"
Rachel was amazed. For one thing it amazed her to hear Thackeray called
second-rate; and then she could not widen her point of view to believe
that there could be great writers in existence at the present day, or
if there were, that any one she knew could be a great writer, and his
self-confidence astounded her, and he became more and more remote.
"My other novel," Hewet continued, "is about a young man who is obsessed
by an idea--the idea of being a gentleman. He manages to exist at
Cambridge on a hundred pounds a year. He has a coat; it was once a very
good coat. But the trousers--they're not so good. Well, he goes up to
London, gets into good society, owing to an early-morning adventure on
the banks of the Serpentine. He is led into telling lies--my idea, you
see, is to show the gradual corruption of the soul--calls himself the
son of some great landed proprietor in Devonshire. Meanwhile the coat
becomes older and older, and he hardly dares to wear the trousers. Can't
you imagine the wretched man, after some splendid evening of debauchery,
contemplating these garments--hanging them over the end of the bed,
arranging them now in full light, now in shade, and wondering whether
they will survive him, or he will survive them? Thoughts of suicide
cross his mind. He has a friend, too, a man who somehow subsists
upon selling small birds, for which he sets traps in the fields near
Uxbridge.
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