The Shadow of Great Britain

Before Disraeli could figure out why Albert would appear in their old haunt, Albert had already taken the initiative and reached out his hand to Disraeli.

”You haven’t forgotten me, have you? My name is Albert, I’m Sir Arthur’s friend from Coburg.”

Quick-witted as he was, Disraeli instantly realized from these words that Albert did not intend to put on any princely airs today.

Only, this young man—naive to the point of being endearing—clearly didn’t understand that his easygoing disguise was nothing but window dressing in front of old hands like these.

Even so, given that he was a relative of the Queen, Disraeli, this Lower House Member, still decided to give Albert some face.

The Jewish lad stepped forward warmly: ”Of course I remember—how could I possibly forget?”

Disraeli’s smile was enthusiastic to the point of excess; it almost overflowed from his cheeks.

He gripped Albert’s hand and shook it vigorously, as though trying to shake loose a lifeline for himself: ”Sir Arthur has mentioned you to me more than once. He said he had an excellent talk with you in Brussels not long ago, and praised your considerable insight into literature and the arts. Now that we can see you here on Fleet Street, it truly is our honor.”

Albert smiled and nodded, with the frankness and curiosity particular to youth: ”I wouldn’t dare call it an honor. But I’ve heard this is one of the most famous editorial offices in London; since I’m here, of course I want to see how the publishing industry in Britain is actually forged.”

Disraeli was choked by this remark; he instinctively glanced at the ball of newspaper Eld had crumpled. It lay by Dickens’s feet, looking for all the world like a few corpses that hadn’t yet had time to be buried.

He took an awkward step to the left, seemingly trying to block those utterly unpresentable headlines from view: ”How is the publishing industry forged? Ah, well, to tell the truth, it’s a bit shameful—we’re nothing more than fellows who make a living by cobbling up stories. Of course, that doesn’t mean we’ve no higher literary ambitions, but you know how it is, Your High... er, no, Albert, these days only novels and plays actually make money. If you hand a publisher a volume of poetry, he practically wants to spit on the cover; the way he looks at you is as if you’re trying to pick his pocket.”

Arthur was just as keen to smooth this over; he stepped forward calmly and picked up the thread: ”That’s right, poetry really is much harder to sell than novels these days. Even works that have already won popular acclaim often have very ugly sales figures. Not long ago, Robert Browning brought out that volume, Pauline: A Fragment of Confession; if you covered Browning’s name, you’d swear it was a posthumous collection of Shelley’s. Even a notoriously fastidious literary magazine like Blackwood’s devoted over a dozen pages to lavish praise on it, declaring that Browning’s style had much of Shelley’s spirit. And yet—guess how many copies Browning’s collection sold?”

Albert duly took the bait. He frowned, thought for a moment, and carefully ventured a figure: ”A thousand copies?”

At this, Dickens burst out laughing and shook his head: ”No, Albert, a thousand is far too generous. Even if it were a novel, selling a thousand copies wouldn’t be a disgrace at all—let alone when it’s poetry you’re trying to sell.”

”Then...” Albert pondered for a while, and named a more conservative number: ”Three hundred copies?”

Lounging sideways on his desk, Eld looked at this German youth who’d materialized out of nowhere and chimed in as though they were old acquaintances: ”If a poetry collection sells three hundred copies nowadays, that already counts as a decent result. Browning’s Pauline ended up selling fewer than fifty. These last couple of years poetry has become dead stock on the market; I even suspect that new collections by big names like Campbell, Rogers, or Wordsworth would now only sell a few hundred copies at best.”

On hearing this, Albert couldn’t help glancing at Tennyson beside him: ”Then...”

Eld saw straight through what he wanted to say, and Director Carter answered ahead of Albert before he could finish: ”Don’t look at him like that—Alfred is an exception in the world of verse. His In Memoriam may not sell like the hottest fashionable novels, but its first print run of six hundred copies sold out in just three months. From what I’ve heard, because the sales were far better than expected, the firm did two additional printings that same year. All told, it sold nearly two thousand copies in the first twelve months. If you include the reprints over the past few years, I’d estimate the total must be four or five thousand by now. That one volume of In Memoriam alone is almost equal to many poets’ lifetime sales.”

Shy Tennyson flushed at Eld’s words: ”I was only lucky, that’s all. Eld, don’t exaggerate it so much.”

Dickens clapped Tennyson on the shoulder with a smile: ”Where’s the exaggeration? Alfred, don’t be too modest. The last time a poetry collection with those kinds of numbers appeared in Britain, you’d have to go back more than a decade, to Lord Byron’s Don Juan. That’s why almost everyone now believes you’re the only young poet capable of taking up the banner of the English poetic tradition from Byron’s hands. Come now—we’re not blind.”

If Dickens hadn’t mentioned Byron, it would have been better; the moment he did, Disraeli’s heart shot right back up into his throat.

After all, this morning’s newspapers were full of stories comparing Liszt’s love life to Byron’s affair with Lady Ponsoby.