XLII

I have just returned from a few days in town, feeling that it is good

to have been there, if only for the sake of the return to the cool

silence of these solitary fields. I am not ungrateful for all the

kindness which I have received, but I cannot help thinking of the

atmosphere which I have left with a kind of horror.

The friend with whom I have been staying is a man of considerable

wealth. He has no occupation but the pursuit of culture. He is married

to a charming wife, also wealthy; but they are childless, and the

result is that they have nothing to expend their energies upon except

books and art and society. At long intervals my friend produces a tiny

volume, beautifully printed and bound, which he presents to his

friends. Last year it was an account of some curious religious

ceremonies which he came across in a tour in Brittany. I dare say I am

wrong, but it seems to me that the only charm of these grotesque and

absurd rites is that country people should practise them quietly and

secretly, as a matter of old and customary tradition. The moment that

the cultivated stranger comes among them with his philological and

sociological explanations, their pretty significance seems to me to be

gone. I do not care a brass farthing what they are all about; they are

old, they are legendary; as performed by people who have grown up among

them, and seen them practised from childhood as a matter of course,

they have a certain grace of congruity about them, as the schoolmen

say. But printed gravely in a book they seem to me to be nothing but

barbarous and foolish games of childish import.

Another year he found some Finnish legends when he was on a yachting

cruise, which he translated into an ungainly English. The tales are

utterly worthless, not a spark of romance from beginning to end, only

typical of an age which I humbly thank God we have left behind.

This year he is full of Balearic music; he played me a number of dreary

and monotonous tunes, which he said were so characteristic. But if they

were characteristic, and I have no reason to doubt his word, they only

seem to me to prove that those islanders are destitute of musical taste

and instinct to a quite singular degree.

While I was up in town, my friends certainly did their best to amuse

me; they had agreeable people of a literary type to luncheon, tea, and

dinner. We heard some music, we went to a play or two, we went to look

at some pictures. But I confess to having laboured under an increasing

depression, because the whole thing was conducted by rule and line, and

in a terribly businesslike way; we knew beforehand exactly what we were

to look out for. We did not go in a liberal and expectant spirit,

hoping that we might find or see or hear some unexpectedly beautiful

thing, but we went in a severely critical spirit, to see if we could

detect how the painters and musicians, whose art we were to inspect,

deviated from received methods. We went, indeed, not to gain an

impression of originality and personality, but to look out for certain

tabulated qualities; it depressed me too, perhaps unduly, to hear the

jargon with which these criticisms were heralded. The triumph appeared

to be to use a set of terms, appropriate to one art, of the effects

produced by the others; thus in music we went in search of colour and

light, of atmospheric effect and curve; in painting it seemed we were

in search of harmony, rhythm, and tone. I should not have minded if I

had felt that these words really meant anything in the minds of those

who used them; but it seemed to me that the critics were more in love

with their terminology than with the effects themselves; and still

more, that they went not to form novel impressions, but to search for

things which they had been told to expect.

It was the same with the treatment of literature; it all seemed reduced

to a game played with counters. There was no simplicity of

apprehension; the point seemed to be to apply a certain set of phrases

as decisively as possible. I never heard a generous appreciation of a

book; what I rather heard was trivial gossip about the author, followed

by shallow, and I thought pedantic, judgments upon an author's lack of

movement or aerial quality. If one of the approved authors under

discussion seemed to me painfully sordid and debased, one was told to

look out for his tonic realism and his virile force. How many times in

those sad hours was I informed that the artist had no concern with

ethical problems! If I maintained that an artist's concern is with any

motives that sway humanity, I was told smilingly that I wanted to treat

art in the spirit of a nursery governess. If, on the other hand, a book

appeared to me utterly unreal and false, I was told that it was typical

and spiritual, and that the conception of the artist must not be

limited by his experience, but that he arrived at correct intuitions by

the force of penetrating insight and by the swift inference of genius.

What seemed to me to be absent from it all was the spirit of liberty,

of frank enjoyment, of eager apprehension. I do not say that my friends

seemed to me to admire all the wrong things; they had abundant

appreciation for certain masters, both in art and music; but I felt

that they swallowed masters whole, without any discrimination, and that

the entire thing was a matter of tradition and rule and precept and

authority, not of irresponsible and ardent enjoyment. It was all

systematised and regulated; there was no question of personal

preferences. The aim of the perceptive man was to find out what was the

correct standard of good taste, and then to express his agreement with

it in elaborate phrases. Most of the party were of the same type. Not

that they were oddly-dressed, haggard, affected women or long-haired,

pretentious, grotesque men. I have been at such coteries, too, where

they praised each other's work with odd, passionate cries and

wriggling, fantastic gestures. That is terrible too, because that is

culture which has turned rancid. But at my friend's house it was not

rancid at all, it was simply unassimilated. My friend himself handed

out culture in neat pieces, carefully done up, as a vendor of toffee

might hand it out to purchasers; and the people who came there,

well-dressed, amiable, quiet, courteous people, would have been

delightful if they had not been so cultivated. Culture lay about in

lumps; it had never soaked in. The result was that I felt I could never

get to know any of these agreeable people at all. One tried to talk,

and one was met with a proffer of a lump of culture. Then, as I say, it

was all in pieces; it was not part of a plan or an attitude of mind; it

had all been laboriously collected, and it was just as it had been

discovered; it did not seem to have undergone any mental process.

And then, further, I felt that it was all too comfortable--it was all

built on a foundation of comfort; that lay really at the bottom of it

all. The house was too full of beautiful things; the dinner was too

long and too good; the wine was too choice. I am not going to pretend

that I do not like comfort; but I do not like luxury, and this was

luxurious. I do not want to have a long and elaborate dinner; it should

be _simplex munditiis_, as Horace said. And beautiful pictures and

furniture are more beautiful if there is not too much of them. One

felt, in this warm, fragrant house, with every room and wall crammed

with charming objects, with every desire anticipated, the dinner-table

bright with flowers and silver, with "orient liquor in a crystal

glass," as if one stifled under a load of delights; I yearned for

plainer rooms and simpler fare, and for freer and more genuine talk.

One felt that the aim of the circle was satisfaction rather than

beauty; to be sheltered and caressed rather than to be invigorated and

tranquillised.

I was standing in a drawing-room one night before dinner, already sated

with the food, the talk, the music, and the art of the day, as the

guests began to arrive: such clean, brilliant men, faultlessly

appointed; such beautiful and delicate women, with a vague sense of

fragrance and jewels, came stealing in. Suddenly among the company

there came stalking in a great literary man, an old friend of my own;

handsome, too, and well-appointed enough, but with a touch of roughness

and vigour that made him, I thought, like a chieftain among courtiers;

and wearing the haggard air of the man who toils at his art, and cannot

achieve his incommunicable hopes or capture his divine dreams. He came

up to me, smiling, in a secluded corner. "Hullo," he said, "_mon

vieux!_ who would have thought of finding you here in the island of

Circe?"

"I might ask the same question," I said. "But perhaps I have the sacred

herb, _moly_, the 'small unsightly root' in my bosom, to guard me

against the spells."

"The leaf has prickles on it," he said, with a smile; "there is nothing

prickly about our friends here."

This was mere sword-play, of course, not real talk; and then we had

five minutes' talk which I will not put down, because I should betray

secrets, and secrets too in their rough, uncut form, the gems of art,

which must be cut before they are presented. But I got more out of

those five minutes than I did out of the rest of my visit.

Presently we went in to dinner, and the performance began. How

skilfully it was all guided and modulated by our host, who was in his

best form. What delicate flies he threw over his fish; how softly they

rose to them. The talk flashed to and fro; the groups formed, broke,

re-formed. But it was a shallow stream; there was no zeal or vehemence;

it was all polished, deft, superficial, conventional. It was like

playing an agile and elaborate game; and I felt that those who took

part in it were congratulating themselves on the brilliance of the

affair. Education, religion, art, poetry, music--we had something to

say about all; and yet I felt that no light had been thrown upon

anything. A lady of high rank gave me her views upon the writing of

English prose, with the air of one speaking condescendingly from

Olympus, which, as we know, was above even Parnassus. In the middle I

caught the eye of the great man, who was opposite me; he gave me a

mournful smile, and I read his thoughts. When the ladies had withdrawn,

my host, with a determined air as of a man above prejudice, started the

conversation on rather more virile lines; and the result was a certain

amount of delicately _risqué_ talk. But even here we felt that it was

not human nature that was revealed. It was Voltairean rather than

Rabelaisian; and I dislike both. Then afterwards we sank into luxurious

chairs in the rich perfumed drawing-room; we talked low and

impressively to charming ladies; there was some exquisite music, so

pure and sweet that it seemed to me to put to shame the complex and

elaborate pageant of life in which we took part; and outside, one

remembered, there were the rain-splashed streets, the homeless wind;

and the toiling multitudes that made such delights possible, and gave

of their dreary, sordid labour that we might sit thus at ease. The

whole thing seemed artificial, soulless, hectic, unreal. One could not

help thinking of Dives and Lazarus, that strange parable that has so

stern a moral. "But now he is comforted and thou art tormented." It is

not suggested there that vice is punished and virtue rewarded; merely

that wealth is penalised and poverty compensated.

Well, it is a great mystery. No uneasy doubt as to the rightness of

things, as they are, ever troubled the mind of my serene host or his

gracious wife. The following morning I went away; I was sped on my way

with courteous kindness; but all the attention I received lies somewhat

heavy on my heart. I do not know how I could express to my friends what

I felt; they would not understand it if I tried to explain it. They

think of me as a queer rustic being, fond of a lonely life; they feel,

unconsciously enough, that they are conferring a benefit upon me by

enabling me to set foot in so cultured a circle; and there is no sense

of patronage about this--nothing but real kindness. But they feel that

they are in possession of the higher and more beautiful life, and I

have no sort of doubt that they believe I regard their paradise with

envy; that I would live the same life if I had the means. I fully admit

that I am not nearly so perfectly equipped with culture as my friends.

I have not got a quarter of their stock or of their experience; but yet

I am as absolutely sure that I, with all my deficiencies and

ignorances, negligences, incompletenesses, am inside the sacred circle

of art, as I am certain that they are without it. To me beauty is a

holy and bewildering passion; a divine spirit, that sometimes heaps

treasures upon me with both hands, and sometimes denies the least hint

of her influence. But they, I feel, mistake craftsmanship and

accomplishment and technique for the inner spirit of art; they have

never felt the awful rapture, the overwhelming impulse. And thus, as I

say, I return with a sense of weary gratitude to my lonely house with

its austere rooms; to my old piano, my old books; to my wide fields and

leafless trees, as of one returning home to worship at a quiet shrine,

after being compelled to play a part in a pageant which is not

concerned with the things of the soul.