is own incompetence.

"But there is more than that. There is the summerhouse itself. I
mean there is the whole thing. There's all that Jenkins gets chaffed
about, the gilding and the gaudy colors and all the vulgarity that's
supposed to stamp him as an upstart. Now, as a matter of fact,
upstarts generally don't do this. God knows there's enough of 'em in
society; and one knows 'em well enough. And this is the very last
thing they do. They're generally only too keen to know the right
thing and do it; and they instantly put themselves body and soul
into the hands of art decorators and art experts, who do the whole
thing for them. There's hardly another millionaire alive who has the
moral courage to have a gilt monogram on a chair like that one in
the gun-room. For that matter, there's the name as well as the
monogram. Names like Tompkins and Jenkins and Jinks are funny
without being vulgar; I mean they are vulgar without being common.
If you prefer it, they are commonplace without being common. They
are just the names to be chosen to _look_ ordinary, but they're
really rather extraordinary. Do you know many people called
Tompkins? It's a good deal rarer than Talbot. It's pretty much the
same with the comic clothes of the parvenu. Jenkins dresses like a
character in Punch. But that's because he is a character in Punch. I
mean he's a fictitious character. He's a fabulous animal. He doesn't
exist.

"Have you ever considered what it must be like to be a man who
doesn't exist? I mean to be a man with a fictitious character that
he has to keep up at the expense not merely of personal talents: To
be a new kind of hypocrite hiding a talent in a new kind of napkin.
This man has chosen his hypocrisy very ingeniously; it was really a
new one. A subtle villain has dressed up as a dashing gentleman and
a worthy business man and a philanthropist and a saint; but the loud
checks of a comical little cad were really rather a new disguise.
But the disguise must be very irksome to a man who can really do
things. This is a dexterous little cosmopolitan guttersnipe who can
do scores of things, not only shoot, but draw and paint, and
probably play the fiddle. Now a man like that may find the hiding of
his talents useful; but he could never help wanting to use them
where they were useless. If he can draw, he will draw absent-mindedly
on blotting paper. I suspect this rascal has often drawn poor old
Puggy's face on blotting paper. Probably he