And there was another bit that Burton said was even better.
"I have been a fighter all my life. I have had many enemies. What man who has ever done anything worth doing has not had them? But our accounts are separate, and I am willing to leave the ultimate reckoning to time." There were lots of things like that. Burton said it was like that cloak he used to wear. It would have been so noble if only he had been a little bigger.
And there was an entry in his diary that I think beat everything he'd ever done. "May 3, 1905. Lankester died. Finished the last chapter of 'A Son of Thunder.' Ave Frater, atque vale."
I thought there was a fine audacity about it, but Burton said there wasn't. Audacity implied a consciousness of danger, and Wrackham had none. Burton was in despair.
"Come," I said, "there must be something in the Letters."
No, the Letters were all about himself, and there wasn't anything in him. You couldn't conceive the futility, the fatuity, the vanity—it was a disease with him.
"I couldn't have believed it, Simpson, if I hadn't seen him empty himself."
"But the hinterland?" I said. "How about the hinterland? That was what you were to have opened up."
"There wasn't any hinterland. He's opened himself up. You can see all there was of him. It's lamentable, Simpson, lamentable."
I said it seemed to me to be supremely funny. And he said I wouldn't think it funny if I were responsible for it.