Anthony Powell - Books Do Furnish a Room

In the humdrum surroundings of everyday business life, when, for example, one met them on the doorstep of the office, both Quiggin and Craggs showed themselves more changed than they had in the hurried, unaccustomed circumstances of Erridge’s funeral. For instance, it was now clear Quiggin had settled down to be a publisher, intended to be a successful one, make money. He no longer spoke of himself producing a masterpiece. Unburnt Boats , his ‘documentary’, had been well received, whatever Sillery might say, when the book appeared not long before the war, but there Quiggin’s literary career was allowed to rest. He had lost interest in ‘writing’. Instead, he now identified himself, body and soul, with his own firm’s publications, increasingly convinced — like not a few publishers — that he had written them all himself.

Quiggin also considered that he had a right, even duty, to make such alterations in the books published by the firm as he saw fit; anyway in the case of authors prepared to be so oppressed. Certainly Trapnel would never have allowed anything of the sort. There were others who rebelled. These differences of opinion might have played a part in causing Quiggin — again like many publishers — to develop a detestation of authors as a tribe. On the contrary, nothing of the sort took place. As long as they were his own firm’s authors, Quiggin would allow no breath of criticism, either of themselves or their books, to be uttered in his presence, collectively or individually. His old rebellious irritability, which used formerly to break out so violently in literary or political argument, now took the form of rage — at best, extreme sourness — directed against anyone, professional critic or too blunt layman, who wrote an unfavourable notice, dropped an unfriendly remark, calculated to discourage Quiggin & Craggs sales.

Craggs’s attitude towards publishing was altogether different. Craggs had been practising the art in one form or another for a long time. That made a difference. He did not care in the smallest degree about rude remarks made on the subject of ‘his’ authors, or ‘his’ books. In some respects, so far as the former were concerned, the more people abused them, the better Craggs was pleased. Certainly he had no great affection for authors as men — for that matter, unless easily seducible, as women — but, unlike Quiggin, his policy in this respect was not subjective; at least not entirely so. It cloaked a certain commercial shrewdness. Craggs, off his guard one day with Bagshaw, expressed the view that there were more ways of advertising a book than dwelling on the intellectual and moral qualifications of its author.

‘What matters is getting authors talked about,’ Craggs said. ‘Let people know what they’re really like. It whets the appetite. Look at Alaric Kydd’s odd tastes, for instance. I drop an occasional hint.’

Craggs was being unusually communicative when he let that out, because in general nowadays he affected the manner of a man distinguished in his own sphere, but vague almost to the point of senility. Such had been his conversation at Thrubworth, though more defensive than real, to be dropped immediately if swift action were required. There was evidence that he was making good use of his wartime contacts in the civil service. Widmerpool, for his part, seemed to be pulling his weight too in a trade that was new to him.

‘He’s laid hands on some extra paper,’ said Bagshaw. ‘Found it hidden away and forgotten in some warehouse in his constituency.’

Walking through Bloomsbury one day on the way to the Fission office, I ran into Moreland. When I first caught sight of him coming towards me, he was laughing to himself. A shade more purple in the face than formerly, he looked otherwise much the same. We talked about what we had both been doing since we last met at the time of the outbreak of war. Moreland had always been fond of The Anatomy of Melancholy . I told him how I was now occupied with its author.

‘Gone for a Burton, in fact?’

‘Books-do-furnish-a-room Bagshaw’s already made that joke.’

‘How extraordinary you should mention Bagshaw. He got in touch with me recently about a magazine he’s editing.’

‘I’m on my way there now to sort out the review copies.’

‘He wanted an article on Existential Music. The last time I saw Bagshaw was coming home from a party soon after he returned from Spain. He was crawling very slowly on his hands and knees up the emergency exit stairs of a tube station — Russell Square, could it have been?’

‘He must have reached the top just in time for the war, because he was in the RAF, and now has a moustache.’

‘A fighter-pilot?’

‘PR in India.’

‘Jane Harrigan’s an’ Number Nine, The Reddick an’ Grant Road? I should think there was a good deal of that. I refused to contribute, although I suspect I’ve been an existentialist for years without knowing it. Like suffering from an undiagnosed disease. The fact is I now go my own way. I’ve turned my back on contemporary life — but what brings you to this forsaken garden? You can’t know anybody who lives in Bloomsbury these days. Personally, I’ve been getting a picture framed, and am now trying to outstrip the ghosts that haunt the place and tried to commune with me. Comme le souvenir est voisin du remords.’

‘Burton thought that too.’

‘I’ve been reading Ben Jonson lately. He’s a sympathetic writer, who reminds one that human life always remains the same. I remember Maclintick being very strong on that when mugging up Renaissance composers. Allowing for murder being then slightly easier, Maclintick believed a musician’s life remains all but unchanged. How bored one gets with the assumption that people now are organically different from people in the past — the Lost Generation, the New Poets, the Atomic Age, the last reflected in the name of your new magazine.

Fart upon Euclid, he is stale and antick.

Gi’e me the moderns.

It’s the Moderns on whom I’m much more inclined to break wind.’

‘If not too late, restrain yourself. As you’ve just pointed out, the Moderns no longer live round here.’

‘Forgive my sneering at Youth, but what a lost opportunity within living memory. Every house stuffed with Moderns from cellar to garret. High-pitched voices adumbrating absolute values, rational states of mind, intellectual integrity, civilized personal relationships, significant form … the Fitzroy Street Barbera is uncorked. Le Sacre du Printemps turned on, a hand slides up a leg … All are at one now, values and lovers. Talking of that sort of thing, you never see Lady Donners these days, I suppose?’

‘I read about her doings in the paper sometimes.’

‘Like myself. Ah, well. Bagshaw’s request made me wonder whether I would not give up music, and take to the pen as a profession. What about The Popular Song from Lilliburllero to Lili Marlene ? Of course one might extricate oneself from the whole musical turmoil, cut free of it altogether. Turn to autobiography. A Hundred Disagreeable Sexual Experiences by the author of Seated One Day at an Organ — but I must be moving on. I’m keeping you from earning a living.’

I suggested another meeting, but he made excuses, murmuring something about a series of tiresome sessions with his doctor. Seen closer, he looked in less good health than suggested by the first impression.

‘I’ve sacked Brandreth. My latest physician takes not the slightest interest in music, thank God, nor for that matter in any of the arts. He also has quite different ideas from Brandreth when it comes to assessing what’s wrong with me. Life becomes more and more like an examination where you have to guess the questions as well as the answers. I’d long decided there were no answers. I’m beginning to suspect there aren’t really any questions either, none at least of any consequence, even the old perennial, whether or not to stay alive.’