by Ngaio Marsh
The reason? It was what publishers call a ‘oncer’. Needing copious illustrations, it would have been extremely costly to produce. By the nature of its subject matter the readership would have been limited to people who were of, or attracted to, the theatre. And there was no likelihood of a follow-up. But it was indeed a nice book. I recall one strange anecdote Mr Wilkie tells of a novice in his company. During a train journey, there came a sudden drop in the racket of their railroad progress in which this young actor’s voice rang out.
‘Ah, you may think I’m common,’ he cried triumphantly, ‘but you should just meet my people!’
I still lament the non-appearance of Allan Wilkie’s autobiography. Many publishers seem to act in accordance with a yearly balanced programme or something closely resembling it: so many books by popular writers whose work is widely known and bound to appeal, so many with a limited appeal but of such literary, artistic, social or scientific interest that they will bring prestige to the firm that introduces them. Sometimes – very rarely – there comes their way a hitherto unknown author who has the mark of genius and for whom they are prepared to go overboard.
There is an anecdote told about my own publisher, Sir William Collins. He was an extremely tall, elegant man with something Puckish in his looks and great charm of manner. He had attended an International Congress of importance and when the luncheon break came and all the delegates were streaming down a corridor he was seen, head and shoulders above the rest, brandishing a bulky manuscript over his head and shouting, ‘I’ve got the book of the century! I’ve got the book of the century!’
The book was Doctor Zhivago.
Many ringers-up or writers-in make their requests before they have set pen to paper or finger to keys. Often their friends have told them they ought to write a book and they intimate that they ‘haven’t got the patience’ to do so unless they can be assured of seeing it in print. Many more suggest that I read their book and give them an opinion. Some send a piece without notice. One correspondent simply wrote on the back of a postal order for two shillings that he was prepared to collaborate and I was to insert the word ‘Yes’ in a morning newspaper of such and such a date. I lost the postal order and I suppose to this day he thinks I pinched it.
I wish very heartily that I could say some manuscript of outstanding merit has come my way over the last half-century but no such luck. If it had I would have offered to send it with a letter of introduction to my agents. As it is I can only suggest to all enquirers that they have mercy on me and provide themselves with a copy of the current Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook. It gives a list of reputable agents, well-established publishers (with additional notes on how they like to be approached) and offers sensible advice about finding out which magazines or papers publish the kind of short story or article you believe you can write.
It is foolish to send a piece on home-dressmaking to the Poulterers’ Journal.
Many years ago now, when I was beginning to get good notices and increasing standing as a writer of detective fiction, my agents and my American publishers asked me if I had ever thought of ‘going straight’. They were kind enough to say they would be interested in such a departure and pointed out that many of the reviewers emphasized the characterization and style of the books rather than their sheer ‘teckery and plot – contrivances which, I must confess, I never have been able to regard as anything but an exacting chore. I have already suggested that in an age of much shapeless fiction the detective story presents a salutary exercise in the techniques of writing. It is shapely. It must have a beginning, a middle and an end. The middle must be a logical development of the beginning and the end must be implicit in both. Economy as well as expressiveness in words must be practised. One may not stray too far from the matter-in-hand. I sometimes catch myself envying the writers of fiction who can allow themselves long digressions into whatever side issue takes their fancy and don’t stop until they have nothing more to say.
If my publishers’ suggestion had come earlier I think perhaps I might have entertained it. But I have never had much confidence in myself as a writer and always think what I am doing at the moment is awful and that I’m going to fall flat on my face and rise up with egg all over it. This is odd because as a director of Shakespeare productions, beset by the terrors of first nights and all the rest of the hazards of the game, I was persuaded, always, that what I wanted to achieve was on the right lines and I think I always know, and pretty exactly, too, just how far I have succeeded or failed in, as actors say, ‘getting a play to work’.
Because the books have done well I have been able to release my passion for these plays and my enduring love for the young actors with whom I have prepared them. It has been possible to forgo fees which a student society could not afford and so enable it to depart occasionally from the best known and therefore safest box-office attractions of Shakespeare’s plays and tackle one that is not on the examination list and therefore will not draw block-bookings from the schools. So, in a way, the books have helped with the productions.
As time goes on, being interviewed about one’s writing becomes more and more of an occupational hazard and demands more and more of a professional attitude. On being asked which of the books is one’s favourite it is not easy to go dewy-eyed and behave as if one is stimulated by the question and is struck by its originality, particularly when, as in this case, the answer is that I haven’t got one. Or else that the one I’ve just finished writing is my favourite because it’s such a relief to have done with it. It would be much easier if the interviewer asked whether, apart from the Alleyns, I had any favourite characters. The Claires in Colour Scheme, The Boomer in Black As He’s Painted, Inspector Fox and P.P. in Hand in Glove come to mind. I enjoyed writing about all of them. On consideration, I think perhaps I worried less about writing Colour Scheme and Black as He’s Painted than I did with most of the others.
Inevitably, of course, I’m asked how many Alleyn stories I’ve written and inevitably, being me, I forget. I see, in the batch of reviews that has just come to hand, that they put it at thirty-two which surprises me.
Another evergreen enquiry is whether I’ve grown bored with Mr Alleyn. I haven’t. Conan Doyle became so bored with Sherlock Holmes that he pushed him over the Reichenbach Falls and got for his pains an infuriated fan mail so huge that he was in the end forced to heave him up again. One of the letters, from a lady, merely said ‘You beast.’ So Holmes returned but it has been said that he was never the same man again. I incline to think that perhaps the trouble is that he was.
Since Sir Arthur’s time, of course, a new kind of interviewer has arisen and what a job is his! The television probe! How grateful we must be to Mr Michael Parkinson who never shows off, never asks a silly question, never utters a bromide, always seems to be on-side with his subjects and neither flatters nor cajoles but crinkles into amusement and listens as a listener should, with quiet relish and enjoyment. Jolly nonagenarians, heart-transplanters, tenors, explorers, actors galore, authors, unrepentant homosexuals and ancient bewigged beauty specialists all walk into his parlour and succumb happily to his unostentatious charm. Has he worked very hard, one asks oneself, to attain such consummate ease?
The press interviewers of whom one becomes increasingly wary are young journalists attached to daily papers and, particularly, women journalists attached to women’s journals, and, most especially, the young ladies who scorn to take notes. I have just read a quotation from an American News of Books and Authors. In it I am said to have ‘reported’ that I ‘always smoke while writing’. I gave up smoking twenty years ago. The more inexperienced the reporter the less she enjoys being asked to let one see her story before publication and the more reckless her misstatements when it does appear in print. It doesn’t happen on television, of course, because at least you’re there and can contradict the soft impeachments.
The really terrifying televisual things, for me at least, are quiz shows. In character as an author of detective ficti
on, I was on a very tricky one for Independent Television in London. Outrageous and seemingly inexplicable events, said to have actually taken place, were put to the victims who were asked to give the true explanation. At the outset of this series I was smitten for the first and last time in my life with a devastating attack of lumbago. It struck me down when I was in the cellar of a London flat and it was so severe that I was forced to crawl on hands and knees across the kitchen and up two flights of stairs into a room where there was a telephone which I dragged down to floor level and rang a doctor.
He arrived in time to give me an injection in the lumbar region. This at least enabled me to become more mobile but wore off about halfway through the transmission, which was a live one. He repeated this treatment for the next appearances but was delayed on the final one. I waited till the last minute and then the friend who was staying with me got a taxi. She and the driver eased me into it. A press photograph was taken of the team that night. You can’t see the beads of sweat that had gathered on my brow above the desperate smirk which I managed to flash at the cameras.
While I’m on about the author’s complaints department I feel I must raise a piteous cry that publishers are probably very tired of hearing. It is a plea to the artist or photographer who does the bookjacket that he read the book or at least the passage the jacket is supposed to illustrate. The American jacket for the hardback of Last Ditch is a charming, rather old-fashioned pencil and wash affair that can only be made to conform with the text by assuming that the girl on the horse is galloping backwards at great speed into the ditch where her body will be found. I’ve had complaints about paperbacks. One from an English reader on the score of vulgarity so gross that she couldn’t bring herself to buy the book as a present for a friend. It looked, said this reader, like a penny-dreadful in a sleazy book stall.
In When in Rome the clothes of a man who is murdered and thrown into a well are described in detail: Italian, black, alpaca-like suit, black tie and beret. On the paperback cover he is spread out, dry as a chip, on a marquetry floor wearing a natty blue business suit and felt hat.
The worst offence under this heading was the binder’s transposition of two jackets and their titles. Infuriated purchasers, thinking they had found a new Alleyn story, discovered they had bought one with which they were already familiar.
I suppose, for non-authors, the best known pitfall in publishing is risk of prosecution for libel or defamation of character or plagiarism. There are famous cases: the one about a City personage who became so fed-up with the badinage of his friends and their quoting advertising jingles about a comical little man of the same very unusual name as himself, that he sued and obtained substantial damages from the firm that published them. There was a successful case against an author who created a disagreeable character and unfortunately gave him the same name as a person he had never met, of whose existence he had no knowledge but who sued and obtained enormous damages.
In one of my early books I introduced a rather unsavoury character called Luke Watchman. I received a charming letter from a real Luke Watchman but the coincidence was startling and might have turned out very differently.
There is, of course, a lighter side to occupational hazards. During the war when I was comparatively young and quite unused to any public appearances outside a theatre, I was asked to take part in a Brains Trust at a military camp. The other three performers were seasoned academics, politically pink and perfectly assured. Our audience consisted of active soldiers on leave from Guadalcanal, extremely tough and liable to cut up roughish if unamused by the proffered entertainment.
The hall where we were to perform was large and crammed to the doors with troops. We sat in a row on the stage. An officer had been detailed to act as chairman. He opened up by introducing us in turn by name and occupation and saying unconvincingly that he knew we would be given a fair hearing. He then declared the meeting open for questions from the audience. I noticed with terror that a soldier near the front was being nudged and muttered to by his neighbours and that they all looked at me.
After a deathly silence broken by the chairman saying, ‘All right, men. Come on, now. Ask somebody something. Yes?’ he added hopefully, having noted the reluctant warrior who now rose and turned scarlet in the face.
‘Why,’ he asked, staring at me, ‘do people like reading about crime?’
The chairman turned to me and smilingly suggested this seemed to be in my department.
I should here explain that some provision had been made beforehand to guard against non-cooperation. Questions had been suggested to the troops. This, I have reason to believe, was one of them.
My mouth was dry and my stomach unruly. I remembered hearing a friend accustomed to public speaking say that the great thing was to start with a joke. The only military jokes I could recollect were about sergeants major.
I opened, in a voice that seemed to belong to someone else, by saying people might enjoy reading about crime as an alternative to committing it.
I then said, ‘Suppose, for instance, one of you wanted to murder the sergeant major.’
I got no further. As one man the assembled strength broke into herculean laughter. They roared, they stamped, they hit each other on the back. They clapped and whistled.
This was extraordinary. Greatly taken aback but encouraged by my inexplicable success I held up my hands. There was immediate silence.
‘Well,’ I said, and hoped to sound breezily at ease, ‘all right, suppose you did want – ’ I got no further.
It broke out again, more boisterous and more puzzling than before. I noticed that the officers in the front row looked quite uneasy. At last, I again raised my hands and said, ‘What is all this in aid of? Where is the sergeant major?’
At the back of the hall three enormous soldiers amid cheers from their comrades hoisted up into view a struggling figure on whose uniform the insignia of a sergeant major was clearly visible. He was pulled down again in a continued uproar.
I really don’t remember how I got on after that except that they calmed down and the rest of the Brains Trust passed off without incident.
When it was over we were entertained in the Officers’ Mess. One after another our hosts came up to me and asked me in the oddest manner, how ‘I knew’. (’Wink, wink. Nudge nudge’, almost.)
‘Knew what?’
Then, furtively, they explained. We had drawn a full house because there was nowhere else for the men to go. And there was nowhere else for them to go because they were confined to barracks. And the reason they were confined to barracks was because that morning a stick of gelignite had been found underneath the sergeant major’s bed.
I grew accustomed, after this dubious success, to speaking to very varied audiences. Seamen, for instance, of all sorts, from the New Zealand Royal Navy to the crews of large and small trading vessels at anchorage in Lyttelton, the port of Christchurch. They were always polite and seemed to be attentive. I remember one occasion when after I had sat down and the chairman had asked for questions and the usual silence had set in, a sailor rose and, in an expressionless voice, asked me what my name was and on being told gave a curt nod and sat down again. Disconcerting.
One does get asked very strange questions by strangers. During a long voyage I had found a quiet place on deck and had settled myself to write when an old lady, who looked and behaved like the late Margaret Rutherford as Miss Marples, sat down nearby, edged her deck chair alongside mine and began to whisper.
‘I have read all your tales,’ she hissed and having waited for my emotion to subside, confided that there was a question she had always wanted to put to me.
She reached out a little paw and patted my manuscript. ‘When you are writing your tales,’ she breathed, ‘do you know who committed the crime?’
A stock question is: how do you begin to write a book? I imagine that my way of beginning is unorthodox and silly. I try to behave sensibly and prepare myself by setting out the anatomy of the plot and the ord
er of events and then inventing a cast of characters that this structure will accommodate. But that never lasts and the truth is that I most often start with characters alone and then have to find a milieu and circumstances and a plot that suits them. It becomes a matter of which of these people is capable of a crime of violence and under what turn of events would he or she actually commit one? I write very slowly, make a lot of alterations and lay myself open to the danger of repetition and self-contradictions which, when there has been a lot of rewriting, I fail to spot. If the publisher’s readers also miss the boob it will ultimately be seized upon with glee by some babu in Pondicherry or a cock-a-hoop maths mistress in an establishment for middle-class maidens.
The stupidest brick I have ever dropped was to do with a play which I knew almost by heart. I mixed up two battles – Harfleur and Agincourt – in Henry V. In less than no time I did indeed get a letter of reproof from a babu in India.
A large number of the reading public for crime fiction are professional men and women; the very people, of course, who are best equipped to catch you out if you make a blunder – doctors, lawyers, soldiers, sailors, academics, all read these books and strangely enough, or so I am credibly informed, so do policemen – these latter perhaps because they enjoy a complete change from reality.