Читать книгу Set Down in Malice: A Book of Reminiscences онлайн

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In this little coterie Houghton was a veritable whale among the minnows. He was also a fish out of water. From the very first his success spoiled him. He would take himself ponderously. Brighouse worshipped success, so he worshipped Houghton. The rest of us, if we worshipped anything at all, worshipped genius, and as Kahane was the only one among us who had a touch of that divine quality, we rather tended to worship him. But Kahane frittered away his gifts; he made a lot of money by dint of working about an hour a day and by the sheer force of his personality. For the rest he played and played hard. He talked; he ragged; he listened to music and saw plays; he fell in love; he indulged harmless vices; and he wrote two wonderful plays, full of faults, but streaked with originality, with fire and with colour. In effect, he could beat both Houghton and Brighouse at their own game, and they knew it. But, at that time, playwriting with Kahane was only a game; with the other two it was deadly earnest.