The way of all flesh - Samuel Butler [201]
He never asked a reviewer to dinner in his life. I have told him over and over again that this is madness, and find that this is the only thing I can say to him which makes him angry with me.
“What can it matter to me,” he says, “whether people read my books or not? It may matter to them—but I have too much money to want more, and if the books have any stuff in them it will work by-and-by. I do not know nor greatly care whether they are good or not. What opinion can any sane man form about his own work? Some people must write stupid books just as there must be junior ops and third class poll men. Why should I complain of being among the mediocrities? If a man is not absolutely below mediocrity let him be thankful—besides, the books will have to stand by themselves some day, so the sooner they begin the better.”
I spoke to his publisher about him not long since. “Mr Pontifex,” he said, “is a homo unius libri, but it doesn’t do to tell him so.”
I could see the publisher, who ought to know, had lost all faith in Ernest’s literary position, and looked upon him as a man whose failure was all the more hopeless for the fact of his having once made a coup. “He is in a very solitary position, Mr Overton,” continued the publisher. “He has formed no alliances, and has made enemies not only of the religious world but of the literary and scientific brotherhood as well. This will not do nowadays. If a man wishes to get on he must belong to a set, and Mr Pontifex belongs to no set—not even to a club.”
I replied, “Mr Pontifex is the exact likeness of Othello, but with a difference—he hates not wisely but too well. He would dislike the literary and scientific swells if he were to come to know them and they him; there is no natural solidarity between him and them, and if he were brought into contact with them his last state would be worse than his first. His instinct tells him this, so he keeps clear of them, and attacks them whenever he thinks they deserve it—in the hope, perhaps, that a younger generation will listen to him more willingly than the present.”
“Can anything,”’ said the publisher, “be conceived more impracticable and imprudent?”
To all this Ernest replies with one word only—“Wait.”
Such is my friend’s latest development. He would not, it is true, run much chance at present of trying to found a College of Spiritual Pathology, but I must leave the reader to determine whether there is not a strong family likeness between the Ernest of the College of Spiritual Pathology and the Ernest who will insist on addressing the next generation rather than his own. He says he trusts that there is not, and takes the sacrament duly once a year as a sop to Nemesis lest he should again feel strongly upon any subject. It rather fatigues him, but “no man’s opinions,” he sometimes says, “can be worth holding unless he knows how to deny them easily and gracefully upon occasion in the cause of charity.” In politics he is a Conservative so far as his vote and interest are concerned. In all other respects he is an advanced Radical. His father and grandfather could probably no more understand his state of mind than they could understand Chinese, but those who know him intimately do not know that they wish him greatly different from what he actually is.
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