“Eh? What’s that? ‘Plan’ did you say? ‘Synopsis’ did you say? By Jove! my young friend, I mustn’t make such a tosspot of ’ee again the night before we set to work. Didn’t I make it clear to you that our book was going to develop along organic lines, not along logical lines? Didn’t I make it clear that what we had to aim at was something quite new, an altogether new genre; and that it was to represent the pell-mell of life? It’s a sort of Diary of the Dead we’re aiming at, Solent. Your plans and your skeletons would spoil it utterly. What I want you to do is to saturate yourself with Dorset Chronicles, especially the more scandalous of them⁠—the old houses, Solent, the old houses!⁠—and then, when you’ve got the drift of it in your blood, what we’ll aim at shall be a sort of West Country ‘Comédie Humaine.’ Do you get my meaning? What you’ve got to do now, Solent, is to help me collect material and to take notes. I’ll show you my notes tomorrow. They’ll make my meaning clearer. The last thing we must think of is arrangement. My book must grow like a living thing, till it frightens us by its reality.”