THE OTHER DAY I received a letter from one of our youngest literati, who has gone to America with the idea of establishing personal contacts, as they call it, with American publishers and—if the good old racket has not turned blue by this time—doing a bit of lecturing. The bulk of the communication is not of any great interest, dealing as it does almost entirely with the subject of how good the writer is, but it ends with a—to me—intensely significant passage.
As follows:
“I have placed my affairs on this side in the hands of a man named Jake Skolsky. I have given him a novel and some short stories to sell. He seems very capable and full of enthusiasm.”
It electrified me.
“Sweet suffering soupspoons!” I thought. “Can it be that old Jake is still alive? He must be a hundred. And, if alive, how on earth does he come to be alive? Has no one shot him in all this long time? It seems incredible.”
And, as I mused, the years fell away, hair sprouted on the vast bare steppes of my head, where never hair has been almost within the memory of man, and I was once more a piefaced lad paying my first visit to New York.
Most people bring back certain definite impressions from their first visit to New York. They may be of the serious-minded type that wags its head and says, “What is the future of this great country?” or they may belong to the whimsical, frivolous brigade and write light essays on the difficulty they had in getting their shoes cleaned at the hotel; but to whichever class they are affiliated they are sure to speak of towering skyscrapers, majestic skylines, and the American girl.
When I came home, people asked me in vain about these things. I did not remember them. I suppose they were there. No doubt there was a skyline. Even in those days there must have been skyscrapers. And the place, I should imagine, was full of American girls. But I was too preoccupied to notice them. My whole attention throughout my visit was absorbed by Jake Skolsky, the capable and enthusiastic literary agent.
As Nicholas Boileau-Despreaux (1636–1711) says in Bartlett’s well-known “Book of Familiar Quotations,” “Every age has its pleasures, its style of wit, and its own ways.” And, one might add, its own literary agents. It is one of the compensations of advancing years that time seems to bring with it bigger and better literary agents. When you arrive at the stage where the question of Japanese second serial rights crops up, you have generally got somebody looking after your affairs incapable of pocketing a yen. But in one’s early days to get paid for the outright sale of a short story was a wonderful adventure. Especially in America, if you were represented by Jake Skolsky.
If this sketch had been written twenty-five years ago, when the blood was hot and the agony of being gypped out of most of one’s microscopic income still fresh and raw, I should probably have begun it with the words, “I call on Heaven to judge between this man and me.” Or would I? Perhaps not, even then. For all through our association I could never quite bring myself to regard Jake as a fellow human being. He was always just a sort of Thing wriggling on the prismatic surface of New York life.
An old actor once told me of a club which used to exist during Buckstone’s days at the Haymarket. At the meetings of the club the members sat round a big barrel, which had a hole in the top. Through this hole they were wont to throw any scraps and odds and ends they did not want. Bits of tobacco, bread, marrow bones, the dregs of their glasses—anything and everything went into the barrel. “And,” said my informant, “as the barrel became fuller and fuller, strange animals made their appearance—animals of peculiar shape and form crawled out of the barrel and attempted to escape across the floor. But we headed them off with our sticks, sir, and we chased them back again into the place where they had been born and bred. We poked them in, sir, with our sticks.”
Many a time when he was handling my affairs, I used to feel that Jake would have gone back into that barrel. And no questions asked, either, by its inhabitants. Just another of the boys, they would have said to themselves.
My first dealings with Jake were through the medium of the post. It was a medium to which, as I shall show later, he did not always trust, but he did so on this occasion, and very charming letters he wrote. I have lost them now, but I remember them. I had sent the MS. of a novel of mine, “Love Among the Chickens,” to an English friend living in New York. Pressure of business compelled him to hand it over to a regular agent. He gave it to Jake. That was the expression he used in writing to me—“I am giving it to Jake Skolsky”—and I think Jake must have taken the word “giving” literally. Certainly, when the book was published in America, it had on its title page, “Copyright by Jacob Skolsky,” and a few years later, when the story was sold for motion pictures, I was obliged to pay Jake two hundred and fifty dollars to release it.
For the book was published in America. I will say that for Jake—he sold not only the book rights but the serial rights, and at a price which seemed to me fantastic. A thousand dollars it was, and to one who, like myself, had never got above fifty pounds for a serial and whose record royalties for a book were eighteen pounds eleven and fourpence, a thousand dollars was more than merely good. It was great gravy. It made the whole world seem different. A wave of gratitude towards my benefactor swept over me. I felt like a man who has suddenly got in touch with a rich and benevolent uncle.
There was just one flaw in my happiness. The money seemed a long time coming. In the letter (a delightful letter) in which he informed me of the sale, Jake said that a draft would arrive on October 1st. But October came and went. “These busy New Yorkers,” I said to myself. “They have so little time. I must be patient.” By Christmas I was inclined to restlessness. In March I cabled, and received a reply, “Letter explaining. Cheque immediately.” Late in April the old restlessness returned, for no explaining letter had arrived. Towards the middle of May I decided to go to New York. In several of his letters Jake had told me I was the coming man. I came.
Jake entered my life heralded by a cloud of smoke and the penetrating aroma of one of the most spirited young cigars I have ever encountered; a little vulture-like man with green eyes, yellow hands, a blue suit, a red tie, and grey hair. Quite a colour scheme he presented that pleasant May morning.
“Say, listen,” said Jake.
It was an interesting story that he told. Sad, too. It seemed that where he had gone wrong was in trying to kill two birds with one stone. There was a charming girl of his acquaintance whom he wanted me to meet, and he also wanted me to get my cheque. And as this girl was leaving for England, the happy idea struck him to give her the cheque to take to me. By doing this, he would avoid all chance of having the letter get lost in the post and would enable his friend to meet me in circumstances where she would catch me at my best and sunniest—viz., while fingering a cheque for a thousand dollars.
But what he had failed to take into account was that she would visit Monte Carlo on her way to England. . . .
There being no Southern route in those days, this surprised me a little.
“Monte Carlo?” I said.
“Monte Carlo,” said Jake.
“Monte Carlo?” I said.
“Monte Carlo,” said Jake.
“But I didn’t know . . .”
“Say, listen,” said Jake.
He resumed his story. Yes, she had stopped off at Monte Carlo en route. But even then, mind you, it would have been all right if she had been by herself. She was a nice girl, who would never have dreamed of cashing a stranger’s cheque. But her brother was with her, and he had fewer scruples. He gambled at the tables and lost; borrowed his sister’s jewellery and lost again. After that, there was nothing left for him to do but fall back on my cheque.
“But don’t you worry,” said Jake, so moved, I remember, that he forgot to begin, “Say, listen.” “You shall be paid. I will pay you myself. Yessir!”
And he gave me ten dollars and told me to get my hat and come along and see editors.
Jake had magnetism. In his presence I was but as a piece of chewed string. There were moments before we separated when I almost believed that story and thought it rather decent of him to let me have ten dollars. Ten dollars, I meant to say . . . just like that . . . right out of his own pocket. Pretty square.
His generalship was, I admit, consummate. He never ceased to keep moving. All that day we were dashing into elevators, dashing out, plunging into editorial offices (“Shake hands with Mr. Wodehouse”), plunging out, leaping into street cars, leaping out, till anything like rational and coherent thought was impossible.
He made only one tactical error. That was when he introduced me to the man to whom he had given my cheque.
He was an author from Kentucky. His experience had been practically identical with mine. He had sent his stories from Kentucky to a friend in New York, and the friend had handed them on to Jake, and Jake had sold them with magical skill, and then there had occurred that painful stage-wait in the matter of the cashing up. Eventually, when he was about twelve hundred dollars down, the author, breathing hot Southern maledictions, packed a revolver and started for New York.
I think Jake must have been a little out of sorts the morning they met. The best he could do in the way of a story was to say he had lost the money on Wall Street. Later, he handed the Kentuckian the cheque he had received from the magazine for my novel, asserting that he had sent me another for the same amount.
I did not see that there was anything to be done. New York at that time was full of men who did not see that there was anything to be done about Jake. He was so friendly about it all. When unmasked, he betrayed none of the baffled fury of the stage villain. He listened to you, and considered the matter with his head on one side, like a vulture accused of taking an eyeball to which it was not entitled.
“Why, say, yes,” he would observe at length. “Say, listen, I want to have a talk with you about that some time.”
You then intimated that there was no time like the present. You pressed him. You were keen and resolute. And then somehow—for the life of you you could not say how—you found all of a sudden that the subject of your wrongs had been shelved and that you were accepting with every sign of good-fellowship a poisonous cigar from his waistcoat pocket.
Yes, Jake had magnetism. Clients might come in upon him like lions, but they always went out like lambs. Not till they had been out from under the influence for a good hour or so did the realisation of their imbecile weakness smite them, and then it was too late. His office, when they revisited it, was empty. He was out somewhere, dashing into elevators, dashing out, plunging into editorial offices, plunging out, leaping into street cars, leaping out. And if by some miracle you did get hold of him, he just stuck his head on one side.
“Why, say, yes . . .”
And all the weary round started again.
Only one man ever got the better of Jake. And he, oddly enough, was not one of the tough story-writers who were or had been reporters, but a poet. Those were the days when New York magazines had rather a weakness for short, crisp, uplift poems calling on the youth of America to throw out its chest and be up and doing. They would print these on their front page, facing the table of contents, accompanied by pictures of semi-nude men with hammers or hoes or whatever it might be, and a magician like Jake could get a hundred dollars out of them per poem.
He had got a hundred dollars for one of this man’s poems, and he gave him his cheque for it, less the customary agent’s fee. The poet presented the cheque, and it came back marked “Insufficient funds.”
You would have said that there was nothing to be done. Nor, in the case of a prose writer, would there have been. Undoubtedly I or my Kentucky friend or any of the rest of Jake’s stable would have treated the thing as a routine situation and handled it in the routine way, going round to see Jake—more as a matter of form than anything—and watching him put his head on one side and proceeding through the “Why, say, yes” to the orthodox cigar.
But not the poet. He gave Jake’s office boy two dollars to nose about among Jake’s papers and find out what his balance at the bank was. Having discovered that it was $73.50, he paid in $26.50 to Jake’s account without delay, presented his cheque again, and cleaned Jake out. Jake never really got over that. He said it wasn’t the money so much, it was the principle of the thing. It hurt him, the deceitfulness of it in a man on whom he had always looked almost as a son.
There are moments, when I am feeling particularly charitable, when I fancy that it was in that relationship that Jake regarded all of us bright young men. I think he meant well. He knew the temptations which New York holds for the young when they have money in their pockets, and he shielded us from them. What he would really have liked would have been to hold a sort of paternal patriarchal position to his clients. He owned at that time—perhaps he owns it still—what he called a farm down on Staten Island. It looked as if there had once been a house there and somebody had pulled it down and left the tool shed, and he was very urgent in inviting each new client to live at this curious residence.
His ideal, I believe, was to have the place full of eager young men, all working away at their stories and running to him when they wanted a little pocket money. He would have charge of all the cash accruing from their writings and would dole it out bit by bit as needed. Up to the moment when he and I parted for ever he had succeeded in inducing few authors to see eye to eye with him in this matter.
Just after I had written the above, another letter arrived from my friend in America.
“I am having a little trouble with Jake Skolsky,” he writes. “He is unquestionably an excellent man and has sold a number of my things, but I find it extraordinarily difficult to get the money from him. However, I have written him a note, informing him that unless he pays up I must place the matter in the hands of a lawyer, so I expect things will shortly adjust themselves.”
It sounds all right, I own. On the surface it has all the appearance of being a clincher. But, unless the years have played havoc with the old pep and reduced him to a mere shell of the man he used to be, Jake will wriggle out of it somehow. He will see that lawyer and bring his magnetism into play. He will talk to him. He will give him a near-cigar. I should not be surprised if, before the interview is over, he does not borrow money from him.
Sometimes I wonder if I ought to have warned my friend when I got that first letter of his. Thinking it over, I fancy not. He is a young man at the outset of his career, and there is no question of the value of an association with Jake in the formative years of an author’s life. Mine was the making of me. Critics to-day sometimes say that my work would be improved by being less morbid, but nobody has ever questioned its depth. That depth I owe to Jake. (He owes me about two thousand dollars.)
1Reproduced by kind permission of Messrs. Chapman and Hall from the book entitled: “The First Time I . . .”