“Frightful Horse-radish”
Egbert is a not a fan of the sentimental tripe of “women’s novels” and is horrified to discover when reading Evangeline’s verbatim transfer for his own words into her novel that it is just as bad as anything he ever read. Or, as he puts it: “frightful horse-radish.”
The Agent
Things are already pretty bleak for Egbert when they take a turn for what appears to be worse:
“at this point there suddenly floated into his life like a cloud of poison gas the sinister figure of Jno. Henderson Banks.”
Metaphorically, however, it will turn out that Egbert is way off. In fact, the peculiarly named Mr. Banks will actually turn out, ironically, to represent the agency of reconciliation and happy endings.
Metaphorical Irony
The entire narrative of “Best Seller” is dependent upon a barmaid’s reaction to a sentimental novel. That novel is titled Rue for Remembrance and it turns out to have been written—in one way or another—by the wife of Mr. Mulliner’s nephew. It is this coincidence which leads Mulliner to tell the story and only at the end is the ironic context of the metaphor expressed here by barmaid revealed as she explains why the novel has moved her to tears:
“It lays the soul of Woman bare as with a scalpel.”
The Stimulus
The story hinges on a man who hates the sentimentalism of novels written by women first ensuring that the object of his love has no desire to herself become a writer. After ascertaining that this is so, Egbert Mulliner proceeds to reveal the depth of his love to Evangeline Pembury in a manner in which he
“produced his soul like a conjurer extracting a rabbit from a hat and slapped it down before her.”
Ironically, it is this very display that stimulates Evangeline to become the one thing above all else he desired to avoid in a wife: a writer of sentimental romance novels.
The Low Point
Egbert reaches his lowest point when not only is his “frightful horse-radish” made fodder for the general entertainment of the public and not only is his beloved’s agent a double for Lord Byron, but Evangeline has become so affected by the benefits of celebrity that he is no longer the world which she revolves. Having thrown down the gauntlet, he is crestfallen when her reaction is to show him the door. And his reaction?
“He laughed harshly as he contemplated the fallen ruins of the castle which he had built in the air.”
