The first publisher to whom I sent it accepted it.It was published and had quite a success.I thought I was made for life.Anything seemed possible to one.After all, so far as one's possibilities went one was on a level with any one--Shakespeare, Dante, any one you like.One might do anything....I published a book a year, after that, for ten years--ten years ten books, and then awoke to the fact that I was nothing at all and would never be anything--that I would never write like Shakespeare, and, a matter of equal importance, would never sell like Mrs.Henry Wood.Not that I wished to write like any one else.I had a great idea of keeping to my own individuality, but I saw quite clearly that what I had in myself--all of it--was no real importance to any one.I might so well have been a butcher or baker for all that it mattered.I saw that I was one of those unfortunate people--there are many of them--just in between the artists and the shopkeepers.I was an artist all right, but not a good enough one to count; had I been a shopkeeper I might have sold my goods.""Well, then, here's your question, Miss Cardinal.Why on earth did Igo on writing?...Simply because I couldn't help myself.Writing was the only thing in the world that gave me happiness.I thought too that there might be people, here and there, unknown to me who cared for what I did.Not many of course--I soon discovered that outside the small library set in London no one had ever heard of me.
When I was younger I had fancied that that to me fiery blazing advertisement: "New Novel by William Magnus, author of..." must cause men to stop in the street, exclaim, rush home to tell their wives, 'Do you know Magnus' new novel is out?'--now I realised that by nine out of every ten men and five out of every ten women the literary page in the paper is turned over with exactly the same impatience with which I turn over the betting columns.Anyway, why not?...perfectly right.And then by this time I'd seen my old books, often enough, lying scattered amongst dusty piles in second-hand shops marked, 'All this lot 6d.' Hundreds and hundreds of six-shilling novels, dirty, degraded, ashamed...I'd ask, sometimes, when I was very young, for my own works.'What's the name? What?
Magnus?--No, don't stock him.No demand.We could get you a copy, sir...' There it is.Why not laugh at it? I was doing perhaps the most useless thing in the world.A commonplace little water-colour, hung on a wall, can give happiness to heaps of people; a poor piece of music can do a thousand things, good and bad, but an unsuccessful novel--twenty unsuccessful novels! A whole row, with the same history awaiting their successors...'We welcome a new novel by Mr.William Magnus, who our readers will remember wrote that clever story...The present work seems to us at least the equal of any that have preceded it.'...A fortnight's advertisement--Dead silence.Some one in the Club, 'I see you've written another book, old man.You do turn 'em out.' A letter from a Press Agency who has never heard of one's name before, 'A little sheaf of thin miserable cuttings.'...The Sixpenny Lot...Ouf!
And still I go on and shall go on until I die.Perhaps after all I'm more justified than any of them.I'm stripped of all reasons save the pleasure, the thrill, the torment, the hopes, the despairs of the work itself.I've got nothing else out of it and shall get nothing...and therefore I'm justified.Now do you understand a little, Miss Cardinal?"She half understood.She understood that he was compelled to do it just as some men are compelled to go to race meetings and just as Uncle Mathew was compelled to drink.
But she nevertheless thought it a dreadful pity that he was unable to stop and interest himself in something else.Then he could see it so plainly and yet go on! She admired and at the same time pitied him.
It seemed, this private history of Mr.Magnus, at first sight so far from Maggie's immediate concerns, her new life, her aunts, the Chapel and the Chapel world.It was only afterwards, when she looked back, that she was able to see that all these private affairs of private people radiated inwards, like the spokes of a wheel, towards the mysterious inner circle--that inner circle of which she was already dimly aware, and of which she was soon to feel the heat and light.She was, meanwhile, so far impressed by Mr.Magnus'
confidences that she borrowed one of his novels from Caroline, who confided to her that she herself thought it the dullest and most tiresome of works."To be honest, I only read a bit of it--I don't know what it's about.I think it's downright silly."This book bore the mysterious title of "Dredinger." It was concerned apparently with the experiences of a young man who, buying an empty house in Bloomsbury, discovered a pool of water in the cellar.The young man was called Dredinger, which seemed to Maggie an unnatural kind of name.He had an irritating habit of never finishing his sentences, and the people he knew answered him in the same inconclusive fashion.The pool in the cellar naturally annoyed him, but he did nothing very practical about it, allowed it to remain there, and discussed it with a Professor of Chemistry.Beyond this Maggie could not penetrate.The young man was apparently in love with a lady much older than himself, who wore pince-nez, but it was an arid kind of love in which the young man discovered motives and symptoms with the same dexterous surprise with which he discovered newts and tadpoles in the cellar-pond.Maggie bravely attacked Mr.
Magnus.
"Why didn't he have men in to clear up the pond and lay a new floor?" she asked.
"That was just the point," said Mr.Magnus."He couldn't.""Why couldn't he?"