The Cost of a Best-Seller

by FRANCES PARKINSON KEYES

1

EVER since I can remember I have wanted to be a writer. But when I married, at an early age, I found that my husband was no more disposed to regard my literary efforts with a favorable eye than my mother had been when she first read my youthful verses. I was used to writing in secret, however, and I went on doing so. A New England attic provides an excellent retreat from prying eyes, and there are always a few minutes every day when the children are asleep and when no household task requires immediate attention —or at least it was so in my case. But I had grown extremely sensitive on the subject of my writing: if neither my mother nor my husband believed in it, how could I reasonably expect that anyone else would do so? The conviction that I could not became so strong that I doubt if the ruled copy books, filled with penciled scribblings, of which there were eventually quite a number, would ever have seen the light of day if the family fortunes had not been at such low ebb.

I was ill a great deal, I had three young children, and I did not see how I could dispense altogether wilh domestic service; I had never been trained to a profession or indeed to anything useful; but I was eager and determined to help my husband in some way if I possibly could. Desperately, because I could think of nothing else to do, I drew one of the ruled copy books from its hiding place; on a battered typewriter in the attic I ineptly copied one of my penciled stories. When it was finished, I awaited my next trip to Boston and myself carried the typescript to a publisher. He received me mercifully and promised that if the script were not acceptable, he would respect my request that it should be returned to me in care of a sympathetic friend and not to my home address.

The script was not returned and, though the novel based upon it received neither a startling sale nor rave reviews, it furnished the wherewithal to pay all outstanding doctors’ bills and to provide me with a new spring outfit, the first I had had in a long while. It did far more. It restored my faith in myself as a human being — and as a writer.

I did not get rapid results but I no longer hid as I wrote. Each novel sold more copies than its predecessor, though that was not saying much. Articles, for a long time, did better; therefore, though I had started out as a novelist and hoped that I could some day return to the field of fiction, I spent most of my time and strength on articles; they brought in more money than fiction did, and my contribution to the family budget was of prime importance. Good Housekeeping and Delineator were two of the magazines which sent me into many parts of the world, and my articles for them met with a very generous response.

Eventually I was asked to write the biography of St. ’Theresa of Lisieux and, with many misgivings, I undertook this. While working on it, at the Abbayc des Benedictines, I was able to write, for the first time, in an atmosphere of great peace, among surroundings of complete tranquillity. This quietude was like a healing pool and, in due course, it became a wellspring of inspiration. The following fall, seventeen years after the appearance of my first novel, I produced my first best-seller.

When the limp yellow letter announcing the acceptance of my first novel came in, I sat for a long while with it in my hands. reading and rereading it: and as I did so I made a vow: that I would never let any work leave my hands until it was as good as I knew how to make it — not as good as I hoped it might he some day, not as good as another writer could turn out, but the very best of which I was capable at the moment. I promised myself that no matter how much I needed money, I would not write hastily or casually; that I would do my utmost to improve my craftsmanship; that I would give every subject on which I wrote careful thought and careful study; and that I would begin and end every working day with prayer. I knew from the beginning that writing is not just a trade, but a trust, and that an author who is unworthy of such a trust is betraying it, in the same sense as a physician who breaks the Hippocratic Oath.

To the best of my ability, I had kept my vow and been faithful to my creed over that long stretch of years between the appearance of my first novel and that of my first best-seller, lint the physical strain had been very great. I had never failerl to fulfill an assignment, but I had six times gone aboard ship on a stretcher because I was too ill or too crippled to do so otherwise. I had fainted away, from exhaustion or pain, at more than one press table. A bad fall, occurring early in the course of a trip around the world, resulted— largely through the unavailability of proper diagnosis and care for more than a year — in a spinal ailment so serious that I was condemned to wear a steel harness for the rest of my life. I had been through numerous hurricanes and earthquakes, two or three epidemics, and several revolutions.

My first novel to appear on a best-seller list did not mount very high or remain there very long. But, as I gazed at its title, coupled with my name, on that fascinating chart, I told myself triumphantly that my troubles as a writer were over — well, very nearly over. Of course the next novel would do better still, and the next one better than that, and so on. Presently I would be earning enough money so that I would not have to work unless I felt equal to it, physically and mentally, or under any other conditions which were not pleasing to me. It had taken me seventeen years to reach the point where I could say this, but that point had now been attained. I said it and I meant it. I thought I was justified in doing so.

I could not possibly have been more mistaken. I still had to learn that Ernie Pyle was right when he said, “There is no easy way to do your work.

. . . However it may seem to you, writing is an exhausting and tearing thing.”

2

My FIRST mistake was in visualizing the financial returns from a best-seller in terms of advance royalties which would mount in size with each successive book, if its predecessor had done well, and of sales which would become correspondingly greater. I realized, of course, in a general way, that the more money I had, the more Uncle Sam would exact from me in taxes —and this irrespective of the fact that it was earned and not inherited money, and of the further fact that my tardy arrival in the high-income bracket meant that nearly twenty years of my adult life had gone into learning my craft and that this period of novitiate represented investment but no profit. What I did not realize was that, in order to get the large advance royalties and the vastly inereased sales, I would have to spend a corresponding amount of money myself!

I could give a great many examples of this, but I think one or two will suffice: my novel entitled The River Road brought me in a good deal of money —on paper; but in order to make it authentic and convincing, I myself had to go and live on the special stretch of River Road near Baton Rouge which I was attempting to interpret. I have long made it a practice to settle in any region that I use for a setting. On this occasion, however, there were difficulties. The only available house was one of great beauty and historical significance; but it had not been occupied for many years and it was in a sad state of disrepair. Moreover, it had never been equipped with many modern conveniences — not even a kitchen sink. Its owners agreed to lease it to me if I would put it in good condition, and I accepted their terms because there was literally nothing else I could do if I were to write the book for which I was under contract.

By the time I had equipped this twenty-room house—inexplicably called The Cottage! —with the minimum amount of plumbing requisite for decent living, with enough gas heaters to ensure a reasonable amount of warmth and enough lighting fixtures to read and write by, I had spent really staggering sums, and these represented only the beginning of my outlay. The house had to be painted throughout and screened throughout; it had to have clothes closets, pantry shelves, and a linoleum-covered board floor in the kitchen (there had been only a rough brick pavement before). And none of these essentials was easy to come by. Daily, as I besought the services of a workman or went shopping for a roll of wire, I was asked if I did not know there was a war on. When 1 look back on the months that I spent in making that house habitable — months, needless to say, when I accomplished very little writing—they seem to me among the most trying I have ever spent in connection with my work.

When I was finally settled in The Cottage there were further complications. I had neither mail nor telephone service; anyone who has ever tried to conduct a big business without them — and by then my writing constituted a big business— will have some idea what this meant. I had no delivery of any commodity; every morsel of food eaten in that house, every drop of water drunk, was brought out from town, eight miles away. My secretary brought food, water, and ice out with her in the morning and took a list away with her when she left at night; but if anything was forgotten in the way of provender, we went without; if there was unexpected company, portions were smaller. After my secretary had left in the evening, my housekeeper‚ Clara Wilson, and I were entirely shut off from the world, unless we had guests. The spinal difficulty to which I have previously referred has always prevented me from driving a car; if either Clara or I had been ill in the night there would have been nothing to do about it; we had no way of calling a doctor or sending anybody to fetch one. Neither could we have summoned help if there had been a robbery or a fire. I am not a timid soul, but I could not help thinking of all these things when I had a sudden, inexplicable pain or when mysterious noises sounded through the gloom.

3

THE book which I had agreed to write required a great deal of research and a great deal of expert advice. Its story concerned the rising and falling fortunes, over a twenty-five-year period, of a family living on a sugar plantation located beside the Mississippi River. When I started the novel, I knew next to nothing about the cultivation of sugar. I visited more than a score of sugar mills, read more than forty books, and consulted well over a hundred persons before I was sure of my background material. This had to be drafted with meticulous care, after consultation with competent authorities, and then read back to these persons, to be certain it contained no factual mistakes. Afterwards it had to be redrafted, in more finished form.

The flood conditions to which the region is subject constituted another unfamiliar angle; so did the various types of hunting and other sports prevalent in the locality; a corresponding amount of time and care went into the interpretation of these. Numerous colloquialisms and dialects are indigenous to the vicinity; a failure to reproduce these correctly would have lessened the illusion of reality in the book. Whenever I talked with a new acquaintance, either while or black, I listened carefully for peculiarities of speech and, as soon as I was alone, I jotted these down. After I had incorporated them in my text, I consulted a local authority as to whether I had done so accurately and effectively.

When I had been working on the book about six months I was taken ill, and my physician advised me to limit myself to three working hours a day. I was already far behind my schedule, because of many unavoidable delays, and this lateness represented a serious loss, not only to myself but to my publisher. A publisher maps out his program long before a book’s appearance: salesmen are sent all over the country to take advance orders for it; an advertising campaign is inaugurated; if there is a paper shortage—as there was throughout the war — available amounts are carefully allocated. If a publisher has counted on a book for fall publication and then fails to receive it, he stands to lose thousands of dollars. No conscientious author will allow his publisher to undergo such a loss, if he can possibly help it; still less will he involve the firm in losses for two successive seasons.

When my physician told me to curtail my writing hours, I replied that I simply could not do it. He shrugged his shoulders and said that under those circumstances he would not be responsible for the consequences.

The months dragged along. I was terribly troubled about having failed my publisher and terribly worried about my own finances. I had not counted on being without supplementary funds for so long, or on the expenses of maintaining such a costly establishment as The Cottage indefinitely. I borrowed money on all my securities and, realizing I could not borrow more, every morning I forced myself to get out of my bed and go to my desk. Some days the words began to come almost of themselves, and by night I had covered from fifteen to thirty pages in my copy book; other days I managed to cover only a few. But in either case, I stayed at my desk all day, eating my lunch on a tray which was brought to me there. In the evening, I tumbled into bed, telling myself that I simply could not go on like this, that I would have to give up the struggle. But the next day I was back at my desk. There was no other way to meet my obligations.

My birthday occurs in midsummer and for a great many years, whenever I have been at home, I have celebrated it with the same circle of old friends. We had planned an especially festive celebration for that year to mark a significant decade. But when my birthday came, I was thousands of miles from my old friends and the date meant nothing to my new ones. I spent the day alone, and though I wrote, I did so lying on the sofa, because by that time I was too ill to sit at a desk. I was inexpressibly lonely, and when darkness finally fell, my yearning for my own hearthstone and my own people became so acute that the pain of it was almost unbearable.

A still sharper disappointment awaited me: one of my sons, a lieutenant in the Navy, had written me of his happy engagement to a lieutenant in the Army Medical Corps. At that time he was in England and she was attached to a hospital in France. They were to be married as soon as either one had leave. Because my next novel was to be done abroad, I had been able to secure a passport and naturally I had hoped to attend the wedding ceremony. But when it was celebrated, at St. James’s Church, on Spanish Place, In London, I was still at The Cottage, going from my bed to my sofa and back to bed again and working twelve hours a day on The River Road.

The novel was finally finished in September of ‘45. I did not attempt to pack anything except my clothes. I took a train for New York, intent on sailing for Europe the following week. I had missed my son’s wedding, but I was still determined to find out what had happened to my friends in devastated France and I was still bent on writing a book with its scene there. However, for the first time in my career as a writer, the ship on which I had taken passage sailed without me; after 1 was released from the long-continued strain of working I collapsed completely.

Three weeks went by before I recovered sufficiently to continue my journey and go home. Most of the autumn was spent in bed and it was not until after the New Year that I could sit at a desk again. I did not get to France until the following spring.

In the meanwhile The River Road appeared and almost immediately leapt up close to the top of the best-seller list. I studied the chart, but it had lost its onetime magic; I told my publisher that even if the new novel sold a million copies, it would have cost me more than it was worth— in cash and in kind. He laughed and said I would feel differently when it had sold a million copies. But I did not. I finally convinced him I never should.

4

THAT authors work only when they are “inspired” to do so and that inspiration comes as suddenly and as easily as manna from heaven is a belief so general as to be almost universal. Repeatedly I am called upon to explain that books by any established author are written under contract, and that a failure to live up to such a contract involves both an author and his publisher in a serious financial loss. “Then what do you do when you don’t feel like writing?” is the question which generally follows. When I answer brutally that I go on writing anyway; that, as a matter of fact, I seldom feel like doing it, but, on the other hand, I do like to eat good food and live in a comfortable house and wear nice clothes, my tormentor looks at me incredulously. “Why, I always supposed that writing was one of your little diversions!'’ a lady recently told me, almost reproachfully. “You don’t mean to say you depend on your writing for money!” she added.

But after all, the questions that arc asked a writer in person are only a small percentage of the total number he is called upon to answer. Every mail brings in a flood of them. For instance, I find that one correspondent is consulting me on a. matter of etiquette; should she write a thank-you note for a shower gift? Another correspondent would like 1o have a temporary home with a “genteel family’' in New Orleans, where the total charges for both room and board would not come to more than eight dollars a week. This one I refer, in desperation, to the Chamber of Commerce. “What do you consider your most successful menu?” asks a third. “Do you prefer New England cookery to Southern cookery, or vice versa? Why?”

A request for a recipe which I actually took pleasure in answering came from Uganda, East Africa. We have been reading about mint juleps in Honor Eright and Also the Hills‚’' wrote mv correspondent, “and we think they would taste very good in this climate. Would you be willing to tell us how they are made?” I sent her careful instructions and, in due course, received a grateful acknowledgment; the mint juleps made in Uganda by my recipe had more than come up to expectations. Shortly thereafter I received a similar request from the Transvaal: “We have heard that you have told some of your readers in Uganda how you make mint juleps and we would like to know too.” Again I wrote out careful instructions and again I received a grateful acknowledgment. Whatever the shortcomings of my novels, they have helped to slake thirst on the Dark Continent!

Requests for biographical material are even more urgent. With all the good will in the world, it is impossible to give such communications the immediate and detailed attention expected; yet they are supplemented by others which are still harder to answer. These come from embryonic authors, who ask for help and advice and often enclose scripts which they would like to have read, edited, and submitted to a publisher.

I take special pains to answer all these letters, because I have not forgotten that, when I was a beginner myself, there was no one to whom I could appeal; I vowed at the time that if I were ever in a position to help another novice who was in the same state of bewilderment and discouragement, I would not turn a deaf ear. But most of the would-be authors who appeal to me are hard to help. Either they have not that little God-given spark we call talent, without which no amount of work will do any good; or else they have it and are not willing to work, and without work, the talent is no use either; it might just as well be folded away in a napkin, like the one we read about in the Bible.

Of course, not all letters contain questions and petitions; some merely contain comments; and though the great majority of these comments are pleasant, others are extremely disagreeable. An unjustly critical or abusive letter, received when its recipient is exhausted, discouraged, or battling against illness and trouble, can do a great deal of real harm by increasing a writer’s depression. For instance, whenever I receive a letter taking issue with me as a Catholic, I wonder why I have failed in my sincere endeavors to live up to my religion, and worry because I am not more of a credit to my chosen church.

Reviewers, no less than correspondents, can have an extremely depressing effect on a conscientious author. I have long since accepted the fact that I shall never win critical acclaim, though of course I should have liked to be worthy of it, since it was originally my hope to be regarded as a woman of letters as well as a best-selling author. But I have resigned myself, more or less philosophically, to the latter role.

Adverse reviews, however disappointing and damaging to one’s pride, can also be philosophically accepted if and when they are, in some measure, fair and, to some degree, based on fact; it is when they are unjust and inaccurate that they hurt. “The complete disregard for good literary form in this book is lamentable,”writes a Nashville reviewer. “But then Mrs. Keyes has never cared whether she wrote good English.”Never cared! There has been nothing about which I cared more, nothing I have tried harder to do. Apparently, I have failed, even though some of my books are now required reading at certain colleges. I must try harder, I will indeed. But to say I do not care! . . . “The fine old restaurant will doubtless survive the insult offered it,” scathingly writes a New Orleans reviewer. The insult? I thought I was paying it a compliment when I used its name. The proprietor thought so too, or at least he assured me he did, not once but many times; otherwise of course I would not have done it. “Mrs. Keyes has forsaken her usual field of historical fiction, which is rather a pity; she does better with her costume novels.” This comment, which comes both from my native state of Virginia and my favorite New York paper, seems, in a way, the unkindest cut of all, for I have never written a costume novel! It is all too evident that the reviewer has been misled by the title, Came a Cavalier, and that he has not looked inside the covers of that or any other book of mine. If I am fated to be condemned by an authority who will not even take the trouble to see whether I deserve his low opinion, then this is an aspect of authorship which I find it hard to accept with good grace.

5

I STILL use a pencil and the same kind of ruled copy book that I did when I was a child, scribbling on the right-hand page and keeping the left-hand page free for corrections and interpolations. It is a slow way to work, but it has many advantages, as far as I am concerned, besides the obvious one that I am accustomed to it. At one stage of my progress, as I have said, I did my own typing, copying from my penciled draft and revising as I went along; I had to give up this method because I was too lame to sit at a typewriter, and I would not go back to it if I could.

I have found that, by reading aloud from my penciled script, I can catch the tedious repetition of words, phrases, and ideas as I never could in any other way. The conversation that drags, the character that fails to develop, the situation which is forced or strained — these are all mercilessly revealed. And Deanie, my stoical young secretary, to whom every word, every punctuation mark even, is read, does not spare her comments. If it is a true saving that no man is a hero to his valet, it is an even truer one that no author is an object of awe to his secretary, and fortunately so, for her carping criticism may save him from many a blunder. “You said yesterday that man had blue eyes,” Deanie tells me caustically. “Now you have made them brown. Which do you really want?” …"Nobody says Wop around here; they say Dago, so I am putting in Dago.”. . . “Well, maybe you like that girl, the way you describe her, but I think she’s a whited sepulcher, myself.”

Hour after hour, day after day, this work of drafting, reading aloud, redrafting and redictating goes on. I write to my eldest son hurried business letters, because he is also my lawyer; but weeks, even months go by when I do not write to his brothers, who are equally dear to me. Such letters would be merely personal, and I have no time for personal letters. There is that deadline. I receive a gracious invitation to spend a week-end in the country; I tell Deanie to decline it for me, with regrets. And the regrets are very real. The azaleas are at the height of their bloom just now, it would be very beautiful in the country; and there would be turtle soup and chicken parlow and spoon bread for dinner; there would be great good fellowship and I would come back to my work relaxed and refreshed. But there is that deadline. There are no Saturday afternoons off for either Deanie or myself — no Sunday afternoons, either, for me. Sundays are the days when I must forge forward with the pencil script for, with everyone else bent on relaxation or enjoyment, I can be surer then of freedom from interruption than at any other time. So, after we come back from Mass. Deanie disappears and I go back to my study in the slave quarters. And long afterwards, Clara calls to me from the back gallery, “ I know you don′ t want to be interrupted, but have you any idea what time it is?”

I have no idea what time it is in New Orleans, for I have been in another world. I have begun to live with a group of people whom I never knew before, but whom I am, at last, getting to know very well. I have to. If they were not real to me, they would never be real to anyone else. I only hope they will not make me too much trouble, that they Will behave as it is reasonable for them to behave and as I want them to behave. But I cannot be sure of it. The first thing I know, Anne will be refusing to marry John, and Edward will fall down and break his leg, and Aunt Nellie will leave her money, which Mary needs so desperately, to an orphan asylum. Well, I should not complain, if only I do not have to deal with another cat like Pinkham.

I shall never forget Pinkham, who complicated my existence in such an unexpected way and to such a very great degree when I was writing Also the Hills. The house on Farman Hill, which provided the setting for the major part of that story, had its prototype in reality, like most of the houses I have used for settings; and my friends Daniel and Sadie Carr, the owners of the real house, were most kind about helping me with my local color. When the book was about two-thirds done, I realized that I had said nothing about any birds on Farman Hill, and I was sure there must be some; so I wrote to Mrs. Carr, asking for authentic information. By return mail, she sent me a long, detailed letter, which ended, ”... and I think the reason we have always been fortunate in having so many birds about the place is because our cat, Pinkham, has never molested them. He does not take the least interest in birds.”

Forgetting all about the rest of the letter, I sat staring in horror at those last sentences. Of course a house like Farman Hill would have had a cat like Pinkham in it. And there was no cat in my story. I tried to tell myself that no one else would notice the omission, that even Mrs. Carr herself had not suggested the addition of Pinkhnm to the cast of characters. But my arguments were unconvincing to me. Finally I went to bed, and every time I turned over, facing the fireplace, I seemed to see the eyes of a reproachful cat glaring at me from the spot where the andirons customarily stood. At four o’clock in the morning I could bear it no longer. I got up, flung on my clothes, and went to my desk. Then I took the script of Also the Hills from its box and, beginning with Chapter One, introduced Pinkham in all the places where I knew he belonged!

After that, I was at peace again. But such interpolations entail very considerable revision when the script in question has already reached its third and presumably its final stage, as it had in that case. The second stage — the result of reading aloud from the penciled draft— is represented by a typescript done in triple spacing, which allows for further revisions, corrections, and additions. There are usually a good many of these— so many that numerous pages are typed over and over again, still in triple space. Hut when we get around to double spacing, we think our script is ready to send off to our publisher, who, long before this, has been hounding us for it through the expressive media of air mail, telegrams, and long-distance calls. The appearance of another character at this point would mean that the third draft would also have to he done over. What is more, it would mean that something would have to be done to placate both Deanie and the publisher.

Reflecting on all this, I call to Aliss Clara that I will be up in a minute. But I do not go up in a minute. I read through what I have written that afternoon and it seems to me very, very bad. I know it will seem even worse the next day, when I read it aloud to Deanie; she will question my spelling and correct my slang and tell me that my hero’s type of love-making went out with hoop skirts. Well, it can’t be helped. And T have an uneasy feeling about our pawnbroker. I do not know very much about pawnbrokers. It is too bad that I did not stick to politicians. I am more familiar with their habits than those of pawnbrokers.

The pawnbroker does not represent my only source of worry: I had belter get out that folder where I file away names. There are several Leonardos in my fiction already; someone will be writing in to remind me of this, and anyway, I am disappointed with the repetition myself. Leopoldo is almost the same. Emilio sounds effeminate. Alphonso is a cliche. Wail a minute—what about Ambrosio? Yes, I think Ambrosio might do. I will write it in everywhere that I have previously written Leonardo, because otherwise I will forget to make the revision some place and confusion will result. Then, tomorrow morning, when I start reading aloud to Deanie, I will see how Ambrosio sounds.

I put out the lights and close the door of the study. It is very quiet in the patio, so quiet that it is hard to believe that this is in the heart of a great city. The fountain makes a little trickling sound and the breeze stirs the camellia bushes‚ ever so slightly. There are stars overhead and the air is soft and mild. It would be pleasant to sit in the patio for a little while. But it must be very late by now, and suddenly I know that I am terribly tired, so tired that I would rather go to bed than sit anywhere, so tired that I can hardly drag myself up the steps of the back gallery, so tired that I do not want any supper. (But of course it is long past suppertime anyway.) At the head of the stairway Aliss Clara is wailing for me accusingly.

‟You promised me, when you wrote that last novel, you’d never work this way again,” she savs. And you′re just as bad as ever. I don’t see what you get out of it. . . . Mrs. Crager brought fifty more books to be autographed for the Basement Book Shop. She said she′d send for them the first thing in the morning. Just the same, I hope you won’t touch them tonight.”

6

OF COURSE Aliss Clara is not the only person who has wondered what I get out of it, though since she has been watching me in action for twenty years now, she comments on the general situation with more feeling than most. And very often I have asked myself the same question. As I have confessed, there was one time when I was so nearly sure the game was not worth the candle that I was tempted to give it up. But now I know I shall go on playing it, as well as I can, to the end.

There are several reasons for this. It is normal for anyone who has been independent for a long time to cherish such independence. If I were not a writer I should have to turn to my sons for at least partial support and this would be very hard for me. It would also be hard for them and their wives and their children, not only financially but in many other ways. They have a right to their own mode of life and their own viewpoint, unhampered by the mode of life and the viewpoint of a previous generation. And I have a right to mine. So far our relations have always been happy and harmonious. I want very much to keep them so. I do not believe I could if my associations with my family were based on necessity rather than on inclination.

It is also normal for anyone to derive a certain amount of satisfaction from success along a chosen line, especially if that success has been hard won. A cessation of work would, inevitably, mean a cessation of such satisfaction; moreover, complete idleness would be as wearisome as constant overendeavor. Of course, if it were possible to find the happy medium between the two, that would be ideal; but so far it has not been possible. Each new undertaking brings with it unexpected ramifications involving more study, more research, more correspondence, more conferences, more travel. And if I must choose between the horns of a dilemma, my choice is to go ahead at full speed rather than to come to a full stop.

There is another kind of satisfaction too, of even more consequence than the material one. This is the satisfaction derived from the feeling that your work has given pleasure or encouragement or help, or even all three, to other people.

I have spoken earlier of the disagreeable and depressing letters that come in and the ones that make unreasonable demands; but I would not be fair if I did not speak of the far greater number of appreciative letters, the letters that do far more for me than I can hope to do for their writers. Every mail brings at least one of these, usually several; they were especially numerous and significant during the war. “I read aloud all night from Fielding’s Folly to my fellow refugees in a bomb shelter and we forgot we were in danger.” . . . “I have been in the hospital six weeks now and most of the other men have been here longer. W e have some of your books in the ward and we take turns in reading them and then we talk them over. It does help to pass the time. We thought perhaps you would like to know.” ... In the course of this period, I received a clipping from a London newspaper, unaccompanied by any personal word: “Wanted, a copy of The Great Tradition for a young girl who is dying and whose parents have not been able to procure a copy for her. Any reasonable price gladly paid.”

Communications such as these are, inevitably, very moving; they act as a spur to greater and greater endeavor. When a tribute is paid in person, this is more moving still, and I had such a one in Merida, the capital of Yucatan. On the last day of my stay in the city, I took one of the funny little horse-drawn cabs which still offer the current means of transportation, and drove around for an hour. My attention was arrested by a display of gold filigree jewelry in a shopwindow, so I asked the driver to stop and got out to look at it. Next door to the jewelry store was a bookstore and I turned, instinctively, from one to the other. Almost the entire display in the bookstore window consisted of Fl Cawino del Rio— The River Road in Spanish.

I stared at it in stupefaction for a moment and then I went inside and introduced myself to the proprietor. He received me with enthusiasm. Yes, the book was going very well, he told me—perhaps better than any other of mine so far, though they all did well. The only trouble was, he had difficulty in getting enough to supply the demand. Was there any way I could help him to get a larger allotment? And when could he expect a new novel? He had heard there was going to be another, this time with the scene laid in France.

I tried to listen to him and to answer him courteously and helpfully. But I was absorbed in watching the people who streamed by in the street and I was thinking very hard. Fully three fourths of the women going by were wearing the straight-cut native dresses made of white cotton and embroidered in bands of bright color around the square neck, the elbow sleeves, and the wide hems; they had black rebozos wound around their heads and throats and alpargatas on their bare feet. The men′s cost times were almost invariably loose white trousers and loose white jackets, and many of them did not even wear sandals. They looked primitive and they looked poor. But evidently these people in Yucatan were buying my books, just as the people in Helsinki and the Canary Islands and Capetown and Manila were buying them — because they wanted them. Yes, and the people in Paris and The Hague and Stockholm and Madrid, in Washington, D.C., and Brattleboro, Vermont, and Little Rock, Arkansas, and New York City. And this meant that, whatever the critics said, I must somehow have succeeded in writing about the pleasures and sorrows, the desires and needs that are universal, in a way that could be universally understood and enjoyed. I was in touch with the human family throughout the world — rich and poor, old and young, wise and ignorant—because of my books; especially because of one book, which until then I had thought cost too much, both in cash and in kind. And suddenly I knew that no price was too high for such fellowship and such communion, that everything which had gone into my lifework was worth while.