (whose fine book on Byron, which we arranged, is still a standard work) in a short story about a literary agency, one of a volume of stories, Blind Eyes, gave a sketch of a youth for whom, I am pretty sure, I was the model...

...When H. G. arrived, nobody knew that he was there except the young man to whom he gave his name (me) and the chief...

...but she appeared to regard the statement as inconsequent, and went away huffed...

...Really interesting ones...

...By my position in the agency, which, officially, was that of a subordinate assistant, and, literally, was in a dim corner, I had excellent opportunities for observing without being observed...

...Few agents today are capable of any real criticism...

...and I found the characteristics and behavior of our eminent authors an illuminating study...

...The boy waved his pen at me...

...I've got an appointment...

...We had placed it with George Bell's, and they wished to see the author...

...An appointment was made, and, as we ourselves had not then seen her, it was agreed that she should first call at our place, and then go on to Bell's...

...You'll meet such a lot of authors...

...His manner impressed me then as a mixture of shyness and Oxford self-complacence, and one could not be sure which of the two was native...

...It was interesting to note the difference between the attitude of John Masefield at the height of his fame (shy, grave, courteous) and the attitude of that pushful young man who, backing his talent by a careful fostering of literary and social connections among the right people, has now come to be accepted by the not-too-clear-sighted as one of the three greatest living novelists...

...Edward Garnett has done...

...Cazenove was that now almost extinct thing—a literary agent...

...I flatly said I wouldn't do it...

...while the confessed business men trusted us wholly, and signed our contracts and our receipts with scarcely a glance at them...

...I'm a patient and diligent secretary, and you take advantage of it...

...weighed so heavily indeed that—I played truant...

...It was interesting, too, to note the utter self-effacement of Edward Thomas, under commercial failure, and the operatic-tenor style of some of the commercially successful, whose minds were as far from his as Huddersfield is from Shantung...

...He said plaintively, "Do please remember, Thomas, that you're one of the staff, and that I'm giving you an order...

...it would be hell...

...Interesting, too, to note how some authors, with a reputation for holding aloof from sordid business matters, would write peevish letters about a quesOctober 15, 1930 THE COMMONWEAL 603 tionable threepence in their royalty statements...

...I'm not still at school," I said...

...They know only what they can sell, and the only advice they are fit to offer, or do offer, to an author, is advice as to how to mutilate his work so as to give it popular and commercial appeal...

...You never asked me...

...One of our authors spotted me...

...He said it would not...

...The very thought of it is exciting...

...I know of but one who is capable of judging and appreciating new literature, and understanding the mind of the literary artist—as distinct from the mind of the man who writes books...

...I pleaded then that I lived with one, and that I had to wash it, and feed it, and do its hair, and make it work, and that when I went out I liked a change...

...It'll be amusing to see Tommy as a squire of dames...

...and in the restricted range of his office he did for pure literature what, in a very much wider range, Mr...

...I did not go to the office...

...We had, of course, a string of writers of no particular distinction, whose work we handled, not because it gave us pleasure, but because we could sell it and because we had to pay our rent...

...Burke...

...Well, well, well...

...It would be good for me, and help to conquer my shyness...

...Yes...

...I knew him to work for two or three years on a given manuscript because he believed (and was usually proved right) that it was literature...

...Come in...

...I was then eighteen, and as I have always been behind my years I looked thirteen...

...It was he who invented and launched (through Williams and Norgate) the Home University Library...

...He was quite willing to lose some of our successful writers, about whose work he had no illusions...

...When I again said "No," she looked surprised, and added, "But they'll all be authors...

...I called...

...The publication of Miss KayeSmith's book was an immense worry to me...

...Ten minutes later a bright and active man in the thirties came in, and, by his manner of speaking to the office boy, disclosed himself as the principal...

...And then discovered that that was all we could say—we were so moved...

...and many of our young clients who are today famous owe something to his keen and constructive criticism of their early work...

...I got up and approached him, and said, "Are you Mr...

...Cazenove stared at me, and addressed both of us at once...

...Cazenove...

...And I'm a junior clerk...

...The Bouncer...

...I know you're giving me an order...

...Yerce...

...but I did not entirely escape...

...Those who read Maud in the week of its publication in 1855 undoubtedly found something in it that was not there for those who first came to it in 1900...

...he was disappointed and hurt if one of our unremunerative but genuine writers wished to leave us...

...He could not see an English Rougon-Maquart...

...The name was so apt that without further questions I did know...

...We handled Masefield's work for many years— until, indeed, the agency perished in the upheaval of 1914...

...It was the morning when three typescripts of Masefield's new poem, The Widow in the Bye Street, arrived in the office...

...He was then experimenting with novels, with boys' stories, with plays, essays and poems...

...Bennett declined...

...Cazenove supplied the first and Perris the second...

...What's that...

...I mean Sheila Kaye-Smith and Hugh Walpole—the one with The Tramping Methodist, the other with The Wooden Horse...

...For some of our authors—Edward Thomas, for example —he worked for years at a return that scarcely covered his postage costs in their correspondence, simply because he recognized that they were artists and was delighted in serving them...

...At about that time there was projected an H. G. Wells book that was not and has not yet been written...

...However charming we may be at literary teas, most of us, when talking to our agents, reveal such shallows that, when I left that agency, I left it with the feeling that I did not want to see any more authors for quite a long time...

...Conrad, Hudson, Lawrence, W. H. Davies, Liam O'Flaherty, these and many others came to literary manhood under the careful nursing of Edward Garnett...

...It affords me, too, a belief in poetic justice when I note the present standing of some of the unassuming, who did not cultivate the press...

...and Masefield arrived...

...he was much more chatty than I was, and Miss Kaye-Smith would certainly prefer his escort to mine...

...I had sent in a collection of about a dozen London sketches, in which Cazenove apparently found something fresh that appealed to him...

...Waiting...

...He had private names for most of our clients...

...It weighed upon me throughout the evening, and it weighed upon me when I woke in the morning...

...It was as an author that I made my first contact with the agency...

...Two novelists now of established reputation, made their entry on the world of novels through our office...

...I wandered about St...

...To this day I have never seen her...

...Soon after that there was a morning in Henrietta Street which is marked in my memory...

...This is interesting...

...Before his first visit I had laid in a large stock of awe, and was prepared to display it...

...When the Bouncer, bouncing upon his two early successes, arrived at the office, the door would burst open, and every room in the office would know that success had kindly come to see us...

...It was a happy office, and the two partners were well matched...

...Unknown to herself, she deranged my peaceful life, and upset the tone and temper of the office for a whole day...

...Hugh Walpole was with us for a short time only...

...I do hope that some time he may be able to give it to us: it would be such a rich, large thrilling, contentious, glittering book...

...Eh...

...I'm eighteen...

...When I did go in I learned that all my agitation had been baseless...

...I don't suppose The Widow in the Bye Street would move any reader of today as it moved us: poetry has met many adventures since then...

...I went in for a ten minutes' chat, and stayed some six years as his secretary, and learned, among other things, how to be happy...

...In his company it was difficult to be anything else...

...Within three days of its publication, his name, which until then had been known only in the discerning literary world, was known to the full English reading public, and, by cable, to the American public...

...The chief said I must do it...

...When I arrived Cazenove was out, and I was asked to wait...

...Wells refused to cut it, but agreed that, if tactfully done, it might be cut...

...I said that young and pretty made it all the worse...

...But a work is of its period...

...As she was very young, and unaccustomed to London, it was further arranged by the chief that I should escort her to Bell's...

...I've called to—" "Can't see you now...

...I actually saw him so described the other day...

...Fifteen minutes passed, and he came out again, and spoke to the office boy: "Didn't I make an appointment with a Mr...

...Burke...

...The sketch showed that she had not only observed me as closely as I had observed her, but had noted that I was using my opportunities for observation...

...I sat down again, too crushed even to dare to start telling the boy about it...

...I said "Who...

...Our office boy, a wise old cynic of fourteen, had a private name for this man...

...but armor, once on, is hard to get off, and thus many people, who are essentially gracious, give an entirely false picture of themselves...

...Perceiving that that was not enough, I urged that in my youth I had spent six years in a literary agency...

...There...

...The owners of the agency—both now, alas, gone— were Frank Cazenove and G. H. Perris...

...He said "The Bouncer...

...But in retrospect those years at the agency were interesting, and recollection of them often affords me an impish delight...

...and his plays were attracting attention only among the select audiences of the private play societies...

...The Bouncer might have made use of it, but not H. G. Another interesting and unborn book was germinated in the office at that time...

...Cazenove had a deep and understanding love of pure letters, and an immediate instinct for quality in literature...

...I asked him one morning who was with the chief...

...We were handling Masefield's work at his most interesting period...

...It amuses me, at this date, to compare the pomposity of some of the arrivistes of those days (blest with a number of friends on the literary press) with their present standing...

...I have said that I could observe without being observed...

...Wells we had only for a year or so, and it was his serial rights only that we handled...

...Three of us grabbed those typescripts, and went apart into our corners...

...Yet anybody who has had close business contact with authors will understand...

...and in 1912 The Widow held for us something that it does not hold for today...

...I was then morbidly shy and inarticulate, and the mere prospect of walking in my shabby clothes with a clever young girl, who would certainly be well dressed, ail through Covent Garden to Portugal Street, was truly terrible to me...

...Come in...

...Awfully sorry...

...His novels—Multitude and Solitude, and The Street of Today—were good, but they were not the work of the born novelist...

...I wasn't expecting that the author of those sketches would be still at school...

...Miss KayeSmith was young and clever, and no doubt pretty, and I would enjoy it...

...At about twelve o'clock we somehow met in the outer office, and each of us said "Well...

...Tell the boy about it," he said, and went into his room...

...I at once threw down my pen...

...When the serial sale of Ann Veronica was fixed, the editor with whom we had fixed it said that for serial use it must be severely cut, to the extent of about one-fifth...

...It 604 THE COMMONWEAL October 15, 1930 was to be—A Journey round the World, by H. G. Wells...

...I said I'd be damned if I did it...

...There are today a number of highly efficient agents who look after the business affairs of authors...

...Among our clients were H. G. Wells, John Masefield, Edward Thomas, Prince Kropotkin, Sheila Kaye-Smith, W. H. Davies, Hugh Walpole, Sir Ernest Shackleton, Alfred Noyes and Roald Amundsen...

...He's been waiting for you nearly half an hour...

...I know now that, like many shy people, he had assumed this selfcomplacence as an armor...

...No work was done that morning...

...When he came, I found that it was not wanted...

...I remember reading, in this period, advance sheets of The War in the Air, Tono Bungay, and Ann Veronica...

...I will not say who did the cutting, but I may say that on its serial appearance Wells remarked that the wretch who had done the horrid work had done it with diabolical skill...

...Wells and Masefield were, I think, our principal men...

...I was wearing a school cap because I had nothing else to wear...

...You know...

...We were authorized by William Heinemann to approach Arnold Bennett with the idea, and to offer him an advance on royalties which, considering the meaning of money in those days, was truly royal...

...Tome: "I'm so sorry, Mr...

...But really—Good God...

...James's Park, and did not go in until after lunch, when I knew that the dreadful affair would have been concluded...

...That's the trouble...

...Miss Kaye-Smith had been accompanied by her father, and no escort had been needed...

...He came but once or twice to the office, and to me, at that age, those visits were occasions...

...Where...

...He asked me to call...

...This was to be an English Rougon-Marquart group of novels by Arnold Bennett...

...The active partner was Cazenove, but Perris, though busy with much other work, including the foreign editorship of a leading daily, was not idle in the business...

...I presented an opposite picture of exactly what it would be, and he insisted that that was all the more reason why I should do it...

...Cazenove, had he been on the staff of one of the literary weeklies, would have made a considerable name as a reliable and penetrating critic...

...Will you believe that I was so unnerved by this simple task of escorting Miss Kaye-Smith through that half-mile that, I could think of nothing else...

...To the boy: "Why the devil didn't you tell me...

...He drew a hasty and vivid sketch of "the two clever children" exchanging brilliant and mutually delightful conversation on the wonders of London, as they tripped through the cabbage-stalks of Covent Garden...

...Then, in 1911, The Everlasting Mercy made its appearance in the pages of the English Review, at that time under the direction of Austin Harrison...

...Any business requires thrust and enterprise directed by experience and caution...