He took from his case a great pile of MS. and turned the leaves over in his hands.
“Here,” said he, “is a blank-verse poem entitled How I felt at 8.45 A.M. on June 8, 1909, having partaken of Breakfast. Would you like to read it?”
I assured him I should, though I fully expected it would contain unmistakable signs of mental disturbance. But it did not. It was quite respectably written verse, much better than at least half of Wordsworth’s; it was logical, it had ideas, it showed some introspective power, and it revealed a mind above the ordinary.
I told him all this.
“Then you don’t think I’m a genius? Some people do.”
“You see, I’m not a very good judge of men—particularly [99] ]men of genius. You may be a genius; on the other hand, you may not.”
“But what exactly do you think of me?”
“I have already told you.”
“Yes, but not with sufficient particularity. Now, put away from you all feeling of nervousness and try to imagine that I have just left you and that a friend of yours has come in and taken my place. You are alone together. You would, of course, immediately tell him that you had met me. You would say: ‘He is a very strange man, eccentric....’ and so on. You would describe my appearance, my personality, my verses. You, being a writer, would analyse me to shreds. Now, that is what I want you to do now. I want you to say all the bad things with the good. And I shall listen, greedily.”
“But, really!” I protested. “Really, I can’t do what you ask.”