New Grub Street quotes

“I don’t know. It happened to catch my eye in the paper yesterday that someone was to be hanged at Newgate this morning.

There’s a certain satisfaction in reflecting that it is not oneself.

”

I am the literary man of 1882. He won’t make concessions, or rather, he can’t make them; he can’t supply the market. I—well, you may say that at present I do nothing; but that’s a great mistake, I am learning my business.

Literature nowadays is a trade.

Putting aside men of genius, who may succeed by mere cosmic force, your successful man of letters is your skilful tradesman. He thinks first and foremost of the markets;

so are they. But he began with money and friends; he came from Oxford into the thick of advertised people; his name was mentioned in print six times a week before he had written a dozen articles. This kind of thing will become the rule.

Men won’t succeed in literature that they may get into society, but will get into society that they may succeed in literature.

”

“To whom isn’t it a misfortune?” pursued her companion. “Poverty is the root of all social ills; its existence accounts even for the ills that arise from wealth. The poor man is a man labouring in fetters.

I declare there is no word in our language which sounds so hideous to me as ‘Poverty.’

”

“To whom isn’t it a misfortune?” pursued her companion. “

Poverty is the root of all social ills; its existence accounts even for the ills that arise from wealth.

The poor man is a man labouring in fetters. I declare there is no word in our language which sounds so hideous to me as ‘Poverty.’ ”

But whilst Maud and Dora were still with their homely schoolmistress, Wattleborough saw fit to establish a Girls’ High School, and the moderateness of the fees enabled these sisters to receive an intellectual training wholly incompatible with the material conditions of their life.

To the relatively poor (who are so much worse off than the poor absolutely) education is in most cases a mocking cruelty.

The burden of their brother’s support made it very difficult for Maud and Dora even to dress as became their intellectual station; amusements, holidays, the purchase of such simple luxuries as were all but indispensable to them, could not be thought of.

“I’ll tell you quite honestly what I do think,” she replied, after a short silence. “

You are much weaker than I imagined. Difficulties crush you, instead of rousing you to struggle.

”

There’s the day’s work cut out for them; no question of mood and feeling; they have just to work at something, and when the evening comes, they have earned their wages, they are free to rest and enjoy themselves.

What an insane thing it is to make literature one’s only means of support!

When the most trivial accident may at any time prove fatal to one’s power of work for weeks or months. No, that is the unpardonable sin! To make a trade of an art! I am rightly served for attempting such a brutal folly.”

“Well, I think so. But I know the value of money better now. I know it is the most powerful thing in the world.

If I had to choose between a glorious reputation with poverty and a contemptible popularity with wealth, I should choose the latter.

”

His money dwindled, and there came a winter during which he suffered much from cold and hunger. What a blessed refuge it was, there under the great dome, when he must else have sat in his windy garret with the mere pretence of a fire!

The Reading-room was his true home; its warmth enwrapped him kindly; the peculiar odour of its atmosphere⁠—at first a cause of headache⁠—grew dear and delightful to him.

But he could not sit here until his last penny should be spent. Something practical must be done, and practicality was not his strong point.

Solitude fostered a sensitiveness which to begin with was extreme; the lack of stated occupation encouraged his natural tendency to dream and procrastinate and hope for the improbable.

He was a recluse in the midst of millions, and viewed with dread the necessity of going forth to fight for daily food.

Little by little he had ceased to hold any correspondence with his former friends at Hereford.

“That’s just what it does, my dear; you never said anything truer.

Poverty will make the best people bad, if it gets hard enough.

Why there’s so much of it in the world, I’m sure I can’t see.”

“Selfishness—that’s one of my faults. It isn’t a brutal kind of selfishness; the thought of it often enough troubles me.

If I were rich, I should be a generous and good man; I know I should.

So would many another poor fellow whose worst features come out under hardship. This isn’t a heroic type; of course not. I am a civilised man, that’s all.”

Just because you are one of the few people I regard with sincere respect. I don’t know you very well, but quite well enough to respect you. My sisters think of you in the same way.

I shall do many a base thing in life, just to get money and reputation; I tell you this that you mayn’t be surprised if anything of that kind comes to your ears.

I can’t afford to live as I should like to.”

“

People who are going to live unworthily don’t declare it in this way.

”

In most of them his name was written, and there were often pencilled notes in the margin. Of course he had chosen from among the most valuable he possessed; such a multitude must else have been sold to make this sum of two pounds ten.

Books are cheap, you know. At need, one can buy a Homer for fourpence, a Sophocles for sixpence.

It was not rubbish that he had accumulated at so small expenditure, but the library of a poor student—battered bindings, stained pages, supplanted editions.

“They are laughable,” asserted the other, “however serious to the persons concerned. The mere fact of grave issues in life depending on such paltry things is monstrously ludicrous.

Life is a huge farce, and the advantage of possessing a sense of humour is that it enables one to defy fate with mocking laughter.

”

“That’s all very well, but it isn’t an original view. I am not lacking in sense of humour, but I prefer to treat these aspects of life from an impartial standpoint.

The man who laughs takes the side of a cruel omnipotence, if one can imagine such a thing.

I want to take no side at all; simply to say, Look, this is the kind of thing that happens.”

he would have to cut away this circumstance, and add that. Why? I should like to know. Such conventionalism results from stage necessities. Fiction hasn’t yet outgrown the influence of the stage on which it originated.

Whatever a man writes for effect is wrong and bad.

”

“The simplest thing in the world. At present it’s a large part of my business to make acquaintances. Why, look you; a man who has to live by miscellaneous writing couldn’t get on without a vast variety of acquaintances.

One’s own brain would soon run dry; a clever fellow knows how to use the brains of other people.

”

‘Advice given on choice of subjects, MSS. read, corrected, and recommended to publishers. Moderate terms.’ A fact! And what’s more, he made six guineas in the first fortnight; so he says, at all events. Now that’s one of the finest jokes I ever heard.

A man who can’t get anyone to publish his own books makes a living by telling other people how to write!

”

“

Equal to that of the contents of a mouldy nut.

”

“Honest journey-work!” cried Jasper. “There are few men in London capable of such a feat. Many a fellow could write more in quantity, but they couldn’t command my market.

It’s rubbish, but rubbish of a very special kind, of fine quality.

”

On that day she said to herself: I could love him if he cared to seek my love.

Premature, perhaps; why, yes, but one who is starving is not wont to feel reluctance at the suggestion of food.

The first man who had approached her with display of feeling and energy and youthful self-confidence; handsome too, it seemed to her. Her womanhood went eagerly to meet him.

His desire was to impress Amy with the bitter intensity of his sufferings; pathos and loving words seemed to have lost their power upon her, but perhaps if he yielded to that other form of passion she would be shaken out of her coldness.

The stress of injured love is always tempted to speech which seems its contradiction.

Reardon had the strangest mixture of pain and pleasure in flinging out these first words of wrath that he had ever addressed to Amy;

The world has no pity on a man who can’t do or produce something it thinks worth money. You may be a divine poet, and if some good fellow doesn’t take pity on you you will starve by the roadside.

Society is as blind and brutal as fate.

I have no right to complain of my own ill-fortune; it’s my own fault (in a sense) that I can’t continue as well as I began; if I could write books as good as the early ones I should earn money.

I have no enjoyment which isn’t tainted by that thought, and I can suffer no pain which it doesn’t increase.

The curse of poverty is to the modern world just what that of slavery was to the ancient.

Rich and destitute stand to each other as free man and bond. You remember the line of Homer I have often quoted about the demoralising effect of enslavement; poverty degrades in the same way.”

“What think you of this story?” asked Biffen. “Is this possible in a woman of any merit?”

“Anything is possible in a woman,” Reardon replied, harshly.

They walked in silence as far as Portland Road Station. There, with an assurance that he would come to a garret-supper before leaving London, Reardon parted from his friend and turned westward.

He met Amy’s full look, and was conscious of that in it which corresponded to his own brutality.

She had become suddenly a much older woman; her cheeks were tight drawn into thinness, her lips were bloodlessly hard, there was an unknown furrow along her forehead, and she glared like the animal that defends itself with tooth and claw.

“Do as you think fit? Indeed!”

Yet this energetic lady had no social ambitions that pointed above her own stratum.

She did not aim at intimacy with her superiors; merely at superiority among her intimates.

Her circle was not large, but in that circle she must be regarded with the respect due to a woman of refined tastes and personal distinction. Her little dinners might be of rare occurrence, but to be invited must be felt a privilege. “Mrs.

people are always ready to allow literary men to do rather odd things—up to a certain point. We should have behaved as if there were nothing that called for explanation. But what are we to do now?”

Like her multitudinous kind, Mrs. Yule lived only in the opinions of other people.

What others would say was her ceaseless preoccupation. She had never conceived of life as something proper to the individual;

Now, confession of the truth was the last thing that would occur to Mrs. Yule when social relations were concerned.

Her whole existence was based on bold denial of actualities.

And, as is natural in such persons, she had the ostrich instinct strongly developed; though very acute in the discovery of her friends’ shams and lies, she deceived herself ludicrously in the matter of concealing her own embarrassments.

She undressed at leisure, and stretched her limbs in the cold, soft, fragrant bed. A sigh of profound relief escaped her.

How good it was to be alone!

And in a quarter of an hour she was sleeping as peacefully as the child who shared her room.

He felt utterly alone in the world. Unless it were Biffen, what mortal would give him kindly welcome under any roof?

These stripped rooms were symbolical of his life; losing money, he had lost everything.

“Be thankful that you exist, that these morsels of food are still granted you. Man has a right to nothing in this world that he cannot pay for. Did you imagine that love was an exception? Foolish idealist!

losing money, he had lost everything. “Be thankful that you exist, that these morsels of food are still granted you. Man has a right to nothing in this world that he cannot pay for. Did you imagine that love was an exception? Foolish idealist!

Love is one of the first things to be frightened away by poverty.

Go and live upon your twelve-and-sixpence a week, and on your memories of the past.”

His own fault.

A man has no business to fail; least of all can he expect others to have time to look back upon him or pity him if he sink under the stress of conflict.

Those behind will trample over his body; they can’t help it; they themselves are borne onwards by resistless pressure.

Her disadvantages, for the present, were insuperable. She had no one to chaperon her; she could not form intimacies because of her poverty. A rare invitation to luncheon, a permission to call at the sacred hour of small-talk—this was all she could hope for.

“I advise you to possess your soul in patience,” Jasper said to her

, as they talked one day on the seashore. “You are not to blame that you live without conventional protection, but it necessitates your being very careful.

“Nonsense?

Oh, this female lack of logic!

Then my argument has been utterly thrown away. Now that’s one of the things I like in Miss Rupert; she can follow an argument and see consequences. And for that matter so can Marian.

“I am afraid,” said Marian, “I haven’t so much sympathy with literary undertakings as you would like me to have.”

Money is a great fortifier of self-respect.

Since she had become really conscious of her position as the owner of five thousand pounds, Marian spoke with a steadier voice, walked with firmer step; mentally she felt herself altogether a less dependent being.

Refuge from despair is often found in the passion of self-pity and that spirit of obstinate resistance which it engenders.

In certain natures the extreme of self-pity is intolerable, and leads to self-destruction; but there are less fortunate beings whom the vehemence of their revolt against fate strengthens to endure in suffering. These latter are rather imaginative than passionate;

“

Because the brains are always at the top.

Not bad, I think, eh?”

“I should hope you do, indeed. What downright lies are accepted as indisputable! That about love being a woman’s whole life; who believes it really?

Love is the most insignificant thing in most women’s lives. It occupies a few months, possibly a year or two, and even then I doubt if it is often the first consideration.

”

“

Because there is so little love in real life. That’s the truth of it. Why do poor people care only for stories about the rich? The same principle.

”

Ah! if this had happened in the first year of his marriage, what more blessed man than he would have walked the earth! But it came after irreparable harm.

No amount of wealth could undo the ruin caused by poverty.

It was natural for him, as soon as he could think with deliberation, to turn towards his only friend.

“Amy, of course! I’m delighted on her account. Ah! but if it had come a long time ago, in the happy days! Then she, too, would have gone to Greece, wouldn’t she?

Everything in life comes too soon or too late.

What it would have meant for her and for me! She would never have hated me then, never. Biffen, am I base or contemptible? She thinks so. That’s how poverty has served me.

Suppose poor Reardon’s novels had been published in the full light of reputation instead of in the struggling dawn which was never to become day, wouldn’t they have been magnified by every critic?

You have to become famous before you can secure the attention which would give fame.

”

“No; you’ll probably make it worth a guinea or so. You must remember that the people who read women’s papers are irritated, simply irritated, by anything that isn’t glaringly obvious. They hate an unusual thought.

The art of writing for such papers⁠—indeed, for the public in general⁠—is to express vulgar thought and feeling in a way that flatters the vulgar thinkers and feelers.

Just abandon your mind to it, and then let me see it again.”

“My name is Duke,” he said, “and

I was christened Victor⁠—possibly because I was doomed to defeat in life.

I wish you could have associated the memory of me with happier circumstances.”

These two were richly endowed with the kindly and the imaginative virtues; if fate threw them amid incongruous circumstances, is their endowment of less value?

You scorn their passivity; but it was their nature and their merit to be passive.

Gifted with independent means, each of them would have taken quite a different aspect in your eyes. The sum of their faults was their inability to earn money; but, indeed, that inability does not call for unmingled disdain.

“

To have had even a small reputation, and to have outlived it, is a sort of anticipation of death.

The man Edwin Reardon, whose name was sometimes spoken in a tone of interest, is really and actually dead. And what remains of me is resigned to that. I have an odd fancy that it will make death itself easier;

At all events, a yearly visit of a week would be quite sufficient for all the special features of the town.

London is only a huge shop, with an hotel on the upper storeys.

To be sure, if you make it your artistic subject, that’s a different thing. But neither you nor I would do that by deliberate choice.”

“I might; but we have both of us too little practicality.

The art of living is the art of compromise.

We have no right to foster sensibilities, and conduct ourselves as if the world allowed of ideal relations; it leads to misery for others as well as ourselves. Genial coarseness is what it behoves men like you and me to cultivate.

we know that human happiness is the origin and end of all moral considerations. What right have we to make ourselves and others miserable for the sake of an obstinate idealism? It is our duty to make the best of circumstances.

Why will you go cutting your loaf with a razor when you have a serviceable bread-knife?

”

He had the strange sensation of knowing that whatever was needful could be paid for; it relieved his mind immensely.

To the rich, illness has none of the worst horrors only understood by the poor.

“Don’t speak a word more than you can help,” said the doctor as he watched Reardon withdraw.

yes, but also more likely than not it will be swamped in the flood of literature that pours forth week after week, and won’t have attention fixed long enough upon it to establish its repute.

The struggle for existence among books is nowadays as severe as among men.

If a writer has friends connected with the press, it is the plain duty of those friends to do their utmost to help him. What matter if they exaggerate, or even lie?

This was on one side a relief but on the other it confirmed her fears. She would rather have heard him plead with her to neglect her parents for the sake of being his wife.

Love excuses everything, and his selfishness would have been easily lost sight of in the assurance that he still desired her.

“You say,” she replied, with bent head, “that it would bring us fifty pounds a year. If another fifty were added to that, my father and mother would be supported in case the worst comes. I might earn fifty pounds.”

The tone of resignation was too marked.

Jasper was not good as a comedian; he lacked subtlety.

“We must wait,” fell from Marian’s lips, in the whisper of despair.

As a bachelor, I can go about freely, make acquaintances, dine at people’s houses, perhaps entertain a useful friend now and then—and so on.

It is not merit that succeeds in my line; it is merit plus opportunity.

Marrying now, I cut myself off from opportunity, that’s all.”

Yet even here he was too often reminded that the poverty-stricken of the class to which poverty is natural were not condemned to endure in solitude.

Only he who belonged to no class, who was rejected alike by his fellows in privation and by his equals in intellect, must die without having known the touch of a loving woman’s hand.

The summer went by, and he was unconscious of its warmth and light. How his days passed he could not have said.