straight than as
to the beauty of everything else. That was another reason why I mustn't
write about his new line: Mr. Bousefield was not to be too definitely
warned that such a periodical was exposed to prostitution. By the time
he should find it out for himself the public--_le gros public_--would
have bitten, and then perhaps he would be conciliated and forgive.
Everything else would be literary in short, and above all _I_ would be;
only Ralph Limbert wouldn't--he'd chuck up the whole thing sooner. He'd
be vulgar, he'd be rudimentary, he'd be atrocious: he'd be elaborately
what he hadn't been before. I duly noticed that he had more trouble in
making "everything else" literary than he had at first allowed for;
but this was largely counteracted by the ease with which he was able to
obtain that his mark should not be overshot. He had taken well to heart
the old lesson of the _Beacon_; he remembered that he was after all
there to keep his contributors down much rather than to keep them up. I
thought at times that he kept them down a trifle too far, but he
assured me that I needn't be nervous: he had his limit--his limit was
inexorable. He would reserve pure vulgarity for his serial, over which
he was sweating blood and water; elsewhere it should be qualified by
the prime qualification, the mediocrity that attaches, that endears.
Bousefield, he allowed, was proud, was difficult: nothing was really
good enough for him but the middling good; but he himself was prepared
for adverse comment, resolute for his noble course. Hadn't Limbert
moreover in the event of a charge of laxity from headquarters the great
strength of being able to point to my contributions? Therefore I must
let myself go, I must abound in my peculiar sense, I must be a resource
in case of accidents. Lim-bert's vision of accidents hovered mainly
over the sudden awakening of Mr. Bousefield to the stuff that in the
department of fiction his editor was palming off. He would then have to
confess in all humility that this was not what the good old man wanted,
but I should be all the more there as a salutary specimen. I would cross
the scent with something showily impossible, splendidly unpopular--I
must be sure to have something on hand. I always had plenty on
hand--poor Limbert needn't have worried: the magazine was forearmed
each month by my care with a retort to any possible accusation of
trifling with Mr. Bousefield's standard. He had admitted to Limbert,
after