“Well, she generally marries us.”
“Yes, and lives in misery ever after.”
“Oh, we’re generous, and share it with her.”
“You see what I mean. The artist is held up to contempt, and all respectable people in the book are aghast at the girl’s choice. Now, why is this?”
“Ask me a harder one. It is because fiction is notoriously untrue to life. The wives of the Royal Academy live in a splendour and luxury undreamed of by the ordinary lady of title.”
“Nothing of the sort. It’s because the artists don’t business-manage themselves. They have no commercial sense. Therefore they are poor. Now, if a man invents a soap, what does he do?”
“Washes himself.”
“He advertises it. He becomes rich. Why, then, if a man writes a great book, should he not advertise himself and his book in every way that is open to him?”
“I believe he does, Barney. Where have you been living this while back to be so ignorant of the approved modern methods in art and literature?”
“Isn’t a great picture of more value to the world than a much-advertised soap?”