In the third place, the mental and
moral shortcomings of Reardon are by no means dissembled by the author. He
is, as the careful student of the novels will perceive, a greatly
strengthened and improved rifacimento of Kingcote, while Amy Reardon is a
better observed Isabel, regarded from a slightly different point of view.
Jasper Milvain is, to my thinking, a perfectly fair portrait of an
ambitious publicist or journalist of the day--destined by determination,
skill, energy, and social ambition to become an editor of a successful
journal or review, and to lead the life of central London. Possessing a
keen and active mind, expression on paper is his handle; he has no love of
letters as letters at all. But his outlook upon the situation is just
enough. Reardon has barely any outlook at all. He is a man with a delicate
but shallow vein of literary capacity, who never did more than tremble upon
the verge of success, and hardly, if at all, went beyond promise. He was
unlucky in marrying Amy, a rather heartless woman, whose ambition was far
in excess of her insight, for economic position Reardon had none. He writes
books to please a small group. The books fail to please. Jasper in the main
is right--there is only a precarious place for any creative litterateur
between the genius and the swarm of ephemera or journalists.
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