One night at the Authors Club, I sat with a group of prolific and successful authors, and as a matter of curious interest I asked each of them to say how far their own and their publishers' anticipations with respect to the comparative success of their several books had been borne out by the actual sales. Almost every one of them had a story to tell of disappointment with the books that were most confidently expected to succeed, and of the success of other books that had been regarded as least promising.
The experience is as old as literature itself, doubtless. Thomas Campbell came even to hate his "Pleasures of Hope," because its fame completely overshadowed that of "Gertrude of Wyoming" and some other poems of his which he regarded as immeasurably superior to that work. He resented the fact that in introducing him or otherwise mentioning him everybody added to his name the phrase "Author of the 'Pleasures of Hope,'" and he bitterly predicted that when he died somebody would carve that detested legend upon his tombstone. In the event, somebody did.
A lifelong intimate of George Eliot once told me that bitterness was mingled with the wine of applause in her cup, because, as she said: "A stupid public persists in neglecting my poems, which are far superior to anything I ever wrote in prose."
In the same way such fame as Thomas Dunn English won, rested mainly upon the song of "Ben Bolt." Yet one day during his later years I heard him angrily say in response to some mention of that song: "Oh, damn 'Ben Bolt.' It rides me like an incubus."
While I was conducting my literary shop at home, there came to me many persons bearing letters of introduction which I was in courtesy bound to honor. Some of these brought literary work of an acceptable sort for me to do. Through them a number--perhaps a dozen or so--of books were brought to me to edit, and in the course of the work upon such books I made a few familiar friends, whose intimacy in my household was a pleasure to me and my family while the friends in question lived. They are all dead now--or nearly all.
But mainly the bearers of letters of introduction who came to me at that time were very worthy persons who wanted to do literary work, but had not the smallest qualification for it. Some of them had rejected manuscripts which they were sure that I, "with my influence," could easily market to the replenishment of their emaciated purses. For the conviction that the acceptance of manuscripts goes chiefly by favor is ineradicable from the amateur literary mind. I have found it quite useless to explain to such persons that favor has nothing to do with the matter, that every editor and every publisher is always and eagerly alert to discern new writers of promise and to exploit them. The persons to whom these truths are told, simply do not believe them. They _know_ that their own stories or essays or what not, are far superior to those accepted and published. Every one of their friends has assured them of that, and their own consciousness confirms the judgment. Scores of them have left my library in full assurance that I was a member of some "literary ring," that was organized to exclude from publication the writings of all but the members of the ring. It was idle to point out to them the introduction of Saxe Holm, of Constance Fenimore Woolson, of Mrs. Custer, of Charles Egbert Craddock, or of any other of a dozen or more new writers who had recently come to the front. They were assured that each of these had enjoyed the benefits of "pull" of some sort.