Delancey hardly ever came to see me. I imagine he was in a very divided state of mind! He had so dreadfully wanted to be an intellectual, to be able to rail at the base imbecile public in exquisitely select Bloomsbury coteries, he had so resolutely determined to be a martyr, to sacrifice himself on the altar of pure art, and somehow Mr. T.S. Eliot and martyrdom were as far off as ever. After all, he had given up 5,000 pounds a year and V.C.'s and happy endings. Was it his fault if he was making more money than ever and the inner circles of the unread elect seemed more firmly closed than ever?
At this time, Delancey avoided me, but I heard that "Transition" was to be dramatised and that the film rights had been bought. How the endless chaotic mass, loosely held together by semi-colons, was to be moulded into a drama or a movie was quite beyond my imagination, but evidently some enterprising people had decided to call their play "Transition." "Delancey must," I reflected, "be getting very rich indeed." But still he didn't come near me, until one day I sent for him. He looked, I thought, just a tiny bit care-worn. The all conquering light had gone out of his eye. His boots were a little dusty and he wore no tie-pin. He had, I suppose, become rich beyond the symptoms of prosperity.
"It has all been very surprising, hasn't it?" he said with an embarrassed expression.
I didn't know whether to say "yes" or "no," that I was glad or that I was sorry.
"But it doesn't alter the quality of your book," I consoled him.
He brightened, "No," he said, "it doesn't; I am glad you said that."
We talked about other things, music and old furniture and people. He had, he said, thought of buying a house in Chelsea. It was, I realised, not exactly the entry he had planned but I encouraged the idea. There was, I explained, nothing like the Thames.
And so we rambled on till he took his leave. But five minutes after his departure I heard the bell ring. Delancey burst back into the room,
"I forgot to tell you," he said, "that 185,000 copies of 'Transition' have sold."
There is a special quality about a December sunset. The ruffles of red gold gradually untightening, the congested mauve islands on a transparent sea of green, the ultimate luminous primrose dissolving into violet powder and then the cold biting night lit up by strange patches of colour that have somehow been forgotten in the sky.