READING MY FIRST REVIEW—IN SPRING

I remember so well the first review I ever saw of my first book, Maiden Voyage. I had been picnicking alone on the banks of the river near Tonbridge; and afterwards, as I lay in the long grass and let my thoughts wander, I remembered that I had shopping to do in the town—toothpaste to buy at the chemist’s; ink and exercise-books at the stationer’s—so I got on my bicycle again and pedalled back along the narrow towpath.

It was a lovely afternoon, early in May, with the sun hot on my back. I will not deny that my thoughts all the time were churning round my book, which had just come out. ‘When I get to the public library,’ I told myself, ‘I can go in and look at the magazines; not that there will be a review yet; it is much too early.’

Propping my bike against the worn brick wall and taking the pump with me, so that it should not be ‘lifted’ while I was quietly reading inside, I entered the, to me, rather sinister building. Sinister, because of the forlorn-seeming people who bend over illustrated encyclopaedias, or murmur and whisper to one another as they crackle the newspapers on the tall stands—and sinister too, because at that time, 1943, the front door was draped in several heavy black-out curtains, the colour of a broken-down priest’s cassock—not black, not green, not ‘rusty’—an indescribable colour.

In this labyrinth of curtains schoolchildren used to hide; and all around you in the hot, sticky darkness boys and girls were giggling, teasing, mocking. Sometimes, as you hurried through, feeling rather desperate, you were even lightly slapped, tickled, or thumped on the back.

Well, after this ordeal I found myself in the quietness of the magazine room. I was sweating slightly from the almost summer heat, the awfulness of the children, and perhaps from my own excitement. I knew there would be no reviews, and yet I was excited. My eyes darted from table to table, and seeing only unillustrated periodicals, I remembered hearing the librarian once say ‘We have to hide all the shiny ones. If we didn’t there wouldn’t be one left. People who want to look at them must come and ask.’

I decided at once not to ask for anything, but to content myself with the New Statesmans, the Time and Tides, the Spectators, and the curious technical magazines that were there.

The latest Spectator was nearest to me, so I took it up at once, and after the first fluttering of pages to get to the reviews, I found myself suddenly face to face with my own name in print and the name of my book, under the heading ‘Growing Up.’

It was a real, though smooth and silky, shock. The sort of shock that makes you convinced that your face, your being is changed, that the people round about must notice.

But after the first completely self-coloured moment, I realised that the people at the tables were not aware that a writer had seen the first review of his first book. They were quite calm—just as the people on top of the bus are always calm, though the young person in love, sitting in their midst, is always afraid that the outrageous indecent state is obvious to all.

I sat down at the yellow oak table and started to read in earnest. I was so delighted to have any review that I don’t think I feared its being a bad one. I would have taken that as part of my fate.

But it was not a bad one. It struck me as both sensible and appreciative. I felt that the woman who had written it was right about me, in her own way; and when she said ‘… he lives for us in these pages with an almost embarrassing vividness,’ I was strangely pleased, not made uncomfortable.

I read it all over again and gazed at it for a little time with my eyes focused far beyond it, then I turned to the other magazines; but nothing else had come out yet, and for this I was almost grateful. It allowed me to concentrate entirely on the first encouraging notice.

Before I left, I again remembered the librarian’s words, and they put the idea into my head that I too might take the people’s property to myself. But I didn’t. I imagined too clearly the furtive crackling of the Spectator stuffed down my shirt-front.

After that there were many reviews. They came trickling in steadily. I would sit up every morning and read them in bed, before I had breakfast. I found myself paying far more attention to adverse criticism than to praise—extravagant or moderate. Perhaps this is usual. It was as if disapprobation always bore the mark of truth on it—although I might still consider it wrong-headed—whereas praise presented itself to me as pudding, as stuffing, as insincerity put out to trick me into some ridiculous position. I understood now why, in old novels and letters, flattery is almost invariably considered insulting or cruel.

I wonder if I was influenced by reading all those reviews? They certainly made me more self-conscious about my work, more aware of its possible effect on other people; for before I was published, I steadfastly refused to think of the impression my words might leave behind. I knew that it would muddle me to consider any one but myself. What pleased, what amused, what touched, what horrified me must be put down as well as I knew how; but everything else must be swept away. There must be no titbits for special types, no appealing to a public I knew nothing of.

But now I had to consider other people’s impressions. When the reviewer of the Listener finished his mingled praise and blame with the extraordinary statement that all women were to me ‘just shapeless, repulsive, silly bags,’ I was bound to be affected by the words. I was bound to rake over my book in my mind, in an effort to find anything that could have led him to such a preposterous opinion.

And when James Agate said: ‘If he is not extremely careful he will grow up into another Proust,’ I had to stop and decide whether this meant anything at all—or was it just to be taken as gay newspaper extravagance?

Was I also not to take too seriously Miss Elizabeth Bowen’s references to the ‘faultless form’ of my book and to the ‘errant genius’ of the sixteen-year-old ‘I’ in it? Was the Liverpool Post’s ‘a painful picture of adolescence at its most gawkish period’ more worthy of my attention?

I revolved all these questions in my mind, with many more as well; and in the end I think I came to the conclusion that the generosity, the encouragement, the sneering, and the patronage were all rather unreal, and that although I could never again be unaware of them as I was at first, still I must never let them prevent me from going my own sweet way.