New Grub Street Read Free

remained of the
stormy mood.
    Jasper renewed the breakfast-table conversation.
    'Look here,' he began, 'why don't you girls write something? I'm
convinced you could make money if you tried. There's a tremendous
sale for religious stories; why not patch one together? I am quite
serious.'
    'Why don't you do it yourself,' retorted Maud.
    'I can't manage stories, as I have told you; but I think you
could. In your place, I'd make a speciality of Sunday-school
prize-books; you know the kind of thing I mean. They sell like hot
cakes. And there's so deuced little enterprise in the business. If
you'd give your mind to it, you might make hundreds a year.'
    'Better say "abandon your mind to it."'
    'Why, there you are! You're a sharp enough girl. You can quote
as well as anyone I know.'
    'And please, why am I to take up an inferior kind of work?'
    'Inferior? Oh, if you can be a George Eliot, begin at the
earliest opportunity. I merely suggested what seemed
practicable.
    But I don't think you have genius, Maud. People have got that
ancient prejudice so firmly rooted in their heads—that one mustn't
write save at the dictation of the Holy Spirit. I tell you, writing
is a business. Get together half-a-dozen fair specimens of the
Sunday-school prize; study them; discover the essential points of
such composition; hit upon new attractions; then go to work
methodically, so many pages a day. There's no question of the
divine afflatus; that belongs to another sphere of life. We talk of
literature as a trade, not of Homer, Dante, and Shakespeare. If I
could only get that into poor Reardon's head. He thinks me a gross
beast, often enough. What the devil—I mean what on earth is there
in typography to make everything it deals with sacred? I don't
advocate the propagation of vicious literature; I speak only of
good, coarse, marketable stuff for the world's vulgar. You just
give it a thought, Maud; talk it over with Dora.'
    He resumed presently:
    'I maintain that we people of brains are justified in supplying
the mob with the food it likes. We are not geniuses, and if we sit
down in a spirit of long-eared gravity we shall produce only
commonplace stuff. Let us use our wits to earn money, and make the
best we can of our lives. If only I had the skill, I would produce
novels out-trashing the trashiest that ever sold fifty thousand
copies. But it needs skill, mind you: and to deny it is a gross
error of the literary pedants. To please the vulgar you must, one
way or another, incarnate the genius of vulgarity. For my own part,
I shan't be able to address the bulkiest multitude; my talent
doesn't lend itself to that form. I shall write for the upper
middle-class of intellect, the people who like to feel that what
they are reading has some special cleverness, but who can't
distinguish between stones and paste. That's why I'm so slow in
warming to the work. Every month I feel surer of myself,
however.
    That last thing of mine in The West End distinctly hit the mark;
it wasn't too flashy, it wasn't too solid. I heard fellows speak of
it in the train.'
    Mrs Milvain kept glancing at Maud, with eyes which desired her
attention to these utterances. None the less, half an hour after
dinner, Jasper found himself encountered by his sister in the
garden, on her face a look which warned him of what was coming.
    'I want you to tell me something, Jasper. How much longer shall
you look to mother for support? I mean it literally; let me have an
idea of how much longer it will be.'
    He looked away and reflected.
    'To leave a margin,' was his reply, 'let us say twelve
months.'
    'Better say your favourite "ten years" at once.'
    'No. I speak by the card. In twelve months' time, if not before,
I shall begin to pay my debts. My dear girl, I have the honour to
be a tolerably long-headed individual. I know what I'm about.'
    'And let us suppose mother were to die within half a year?'
    'I should make shift to do very well.'
    'You? And please—what of Dora and me?'
    'You would