“I thought there was a chance of it, since they say all very good painters are so poor. But perhaps you are a little too fierce, although I am told these impressionists are terrible men.”
“The painting of pictures is one of the few things I have not attempted,” said the young man, consenting to this interruption that he might sit for his own portrait.
“Well, I should not say you are a writer of fiction. They are so tame. Besides they are all nearly as rich as solicitors.”
“Why not a poet?”
“Why not? although your fierceness would make you a dramatic, not a lyric one. Still it is impossible for you to be a poet, because I am sure that Witty would never have climbed up all those stairs to your miserable garret—I feel sure it is a garret with a sloping roof with a hole in it—”
“There is a pool under the hole which has been caused by the percolation of water—”
“On to the atrocious bare boards, its occupant being much too poor to afford a carpet. Yes, Witty would never have climbed up to your garret if you had been a poet. Or stay, he might, had you been Mrs. Felicia Hemans. As you are a seeker of documentary evidence, he has been known to recite her poems, at the request of the rector of this parish, to a Sunday-school party.”
“Base woman,” said the solicitor, with an air of injury; “I claim to be an admirer of the poet Longfellow.”
“Never, Witty, in your heart; it is merely your fatal craving to be respectable in all things. But in the matter of poetry you must be content to remain outside. You would never have climbed those rickety stairs to that cold garret to see John Keats.”
“Well, now, Featherhead, did I not tell you at the first that our young friend was England’s future Lord Chancellor?”