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.
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