"Not yet; but you'll soon be shaping that way. This I realise: journalism will give any moderately clever fellow a living, but even a genius will scarcely win a reputation that way. Billy Ricketts writes a book, and even if it's a bad one, Billy is for a week or two more noticed in the papers than the editor of the Times will be in five years. The journalist who gives his best to his paper is a pathetic figure—from the British or Henry Charles point of view, I mean, as I'm looking at the situation with your ideas to direct me, your view of success. He is probably our nearest approach to the Greek sculptors I seem to remember quoting to you once. Anonymity is essential to the true artist, I hold; and strangely, it is the newspaper man—none less artistic—who conforms to this law in England, perhaps unwillingly."
"Of course, we'll never agree on that point," said Henry, "as I'm all for personality."
"So; that's what I know, and hence my line of reasoning. Play up your personality for all it's worth, and be happy. It's not my way; but no matter. And to do so, journalism is at best only a training school. What you must do is a book. Once you make a moderate success with a book, your precious personality has become a marketable thing in modern Philistia."
"You mean a novel, I suppose?"
"I mean a book. You're not a poet, or the song within would have rilled out long ago. Ergo, it's not a book of poetry. You have a literary touch, and might do well in the essay; but essays are 'off' just now, says the Ass-in-Chief of the great B. P. You haven't gone round the world on your hands and knees, or walked from Charing Cross to St. Paul's on your head—either of which achievements would have given you copy for a sensational book hot with personality, and made you the most sought-after lecturer of the day. So there remains only the novel, and the B. P. shouts for more novel, like the whimpering infant it is. Give it novel, my lad. You, as well as anybody. That the novel has become a contemptible convention of the publishing trade is not its fault. Always remember we have Meredith and Hardy and Stevenson writing novels, and you will think well of that vehicle of expression."
"But I have no great impulse to write fiction. I'd rather write about the men who write it," Henry said.
"A pity that; for little of real value is done without the impulse. But one never knows. Try and see. The impulse may follow in the same sense that certain psychologists believe the simulation of an emotion produces its effect. I like the idea; but am not quite ready to accept it. Reproduce the muscular expressions of sorrow or joy, and you will after a time be sorrowful or glad, says Nordau. There's something in the thought, perhaps. Similarly, determine to write a novel, and the mood for novel-writing will be induced. I don't say I agree with the theory. But it's worth a trial, and anyhow a novel is the easiest form in which to make a public appeal, to make merchandise of your personality."
Adrian Grant's face wore its half-cynical smile as he said this, and extending his hand to Henry, he added abruptly, as his manner was: "This is your 'bus, I think; I must make for Kensington."
Henry shook hands at once with a hurried expression of thanks for his friend's kindness, and jumped on the 'bus, while Mr. P. hailed a passing hansom, and set out for his rooms in Gloucester Road.
Vague and confused were the thoughts of Henry as the 'bus lumbered its way by historic Drury Lane and across Holborn, to his door in Bloomsbury. A 'bus ride was still full of romance to him, and the glimmering lamps of London were dearer to his mind than "the swing of Pleiades"; every jingling cab that passed, every lighted window, was touched with romance in his eyes. To make this wondrous City listen to him—how the dream thrilled him! That the unknown thousands who flitted through these world-famous streets, and lived behind these lighted windows, might read what he wrote and know him for the writer—it was worth trying for. Already he had seen his book brave in bright gilt, shouldering the best of them in the book-shops of Holborn and the Strand; he could read the reviews distinctly: noticed even the size and style of the type they were set in, was gratified to find them so remarkably favourable, and—"Wob'n Plice!" shouted the conductor.