My Brother Evelyn & Other Profiles (14 page)

George himself was of the opinion that Methuen's reaction was determined, subconsciously if not actually, by their having lost money on his previous book, a not very exciting story about a newspaper proprietor, through paying a too high advance. George's book before it,
Blind Alley
, one of his best and published during a boom, had sold very well. Methuen had expected his sales to go up but they went down instead. They perhaps welcomed an opportunity to cut their losses.

‘It's always best,' George would say, ‘to ask for a high royalty rather than a high advance. A publisher hates over-advances. He's always happy when an advance has been earned, even though, through a high royalty, it has been earned by the sale of fewer copies. I'd never have had that trouble with Methuen if I'd remembered that.'

Luckily for us, he had not remembered it, and luckily for himself, too, in the long run. He was as happy at Henrietta Street as we were to see him there. He became one of the easiest authors on our list. He never bothered us with suggestions or enquiries, did not ask for daily accounts of how the book was selling or with complaints that the librarian of the Smith's branch at Notting Hill had never heard of it. When he delivered the manuscript, he considered that his job was done and that it was now up to the publisher to sell it. He wrote a publicity handout for the Press and he gave his opinion on the jacket if it was invited. But that was all. He never interfered. If a book
did not sell as well as he had hoped, he did not necessarily blame the publisher.

He published all his subsequent books through us. For his novels he accepted an advance of £300. This may seem very small but only authors and publishers know how little money an author can make out of a book that appears to be successful.

George gave me this advice, ‘Never confess your sales as a novelist. If you tell the truth, people will be astonished and think you are unsuccessful. It harms you to have them thinking that.

‘On the other hand you can safely discuss the prices you receive from American magazines. What, they will exclaim, a thousand dollars just for that!'

The Confession of Ursula Trent
was published in the early autumn of 1921. It sold quite well, and a number of men, Clifford Bax among them, considered it remarkable that George should have been able to enter a woman's mind so convincingly, but it had a bad press and it was during that autumn that George's stock in terms of social popularity touched its lowest level.

In the previous autumn he and his wife had gone to America on a lecture tour. In January Russet died. She was very popular, George was devoted to her, and genuine sympathy was felt. That sympathy diminished when
Ursula Trent
appeared. A heartbroken widower should not, it was felt, have been writing at that time, that kind of book. Then in the late autumn his engagement to be remarried was announced.

The engagement, like everything to do with George, was widely publicized. His fiancée had a Spanish background and distinguished antecedents. Her photographs showed her as dark, not very tall, slight, with an exceptionally good figure, pale skinned, and with a Southern air. It was rumoured that she was rich. After the honeymoon,
they were to sail for America, for a lecture tour. The general reaction was a ‘Well now, really'.

That was at Christmas, 1921; within three years that estimate had been reconsidered. A great deal was to happen in that short time. In the first place his new wife, Kathleen, was to make herself greatly liked, as a friend, a hostess and a wife. She had a difficult task, following upon Russet, under such conditions, and with two step-children, the elder, a boy, by a first marriage. She displayed poise and tact and friendliness. Yet she was never not a person in her own right. She was fourteen years younger than George and in a number of slight ways his life altered to meet her tastes; they became regular first-nighters, they gave bridge parties, he took up golf. His income had increased as a result of his American trips and they moved into a larger house, in Hyde Park Terrace. Their dinner parties were more elaborate but no less enjoyable. A new marriage that is going well has a contagious, cheerful atmosphere. It is a fire at which friends warm their hands. People were soon saying, ‘Kathleen is very nice. Let's hope that it works out.' Because of Kathleen, there was a sudden burgeoning of well-wishing towards George. During his previous marriage, devoted though he had been to Russet, he had never concealed that, while other men might hunt and fish and play golf, his sport was women. He never gave that impression after he married Kathleen.

In the early spring of 1924 he joined the board of Chapman & Hall. To our deliberations at Henrietta Street, he brought a fresh and practical point of view. He could on occasions act as an advocate for a refractory author, but he recognized that a publisher must make money. He also brought into the boardroom the sense of a larger world. On sunny days after the meetings I used to walk back with him across the park. Those walks
in retrospect are the pleasantest feature of my years at Henrietta Street.

His wit and quickness of mind and general zest for life were never as keen as they were during that summer. Yet it was in the course of it that we became aware that there was something very wrong with him. His eyes had always been prominent, now they were protuberant. He had lost weight, yet the colour of his cheeks had heightened. He had shaved his moustache which gave him a naked look. He had difficulty with his speech; there seemed something odd about his hands. By the end of the summer his friends were beginning to be shocked by the change in him.

In September he published
The Triumph of Gallio
. It is a powerful, uncompromising novel, the story of a man who came to believe that nothing mattered, who was equally ruthless and ultimately indifferent towards success and failure, who valued nothing but his own independence. It was the best book that he had written since
The Second Blooming
, ten years before.

In England George now acted without an agent. He could do his own business as well himself, he said, and thus, save ten per cent, but in America he worked through Carl Brandt. Many years later I wrote to ask Brandt if he could throw any light on this sudden change in the quality of George's writing. ‘As it happened,' he answered, ‘I had a good deal to do with his later writing. Out of the air one day he came in to see me. I had always been an admirer of his work, except in the later years. I finally dug out of him what was the trouble. While at that time he did not disclose to me that he feared or knew of the disease he had, he did tell me that it had seemed necessary for him to make as much money as he could as quickly as he could. He therefore, quite cold-bloodedly, decided that sex paid off best, and had cheapened his work.
I think I was able to prove to him that it cheapened it to the point where it had no value even in return to himself. Even at that late date he was sufficiently an artist to turn in his tracks and I think you would find in his last two, possibly three, books he was again setting sail on the course which he should have followed from the beginning.

‘It is to me interesting that this should have been a thought-out thing rather than a temperamental one. I've always tried to correct the impression that people had of him during the latter part of his career. He didn't have time enough to re-establish himself in the echelon to which he belonged by right of gift and craftsmanship.'

The Triumph of Gallio
made many of those who had before been hostile change their attitude; it aroused admiration where
Ursula Trent
had aroused irritation and contempt. His illness made him an object of sympathy.

That autumn I gave a lecture at the Lyceum Club. George who was an able speaker was invited to join in the subsequent discussion. He was at the back of the room and I could barely follow what he said. The words seemed to be sticking in his throat. The next day I met him in the Savile. He asked me if I had had any difficulty in hearing him. I told him that I had, a little. ‘I supposed so,' he said. ‘We must regard it as my swan song.' Each week the effort of articulation became more marked. It was painful to see him struggling for his words.

His hands also began to be affected. The top joints of his fingers turned inwards; they became claws. After the board meetings, tea was served and it was pathetic to watch him trying to double over the slices of bread and butter with his knuckles. The upper half of the door to the boardroom was composed of frosted glass. It was gruesome to hear him fumbling at the door knob, to see his shadow through the glass and to wonder what manner of spectre would appear when the door opened.

By the summer he could scarcely make himself understood. At the end of the last meeting he attended I went with him to the stairs. The stairs were steep and I wondered if he could get down them safely. I put my hand on his arm. There was scarcely any flesh, just bone within the sleeve. I started to lead him down the stairs, but he began to choke; he seemed to shrink into my arms. He cannot have weighed six stone. I led him back into the room and a chair was brought for him. He tried to say something, but only a gargle came out of his throat. He sat there for two or three moments, then he got up and made his own way to the stairs.

Next day he wrote to explain that he had not fainted but that he had been laughing because he had not been able to make me understand that he wanted me to stand on the other side of him. I never saw him again. He died in the following February, a few days before the publication of
Gifts of Sheba
—another fine uncompromising novel that left little doubt with critical opinion that he had returned to his best form.

It was, I believe, Parkinson's disease that killed him. The stoicism with which he faced that illness, and the brave devotion which Kathleen showed—her black hair went white during that year—made many who had been hostile once, respect him. It was ironic that during the war he had said, even if he said it flippantly, that while he would not mind being killed, he could not face disfigurement. It was that very poison that fate chose to hand to him. He drank it unflinchingly, like an antique Roman, and left an honoured name.

GILBERT CANNAN, W. W. JACOBS

In March 1914 Henry James contributed two long signed articles to the English
Times Literary Supplement
on the younger novelists. The four on whom he concentrated were Compton Mackenzie, Hugh Walpole, Gilbert Cannan and D. H. Lawrence. These articles appeared on the front page, and completely filled it. James in them was at his most involved, his most diffuse. It was difficult to discover what he was trying to say, except that he appeared to discern least promise in Lawrence, whom he described as ‘hanging in the dusty rear'. On the whole his articles were welcoming and enthusiastic. It is doubtful if in the history of letters so tremendous a tribute had been paid to four young men. All except Lawrence—and he was to be later—were sponsored by the youngest and the most enterprising of London publishers, Martin Secker. There was much talk of Secker's young men. The world's prizes must have seemed to them ripe for gathering but the war intervened with its consequent reappraisal and reversal of reputations.

In the autumn of 1918 W. L. George published a book entitled
A Novelist on Novels
. It was very obviously the gleanings of a desk; the kind of book that gets compiled when a publisher says to an author, ‘I'd so like to have your name on our list. Isn't there anything that you could let us have? Haven't you got some magazine pieces that have never appeared in book form that you
could write a preface to, so as to give some kind of cohesion to the whole. Do think about it.'

A Novelist on Novels
is no more than that, yet I should not be surprised if more references have been made to it during the last forty-five years than any prose book, except
Eminent Victorians
, published during 1918. It contained a section called ‘Who is the man?' which propounded the question ‘Who in twenty years time will occupy the position at present held by Conrad, Wells and Bennett?' For thirty years now that section has provided a convenient lead for anyone writing an obituary of or tribute to an elder writer. ‘In 1918,' the piece begins. ‘W. L. George was wondering.… Today, quarter of a century later, we can assess the accuracy of his judgment.' If the lead is right, the other problems of an article fall into place, and George has immeasurably smoothed the path of his successors.

The seven contestants for the laurels were Compton Mackenzie, Hugh Walpole, J. D. Beresford, E. M. Forster, Gilbert Cannan, Oliver Onions, Frank Swinner-ton. A section was devoted to D. H. Lawrence but he was not one of the seven.

I never met Lawrence, but I have been on friendly terms with the other seven. Oliver Onions's wife, Berta Ruck, has been for many years one of my dearest friends; the only one, however, whom I knew on any terms of intimacy—by that I mean spent a certain amount of time alone with, entertained or been entertained by—was Gilbert Cannan.

His name is rarely mentioned nowadays, but like George's it occasionally appears in current autobiographies. Ivor Brown calling him ‘the comet of a few seasons' reminded his readers that in Shaw's preface to
Fanny's First Play
Cannan was the supercilious critic, Gunn. In the early ‘twenties his nerves gave way; he
suddenly became violent and in, I believe, a transatlantic liner, seized Horace Liveright by the throat, forced him to his knees and exhorted him to prepare to meet his maker. Kindly hands led him to a sanatorium where he spent the last thirty years of his life; contentedly, believing that he was a guest in a country house, and relieving his literary needs by inditing to politicians long letters that were never posted.

Cannan was raised in Manchester, under squalid conditions; then a rich cousin adopted him, and sent him to Cambridge, where he was at King's, one of that brilliant many-sided group that included Rupert Brooke, Lytton Strachey, E. M. Forster, John Maynard Keynes. His early novels had a sombre Manchester background. He translated Artzibasheff's
Sanine
—presumably from the French—and his first successful novel
Round the Corner
was greatly influenced by
Sanine
.