Produced by David Widger
By Winston Churchill
I was about to say that I had known the Celebrity from the time he worekilts. But I see I shall have to amend that, because he was not acelebrity then, nor, indeed, did he achieve fame until some time after Ihad left New York for the West. In the old days, to my commonplace andunobserving mind, he gave no evidences of genius whatsoever. He neverread me any of his manuscripts, which I can safely say he would have donehad he written any at that time, and therefore my lack of detection ofhis promise may in some degree be pardoned. But he had then none of theoddities and mannerisms which I hold to be inseparable from genius, andwhich struck my attention in after days when I came in contact with theCelebrity. Hence I am constrained to the belief that his eccentricitymust have arrived with his genius, and both after the age of twenty-five.Far be it from me to question the talents of one upon whose head has beenset the laurel of fame!
When I knew him he was a young man without frills or foibles, with anexcellent head for business. He was starting in to practise law in adowntown office with the intention of becoming a great corporationlawyer. He used to drop into my chambers once in a while to smoke, andwas first-rate company. When I gave a dinner there was generally a coverlaid for him. I liked the man for his own sake, and even had he promisedto turn out a celebrity it would have had no weight with me. I look uponnotoriety with the same indifference as on the buttons on a man'sshirt-front, or the crest on his note-paper.
When I went West, he fell out of my life. I probably should not havegiven him another thought had I not caught sight of his name, in oldcapitals, on a daintily covered volume in a book-stand. I had littletime or inclination for reading fiction; my days were busy ones, andmy nights were spent with law books. But I bought the volume out ofcuriosity, wondering the while whether he could have written it. I wassoon set at rest, for the dedication was to a young woman of whom I hadoften heard him speak. The volume was a collection of short stories. Onthese I did not feel myself competent to sit in judgment, for my personaltaste in fiction, if I could be said to have had any, took another turn.The stories dealt mainly with the affairs of aristocratic young men andaristocratic young women, and were differentiated to fit situations onlymet with in that society which does not have to send descriptions of itsfunctions to the newspapers. The stories did not seem to me to touchlife. They were plainly intended to have a bracing moral effect, andperhaps had this result for the people at whom they were aimed. Theyleft with me the impression of a well-delivered stereopticon lecture,with characters about as life-like as the shadows on the screen, andwhisking on and off, at the mercy of the operator. Their charm to me layin the manner of the telling, the style, which I am forced to admit wasdelightful.
But the book I had bought was a success, a great success, if thenewspapers and the reports of the sales were to be trusted. I read thecriticisms out of curiosity more than any other prompting, and no two ofthem were alike: they veered from extreme negative to extreme positive.I have to confess that it gratified me not a little to find the negativesfor the most part of my poor way of thinking. The positives, on theother hand, declared the gifted young author to have found a manner oftreatment of social life entirely new. Other critics still insisted itwas social ridicule: but if this were so, the satire was too de