remain an honorable profession, instead of sinking to a trade. He would rank with the rare theatrical manager to whom art is dearer than profit-if such a one still survives. But the trail of business is over the age: the theatrical manager is a shameless tradesman, and more and more the publisher will become the mere distributer, if indeed he be not eliminated by a mechanical organisation. The popular author needs only a central store to supply the trade with his printed writings, the cost of production of which is covered by the first day's sales. This is, of course, to ignore the publisher in his aspect of initiator of series, art books and encyclopedias. But to originate is to depart from publishing proper and to become entitled to the profits of the inventor; nay, almost to step over into the province of authorship and the dignity thereof.
But if we can forgive the publisher for succumbing to the business spirit of the age, we cannot as readily acquiesce in the huckstering spirit that has crept over literature. The 'battle of the books' has become one of account-books, and the literary columns of the newspapers bristle with pecuniary paragraphs. Even the 'chatter about Shelley' was better than the contemporary gossip about the takings of authors, for the most part vastly exaggerated. A paragraph which must have inflated him with pride led to a friend of mine being haled up before the Income Tax Commissioners. 'How long have you been an author?' he was asked in addition. 'Six years,' he replied. 'And you have only paid income tax for five!' was the horrified exclamation. Here is the nemesis of all this foolish fuss about L. S. D. The British mind now supposes authorship to be a trade, like any other. You go into it, and you at once begin to make a regular income; and, once successful, you go on steadily earning large sums, automatically. The thing works itself. You are never ill or uninspired; you are never to let your mind lie fallow, never to travel and gather new inspiration, never to shut up shop and loaf. You simply go on making so much a year-for do not the papers say so? And that you should cherish the immoral sentiments contained in the following stanzas, as at least two authors of my acquaintance do, is simply incredible to the envious Philistine.
THE AUTHOR TO THE SYNDICATOR.
Thou lord, of bloated syndicates,
Thou master of the mint,
Who payest at the highest rates
And takest without stint,
Go back, go back to wild New York,
Go back across the sea;
Go, corners make in beans and pork,
No corners make in me.
For thou art 'cute and thou art smart,
No dead flies hang on thee;
Thou carest not one jot for Art,
But only
Go 'back, go back, etc.
Thy aims are low, thy profits high;
Thy mind is only bent,
Whatever live, whatever die,
To scoop in cent per cent.
Go back, go back, etc.
To thee the greatest authors are
Those who most greatly sell;
But he whose soul is as a Star-
Why, he may go to H-ll!
Go back, go back to wild New York,
Go back across the sea;
Go, corners make in beans and pork,
No corners make in me.
An author's income must be indeed difficult to adjudge. He is the manufacturer of a patent article-which only he can turn out. But he is also the vendor thereof, and his transactions involve sales of serial-as well as of book-rights synchronised in two or more countries-a tedious and delicate task. And a great part of his business-'the tributes that take up his time,' the MSS. he has to read, etc., etc.-must be conducted entirely without profit, or rather must be run at a loss. Who can determine what are the working expenses of so complex an industrial enterprise? An artist subtracts the cost of his models: may an author subtract the cost of the experiences which supply him with his material, and, if so, how are they to be estimated? Mr. Conan Doyle and Mr. Anthony Hope both write historical novels; but while the former buys and studies large quantities of books, and travels to see castles and battlefields, the latter professedly works from intuition. Are both these men's incomes to be treated alike? Goethe deliberately fell in love so as to write poems when the passion had subsided: how much should be deducted from his gross returns to cover the working expenses of his love-affairs? And even when we do not go about it in such cold blood, our art-is it not woven of our pain and our passion, our 'emotions recollected in tranquility'? Do these emotions cost us nothing? Do they not 'wear and tear' our system, justifying us in writing off 5 per cent. for depreciation in our machinery? Countless are the problems that arise out of this new view of authorship as an exact trade. Scientifically speaking, the author is a pieceworker, whose productiveness is fitful and temporary. However widely the fame of his business extend, he cannot extend it; he cannot increase his output by adding new clerks or new branches: every order received means work for his own brain and his own hands. If he keep other hands they are called ghosts, and such ghosts are frowned upon even by the Psychical Society.
No, the more I think of it, the more it is borne in upon me that authors should be exempted from income tax altogether-if, indeed, the income itself should not rather be provided for them (free of duty) by a grateful Government. Carlyle is said to have claimed exemption on the ground that the earnings of a writer are incalculable: it seems to me that it is rather the working expenses which are incalculable. 'I sometimes sit and yearn for anything in the shape of an income that would come in,' wrote poor sick Stevenson on a languorous summer afternoon,-by the way, I hope his doctors' expenses were deducted from his gross returns, as incurred in order to keep the writing machinery going; or did he perchance fly to Samoa to escape the tax altogether?-'Mine has all got to be gone and fished for with the immortal mind of man. What I want is the income that really comes in of itself, while all you have to do is just to blossom and exist, and sit on chairs.' Poor R. L. S.!-does it not make you think of 'mighty poets in their misery dead'? Does it not-if you are more prosaic-bring home to you the absurdity of taxing professional incomes as though they were akin to those which 'come in' to the happy folk who have but 'to blossom and exist and sit on chairs'? And will you not, whoever you are, rejoice that the work done with so much art and conscience and suffering, obtained, in Stevenson's latter days, its highest possible money-reward through the much-abhorred Agent? Why do not millionaires hear of the woes of authors and send them anonymous bank- notes? Why do not 'national testimonials' happen in the author's lifetime in the shape of purses of gold? They are more digestible than posthumous stones. Alas! the author's path is thorny enough. And it is against this jaded, unhappy creature that the publishers have had to make a Union! Well, well, there will soon be no Authors' Union except the Workhouse.
XXVI. THE PENALTIES OF FAME
There is one form of persecution to which celebrity or notoriety is subject, which Ouida has omitted in her impassioned protest. It is interviewing carried one step further-from the ridiculous to the sublime of audacity. The auto-interview, one might christen it, if the officiating purist would pass the hybrid name. Yon are asked to supply information about yourself by post, prepaid. The ordinary interview, whatever may be said against it, is at least painless; and, annoying as it is to after-reflection to have had your brain picked of its ideas by a stranger who gets paid for them, still the mechanical vexations of literature are entirely taken over by the journalist who hangs on your lips; though, if I may betray the secrets of the prison-house, he often expects you to supply the questions as well as the answers. But when you are asked to write your life for a biographical dictionary, or to communicate particulars about yourself to a newspaper, it is difficult, however equable your temperament, not to feel a modicum of irritation. It is not only the labour of writing and the cost of stamps that anger you. Your innate modesty is outraged. How is it possible for you to say all those nice things about yourself which you know to be your due, and which a third person might even exaggerate? What business have editors to expose you to such inner conflict? A
