Herrick Vaine is a puffy, pimply person, with a mincing manner and an emasculated voice. He might have been a poet of note but for two things: while reading his work you always have a feeling that you have seen something oddly like it before; and after you have read it all you retain is a certain dark-brown taste on the mental palate. Otherwise he is all right.
And now, having described the principals, let me record the little dialogue to which I was the unseen listener.
Vaine (with elaborate carelessness): By the way, you haven’t read my latest book, I suppose?
Quince (cooingly): Why yes, my boy. I lost no time in reading it. I positively wallowed—I mean revelled in it. Reminds me of Baudelaire in spots. Without you and a chosen few what would literature be?
Vaine (enraptured): How lovely of you to say so. You know I value your opinion more than any in the world.
Quince (waving his gold-rimmed eyeglasses): Not at all. Merely my duty as a watchdog of letters. Yes, I thought your Songs Saturnalian in a class by itself; but now I can say without being accused of a lapse of literary judgment that your Poems Plutonian marks a distinct epoch in modern poetry. There is an undefinable something in your work, a je ne sais quoi ... you know.
Vaine: Yes; thank you, thank you.
Quince: Is it selling, by the way?
Vaine: Thank heaven, no! How banal! Popular success would imply artistic failure. To the public true art must always be inaccessible. If ever I find my work becoming bourgeois, it will be because I have committed artistic suicide. On my bended knees I pray to be delivered from popularity.
Quince: I see. You prefer the award of posterity to the reward of prosperity. Well, no doubt time will bring you your meed of recognition. In the meantime give me a copy of the poems, and I will review it in next week’s Compass.