They're scholars, both of them. I know one or two wretched
starving creatures like that who quote Aristotle at you over a fried
herring and a pint of porter. Fashionable life, too, I have to represent
at some length, in order to show my hero under all circumstances. Lady
Theo Bingham Bingley, whose bay mare he had the good fortune to stop,
is the daughter of a very fine old Tory peer. I'm going to describe the
kind of parties I once went to--the fashionable intellectuals, you know,
who like to have the latest book on their tables. They give parties,
river parties, parties where you play games. There's no difficulty in
conceiving incidents; the difficulty is to put them into shape--not to
get run away with, as Lady Theo was. It ended disastrously for her, poor
woman, for the book, as I planned it, was going to end in profound and
sordid respectability. Disowned by her father, she marries my hero, and
they live in a snug little villa outside Croydon, in which town he is
set up as a house agent. He never succeeds in becoming a real gentleman
after all. That's the interesting part of it. Does it seem to you the
kind of book you'd like to read?" he enquired; "or perhaps you'd like my
Stuart tragedy better," he continued, without waiting for her to answer
him. "My idea is that there's a certain quality of beauty in the past,
which the ordinary historical novelist completely ruins by his absurd
conventions.
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