One morning I just began
to write, and then it was very easy. Then everything else was easy.
The first publisher to whom I sent it accepted it. It was published
and had quite a success. I thought I was made for life. Anything
seemed possible to one. After all, so far as one's possibilities
went one was on a level with any one--Shakespeare, Dante, any one
you like. One might do anything. . . . I published a book a year,
after that, for ten years--ten years ten books, and then awoke to
the fact that I was nothing at all and would never be anything--that
I would never write like Shakespeare, and, a matter of equal
importance, would never sell like Mrs. Henry Wood. Not that I wished
to write like any one else. I had a great idea of keeping to my own
individuality, but I saw quite clearly that what I had in myself--
all of it--was no real importance to any one. I might so well have
been a butcher or baker for all that it mattered. I saw that I was
one of those unfortunate people--there are many of them--just in
between the artists and the shopkeepers. I was an artist all right,
but not a good enough one to count; had I been a shopkeeper I might
have sold my goods.
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