s room, and he never once raised his head from his papers to look
at me. I just remember that he had a neck like a three-decker, and a
voice like a peahen's. 'Well, sir?' he said. I mentioned the object of
my visit. 'What can you read?' 'Novels and poems,' I answered. 'Don't
publish either--good day,' he said, and I went out.

But one of the very best, and quite, I think, the very oldest of
publishers now living, received me differently. 'Come into my own
room,' he said. It was a lovely little place, full of an atmosphere that
recalled the publishing house of the old days, half office, half study;
a workshop where books might be made, not turned out by machinery. I
read many manuscripts for that publisher, and must have learned much by
the experience. And now that my novel was finished I took it to him
first. He offered to publish it the following year. That did not suit
me, and I took my book elsewhere. Next day I was offered 50_l._ for my
copyright. That was wages at the rate of about four shillings a day for
the time I had been actually engaged upon the work, sweating brain and
heart and every faculty. Nevertheless, one of my friends urged me to
accept it. 'Why?' I asked. 'Because it is a story of the past, and
therefore not one publisher in ten will look at it.' I used strong
language, and then took my novel to Chatto & Windus. Within a few hours
Mr. Chatto made me an offer which I accepted. The book is now, I think,
in its fifteenth edition.

The story I have told of many breakdowns in the attempt to write my
first novel may suggest the idea that I was merely serving my
apprenticeship to fiction. It is true that I was, but it would be wrong
to conclude that the writing of a novel has been plain sailing with me
ever since. Let me 'throw a crust to my critics,' and confess that I am
serving my apprenticeship still. Every book that I have written since
has offered yet greater difficulties. Not one of the little series but
has at some moment been a despair to me. There has always been a point
of the story at which I have felt confident that it must kill me. I have
written six novels (that is to say, about sixteen), and sworn as many
oaths that I would never begin another. Three times I have thrown up
commissions in sheer terror of the work ahead of one. Yet here I am at
this moment (like half-a-dozen of my fellow-craftsmen), with contracts
in hand which I cannot get through for three years. The public expects a
novel