Page:Walpole - Fortitude.djvu/353

. But really, Peter, it's the most uneven thing I've ever read. Again and again one is caught, held, stirred—then, suddenly, you slip away altogether—you aren't there at all, nothing's there, I could put my finger on the places. Especially the first chapters and the last chapters—the middle's splendid—what happened to you? But it will sell, I expect. Tell your banker to read it, go into lots of banks and tell them. Bank clerks have subscriptions at circulating libraries always given them but the wild bits are best, the wild bits are splendid—that bit about the rocks at night  you don't know much about women yet—your girls are awfully bad. By the way, do you know that Mary Hollins is only getting £100 advance next time? All she can get, that last thing was so shocking. I hear that that book about an immoral violet, by that new young man—Rondel, isn't it?—is still having a most enormous success—I know that Barratt's got in a whole batch of new copies last night—I hear ”

Mrs. Launce was disappointed—Peter could tell well enough. He received some laudatory reviews, some letters from strangers, some adulation from people who knew nothing whatever. He did not know what it was exactly that he had expected—but whatever it was that he wanted, he did not get it—he was dissatisfied.

He began to blame his publishers—they had not advertised him enough; he even, secretly, cherished that most hopeless of all convictions—that his book was above the heads of the public. He noticed, also, that wherever he might be, this name of Rondel appeared before him, Mr. Rondel with his foolish face and thin mother in black, was obviously the young man of the moment—in the literary advertisements of any of the weekly papers you might see The Violet novel in its tenth edition and “The Stone House” by Peter Westcott, second edition selling rapidly.

He was again bewildered, as he had been after the publication of “Reuben Hallard” by the extraordinary variance of opinions amongst reviewers and amongst his own personal friends. One man told him that he had no style, that he must learn the meaning and feeling of words, another told him that his characters were weak but that his style was “splendid—a real knowledge of the value and