Another Life_ A Memoir of Other People - Michael Korda [48]
I rose, and we shook hands. I apologized for not having used his title. He waved the matter aside with one hand. The heat of his exertions on the dance floor had sharpened the odor of his eau de cologne and brought a slight beading of perspiration to his brow. He dabbed at it with a silk handkerchief. “We are here in America,” he said pleasantly, with an air of noblesse oblige. “One does not bother about such things. I am perfectly happy to be Monsieur Chambrun, plain and simple.” (I was eventually to discover that he was not even remotely related to the French noble family and as much entitled to be called “Count” as I am.)
Over a pot of tea—brewed with tea bags—and a plate of rather dry-looking petits fours, Chambrun told me of the many sales he had made for Maugham over the years, of his passion for new and exciting novelists, and of his close connections with the leading magazines. Certainly working with a great writer like Maugham was an honor—and a profitable one—but the real pleasure lay in discovering new young talent. He kissed his fingertips. He was discriminating, as he could see that I must be—after all, were we not both Europeans? The kind of books he liked were often special, I must understand, not for everyone. He himself was a passionate reader of fiction, in love with the written word. Even so, only if a work of real quality caught his eye did he send it on to a few favored editors who shared his tastes.
That sounded good to me. I did not aspire to be Maugham’s publisher yet, after all. New young talent was exactly what I was looking for. Would I like to dance with any of the ladies? Chambrun asked. I declined. Chambrun clearly wanted to get on with his dancing—his feet were tapping in time to the music—so I made my adieux, and he promised to send me the work of a few of his very best writers. We should do business together, he hoped, very soon.
Shortly afterward, a steady stream of manuscripts began to arrive from Jacques Chambrun. Strangely enough, they did not seem very different from the ones in the slush pile; some of them, in fact, I even recognized from the slush pile. Most of them showed signs of having been mailed out many, many times, despite being accompanied in every case by a letter assuring me that I was the first editor to have the pleasure of reading the book. I had, in fact, the ungenerous impression that he might simply be passing along manuscripts without reading them at all.
There is hardly anything more depressing for a young editor than turning a book down when it has been sent to him by an agent. Chambrun took no offense at all at my sending his books back with long, apologetic letters explaining exactly what was wrong with them. In fact, he even called and invited me to lunch with him at the bar of the Sherry Netherland Hotel, where, apparently, he ate every day. I happened to mention where I was going to Henry Simon, and he raised an eyebrow in surprise. “Chambrun?” he asked, with an unpleasant chuckle. “The so-called Count? Is that charlatan still in business?”
He was not only in business, I said with some heat, but he was sending me manuscripts. Besides, he was Somerset Maugham’s agent, which surely counted for something. Henry shook his head gravely, like a doctor confronting a terminal illness. “He was Maugham’s agent for a while—God knows how. Maugham fired him eventually. It turned out that Chambrun was selling magazine rights to Maugham’s stories all over the world without telling Maugham and kept the proceeds for himself. And that’s not all …”
“Not all” involved a long discussion of agents who actually charged writers for reading a manuscript. This custom had been invented