One night, Salinger saw Hamilton and his wife Yvonne. In their first face-to-face meeting, Salinger and Hamilton seemed to have an instant rapport. Salinger appeared to trust that Hamilton would publish his novel well in England—as much as he trusted any publisher. The only publisher or editor Salinger trusted completely was Harold Ross, the New Yorker’s editor-in-chief. After he had founded the magazine in 1925, Ross made a reputation for himself as being a stylish and tasteful man blessed with a profound editorial brilliance. Over the years, Ross took a personal interest in a few of his writers, and Salinger was one of them. Similarly, Salinger not only admired the New Yorker, even though the editors did not accept every story Salinger submitted to them, but he also liked Ross as a person. Consequently, like many of Ross’s friends, Salinger was deeply troubled in May and June of 1951 when Ross became ill. At first, doctors thought Ross was suffering from pleurisy.
