"How do writers manage to live, Mr. Jannissary?" John said to him at this point, and Mr. Jannissary murmured that there was a divinity which shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we may.
"Oh, is that it?" said John.
"Some men have been very hungry, MacDermott because they served their Art faithfully. Think of the garrets, the lonely attics in which beautiful things have been imagined!..."
"I've no desire to go hungry or to live in a lonely attic, Mr. Jannissary. Let me tell you that!"
"No ... no, of course not. None of us have. I trust I am not a voluptuary or self-indulgent in any way, but I too would dislike to be excessively hungry. Still, I think it must be a great consolation to a man to think that he had made a great work out of ... his pain, so to speak!"
John reflected for a moment on this. Then he said, "How do you manage to keep going, Mr. Jannissary, when you publish so many books that don't bring you any return?"
Mr. Jannissary glanced very interrogatively at John. Then he waved his hands, and murmured vaguely. "Sacrifices," he said. "We all have to make sacrifices!..."
John left the publisher and went on to the office of the Evening Herald where he saw Hinde. "I've brought an article I thought you'd like to print," he said when he had been admitted to Hinde's office. Hinde glanced quickly through it. "Good," he said, "I'll put it in to-morrow. I suppose," he continued, "you wouldn't like to do a job for me?"
"What sort of a job?"
"There's to be a great ceremony at Westminster Abbey to-morrow ... dedication of a chapel for the Order of the Bath. The King'll be there. Like to go and write an account of it?"