Billy is for a week or two more
noticed in the papers than the editor of the _Times_ will be in five
years. The journalist who gives his best to his paper is a pathetic
figure--from the British or Henry Charles point of view, I mean, as I'm
looking at the situation with your ideas to direct me, your view of
success. He is probably our nearest approach to the Greek sculptors I
seem to remember quoting to you once. Anonymity is essential to the true
artist, I hold; and strangely, it is the newspaper man--none less
artistic--who conforms to this law in England, perhaps unwillingly."

"Of course, we'll never agree on that point," said Henry, "as I'm all
for personality."

"So; that's what I know, and hence my line of reasoning. Play up your
personality for all it's worth, and be happy. It's not my way; but no
matter. And to do so, journalism is at best only a training school. What
you must do is a book. Once you make a moderate success with a book,
your precious personality has become a marketable thing in modern
Philistia."

"You mean a novel, I suppose?"

"I mean a book. You're not a poet, or the song within would have rilled
out long ago. _Ergo_, it's not a book of poetry. You have a literary
touch, and might do well in the essay; but essays are 'off' just now,
says the Ass-in-Chief of the great B. P. You haven't gone round the
world on your hands and knees, or walked from Charing Cross to St.
Paul's on your head--either of which achievements would have given you
copy for a sensational book hot with personality, and made you the most
sought-after lecturer of the day. So there remains only the novel, and
the B. P. shouts for more novel, like the whimpering infant it is. Give
it novel, my lad. You, as well as anybody. That the novel has become a
contemptible convention of the publishing trade is not its fault. Always
remember we have Meredith and Hardy and Stevenson writing novels, and
you will think well of that vehicle of expression."

"But I have no great impulse to write fiction. I'd rather write about
the men who write it," Henry said.

"A pity that; for little of real value is done without the impulse. But
one never knows. Try and see. The impulse may follow in the same sense
that certain psychologists believe the simulation of an emotion produces
its effect. I like the idea; but am not quite ready to accept it.
Reproduce the muscular expressions of sorrow or joy, and you will after
a time be sorrowful or gla