Hypocrite lecteur
You can always spot the newbie. Not so much by the greenish tinge about the ears as the golden, starstruck expression and the ever-earnest gaze. Newbies gravitate towards unremarkable planetoids like Rothenstein like short-circuited satellites, meant to survey the heavens but caught instead by a nearby gravitational well of massive self-importance.
Newbies are an inevitability, yes, but pity them at your peril: they’re gaseous giants in training, and one will take the place that is rightfully yours before you can raise an ironic eyebrow.
Beerbohm was our newbie. But like all newbies he was starstruck at all of us, even me, even if the others were not aware that I included myself in the “us.” And so he worked at it, you know. Read my books, sought me out, remarked intelligently. Not that I let on that I appreciated that. I was too too for that. But I did, I definitely did. At first. Yes, if Rothenstein wouldn’t take me up properly, perhaps I’d rise with the newbie usurper instead.
Had I only known how he would betray me! The inevitability, the chagrin, the excess! Ah, sincerity, you are the most fickle mistress of all!
