Evening. The fireside. L's arm-chair in the comfortablest corner.
L. (perceiving various arrangements being made of footstool,
cushion, screen, and the like.) Yes, yes, it's all very fine! and
I am to sit here to be asked questions till supper-time, am I?
DORA. I don't think you can have any supper to-night:--we've got
so much to ask.
LILY. Oh, Miss Dora! We can fetch it him here, you know, so
nicely!
L. Yes, Lily, that will be pleasant, with competitive examination
going on over one's plate: the competition being among the
examiners. Really, now that I know what teasing things girls are,
I don't so much wonder that people used to put up patiently with
the dragons who took THEM for supper. But I can't help myself, I
suppose;--no thanks to St. George. Ask away, children, and I'll
answer as civilly as may be.
DORA. We don't so much care about being answered civilly, as about
not being asked things back again.
L. "Ayez seulement la patience que je le parle." There shall be no
requitals.
DORA. Well, then, first of all--What shall we ask first, Mary?
MARY. It does not matter. I think all the questions come into one,
at last, nearly.
DORA. You know, you always talk as if the crystals were alive; and
we never understand how much you are in play, and how much in
earnest. That's the first thing.
L. Neither do I understand, myself, my dear, how much I am in
earnest. The stones puzzle me as much as I puzzle you. They look
as if they were alive, and make me speak as if they were; and I do
not in the least know how much truth there is in the appearance.
I'm not to ask things back again to-night, but all questions of
this sort lead necessarily to the one main question, which we
asked, before, in vain, "What is it to be alive?"
DORA. Yes; but we want to come back to that: for we've been
reading scientific books about the "conservation of forces," and
it seems all so grand, and wonderful; and the experiments are so
pretty; and I suppose it must be all right: but then the books
never speak as if there were any such thing as "life."
L. They mostly omit that part of the subject, certainly, Dora; but
they are beautifully right as far as they go; and life is not a
convenient element to deal with. They seem to have been getting
some of it into and out of bottles, in their "ozone" and
"antizone" lately; but they still know little of it: and,
certainly, I know less.
DORA. You promised not to be provoking, to-night.
L. Wait a minute. Though, quite truly, I know less of the secrets
of life than the philosophers do; I yet know one corner of ground
on which we artists can, stand, literally as "Life Guards" at bay,
as steadily as the Guards at Inkermann; however hard the
philosophers push. And you may stand with us, if once you learn to
draw nicely.
DORA. I'm sure we are all trying! but tell us where we may stand.
L. You may always stand by Form, against Force. To a painter, the
essential character of anything is the form of it, and the
philosophers cannot touch that. They come and tell you, for
instance, that there is as much heat, or motion, or calorific
energy (or whatever else they like to call it), in a tea-kettle as
in a Gier-eagle. Very good; that is so; and it is very
interesting. It requires just as much heat as will boil the
kettle, to take the Gier-eagle up to his nest; and as much more to
bring him down again on a hare or a partridge. But we painters,
acknowledging the equality and similarity of the kettle and the
bird in all scientific respects, attach, for our part, our
principal interest to the difference in their forms. For us the
primarily cognizable facts, in the two things, are, that the
kettle has a spout, and the eagle a beak, the one a lid on its
back, the other a pair of wings,--not to speak of the distinction
also of volition which the philosophers may properly call merely a
form or mode of force,--but then, to an artist, the form or mode,
is the gist of the business. The kettle chooses to sit still on
the hob, the eagle to recline on the air. It is the fact of the
choice, not the equal degree of temperature in the fulfillment of
it, which appears to us the more interesting circumstance--though
the other is very interesting too. Exceedingly so! Don't laugh
children, the philosophers have been doing quite splendid work
lately, in their own way especially, the transformation of force
into light is a great piece of systematized discovery and this
notion about the sun being supplied with his flame by ceaseless
meteoric hail is grand, and looks very likely to be true. Of
course, it is only the old gunlock,--flint and steel,--on a large
scale but the order and majesty of it are sublime. Still, we
sculptors and painters care little about it. "It is very fine," we
say, "and very useful, this knocking the light out of the sun, or
into it, by an eternal cataract of planets. But you may hail away,
so, forever, and you will not knock out what we can. Here is a bit
of silver, not the size of half-a-crown, on which, with a single
hammer stroke, one of us, two thousand and odd years ago, hit out
the head of the Apollo of Clazomenas. It is merely a matter of
form; but if any of you philosophers, with your whole planetary
system to hammer with, can hit out such another bit of silver as
this,--we will take off our hats to you. For the present, we keep
them on."
MARY. Yes, I understand; and that is nice; but I don't think we
shall any of us like having only form to depend upon.