His last remark to the ear of anyone who has genuine talent, whether artist or author or poet, or what you please, sounds like a sacrilegious blasphemy.
"Make up something!"
Great heavens! What an expression!
Is a writer, then, a cook, preparing a new dish? Is he a nursery maid soothing a refractory child? Is he a woman's dressmaker taking her mistress's orders?
Dinner was served just then, and we took our seats at the table in silence.
I thought I should have no need to answer.
However, when the butler had deposited the soup and shut the door after him, my father returned to the attack.
"Yes, Victor," he said in a friendly way, as if a happy solution of my difficulties had just occurred to him, "why don't you make up something quite orthodox and keep your own opinions out of it?"
I sighed and took half a glass of claret to fortify me. I saw I was in for propounding my views upon genius, and I did not feel up to it.
I could have avoided the argument, doubtless, by seeming to assent, by promising to "make up something," and saved myself a number of words.