Twilight, Julia Frankau [100 books to read in a lifetime txt] 📗

THAT night, the very night after Ella had gone, I tested my slowly returning strength. Benham gave me my codein, and saw that I was well provided with all I might need for the night; the lemonade and glycerine lozenges, a second codein on the table by my side, the electric bell to my hand. This bell had been put up since the night nurse left; it rang into Benham’s bedroom. I waited for a quarter of an hour after she had gone, she had a habit of coming back to see if I had forgotten anything, or to show me how thick and abundant her hair was without the uniform cap. I should have felt like a criminal when I stole out of bed. But I did not, I felt like an invalid, and a feeble one at that. It was only a couple of steps from the bed to the chest of drawers and I accomplished it without mishap, then was back again in bed, only to remember the seals were still unbroken and the string firm. A pair of nail scissors were on the dressing-table. I was disinclined for the journey, but managed it all the same. I was then so exhausted I had to wait for a quarter of an hour before I was able to use them. Only then was my curiosity rewarded.

A small number of letters, not more than fifteen or sixteen in all, a bound diary, a very cursory glance at which showed me the disingenuousness, and half a dozen pages of MS. notes or chapter headings with several trial titles, “Between the Nisi and the Absolute,” “Publisher and Sinner,” headed two separate pages. “The Story of an Unhappy Woman “the third. The notes were all in the first person, and I should have known them anywhere for Margaret Capel’s.

Small as the whole cache was, I did not think it possible I could get through it all that night. Neither did it seem possible to get out of bed again. The papers must remain where they were, or underneath my pillow. I should be strong enough, I hoped, by the morning to put up with or confront any wrath or argument Benham would advance.

I had got up because I chose. That was the beginning and end of it. She must learn to put up with my ways, or I with a change of nurse.

The letters were in an elastic band, without envelopes, labelled and numbered. Margaret’s were on paper of a light mauve, with lines, like foreign paper. Her handwriting, masculine and square, was not very readable. She rarely dotted an i or crossed a t, used the Greek e and many ellipses. Gabriel’s letters were as easy to read as print. It was a pity therefore that hers were so much longer than his. Still, once I began I was sorry to leave off, and should not have done so if I could have kept my eyes open or my attention from wandering. I am printing them just as they stand, those that I read that night, at least. Here they are:

No. i. 211 Queen Anne’s Gate, S.W.,

January 29th, 1902.

Dear Sirs:

Would you care to publish a book by me on Staffordshire Pottery? What I have in my mind is a limited edition de luxe, illustrated in colours, highly priced. I may say I have a collection which I believe to be unique, if not complete, upon which I propose to draw largely. Of course the matter would have to be discussed both from your point of view and, mine. This is merely to ask if you are open.

My name is probably not unknown to you, or rather my pseudonym.

The critics have been kind to my novels, and I see no reason why they should be less so to a monograph on a subject I thoroughly understand. Although perhaps that will be hard for them to forgive. For it will be reviewed, if at all, by critics less well informed.

Yours sincerely,

MARGARET CAPEL (“Simon Dare”}.

Author of “The Immoralists,”

“Love and the Lutist,” etc.

Messrs. Stanton & Co.

No. 2. 117-118 Greyfriars’ Square, E.G.,

January 3Oth, 1902.

Dear Madam:

I have to thank you for your letter of yesterday with its suggestion for a book on Staffordshire Pottery.

The subject is outside my own knowledge, but I find there is no comprehensive work dealing with it, a small elementary booklet published in the Midlands some three years ago being the only volume catalogued.

In any case there can hardly be a large public for so special an interest, and it will probably be best, as you indicate, to issue a limited edition at a high price and appeal direct by prospectus to collectors. The success of the publication would be then largely dependent on the beauty of the illustrations and the general “get up “of the volume, for although I have no doubt your text will be excellent and accurate it must be properly “dressed “to secure attention.

Indeed I have the privilege of knowing your novels well. They have always appealed to me as having the cardinal qualities of courage and actuality. Complete frankness combined with delicacy and literary skill is so rare with modern-day writers that your work stands out.

Could you very kindly make it convenient to call here so that we may discuss the details and plan for the Staffordshire book? This would save a good deal of correspondence.

I will gladly keep any appointment you make please avoid Saturday, as I try to take that day off at this time of year to go to a little fishing I have in Hampshire.

Your faithfully,

… GABRIEL STANTON.

Mrs. Capel.

No. 3. 211 Queen Anne’s Gate, S.W.,

February 1st, 1902.

Dear Sir:

I am obliged by your courteous letter, and will be with you at four o’clock whichever day suits you. I propose to bring with me a short synopsis of “The Staffordshire Potters, Their Inspiration and Results,” and also a couple of specimens from which you might make experiments for illustrations. I want to place the book definitely before writing it.

Domestic circumstances with which I need not trouble you, they are I fear already public property, make it advisable I should remain, if not sequestered, at least practically in retreat for the next few months. I find I cannot concentrate my mind on a novel at this juncture. But my cottages and quaint figures, groups and animals, jugs and plates, retain their attraction, and I shall do a better book about them now, when I am dependent on things and isolated from people, than I should at any other time.

It is good of you to say what you do about my novels, but I doubt if I shall ever write another. My courage has turned to cowardice, and under crossexamination I found my frankness was no longer complete. I have taken a dislike to humanity. Yours sincerely,

MARGARET CAPEL.

No. 4. 211 Queen Anne’s Gate, S.W.,

February 6th, 1902.

Dear Mr, Stanton:

The agreement promised has not yet arrived; nor your photographer; but I have made a first selection for him, and I think you will find it sufficiently varied according to your suggestion. Thirty illustrations in colour and seventy in monochrome will give the cream of my collection, and be representative, although of course not exhaustive. I have 375 specimens, no two alike! Ten groups, with the dancing dogs for the half-title, six cottages, six single figures, and the rest animal pieces will all look well in the process you showed me. I propose the large socalled classical examples in monochrome; their undoubted coarseness will then be toned down in black or brown and none of their interest destroyed. Julia, Lady Tweeddale, has one piece of which I have never been able to secure a duplicate, and so has Mr. Montague Guest. Do you think it advisable to ask permission to photograph these for inclusion, or would it be better to use only my own collection, and keep to the personal note in the letterpress?

Our brief interview gave me the feeling that I may ask you for help in any difficulty or perplexity that occurs in the preparation of a work so new to me. You were very kind to me. I daresay I seemed to you nervous and uncertain of how I meant to proceed. I felt like a trembling amateur in that big office of yours. I have never interviewed a publisher before; my novels always went by post and came back that way too, at first! I had a false conception of publishers, based on but I must not tell you upon whom it was based. Although why not? Perhaps you will recognise the portrait. A little pot-bellied person, Jewish or German, with a cough, or a sniff, or a sneeze, a suggestion of a coming expectoration, speaking many languages badly and apparently all at once; impressed with his own importance, talking Turgenieff and looking Abimelech. Why Abimelech I don’t know; but that is the hero of whom he reminds me. I met him at a literary garden party to which I was bidden after “The Immoralists “had been so favourably reviewed. It was given by a lady who seemed to know everybody and like no one, a keen two-bladed tongue leapt out among her guests, scarifying them. She told me Mr. Rosenstein was not only a publisher but an amorist. He looked curiously unlike it; but an introduction and a short interview turned me sceptic of my own impression, inclined me to the belief in hers.

I have wandered from my theme your kindness, my nervousness. I shall try to do credit to your penetration. You said that you were sure I should make a success of anything I undertook! I wonder if you were right. And if my Staffordshire book will prove you so? I am going to try and make it interesting, not too technical! But my intentions vary all the time. A preliminary chapter on clays was in my first scheme, I now want instead to tell of the family history of half a dozen potters. From this I begin to dream of stories of the figures; the short-waisted husband and wife a-marketing with their basket of fruit and vegetables, the clergyman in the tithe piece, a benignant villain this, with a chucking-his-parishioners-under-the-chin expression.

Dear Mr. Stanton, what will happen if it turns out that I cannot write a monograph, but am only a novelist? You said I could trust you to act as Editor and blue-pencil my redundancies. But what if it should be all redundancy? Put something about this in the agreement, will you? I want to make money, but not at your expense. I am nervous. I fear that instead of a book on Staffordshire Pottery I shall give you an illustrated volume of short stories published at five guineas!! What an outcry from the press! Already I have been called “precious.” Now they will talk of “pretentiousness “; the “grand manner “without the grand brain behind it! Will you really help and advise me? I have never felt less self-confident.

Yours sincerely,

MARGARET CAPEL.

No. 5. 118 Greyfriars’ Square, E.G.,

February 6th, 1902.

Dear Mrs. Cap el:

As we arranged at our interview yesterday I now enclose a draft contract for the book.

If there is any point not entirely clear to you please do not hesitate to tell me, and I shall be glad also of any suggestion or criticism that may occur to you in regard to possible alteration of the various clauses, and will do my best to meet your wishes. For I am more than anxious that we shall begin what I hope will prove a long and successful “partnership “with complete understanding and confidence.

Further enquiry makes me sanguine that the