When we returned to the dining-room Mackenzie looked at me with
interest.
"I didn't know that you were the _Dominie's Log_ man till Mr. Macdonald
told me two minutes ago," he said. "I am delighted to meet you. I
enjoyed your book very much indeed. Very amusing."
He was quite affable now. Writing a book gives a man a certain
standing. I fancy it is the dignity of print that does it, and we all
have the print superstition. I find myself accepting statements in
books, whereas if someone said the same things to me over a
dinner-table I should refute them with scorn. "If it is in _John Bull_
it is so!" Mr. Bottomley is a sound psychologist.
When they were departing I said to Smart: "Yes, he's very amiable and
all that, but I am jolly glad I had Frank Michie and not him as my
chief inspector when I wrote my _Log_."
Smart laughed.
"My dear chap, Mackenzie would have let you run your school in your own
way."
"But," I cried, "he doesn't believe in freedom!"
"He doesn't, but don't you see that he simply couldn't have jumped on
you? He would have thought you either a lunatic or a genius, and he
would have feared to condemn you in case you might turn out to be the
latter. I know an art critic in London, and, believe me, the poor
devil lives in terror lest he should damn the work of a new Augustus
John. The Futurists aren't flourishing on their merits; they are
flourishing because the critics are in a holy funk to condemn them in
case they might be artists after all."