The Truth About an Author

"By heaven!" I said, "I will write a novel!"

And I sat down to my oaken bureau with the air of a man who has resolved to commit a stupendous crime. Perhaps indeed it was a crime, this my first serious challenge to a neglectful and careless world. At any rate it was meant to be the beginning of the end, the end being twofold—fame and a thousand a year. You must bear well in mind that I was by no means the ordinary person, and my novel was by no means to be the ordinary novel. In these cases the very essence of the situation is always that one is not ordinary. I had just discovered that I could write—and when I use the term "write" here, I use it in a special sense, to be appreciated only by those elect who can themselves "write," and difficult of comprehension by all others. I had had a conte—exquisitely Gallic as to spirit and form—in the "Yellow Book," and that conte had been lauded in the "South Audley Street Gazette" or some organ of destructive criticism. My friends believed in Art, themselves, and me. I believed in myself, Art, and them. Could any factor be lacking to render the scene sublime and historic?