Books Do Furnish a Room - Anthony Powell [51]
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