_Wherein a Strutting Cock comes near to Losing a Feather upon his Own
Dunghill_
At a table, with his disciples, sat Quilliam O’Flaherty Macloughlin
Myre--a slack-headed, loose-lipped, colourless-haired, untidy-minded
fellow enough to outward seeming.
As Noll listened to his affected voice and caught the tenor of his mind
he understood why the man was known amongst the robuster wits as The
Brixton Celt.
Sitting next to him, and admiring himself in a mirror opposite, was his
friend the poet Aubrey, who, it must be acknowledged, paid but little
attention to anyone but himself. As Noll entered the place Myre’s loud
drawl was giving utterance to the innuendo that the love of woman was
only worth the seeking in order “to take her soul up by the roots and
examine it”; on which Aubrey had raised a laugh somewhat at his own
cost and yet with a certain vague undefined loss to the Quogge Myre, by
saying:
“I personally am content to take up my own soul by the roots and
examine it.”
When the ironic applause and laughter were run down, Aubrey, still
gazing at himself, said:
“That laugh is sheer affected hypocrisy. I am of the only
importance--that is the only real heart’s creed of man.” And he added
lovingly: “I thank God that I am beautiful--very beautiful.”
It was a historic night....
Quogge Myre had been irked of late by the perpetual reference to him
as the English Zola. He felt that he ought to be original. He saw that
he must again strike a new and original note. Above all he felt that
Realism was running dry--the public were grown used to it; nay, worse,
the public had accepted it at his estimate.
On this evening he had planned the surprise of a great Renunciation.
One or two sonnets had been given by poets, as was the custom in
Parisian students’ taverns, before Myre himself arose to read an essay
he had just written, and thus give to the privileged few the advantage
of the earliest communion with his latest thought.
He astounded them that were gathered about him by attacking Zola and
Realism with bitterness; and he solemnly announced his decision to
break with the movement for ever.
All these little men stared aghast--they had only just acquired the
style and method and some little vogue upon their capture of the tricks
of this very Realism. And for a few moments they were dumbfounded.
Had they not “written each other up” on their mastery of this very
craft!
Even they, like Myre, had discovered that the superficial tricks were
easily captured.
But, as Myre read, they began to glow, as though in some measure
sharing in his greatness--he put that hint to them with subtlety.
It was that famous essay in which he showed, once for all, with
aggressive air as though the prophet of the gospel, that Realism
was a Failure--that all Art must be symbolical. Though he still
maintained that the expression of it must be of the hammered and
perfect metal called Style, he had overstated the case for style--but
he did not withdraw everything. He had said that Style was the All
in All--that the matter did not matter. He renounced that position.
Style was important, but it was the symbols that were significant in
art.... Then this man, who baldly stated how he had thrust himself
upon Zola, proceeded to tell how he had tricked Zola into giving him
the advertisement of his praise, how he had lied to him, how he now
despised him, because Zola, being grown rich, wrote in a room that was
a bourgeois ideal of handsome furnishing. He employed all his sarcasm
on making ridiculous what only the genial hospitality of the kindly
Frenchman could have thrown open to his treacherous censure; and he
ended with a scalding attack on the coarseness of Zola’s work and on
the lack of its artistry. For himself--he had discovered a greater
master, whose name was Ibsen. “In so far as my work has unwittingly
been symbolical,” said he, with the majesty of a great renunciation,
“in so far has it been good. For the rest, it has been written in
vain....” To achieve the masterpiece, he was content to go to the
Greeks--to Æschylus, to Euripides, to Aristophanes, to Sophocles in
drama, to Homer in the Epic, to Phidias in art--the Greeks, he averred,
recorded only the Inevitable Thing.
As the great man sat down amidst a thunder of applause, Noll leaned
over to a pimpled disciple:
“Tell me,” said he--“what has this man done?”
The youth gazed at him:
“Oh, it isn’t that he has done anything yet,” he said. “That will come.
He has the right attitude.”
The pimply young man blew out cigarette smoke.
Netherby Gomme rose to his feet:
“I should like to ask our Master,” said he, without trace of smile on
his cadaverous face, “and I ask it because I have only read Sophocles
in the translation--to which of the plays of Sophocles did he allude
when he burst into his splendid eulogy of the Greek genius just
now--_OEdipus Tyrannus_, or _Ajax_ or _Hecuba_, or was he thinking of
the _Prometheus Bound_?”
Quilliam O’Flaherty Macloughlin Myre licked his puffy red lips
uncomfortably, but said nothing. He smiled cynically to cover his
hesitation--the fact was that he had never read a play by Sophocles,
even in translation. There was a long tense pause.
“Sophocles had the right attitude in _all_ his plays,” he said at
last--“what is true of one is true of all.”
Netherby sat down, and laughed loud and long:
“Spoken like a game-cock!” cried he--“if a game-cock could sing----”
Noll touched his sleeve confidentially:
“But, Netherby,” said he--“Sophocles did not write _Prometheus Bound_.
It was----”
“Hush, Noll--the ass hasn’t the smallest idea of that----”
Myre was uneasy, feeling he had not been wholly secure, when all eyes
turned upon the entry into the café of a very beautiful young woman.
She walked to a small table and sat down.
Myre at once became hysterical; and proceeded to embarrass the girl
with his vulgar eyes.
She ordered some coffee of the waiter, and, fretted by the admiring
stare of these gentlemen, soon rose from the table, shortened her
skirts above her dainty ankles, and went out into the night.
Myre, offended by the girl’s ignoring, said:
“The amateur is sapping the arts of all strength. The county gentry are
destroying painting and the drama. That woman is an exquisite stick on
the stage--she is connected with a peer.”
“Not by marriage, I suppose,” said a handsome youth flippantly; and
rising from his chair with Byronic gloom, he put on his silk hat--“I
must follow her; she is very beautiful.”
He followed her.
When he was gone, the pimply young man leaned over to Noll, and said
with hushed admiration:
“Bartholomew Doome--the wickedest man in London.”
“Indeed,” said Noll--“what does he do?”
“He has never been known to give way to a decent emotion,” said the
youth....
The next day, Mr. Myre bought a translation of the plays of Sophocles,
and armed himself against his disciples. A cold sweat broke out upon
him as he paid the price and realized how near he had come to losing
his wits on his own particular dunghill.