I suspect you have never heard of a French novel called The Castle in the Forest. How a copy of it came to lead a life at sea in the frigate’s library, I will not venture to guess any more than I would the provenance of the rest of the trunk’s hodgepodge. There was a time long ago when the author of that title, Elizabeth Barnard, was very popular, particularly in France, where she lived, and an era when each of her books would have been translated into English and many other languages. Now her name, like those of her novels, is all but forgotten, not only by a young man your age, my dear Mr. Clover, but by most people. There is no great mystery to what happened to Mrs. Barnard, for it happens to so many authors. People imagine that literature is the collection of books that we read as a nation or society, but, for just a moment, picture it as something alive instead, a new organism. Not a pretty or delicate thing, either. A grotesque, cold-blooded beast, as big as the biggest whale and growing. Give it seven or eight heads while we’re at it, and it feeds on a book in each loathsome mouth simultaneously. Each book requires whatever blood and tears an author has, but to the beast of literature it is merely one sliver of a meal to swallow down, and upon ingesting it that particular head of this beast licks all its shiny red lips, as if to call out, “Next!” If the same author provides another meal quickly enough, then the beast has been pleased; if not, the beast swallows the unlucky author whole instead and waits in rage for the next one. The hydra-headed abomination savors female authors in particular—Mrs. Shelley and Harriet Beecher Stowe could never satisfy its appetites after their respective masterpieces had been consumed. The moral is this: authors do not create literature; they are consumed by it. As a bookseller, I am often asked if I didn’t dream of being an author, but I should rather think it is the author who learns to dream of becoming a bookseller. I do not seek the mantle of genius. I am an appreciator, an observer, a preposition, and content in that, and that is me in a nutshell.
Back to Pen Davenport’s ambivalent emotion upon laying eyes—for what was probably the first time in years—upon that book sliding across the library floor of the man-of-war. I believe his reaction relates directly to an early time in his career as a bookaneer, and it is worth a brief digression to shed some light on it. Mrs. Barnard moved from her native England to the beautiful rural environs of France after marrying a French potter. She had already published a few forgettable pieces of magazine poetry in England under her industrious maiden name, Werker. While in their tiny village in France and while her husband shaped clay, she spent her hours writing prose alone in their quiet cabin. There were heroines, and magic, and sorcery, and devious monsters disguised as suitors. These may sound like trifles to a young man who prefers Socrates over Horatio Alger. But there is a truism that if women who live in the countryside enjoy a book, then that book could sell anywhere, and Barnard soon was writing novel after novel, with her novels keeping the presses in Paris humming around the clock. Success plagued her with overly enthusiastic admirers as well as ruthless critics punishing her for popularity. After five books, she proclaimed that she would never put pen to paper again. As quietly as they had come, she and her husband moved away, some said to Ireland and others to Bath, for a life of peace. A few years later, news of her death reached the Continent.
It was about a month after the newspapers reported her death that a young man in rustic clothes was walking into the offices of Mrs. Barnard’s publisher in Paris. He explained that he was hired to remove some crates left abandoned in a shed on the property formerly belonging to the potter and his novelist wife, and was given permission to keep what he liked. He came upon a bundle of papers and, preparing to burn it, noticed the page on top. A Tomb—so it said—a romance by Elizabeth Louise Barnard. The publisher on the other side of the desk from this visitor had many years of experience and a deep suspicion of forgeries. He never knew Mrs. Barnard personally, as she had been reclusive even before her abrupt departure, but he knew her work intimately. To his utter joy, after examining the mysterious pages, he had no doubt they were authentic. Since the family of the deceased had given this young laborer permission to keep whatever he wished, he owned the manuscript. The lad had lucked into a golden goose.
To the publisher’s amazement, the visitor refused to sell. “No. If she wanted to have it published, wouldn’t she have done it herself?” young Pen Davenport moralized in French.
Davenport made himself scarce but left enough traces to be found and sent for. He knew the publisher’s head would burst thinking of the money he could make from a posthumous Elizabeth Barnard book.
The publisher soon arranged to have him return to Paris. “Good day,” the publisher greeted him, with a big smile this time.