"I begin already," I commented, "to dislike that phrase--"
"Nevertheless, you need never look to find yourself regarded as
anything save the author of _Jurgen_ and, just incidentally, of
some other books. There, after all, my friend, the Tumble-bug has
scored: and nobody, for the rest of your lifetime, will you ever hear
speak of those other books except, more or less politely, to find
fault with their likeness or their unlikeness to _Jurgen_. Either
quality, as you perhaps have learned already, is equally to be deplored
and shrugged over."
"As the subscriber to a clipping bureau," I admitted, "I have noticed
the fact rather unavoidably. Any likeness to _Jurgen_ is the
tiresome reworking of an exhausted vein: but any difference from
_Jurgen_ proves my exhausted abilities."
Again beneath his moustache his teeth showed. "So you remain, you see,
the author of _Jurgen_."
"Scott," I replied, "wrote _The Antiquary_; and Thackeray wrote
_Henry Esmond_; and Dickens wrote _Our Mutual Friend_: yet
people even to-day continue to think of them as the authors, severally,
of _Ivanhoe_ and _Vanity Fair_ and _Pickwick Papers_. So
I suppose that nothing can be done about it."
Charteris regarded me for a lengthened while. "I see: you have become
stoically reconciled to having posterity go on thinking of you, for
century after century, as merely the author of _Jurgen_."