He did what he could and felt that she, on her side, was doing no
less; but at the end of a year he was obliged to recognise that their
united effort had mainly produced the fine flower of discouragement.
At the end of a year the lustre had, to his own eyes, quite faded
from his unappreciated masterpiece, and he found himself writing for
a biographical dictionary little lives of celebrities he had never
heard of. To be printed, anywhere and anyhow, was a form of glory
for a man so unable to be acted, and to be paid, even at
encyclopaedic rates, had the consequence of making one resigned and
verbose. He couldn't smuggle style into a dictionary, but he could
at least reflect that he had done his best to learn from the drama
that it is a gross impertinence almost anywhere. He had knocked at
the door of every theatre in London, and, at a ruinous expense, had
multiplied type-copies of Nona Vincent to replace the neat
transcripts that had descended into the managerial abyss. His play
was not even declined--no such flattering intimation was given him
that it had been read.
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