Thomas Wolfe, page 245
And yet their life went on. Sometimes he loved her wholly, as he had loved her in those first rare months when love was gold and green and still untarnished, and then she came to him like morning, joy, and triumph, and the lights of April. Again, when driven in upon himself by his dark thoughts, she seemed to him the subtle, potent bait of life, the fabled lure of proud and evil cities, cunningly painted with the hues of innocence and morning, the evil snare that broke the backs of youth, and spread corruption in the hearts of living men, and took all of their visions and their strength in fee.
Sometimes, suddenly, this black convulsion of madness, shame, and death would sweep through his brain even as he spoke his love for her, and he would cry out savagely the burden of his despair.
“Oh, you are mad!” she would say. “And your mind is black and twisted with its evil!”
But instantly the wave of death and horror would pass out of him as quickly as it came, as if he had not heard her voice, and he would tell her then with swelling joy and certitude the depth and fullness of the love he felt for her.
And still the cat crept trembling at its merciless stride along the ridges of the backyard fence. The hoof and wheel went by upon the street. And high above the fabulous walls and towers of the city, the sound of time, murmurous and everlasting, brooded forever in the upper air.
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32
THE PHILANTHROPISTS
We have now reached that portion of our narrative where it becomes our agreeable privilege to inform the reader of an event which he must have been eagerly anticipating for some time—namely, the entrance of our young hero into the literary life of the great city, or, as those of us who have been to France and know the language would prefer to say, his initiation into the mysteries of La Vie Littéraire.
It is true that the young man’s entrance—if so it may be described—was an extremely modest one, and bore few of the aspects of an invasion. In fact, if he got in at all, it might be said he got in by a side door, and—to put it brutally—only after he had been kicked downstairs, had picked up his bruised behind from the cobblestones, and limped off, muttering, no doubt, that Rome would yet live to hear of Caesar!
It happened in this way:
The book on which Monk had been employed for three years or more was completed very early in that fat year of Our Lord and Calvin Coolidge, 1928, and Mrs. Jack suggested to him that so pure a gem should not be left to glitter in obscurity. In short, she said the time had now arrived when “We ought to show it to someone.”
This had been the author’s notion all the time, but now that his work was done, he was stricken with a sense of complete helplessness, and all he could do was to look at the lady rather stupidly, and say:
“Show it to someone? Who?”
“Why,” said Mrs. Jack impatiently, “to someone who knows about these things.”
“What things?”
“Why, about books!”
“Who knows about them?” he inquired.
“Why—critics, publishers—people like that!”
“Do you know any publishers?” the young man said, staring at her with a dull yet fascinated eye, as who should say, “Are you acquainted with any hippogriffs?”
“Why—let me see!” said Mrs. Jack, reflecting. “Yes, I know Jimmy Wright—I used to know him very well.”
“Is he a publisher?” Monk said, still looking at the lady with an expression of fascinated disbelief.
“Yes, of course he is!” said Esther. “He’s a partner in the firm of Rawng and Wright—you must have heard of them!”
He had heard of them, everyone had heard of them; nevertheless, he did not believe in their existence. In the first place, now that his book was finished, he did not believe in the existence of any publisher. A publisher was a figment of the romantic imagination, an agreeable fiction conceived by young men writing their first book in order to tide them over their darker moments! But seriously to believe now, in the cold light of reality, while his appalled eye rested on the huge pile of his completed manuscript, that such a creature as a publisher really existed—that a publisher could be found who would publish this leviathan—no, it was too much! It was impossible! To believe that a publisher actually lived and moved and had his being somewhere in the canyoned precincts of the mighty city was like believing in ghosts and fairies! Such a creature and the whole world he moved in was a myth, a fable, and a legend.
If it was hard to believe in the existence of any publisher, it was especially hard to believe in the existence of the firm of Rawng and Wright. True, he had heard of them; they were, at the moment, one of the most famous publishing houses in existence, but everything that he had ever heard had been unbelievable, fascinating but impossible, matter for amusing anecdotage over one’s cups—but in the cold grey dawn of soberness, incredible.
In the first place, from all that he had heard about the firm of Rawng and Wright, it appeared that they were a firm that published books but never read them. Mr. Rawng, in fact—the fabulous Mr. Hyman Rawng, a large and Oriental-looking gentleman who had been born Rawngstein but had changed his name, in the interests of brevity, no doubt—Mr. Rawng was a familiar figure at first nights, cocktail parties, the better class of speakeasy, and other public gatherings where food and drink were available—but no one had ever known him to read a book. Moreover, he admitted it. It was Mr. Rawng himself who had conceived the famous mot:
“I don’t read books, I publish ’em!”
The firm of Rawng and Wright belonged, indeed, to the younger and more unconventional element of the publishing profession. The stodgy business of print was agreeably enlivened by long and frequent intervals of women, wine, and song. Their publishing judgments may have erred at times, but their cuisine was always excellent. One saw few books about their cheerful offices, but there was a large and well-appointed bar. They gave parties, teas, and dinners to their authors, to which a large part of the public was invited; there may have been, conceivably, a dearth of plain thinking at these gatherings, but of high living there was no end.
It will be seen, then, that this enterprising house belonged to the new school of what might be called “publishing by intuition.” While Mr. Rawng boasted openly that he never read a book, Mr. Wright, who made great store of all his erudition, asserted frequently that so far as reading was concerned, he didn’t have to read, because he had “done all his.” As for reading any of their own books, or reading an author’s manuscript when it was sent in for their inspection, that, of course, was out of the question, absurdly out of date, ridiculous—the kind of thing, really, that had ruined the whole publishing profession, the kind of stodgy, unimaginative procedure to be expected from what the Messrs. Rawng and Wright called “old-line houses”—such as Scribner, Harper, or Macmillan—but from the Messrs. Rawng and Wright, by heaven, never!
“Read a manuscript!” cried Mr. Rawng one time when questioned on the point—“Me read a manuscript!” he cried again, and tapped his bosom with fat fingers, and dilated fleshly nostrils with rich scorn. “Don’t make me leff!” cried Mr. Rawng, unmirthfully. “Vy the hell should I read a manuscript? I don’t have to read it! All I have to do is pick it up and feel it!”—here he wagged four fat fingers feelingly—“All I have to do is hold it up and smell it”—here he dilated his fat nostrils with odorous appraisal—“If if feels good—good! I publish it! If it smells good—good! I publish it! If it feels bad and smells lousy—” Mr. Rawng’s voluptuous features writhed with disgust, he pointed downward with a fat, condemning thumb—“R-r-raus mit it!” he growled. “The thing stinks! I wouldn’t have it on a bet!”
Moreover, it was a theory of the house—call it rather an unspoken but nevertheless passionate conviction—that business should never be discussed at the offices of the firm. Let the “old-line houses” go in for that sort of thing! Let the “old-line houses” proceed along these lines of conventional commerce which had stultified the imagination and impeded the free expansion of the whole profession. Let the “old-line houses” proceed on the assumption that publishing was a business rather than a branch of the fine arts, and that the delicate and shrinking soul of the artist could not be lacerated by talk of contracts, royalties, publication dates, etc., as if he were some dull-witted Philistine upon the Stock Exchange! Let them—these “old-line houses”—carry on in the sinister privacy of their business offices the old, old game of stealth and slyness, whispering intrigue, secret agreements, hidden diplomacy! Such methods as these did nothing but breed suspicion and future misunderstandings; they were ruinous—ruinous!—would these crafty old ones never learn?—and had brought the publishing profession to its present wretched state.
As for the Messrs. Rawng and Wright, they would have none of it. They had brought new life to publishing. As they admitted, they had entered the publishing business “like a fresh breeze”—and they were blowing across it now like a tornado! Let others have their business offices and their stodgy atmospheres; the Messrs. Rawng and Wright, who understood the delicate adjustments of the artistic temperament better than any of their competitors, had studios, reception rooms, and couches with lots of cushions on them. The note they sounded was æsthetic, not commercial.
If business with an author had to be discussed—and the Messrs. Rawng and Wright regretted personally that the necessity ever had to arise—let the discussion be carried on without concealment or suspicion, in a free, frank, and wholesome manner, and let the public be invited. In accordance with this principle, all of the business negotiations and arrangements of the firm took place in a well-known speakeasy conveniently located in the basement of a brownstone house three doors down the street. Here, at almost any hour of the day or night, some member of the organization might be found discussing the plans, projects, and accomplishments of the house to anyone inclined to listen. One of the most delightful features of the personnel of Rawng and Wright was that it had no secrets. A delightful air of camaraderie prevailed throughout. The office boy was almost as well informed on all the affairs of the firm as were the two great heads themselves, and within a quarter of an hour of any new development the matter was being amiably talked over with waiters, bartenders, bar-flies, and anyone within a hearing radius of one hundred yards.
All negotiations with authors were made as agreeable as possible. Knowing the nature of the artistic temperament as they did, and understanding to the full—nay! wincing in sympathy with—its exquisite sensitivity, any matter of contracts, royalties, or advances was never even mentioned until after the sixth round of drinks. If the business to be discussed was a simple one—some matter of routine dispatch such as getting an author’s signature to a contract calling for “the usual terms,” together with an option on his next eight books—nothing more was needed than six or seven stiff Scotch highballs and the hypnotic compulsions of Mr. Hyman Rawng’s persuasive voice to make the owner of the temperament succumb, see light, and get the unpleasant business signed and over with without delay.
In more difficult problems, of course, where the artistic temperament was inclined to be more vexed and hostile, a longer period of persuasive preparation was at times essential. If there was some dispute—and, unhappily, we must admit, these unfortunate disputes do sometimes happen—if there was, on the part of the artistic temperament, some over-sensitive tendency to truculent suspiciousness, Mr. Hyman Rawng’s sympathetic pity was as wide as nature, as deep as the Atlantic, as tender in its mercy as the love of God.
“My dear boy,” he could be heard, after the eleventh round of drinks, speaking as gently, tenderly, and sweetly as one speaks to little children, “My dear boy, vat do you think I’m in the publishing business for anyway?—To make money?”
“Well,” the Temperament might answer, surveying his benefactor with truculent surprise, mixed in between a hiccup and a belch—“hie!—aren’t you?”
Here Mr. Hyman Rawng would laugh gently, gutturally, understandingly—a laugh mixed equally of pity and reproach. Then, wagging a fat forefinger sidewise before his fleshy nose, he would say:
“Nah! Nah! Nah! Nah! Nah! . . . My dear boy, you don’t understand! . . . Money! My dear boy, I don’t care for money! It means nothing to me! If I cared for money,” he cried triumphantly, “vy the hell should I be in the publishing business? . . . Nah! Nah! Nah! You got it all wrong! It’s not money that I’m after! No publisher is! If I was after money I wouldn’t be in this business. My dear boy . . . you got it all wrong! Publishers don’t make money! . . . Nah! Nah! Nah! . . . I thought you knew that!”
“Oh, I see!” the Temperament might now say bitterly. “Just a bunch of—hie!—big-hearted philanthropists, hey?—in business—hie!—for your health!”
Mr. Rawng’s manner now became immensely grave and confidential. Leaning over and tapping his companion on the knee with a fat forefinger he would say in a low but very impressive whisper:
“You said it! . . . You got it eggs-ackly! . . . You hit the nail right on the head! . . . That’s what we are—philantropists!”
“Yeah!”—this with a decided shade of cynical aspersion—“Then what about those royalties of mine? Where’s all that dough you made on my last book?”
“Royalties?” said Mr. Hyman Rawng in a thoughtful and abstracted tone, as if he had heard this curious word somewhere in his childhood long ago. “Royalties? . . . Oh, royalties!” he cried suddenly, as if the meaning of the word had just dawned on him. “It’s royalties you’re talking about? That’s what’s worrying you?”
“You bet your cock-eyed life that’s what’s worrying me! What about ’em, huh?”
“My dear boy,” Mr. Rawng now said in a commiserating tone, “why didn’t you say so before? Why didn’t you get it off your chest? Why didn’t you come to me and tell me about it? I’d have understood! That’s what we’re here for—because we understand these things! So when anything of this sort comes up again . . . when it begins to worry you . . . for God’s sake, come to me, and spill it! . . . Don’t let it eat on you! . . . That’s the trouble with you fellows—you’re all so God-damn sensitive! . . . Of course, you wouldn’t be writers if you weren’t! . . . But don’t be that way with me, Joe! . . . You got nothing to be afraid of where I’m concerned. . . . You know that, don’t you? . . . So don’t be so sensitive!”
“Sensitive! Why, you—Sensitive! . . . What the hell do you mean by sensitive?”
“Just what I say,” said Mr. Rawng. “I mean you got nothing to worry about at all. That’s what I brought you in here to tell you—I could see you had begun to let it eat on you—so I just wanted to bring you in here for a drink or two to tell you everything was all right!
“Tell me! Tell me what’s all right? It’s not all right! Not by a damn sight!”
“It is all right! If it’s not all right, I’ll make it all right! . . . Listen to me, Joe,” again the low and quiet reassurance, Mr. Rawng’s dark, compelling eye, the finger tapped impressively on the author’s knee. “Forget about it! . . . I could see you’ve let it eat on you—but forget it! Life’s too short! We want you to feel right. . . . So I just brought you in here to let you know that it’s all settled as far as we’re concerned! . . . You owe us nothing!”
“Owe you! Why, you old—why, owe you! What the hell do you mean by owe you?”
“Just what I say! . . . I mean that from now on . . . today! . . . right now! . . . this minute! . . . we’re starting out with a clean slate! . . . What’s done is done! . . . What’s over is over! . . . We’re banking on your future, and we want you to have a mind free from worry, so you can do the work we know you’re going to do. . . . So just forget about it! . . . The coast is clear, the slate is clean—that’s the way we feel about it!”
“The way you feel about it, is it! The slate is clean, is it? Not by a damn sight! That’s not the way I feel about it!”
“I know you don’t,” said Mr. Rawng quietly, “but that’s because you’re so sensitive! You think you owe us something! You think you’re under some sort of obligation to us. But that’s just your pride!”
“Owe! Obligation! Pride! Why——”
“Listen, Joe,” said Mr. Rawng in his quiet and earnest tone again. “That’s what I tried to tell you a while ago, but you wouldn’t listen to me! I told you I wasn’t in this business to make money! . . . If I wanted to make money, I wouldn’t be in this business! . . . I’m in this business because—” Mr. Rawng’s voice faltered huskily, for a moment his dark eye shone humidly, but he mastered himself, and concluded simply—“well, I’m in this business because I love it . . . because of the friendships I have made . . . because, maybe . . . well, Joe, I didn’t mean to say this . . . I know it will embarrass you . . . I know how you hate it when anyone talks to you about your work . . . but I got to say it! . . . I know that a hundred years from now no one will remember me,” said Mr. Rawng with a sad but manly resignation, “I know I’m just one of the little guys of the world. . . . It don’t matter much whether I live or die, they won’t remember me. . . . But if someone a hundred years from now picks up one of your books and sees my mark on it, and says, ‘Well, I don’t know what that guy was like, but he was the guy who first discovered Joseph Doaks, and gave him his first chance’ . . . why, then, I would consider that my life had not been lived in vain! . . . That’s just how much it means to me, boy!” Mr. Rawng’s voice was now distinctly husky. “That’s why I’m in this game! It’s not the money! . . . Nah! Nah!” He smiled moistly, painfully, and shook a fat finger before his nose. “It’s the thought that maybe I’ve been of some use here on earth . . . that maybe I’ve been able to be of some use to guys like you . . . helped you on your way a little . . . made things a little easier for you so you could realize your genius. So you don’t owe me one red cent! Not a penny! You’re not under any obligation to me what-so-ever! . . . Your friendship means too much to me for that—the pride I take in the knowledge that I am your publisher! . . . So forget about it! You owe me nothing!”
