Dr. Caliban laid his hand in a fatherly way upon my shoulder and said:
“You are still young; you do not know how long fame may take to find a man, if the way is not pointed out to her; and if she takes too long, sometimes he dies of a broken heart.”
It was a noble thought in one who had known Fame almost from the very day when, as a lad of 22 years old, he had stood up in the chapel at Barking Level and answered the preacher with the words, “Lord, here am I.”
Dr. Caliban continued in a few simple words to convince me that my foolish pride alone stood between this young genius and the fame he deserved. He pointed out what a weight would lie upon my mind were that poet some day to become famous, and to be able to say when I presented myself at his receptions:
“Get ye hence: I know ye not!”
He added the awful words that death might find us at any moment, and that then we should have to answer, not for our reasons or our motives, but for the things we have done, and for the things we have left undone. He added that he would regard a visit to this new writer as overtime work, and that he was ready to pay my expenses, including cab fares to and from the station. He ended with an appeal which would have convinced one less ready to yield: a magnificent picture of the Empire and of the Voice for which it had waited so long.
It seems unworthy, after the relation of this intimate domestic scene, to add any words of exhortation to the reader and student.
I will not pretend that the interview is a form of true literature. If I have been guilty of too great a confidence, my excess has proceeded from an earnest desire to watch over others of my kind, and to warn them lest by one chance refusal they should destroy the opportunities of a lifetime.
To interview another, even a rival, is sometimes necessary at the outset of a career. It is an experience that need not be repeated. It is one that no earnest student of human nature will regret.