Book

 ” My dear Walkley

  You once asked me why I did not write a Don Juan play. The levity

with which you assumed this frightful responsibility has probably by

this time enabled you to forget it; but the day of reckoning has

arrived: here is your play! I say your play, because qui facit per

alium facit per se. * Its profits, like its labor, belong to me:

its morals, its manners, its philosophy, its influence on the young,

are for you to justify. You were of mature age when you made the

suggestion; and you knew your man. It is hardly fifteen years since,

as twin pioneers of the New Journalism of that time, we two, cradled

in the same new sheets, began an epoch in the criticism of the theatre

and the opera house by making it the pretext for a propaganda of our

own views of life. So you cannot plead ignorance of the character of

the force you set in motion. You meant me to epater le bourgeois…”