He thought, on the whole, he would keep his valet on—but Jonkin was to dress like himself, as a student, corduroy trousers, black coat, slouch hat and all. There was to be no tomfoolery in it—he was going to be the poor student right through. And the girls of the Latin quarter, heavens! he kissed his hand to them....
Within a month, Noll was elected to a literary club—one of those places where men turn in to wash their hands on the way to the Athenæum.
At the first entry into this club, the youth felt that he was come amongst the very wits. But the minor critic Fosse fussed about him, and took the earliest confidential opportunity to whisper to him with wink and nod that it was owing to his interest in him that Noll had been elected over the heads of men who had been waiting for years at the portals in vain. The thrill trickled out of the glamour of his election a little as each of several others confided to Noll that it was owing to his exertions and his following that his election had been so speedily secured—and that everyone else in the gathering was but mediocre and painstaking. His conceit in his honours slowly leaked away.
Then Mr. Quilliam O’Flaherty Macloughlin Myre, though kind, at once roused uneasiness and soul-searchings in the youth. He pointed out that the man of genius was the type of his time, the outward and visible as much as the inward and spiritual; that in our age the face of genius wore a moustache—Bismarck and Rhodes and Whistler all wore the moustache.
Quogge Myre himself wore a moustache....
As the glamour of initiation wore off, the youth was oppressed with the barrenness of the land—the petty jealousies, the tittle-tattle, the spites, the little treacheries.
He came to have an unpleasant and mean desire to sit the others out always—he knew that the moment the door closed upon him they tore his weaknesses to pieces, and garbled his motives.
And still the masterpiece did not come....
Netherby Gomme, lunching with him at the club, ended by walking back with him to his rooms; and, out of the earshot of the precious company, he warned the youth not to fling his fresh ideas to these people if he would weave them into his own art.
“These are the jackals of the arts, Noll,” said he grimly—“they filch the ideas of other men—they follow hot-foot on the latest success, turning out indifferent copies of the master-wits—they will suck your brains, vampire-like. These are they who, when a genius appears, cannot lift their eyes to his magnificence, to the beauty of his imagination, can but seek out the sources of his inspiration and laboriously accuse him of the footsteps in which he had trod. Be rid of the crew. Or, keep your quaint conceits for your workshop. Give them but the chips.... You gave those fellows this very day the scheme for a large work of art—they have not the brains to see the potentialities that lie latent in an idea—so some fellow of them will make a catchy magazine essay of it—catch the newness of it and exploit it. They are as vulgar thieves as though they stole your pence.... They are no help to you—I have done my best work even in my small way, as many a really big man has done his, in the back room of a dingy house, looking out upon a brick wall. What is in you is in you—you can benefit nothing from these others.... If you have companions, have splendid companions—the big rich-souled man. Friendship is the top of ambition. These others will steal your very tears.”