The Successful Novelist [pp. 462-465]

464 APPLETONS' JO URNAL OF POPULAR [APRIL 23,
and energy, and the power of maintaining her without an assured in come, as personified by me.
However, youth entered the lists fairly, and won the fair guerdon
of the girl's love honestly. Both Alice and I were averse to doing
any thing diametrically opposed to the old man's wishes, or any thing
that could savbr of filial ingratitude. But he left us no choice. He
would not hear me and reason. And the end of it was that, rather
than see his daughter sacrificed to his grasping cupidity, I set aside
my own scruples, and entreated her to marry me without delay.
It was all very well urging this in hot blood, and vowing in the
same that I would "make her famous by my pen," i. e., secure her a
fair maintenance, and keep her in that position of life in which she had
always been accustomed to be kept. It was all very well vowing and
swearing and promising, but, when it came to the point, and she
agreed to marry at once, and repent (if needs be) at leisure, I had not
the wherewithal to carry out the plans I had made so bravely. In
plain, idiomatic English, I was out of funds until the next pay-day
(two months hence) arrived. That is to say, though I had enough to
have enabled me to rub along as a bachelor, I had not enough to make
the path of my bride tolerably smooth.
At this juncture, and just as my bewilderment and anxiety seemed
likely to culminate in low fever, I bethought me of Gerard Ilayter.
Hie was on the top of the tide; surely he would not object to advancinlg me a sum of money which I could easily repay. On the other
hand, though he was on the top of the tide of success, still, to my
certain knowledge, he had a great many expenses, and the consideration of these made me hesitate about applying to him. In this emergency, while I was waiting, and Alice was preparing for our quiet marriage, he came to me, and all my difficulties vanished.
"Jack, my dear fellow," he said, " I'm in a fix."
"So am I," I said.
"I'm in an awful fix," he went on, moodily, without noticing my
remark. " You know what I did on the strength of the success of
'Fidelity;' what you advised me to do, in fact. Well, now I'm
stranded, high and,dry, in the middle of the first volume, and my
publisher is crying for his pound of flesh; it's in the bond that he
has the whole of his copy in six weeks' time, and I haven't an idea
left; my brain will soften if it's strained much more."
I felt rather aghast. "What have you been doing all this time?"
I asked, for he had been given six months to write his novel in.
"Nothing," he said, rather savagely; "a fellow can't write to
order. What were you about, Jack, to let me in for this? Nina is
frantic; talks of putting down her brougham and going into cheap
lodgings, and all sorts of impossibilities; I wish you'd look over the
copy I have ready, like a good fellow, and see if you could help me
along this once?"
"Do you mean continue your story for you?" I asked, with a beating heart.
"Well, yes; I'll give you a sketch of my general idea about it,
and post you up in a notion or two about some of the characters. If
I only had the power of writing to order like a machine, I should be
all right," he continued, with a sort of magnificent scorn, that at the
time I thought infinitely becoming; "but I haven't the power, and
so I'll give up the working out of one of the finest women who has
been brought into a book for many a long day into your hands."
He talked on in this strain for a long time, and the end of it was
that we came to the following agreement, namely-that I should finish
the novel he had in hand; that it should be published in his name;
that he should take all the praise and all the blame which might be
awarded it; and that, in consideration of my share in the work, I
should receive the sum of one hundred pounds from him when the last
line of manuscript was sent in to his publisher.
I did my work in the appointed time, I received the money, I
married, and went off on my wedding-tour, with all my happiness
marred by the feeling that I had commit to i a fraud on the public, the
evil effects of which would, at no distant date, rebound on my own
head. The worst effects I dreaded were that the deception both Hayter and I had practised-I in writing the book, and he in palming it
off as his own-would be discovered, and that our reputation for
probity would be destroyed. This was what I dreaded. The evils
that have ensued are widely different, and have fallen on my head
alone.
We came home, and after a time the proceeds from my usual work
flowed in-not with lavish profusion certainly, but still with most de
sirable regularity. Alice and 1 were in comfortable furnished lodgings,
not very distant from the little bijou house in Brompton which was
occupied by Gerard Hayter and his wife, and Nina and Alice were
"devoted friends," as the women phrase it.
The reviews, the public, and consequently the libraries, were kinder
to Gerard Hayter's new novel than they had been to his first even.
He peacocked himself upon the strength of this success amazingly
and amusingly. He did not quite ignore my share in the work, but he
did almost ignore it.
"Maitland, my dear old fellow, how splendidly we work together,
don't we?" he would say, reading a good "selling" notice, and tugging away at his mustache. "I do the pattern, and you do the
grounding admirably."
Yes; he had the audacity to tell me that I did the "grounding,"
when I had written exactly two volumes and a half of his new and
successful novel.
Time went on. Our dream of love was resolving itself into very
wide-awake married happiness, and the enterprising publisher who
had bought Hayter's brains and name for six years began to grow impatient to see the early chapters and the scheme of another novel.
Again Gerard came to me, moody and miserable, and repentant of the
bargain he had made.
"Why don't you tell him you can't do it, and cancel the bond?" I
asked.
"Why don't I stand at the corners of the streets and shout to all
who care to hear that I'm written out for a time; that I can't produce
money's worth, and so must go and starve? You're a precious adviser, Jack-a Job's comforter, and no mistake; besides, I have the
ideas. I have got a woman in my head who will beat all the heroines
of late years hollow; I have studied her profoundly, and could sketch
her pointedly and well for you; it's the confounded filling-in and padding that I can't do-the part you manage so well; come, Jack, what
do you say? let us do another book together on the same terms as
before."
"And publish the fact of the joint authorship?" I asked.
"My dear fellow, no one in that special line of literature knows
your name even," he said, condescendingly. "No, no; that would
spoil the name of the book. My, name will float any thing."
"Why don't you write'any thing,' and try it, then?" I said.
"I really haven't the health at command, or the time either; I
don't want to drop my connection with the papers I'm on, and yet the
public will have a novel bearing my name every six months. Come,
Jack, be a good fellow." Then he went on to put the fact before me
more forcibly, that no publisher would risk buying a book of mine at
present, and that I should be unwise to put myself in the ranks of the
rejected. And, further, he enlisted my wife on his side, through the
agency Qf his wife. "Dear Jack, it will be so nice to have that money
down at once for doing what won't take you very long to write, because you're so clever. Besides, see how it will help poor Gerard!
Nina says he would never hold his head up again, if he had to break
his agreement with his publisher."
Alice's blandishments and Mr. Gerard Hayter's conscientious scruples carried the day against my knowledge of what was due to myself.
I entered upon the task, and this time I was not hampered with even
half a volume of another man's writing. Gerard gorgeously placed
some of his grand ideas at my service; but I did not find them available. Consequently, I wrote the whole of the third novel, which was
shortly advertised as "from the pen of that popular novelist, Mr. Gerard Hayter."
For more than three years I remained in this ignominious bondage.
He was quite right in his assertion that "whatever was put forth to
the world under his name went like wildfire." The novel-reading public had an enthusiasm for him. But still, as various discriminating
critics picked out special bits in the books on which to bestow unb~unded praise, it occurred to me that, if I appeared in my own
proper person, I could soon make as much as Gerard Hayter; for
every one of "his" latter novels was pronounced to be an improvement on his first, " Fidelity."
Accordingly. I wrote a book into which I poured my best, and sent
it to the firm that esteemed him so highly under my own name. They
returned it with "their compliments, and regretted to say that it was
a class of work they had no desire to publish." Another firmrejected
it without so much as a glance; they understood that I was a sensa.
tion serial writer for some of the local papers, and must decline any
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APPLETO-YS' JO U-R2AL OF POPULA_R
[ArRpn, 23,