ether he ever wrote a
good book. One knows that he used to write for fifteen hours at a
stretch, gulping down coffee all the while. But it does not follow
that the coffee was good, nor does it follow that what he wrote was
good. The Comedie Humaine is all chicory.... I had wished for some
years to say this, I am glad _d'avoir debarrasse ma poitrine de ca_.

To have described divinely a Christmas party is something, but it is
not everything. The disengaging of the erotic motive is everything, is
the only touchstone. If while that is being done we are soothed into
a trance, a nebulous delirium of the nerves, then we know the novelist
to be a supreme novelist. If we retain consciousness, he is not
supreme, and to be less than supreme in art is to not exist....
Dickens disengages the erotic motive through two figures, Mr. Winkle,
a sportman, and Miss Arabella, "a young lady with fur-topped boots."
They go skating, he helps her over a stile. Can one not well see
her? She steps over the stile and her shin defines itself through her
balbriggan stocking. She is a knock-kneed girl, and she looks at Mr.
Winkle with that sensual regard that sometimes comes when the wind
is north-west. Yes, it is a north-west wind that is blowing over this
landscape that Hals or Winchoven might have painted--no, Winchoven
would have fumbled it with rose-madder, but Hals would have done it
well. Hals would have approved--would he not?--the pollard aspens,
these pollard aspens deciduous and wistful, which the rime makes
glistening. That field, how well ploughed it is, and are they not like
petticoats, those clouds low-hanging? Yes, Hals would have stated them
well, but only Manet could have stated the slope of the thighs of
the girl--how does she call herself?--Arabella--it is a so hard name
to remember--as she steps across the stile. Manet would have found
pleasure in her cheeks also. They are a little chapped with the
north-west wind that makes the pollard aspens to quiver. How adorable
a thing it is, a girl's nose that the north-west wind renders red! We
may tire of it sometimes, because we sometimes tire of all things,
but Winkle does not know this. Is Arabella his mistress? If she is
not, she has been, or at any rate she will be. How full she is of
temperament, is she not? Her shoulder-blades seem a little carelessly
modelled, but how good they are in intention! How well placed that
smut on her left cheek!

Strange thoughts of her surge up vag