‘I do so agree with Gissing,’ she said. ‘When he used to ask of a writer—has he starved?’
The tribute was disinterested, as Evadne Clapham did not in the least look as if she had ever starved herself. The remark ruffled Trapnel.
‘Gissing was more of an authority on starvation than on writing.’
‘You don’t think hunger teaches things?’
‘I know as much about starvation as Gissing, probably more.’
‘Then you prove his point—though after all it’s dedication that counts in the end.’
‘Dedication’s often the hallmark of inferior performance.’
Trapnel was in a severe mood on that occasion. He was annoyed at Evadne Clapham being brought to his favourite pub The Hero of Acre. The conversation was reproduced in due course, somewhat more elaborately phrased, with the heroine getting the whip-hand, when Evadne Clapham’s next novel appeared. However, that is by the way. To return to Trapnel’s ambitions, they were—poverty apart—not only hard to achieve individually, but, even in rotation, impossible to combine. That was over and above Trapnel’s particular temperament, no great help. Infeasibility did not prevent him from behaving, where ambitions were concerned, like an alpinist who tackles the sheerest, least accessible rock face of the peak he has sworn to ascend.
The rôle of ‘writer’ was on the whole the one least damaged when the strain became too severe, a heavy weight of mortal cargo jettisoned. There were times when even that rôle suffered violent stress. All writing demands a fair amount of self-organization, some of the ‘worst’ writers being among the most highly organized. To be a ‘good’ writer needs organization too, even if those most capable of organizing their books may be among the least competent at projecting the same skill into their lives. These commonplaces, trite enough in themselves, are restated only because they have bearing on the complexity of Trapnel’s existence. There was a growing body of opinion, including, as time went on, Craggs, Quiggin, even Bagshaw himself—though unwillingly—which took the view that Trapnel’s shiftlessness was in danger of threatening his status as a ‘serious’ writer. His books might be what the critics called ‘well put together’—Trapnel was rather a master of technical problems—his life most certainly was the reverse. Nevertheless, people have to do things their own way, and the troubles that beset Trapnel were for the most part in what Pennistone used to call ‘a higher unity’. So far as coping with down-to-earth emergencies, often seemingly unanswerable ones, Trapnel could show surprising agility.
One point should be cleared up right away. If comparison of his own life with a camel ride to the tomb makes Trapnel sound addicted to self-pity, a wrong impression has been created. Self-pity was a trait from which, for a writer—let alone a novelist—he was unusually free. On the other hand, it would be mistaken to conclude from that fact that he had a keen grasp of objectivity where his own goings-on were concerned. That judgment would be equally wide of the mark. This lack of objectivity made him enemies; that of self-pity limited sales. Whatever Trapnel’s essence, the fire that generated him had to see him through difficult days. At the same time he managed to retain in a reasonably flourishing state—flourishing, that is, in his own eyes—what General Conyers would have called his ‘personal myth’, that imaginary state of being already touched on in Trapnel’s case. The General, speaking one felt with authority, always insisted that, if you bring off adequate preservation of your personal myth, nothing much else in life matters. It is not what happens to people that is significant, but what they think happens to them.
Although ultimate anti-climaxes, anyway in their most disastrous form, were still kept at bay at this period, portents were already threatening in the eyes of those—L. O. Salvidge, for example, one of the first to praise the Camel—who took a gloomy view. Others—Evadne Clapham led this school of thought—dismissed such brooding with execrations against priggishness, assurances that Trapnel would ‘grow up’. When Evadne Clapham expressed the latter presumption, Mark Members observed that he could think of no instance of an individual who, having missed that desirable attainment at the normal stage of human development, successfully achieved it in later life. It was hard to disagree. The fact is that a certain kind of gifted irresponsibility, combined with physical stamina and a fair degree of luck—in some respects Trapnel was incredibly lucky—always holds out an attractive hope that its possessor will prove immune to the ordinary vengeances of life; that at least one human being, in this case X. Trapnel, will beat the book, romp home a winner at a million to one.
Trapnel said he preferred women to have tolerable manners. The taste was borne out by the behaviour of such girls as he produced in public. When things were going reasonably well, he would be living with a rather unusually pretty one, who was also to all appearances bright, good tempered and unambitious. At least that was the impression they gave when on view at The Hero of Acre, or another of Trapnel’s chosen haunts. The fairly rapid turnover suggested they might be less amenable when alone with Trapnel, not on their best behaviour; but that, after all, was just as much potential criticism of Trapnel as of the girl. She usually kept herself by typing or secretarial work (employed in concerns other than those coming under the heading of publishing and journalism), her financial contribution tiding over the ménage more or less—on the whole less rather than more—during lean stretches of their life together.
The pair of them, when Trapnel allowed his where-abouts to be known, were likely to be camped out in a bleak hotel in Bloomsbury or Paddington, enduring intermittent persecution from the management for delayed action in payment of the bill. The Ufford, as it used to be in Uncle Giles’s day, would have struck too luxurious, too bourgeois a note, but, after wartime accommodation of a semi-secret branch of the Polish army in exile, the Ufford, come down in the world like many such Bayswater or Notting Hill establishments, might well have housed Trapnel and his mistress of the moment; their laundry impounded from time to time, until satisfactory settlement of the weekly account.
Alternatively, during brief periods of relative affluence, Trapnel and his girl might shelter for a few weeks in a ‘furnished flat’. This was likely to be a stark unswept apartment in the back streets of Holland Park or Camden Town. The flat might belong to an acquaintance from The Hero of Acre, for example, possibly borrowed, while a holiday was taken, custodians needed to look after the place; if Trapnel and his girl could be so regarded.
When, on the other hand, things were going badly, the girl would have walked out—this happened sooner or later with fair regularity—and, if the season were summer, the situation might not exclude a night or two spent on the Embankment. The Embankment would, of course, represent a very low ebb indeed, though certainly experienced during an unprosperous interlude immediately preceding the outbreak of war. After such disasters Trapnel always somehow righted himself, in a sense seeming to justify the optimism of Evadne Clapham and those of her opinion. Work would once more be established on a passable footing, a new short story produced, contacts revived. The eventual replacement of the previous girl invariably kept up the traditionally high standard of looks.
Like many men rather ‘successful’ with women, Trapnel always gave the impression of being glad to get away from them from time to time. Not at all a Don Juan—using the label in a technical sense—he was quite happy to remain with a given mistress, once established, until the next upheaval. The question of pursuing every woman he met did not arise. Unlike, say, Odo Stevens, Trapnel was content to be in a room with three or four women without necessarily suffering the obligation to impose his personality on each one of them in turn.
All the same, if they could feel safe with him in that sphere, Trapnel’s girls, even apart from shortage of money, had to put up with what was in many respects a hard life, one regulated by social routines often untempting to feminine taste. A gruelling example was duty at The Hero of Acre. They would be expected to sit there for hours while Trapnel held forth on Portrait of the Artist
, or The Birth of a Nation. Incidentally, The Hero of Acre was to be avoided if absolute freedom from parasites was to be assured, even though Trapnel could drastically rebuff them, if they intervened when a more important assignation was in progress. Dismissal might take a minute or two, should they be drunk, and in any case their mere presence in the saloon bar could be inhibiting.
However, this body of auxiliaries was a vital aspect of the Trapnel way of life. When things were bad, they would come into play, collect books for review, deliver ‘copy’—Trapnel in any case distrusted the post—telephone in his name about arrangements or disputes, tactfully propound his case if required, detail his future plans if known, try—when such action was feasible, sometimes when not—to raise the bid in his favour. They were to be seen lingering patiently in waiting rooms or halls of the journal concerned—at Quiggin & Craggs in the packing room, if cold and wet, the yard, if sunny and dry—usually the end in view to acquire ready cash for the Trapnel piece they had handed to the editor a short time before. Where Trapnel recruited these auxiliaries, how he disciplined them, was always a mystery.
This need to receive payment on the nail was never popular with the publishers and editors. Even Bagshaw used to grouse about it. The money in his hand, Trapnel could rarely hang on to it. He was always in debt, liked standing drinks. He could not understand the difficulties publishers and editors, especially the latter, made about advancing further sums.
‘After all, it’s not their own money. It’s little or no trouble to them. As a matter of fact the accountants, the boys who are put to the ultimate bother, such as it is, of unlocking the safe and producing the dough, are far easier to deal with than the editor himself.’
Accountants, as described by Trapnel, would often leave their offices after the money had been paid out, and join him in a drink. Perhaps they thought they were living dangerously. It might be argued they were. Trapnel had made a study of them.
‘People who spend their time absorbed with money always have a bright apologetic look about the eyes. They crave sympathy. Particularly accountants. I always offer a drink when specie changes hands. It’s rarely refused.’
Bagshaw was unusually skilful in controlling this aspect of Trapnel as a Fission contributor. Not at all inexperienced himself in the exertions of extracting money, he knew all the arguments why Trapnel should not be given any more until he produced the goods. Bagshaw would put on an immensely good-natured act that represented him as a man no less necessitous than Trapnel himself, if not more so. Trapnel did not have to believe that, but it created some sort of protection for Bagshaw. That was when Trapnel appeared in person. As time went on, these personal visits decreased in frequency.
Living as he did, there were naturally times when Trapnel was forced to apply for a loan. Widmerpool was a case in point. One of the principles dearest to Trapnel was that, as a writer himself, he did not care to borrow from another writer; anyway not more than once. At a party consisting predominantly of writers and publishers—publishers naturally unsuitable for rather different reasons—Widmerpool was a tempting expedient. A man of strong principle in his own particular genre, Trapnel appears to have observed this self-imposed limitation to the best of his ability, circumstances from time to time perforce intervening. The fulfilment of this creed must have been strengthened by practical experience of the literary profession’s collective deficiencies as medium for floating loans.
However, almost everyone had their story of being approached by Trapnel at one time or another: Mark Members: Alaric Kydd: L. O. Salvidge: Evadne Clapham: Bernard Shernmaker: Nathaniel Sheldon: Malcolm Crowding: even Len Pugsley. All had paid up. Among these Alaric Kydd took it the hardest. The ‘touch’ had been one afternoon, when Kydd and Trapnel had met at the Quiggin & Craggs office. They were moving northwards together in the direction of Tavistock Square, according to Kydd, who was very bitter about it afterwards. He had been particularly outraged by Trapnel’s immediate offer of a drink, a piece of good-fellowship received not at all in the spirit proffered. Quiggin, whose relations with Kydd were not entirely friendly, although proud of him as a capture, told the story after.
‘Alaric had my sympathy. The money was at one moment resting frugally and safely in his pocket—the next, scattered broadcast by Trapnel. Alaric wasn’t going to stand Trapnel a drink with it, it’s therefore logical he should object to Trapnel wasting it on a drink for him.’
Kydd’s never wholly appeased rancour implied abstraction of a somewhat larger sum than customary. A tenner was normal. Quiggin, whose judgment on such matters was to be respected, put it as high as twelve or fifteen—possibly even twenty. He may have been right. He had just signed a cheque for Kydd. There must have been a battle of wills. Trapnel did not on the whole prejudice his own market by gleaning the odd five bob or half-a-crown, though there may have been fallings by the wayside in this respect when things were bad; even descent to sixpences and pennies, if it came to that, for his unceasing and interminable telephone calls from the afternoon drinking clubs he liked to frequent. Such dives appealed to him chiefly as social centres, when The Hero and other pubs were closed, because Trapnel, as drinking goes, was not a great consumer, though he chose to speak of himself as if he were. An exceptionally excited or demoralized mood was likely to be the consequence of his ‘pills’, also apparently taken in moderation, rather than alcohol.
‘The habit of words bestows adroitness on men of letters in devising formulae of excuse in evading onerous obligations. More especially when it comes to parting with hard cash.’
St John Clarke had voiced that reflection—chronologically speaking, before the beginning of years—when Mark Members had managed to oust Quiggin from being the well-known novelist’s secretary; himself to be replaced in turn by Guggenbühl. Members had goodish stories about his former master, particularly on the theme of handling needy acquaintances from the past, who called in search of financial aid. Members insisted that the sheer artistry of St John Clarke’ pretexts claiming exemption from lending were so ornate in expression that they sometimes opened fresh avenues of attack for the quicker-witted of his persecutors.
‘Many a literary parasite met his Waterloo in that sitting-room,’ said Members. ‘There were crises when shelling out seemed unavoidable. St J. always held out right up to the time he was himself remaindered by the Great Publisher. I wonder what luck X. Trapnel would have had on that stricken field of borrowers.’
It was an interesting question. Trapnel was just about old enough to have applied for aid before St John Clarke’s passing. His panoramic memory for the plots of twentieth-century novels certainly retained all the better known of St John Clarke’s works; as of almost every other novelist, good, bad or indifferent, published in Great Britain since the beginning of the century. As to the United States, Trapnel was less reliable, though he could put up a respectable display of familiarity with American novelists too; anyway since the end of the first war. An apt quotation from Dust Thou Art (in the College rooms), Match Me Such Marvel (Bithel’s favourite) or the much more elusive Mimosa (brought to my notice by Trapnel himself), might well have done the trick, produced at the right moment by a young, articulate, undeniably handsome fan; the intoxicating sound to St John Clarke of his own prose repeated aloud bringing off the miracle of success, where so many tired old leathery hands at the game had failed. In the face of what might sound damaging, even contradictory evidence, Trapnel was no professional sponge in the manner of characters often depicted in nineteenth-century novels, borrowing compulsively and indiscriminately, while at the same time managing to live in comparative comfort. That was the picture Members painted of the St John Clarke petitioners, spectres from the novelist’s younger, more haphazard days, who felt an old acquaintance had been allowed too long to exist in undisturbed affluence. Members had paused for a phrase. ‘Somewhere between men of letters and blackmailers, a largely forgotten type.’
No one could say Trapnel resembled these. He neither lived comf
ortably, 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?