“Not Sherrington Trimm’s daughter!”
“The same, if it please you.”
“I congratulate you on leaving the literary career,” said Johnson with a sardonic smile. “I suppose you will never do another stroke of work. Well—it is a pity.”
“I have to work for my living as I have done for years,” George answered. “Do you imagine that I would live upon other people’s money?”
“Do you really mean to go on working?”
“Of course I do, as long as I can hold a pen. I should if I were rich in my own right, for love of the thing.”
“Love of the thing is not enough. Are you ambitious?”
“I do not know. I never thought about it. To me, the question is whether a thing is well done or not, for its own sake. The success of it means money, which I need, but apart from that I do not think I care very much about it. I may be mistaken. I value your opinion, for instance, and if I knew other men like you, I should value theirs.”
“You will never succeed to any extent without ambition,” Johnson answered with great energy. “It is everything in literature. You must feel that you will go mad if you are not first, if you are not acknowledged to be better than any one else during your lifetime. You must make people understand that you are a dangerous rival, and you must have the daily satisfaction of knowing that they feel it. Literature is like the storming of a redoubt, you must climb upon the bodies of the slain and be the first to plant your flag on the top. You must lie awake all night, and torment yourself all day to find some means of doing a thing better than other people. To be first, always, all your life, without fear of competition, to be Cæsar or to be nothing! I wish I could make you feel what I feel!”
“I think I would rather not,” said George. “It must be very disturbing to the judgment to be always comparing oneself with others instead of trying to do the best one can in an independent way.”