This at first fretted him somewhat. He had always been distressed that his name was only of one syllable—Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Milton, Chaucer, Balzac were of two.
Still, there was Poe!
He tried his own name on his tongue. He wondered if it could ever sound like the name of a man of genius.
Then there came to him a sudden glow—it was more original.
He felt that the time was come to gather in disciples; he chose a foreign restaurant, in the French quarter where, he darkly hinted in the press, and to all and sundry, that the wits might be seen of an evening, glittering resplendent. It was at this time that he gave forth the now famous essay in which he showed once for all how the home life checked the range of genius; in which he proved how the wifely milieu stunted the view and narrowed the eagle flight of the original intellect; that same essay in which he showed that a woman should be well content to be simply beautiful, relying on man’s chivalry for her sufficient empire; in which he also proved beyond shadow of doubt that it was due to the meeting of the wits in the tavern and the resulting whetting of the national genius that the French achievement so far transcended the English—indeed, he pointed the moral in a florid picture of Shakespeare glittering at the Sign of the Mermaid—he even invented some lines for Shakespeare.
The tavern club was like to be born again.
Netherby Gomme, seeing the inquisitive mind of the lad Noll beginning to run upon the literary warfare of the day, set Noll’s heart jigging one evening by calling for him, together with the airy Fluffy Reubens, and taking him out into the London night to spend an hour or two at the great man’s tavern.