Books Do Furnish a Room - Anthony Powell [67]
No one could say Trapnel resembled these. He neither lived comfortably, nor, once the need to take taxis were recognized, borrowed frivolously. Indeed, when things were going badly, there was nothing frivolous about Trapnel’s condition except the manner in which he faced it. He borrowed literally to keep alive, a good example of something often unrecognized outside the world of books, that a writer can have his name spread all over the papers, at the same time net perhaps only a hundred pounds to keep him going until he next writes a book. Finally, the battle against all but overwhelming economic pressures might have been lost without the support of Trapnel’s chief weapon – to use the contemporary euphemism ‘moral deterrent’ – the swordstick. The death’s head, the concealed blade, in the last resort gained the day.
I have given a long account of Trapnel and his ways in order to set in perspective what happened later. Not all this description is derived from first-hand knowledge. Part is Trapnel legend, of which there was a good deal. He reviewed fairly regularly for Fission, wrote an occasional short story, article or parody – he was an accomplished parodist of his contemporaries – and on the whole, in spite of friction now and then, when he lost his temper with a book or one of his pieces was too long or too short, the magazine suited him, he the magazine. His own volume of collected short stories Bin Ends was published. Trapnel’s reputation increased. At the same time he was clearly no stranger to what Burton called ‘those excrementitious humours of the third concoction, blood and tears’.
One day the blow fell. Alaric Kydd’s Sweetskin appeared on the shelf for review. Even Quiggin was known to have reservations about the novel’s merits. Several supposedly outspoken passages made him unwilling to identify himself with the author in his accustomed manner, in case there was a prosecution. In addition to that, a lack of humdrum qualities likely to appeal to critics caused him worry about its reception. These anxieties Quiggin had already transmitted to Bagshaw. Sweetskin was a disappointing book. Kydd had been coaxed away from Clapham’s firm. Now he seemed to be only a liability. On the one hand, the novel might be suppressed, the firm fined, a director possibly sent to gaol; on the other, the alleged lubricities being in themselves not sufficient to guarantee by any means a large sale, Sweetskin might easily not even pay off its considerable advance of royalties. How was the book to be treated in Fission? Kydd was too well known to be ignored completely. That would be worse than an offensive review. Who could be found, without too hopelessly letting down the critical reputation of Fission itself, to hold some balance between feelings on either side of the backyard at the Quiggin & Craggs office?
Then an opportune thing happened. Trapnel rang up Bagshaw, and asked if he could deal with Kydd, in whose early work he was interested, even though he thought the standard had not been maintained. If he could see Sweetskin, he might want to write a longer piece, saying something about Kydd’s origins and development, in which the new book would naturally be mentioned. Bagshaw got in touch with me about this. It seemed the answer. Trapnel’s representative came round the same afternoon to collect the review copy.
The following week, when I was at Fission ‘doing’ the books, Trapnel rang up. He said he was bringing the Sweetskin review along himself late that afternoon, and suggested we should have a drink together. There was something he particularly wanted to talk about. This was a fairly normal thing to happen, though the weather was not the sort to encourage hanging about in pubs. I also wanted to get back to Burton. However, Trapnel was unusually pressing. When he arrived he was in a jumpy state, hard to say whether pleased or exasperated. Like most great egoists, a bad arriver, he lacked ease