* * * * *

“He will insult you.  He will inform you that he has forty candidates for the most insignificant post on the editorial staff, and that there is not the remotest chance for you.  You then tell him that you are an expert writer, a contributor to the monthlies and quarterlies, and the author of a novel which Mr. James Douglas has described as the most stupendously virile work of fiction since Tourgeniev’s ‘Crime and Punishment.’  He will insult you anew, and demand your immediate departure.  You then say to him, in a casual tone:  ‘I can bring you ten thousand pounds’ worth of ads. a year.’  He will read your deepest soul with one glance, and will reply, in a casual tone, ’I dare say I could find you something regular to do on the magazine page.’  You go on airily:  ’I’m pretty sure I can bring twenty thousand pounds’ worth of ads. a year.’  He will then order R.P.  Muria cigars, and say with benevolence:  ’It just happens that the head of our reviewing department is under notice.  How would that suit you?’ You then unmask all your batteries, and tell him squarely that you can bring him advertisements to the tune of a thousand pounds a week.  Whereupon he will reply, shaking you fraternally by the hand:  ’My dear fellow, I will make you editor at once.’”

* * * * *

So spake my celebrated friend.  Of course, he is a cynic.  He may be a criminal cynic.  But he spake so.  From time to time London dailies do me the honour to reprint saucy paragraphs from this weekly article of mine.  My friend said to me:  “You can print what I’ve said, if you like.  No daily paper in London will reprint that.”

MARGUERITE AUDOUX

[2 March ’11]

Among the astonishing phenomena of a spring season which promises to be quite as successful, in its way, as the very glorious autumn season (publishers must have spent a happy Christmas!) is the success of a really distinguished book.  I mean “Marie Claire.”  Frankly, I did not anticipate this triumph.  For, of course, it is very difficult for an author of experience to believe that a good book will be well received.  However, “Marie Claire” has been helped by a series of extraordinary reviews.  No novel of recent years has had such favourable reviews, or so many of them, or such long ones.  I have seen all of them—­all except one have been very laudatory—­and I am in a position to state that if placed end to end they would stretch from Miss Corelli’s house in Stratford-on-Avon across the main to Mr. Hall Caine’s castle in the Isle of Man.  This may be called praise.  One of the best, if not the best, was signed “J.L.G.” in the Observer.  It is indeed a solemn and terrifying thought that Mr. Garvin, who, by means of thoroughly bad prose persisted in during many years, has at last laid the Tory Party in ruins, should be so excellent a judge of literature.  Mr. Garvin