"A book? You will let me collaborate with you?"
"Collaboration is the modern method of evading responsibility. A genius moves in a cycle of masterpieces, but it is never a cycle made for two. It reminds me of the book by Mr. Rider Haggard and Mr. Lang. Too late Mr. Haggard found that he had killed the goose which laid the golden eggs. He had lost the notices which his collaborator could no longer write."
"But it is so much trouble to write a book. Would not a purple newspaper article effect your purpose?"
"One would think I was Mr. Athelstan Riley, or the Independent Labour Party, to hear you talk of effecting my purpose. But in any case the book's the thing."
"Tell me, Cecil, tell me about your book," said Lord Archie, with the ardour of a disciple of Cecil's.
"It will be called The Blue Gardenia. The title is one of the unemployed; it has nothing to do with the story."
"I fancy I remember that Mr. Barry Pain said that once before."
"No doubt. The clumsiness of acknowledgment is what makes the artist into an artisan. I am like Mr. Balfour, I do not hesitate to shoot—into my treasury the pearls of speech I have gathered from others, and then, Archie, I shall not lack the art of personal allusion. If my characters go out into the village and see the village clergymen, I shall make him the Archbishop of Canterbury. People like it. They say it's rude, but they read the book and repeat the rudeness. I shall be frankly rude. Minor poets and authors and actors will all be fair game. You suggest the publisher may object. To tell you the truth, ANY MAN will publish for me. The book will succeed—it is only mediocrities who indulge in failure—and the public will tumble over one another in their mad rush to be dosed with epigrams of genius."
"And I will write a flaming favourable notice in the Dodo."