“It is not the less true; and is, indeed, true of most other professions as well. If you had stuck to the law your father would have provided you with the means of living till your profession had become profitable.”
“Is it not true that many hundreds in London live on literature?” said our hero.
“Many hundreds do so, no doubt. They are of two sorts, and you can tell yourself whether you belong to either. There are they who have learned to work in accordance with the directions of others. The great bulk of what comes out to us almost hourly in the shape of newspapers is done by them. Some are very highly paid, many are paid liberally, and a great many are paid scantily. There is that side of the profession, and you say that you have tried it and do not like it. Then there are those who do their work independently; who write either books or articles which find acceptance in magazines.”
“It is that which I would try if the opportunity were given me.”
“But you have to make your own opportunity,” said Mr. Wickham Webb. “It is the necessity of the position that it should be so. What can I do for you?”
“You know the editors of magazines?”
“Granted that I do, can I ask a man to buy what he does not want because he is my friend?”
“You could get your friend to read what I write.”
It ended in Mr. Webb strongly advising Fred Pickering to go back to his father, and in his writing two letters of introduction for him, one to the editor of the International, a weekly gazette of mixed literature, and the other to Messrs. Brook and Boothby, publishers in St. James’s Street. Mr. Webb, though he gave the letters open to Fred, read them to him with the view of explaining to him how little and how much they meant. “I do not know that they can do you the slightest service,” said he; “but I give them to you because you ask me. I strongly advise you to go back to your father; but if you are still in town next spring, come and see me again.” Then the interview was over, and Fred returned to his wife, glad to have the letters; but still with a sense of bitterness against Mr. Webb. When one word of encouragement would have made him so happy, might not Mr. Webb have spoken it? Mr. Webb had thought that he had better not speak any such word. And Fred, when he read the letters of introduction over to his wife, found them to be very cold.
“I don’t think I’ll take them,” he said.