Читать книгу Nights: Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties - Elizabeth Robins Pennell - Страница 13

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As time went on, my journeys were fewer and J. took his oftener by himself. A new variety of task was set me that left so little leisure for the galleries that I gave up "doing" them for my London papers. My days went to the making of books which, whether I wrote them alone or in collaboration with J., required my undivided attention. When these were such books as the Life of My Uncle, Charles Godfrey Leland, or the Life of Whistler, they called for research, days of reading in the Art Library at South Kensington, the British Museum, the London Library, days of seeing people and places, days of travelling, days of correspondence, days upon days at my desk writing—these days crowded with interesting incident, curious surprises, amusing talk, hours of hope, hours of black despair—in their own way days of discovery and adventure. But in this case again the tale has been told and I am not so foolish as to sit down and tell it anew, sorely as I may be tempted. Anybody who reads further will find that the principal truth my nights have revealed to me is that the man who is interested—really interested—in something, does not want to talk, and often cannot think, about anything else. But it does not follow that he can make sure of listeners as keen to hear about it. The writer may, in his enthusiasm, write the same book twice, but even if it prove a "best-seller" the first time, he runs a risk the second of seeing it disposed of as a remainder.