s neither here nor there. What I have
written myself is neither here nor there. For the purposes of this
history it counts only as the means which enabled me to witness the last
act of his drama.

That is why I say so much about his adventure, his campaign, his
business, and so little about his books. In this I am adopting his own
values, almost his own phrases. He wanted most awfully to arrive. How far
he took himself seriously as a writer nobody will ever know. Viola was
convinced, and always will be convinced, that he was a great genius.
(There's no doubt he traded with her on her conviction. He wanted most
awfully to arrive, but more than anything he wanted Viola.) Still, he was
too clever, I think, ever to have quite convinced himself.

His adventure, then, began with his reporting; his campaign with his
journalism, and his earlier novels; his business was to follow later in
the long period of peace and prosperity he saw ahead of him.

His first novel, he told me, was calculated, deliberately, to startle and
arrest; to hit the public, rather unpleasantly, in the eye. _That_, he
said, was the way to be remembered. It wouldn't sell. He didn't want it
to sell. What he wanted first was to gain a position; then to consolidate
it; then to build. He talked like the consummate architect of his own
fortunes.

His second novel would be designed, deliberately, to counteract the
disagreeable effects of his first.

"Why," I asked, "counteract them?"

Because, he said, if he went on being disagreeable, he'd alienate the
very sections of the public he most wished to gain. His retirement was
simply the preparation for the Grand Attack.

It was in his third novel that he meant, still deliberately, to come into
his kingdom and his power and his glory, for ever and ever, Amen. His
third novel, he declared, would sell; and it would be his best. On that
utterly secure and yet elevated basis he could build afterwards pretty
much as he pleased. I asked him if it wasn't a mistake to put his best so
early in the series? Wouldn't it be more effective if he worked up to it?
But he said No. He'd thought of that. There wasn't anything he hadn't
thought of. That third novel was to start his big sales. And the worst of
a big sale was this, that when you'd caught your public you were bound to
go on giving them the sort of thing you'd caught them with, therefore,
he'd be jolly careful to start 'em with the sort of thing he happened to
like