n showing his interminable
pedigree, he would let the thing unfold and one beheld a sad animal of
unknown species sitting in a silver winter landscape, or a purple silk
sunset. And over it glared the mad artist, a sallow fraud, yet watching
with some impatience how the stranger regarded this secret preoccupation
of his life. I knew nothing about such things and knew he scorned me for
my ignorance. Like most artists, he was an unconscious liar. He strove
also to give an impression of tremendous power. He had gestures which
were supposed to register virility, irresistible force, abysmal
contempt. And if the word had not been worked to death by people who
don't know its meaning, I would have added that he was a votary of the
_kultur_ of his race. His ideal, I suppose, was more the Renaissance
_virtu_ than our milk-and-water virtue. He made me feel that I was a
worm. In short, he was a very interesting, provocative and exasperating
humbug, and his very existence seemed to me sufficient reason for
turning _Aliens_ into a book which would shed a flickering light upon
the fascinating problem of human folly.

For that is what it amounted to. I was obsessed with the problem of
human folly, and he focussed that obsession. It often happens that the
character which inspires a book never appears in it. In all sincere work
I think it must be so. And, with the mad artist in my mind all the time,
I got a good deal of fun out of writing the book, and that, after all,
is the main reason one has for writing books. I finished the thing and
immediately became despondent, a condition from which I was raised by an
unexpected admirer. This was the elderly gentleman who did my
typewriting. He dwelt half way up a tall elevator shaft in Newark, N.
J., and, as far as I could gather, had farmed himself out to a number of
lawyers, none of whom had much to do except telephone to each other and
smoke domestic cigars. They say no man is a hero to his valet. I have
never had a valet except on ship-board, and I have no desire to compete
with the heroes of the average steward; but I have had a typist, and I
suppose it is equally rare for an author to be interesting to his
amanuensis. And when I climbed one day (the elevator being out of order)
to the eyrie where my elderly henchman had his nest, his bald head was
shining in the westering sun, and he beamed like a jolly old sun himself
as he apologised for not having finished. "He had got so interested in