I am sick of the smell of the
incense I have swung to this and that false god--Zola, Yeats, _et tous
ces autres_. I am angry to have got housemaid's knee, because I got
it on doorsteps that led to nowhere. There is but one doorstep worth
scrubbing. The doorstep of Charles Dickens....
Did he write many books? I know not, it does not greatly matter, he
wrote the "Pickwick Papers"; that suffices. I have read as yet but
one chapter, describing a Christmas party in a country house. Strange
that anyone should have essayed to write about anything but that!
Christmas--I see it now--is the only moment in which men and women are
really alive, are really worth writing about. At other seasons they
do not exist for the purpose of art. I spit on all seasons except
Christmas.... Is he not in all fiction the greatest figure, this Mr.
Wardell, this old "squire" rosy-cheeked, who entertains this Christmas
party at his house? He is more truthful, he is more significant, than
any figure in Balzac. He is better than all Balzac's figures rolled
into one.... I used to kneel on that doorstep. Balzac wrote many
books. But now it behoves me to ask myself whether he ever wrote a
good book. One knows that he used to write for fifteen hours at a
stretch, gulping down coffee all the while.
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