[[1]]
[[MS 2750/351/2]]
Entumeni
Zululand
21st Dec 1924
My dear Hogarth Press,
Your letter of 15/7/24 was a model of forbearance and candour. You were so kind as to hope that I would submit the MS [manuscript] of my novel. It is coming. Now without presuming to influence your taste (which I honour secretly, from afar, as almost infallible) I allow myself to offer you a little balance-sheet. I don’t say that it has anything to do with the value of the work as writing; I only flatter myself that you may be interested.
In the writing of the book these were some of my ASSETS,
1. I do not depend on writing for my living, and I do not intend to, in case I should be
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obliged to write that which I should be ashamed of; i.e. my stomach is not allowed to get between me and my work.
2. Energy.
3. I desire to set myself a standard as high as yours, my dear Hogarth Press.
4. Sooner or later I shall ‘come into my own.’ I come first to you for assistance.
5. A tendency to satire. Is it to be encouraged?
6. I am young.
[the list of 'drawbacks' begins on page one [[1]] of the letter, however, the table drawn within this letter has been transcribed in two halves, 'assets' and then 'drawbacks'. Drawbacks feature on page [[2]] of the transcription]
and these some of my DRAWBACKS.
1. I have no leisure. When I write, it is under the hardest of conditions. I write without silence, peace, light, air, or ease.
2. I lack intellectual stimuli.
3. I lack modesty.
4. I lack reticence.
5. I have no typewriter. For this I lay before you my humblest apologies, and my pencilled MS [manuscript].
6. I am young.
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If I ever return to England I shall make a bee-line for Tavistock Square. As a fair warning, I should like to protest that I am not as aggressive in the flesh as I am in this letter. You would find me quite ‘nice to know.’ (Am I wasting your time?) If by chance you should desire to print “Turbott Wolfe” please remember that I submit it to you as a piece of writing (I haven’t the vanity yet to say ‘as literature’ or ‘as a work of art’) - not as a collecting-box for halfpence. Although I am extremely poor & more overworked than any prime minister (Entumeni is a trading-station, and it is mine); although I am always thankful for the smallest sums of money that come to me; yet I earnestly beg that you will only refrain from printing “Tubott Wolfe” because:-
Perhaps 1. You would lose money by it.
and/or 2. You w[oul]d. do your reputation no good by it.
and/or 3. You think it is a “rotten novel.”
I know the book is short. I can’t make it any longer. It seems to me complete. I enclose with the MS [manuscript] a title-page & end-piece done by my own hand: these you might care
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to use if you printed the work. I also enclose a page of quotations to precede the whole. It might be as well to insert some such note as this:-
“This is a work of fiction. The characters are not intended to refer to living persons, and their opinions need not necessarily be taken for my own.”
So now I await your answer.
I am | yours faithfully | William Plomer [signature]