“You must excuse me the gaucherie of a compliment,” I said to Bevan in
the smoking-room, after a very pleasant dinner, “but you have never been
more brilliant. Five stories, and each a success, is surely a record
even in your experience.”
“It is very good of you to appreciate my poor efforts so highly. I felt
it a distinct risk to attempt five in one evening--six is the farthest
limit sanctioned by any raconteur of standing. You can always
distinguish an artist from a mere amateur by his severe reserve. He
knows that an anecdote is a liqueur, and he offers it seldom; but the
other pours out his stuff like vin ordinaire, which it is, as a rule,
the mere dregs of the vine. Did you ever notice how a man will come back
from Scotland in autumn, and bore companies of unoffending people with a
flood of what he considers humorous Scottish stories? It is one of the
brutalities of conversation. What irritates me is not that the material
is Scottish, for there are many northern stories with a fine flavour; it
is the fellow's utter ignorance of the two great principles of our art.”
“Which are?”
“Selection and preparation,” said Bevan, with decision. “One must first
get good stuff, and then work it into shape. It is amazing how much is
offered and how little is of any use. People are constantly bringing me
situations that they think excellent, and are quite disappointed when
I tell them they are impossible for the purposes of art. Nothing can be
done with them, although of course another artist in a different line
might use them. Now I have passed several 'bits' on to Brown-Johnes,
who delivers popular lectures. The platform story is scene-painting, the
after-dinner miniature.”
“May I ask whether you are ever taken in, as it were, with your
material, and find it 'give' after it has been manufactured, like rotten
yarn or unseasoned wood?”
“Rarely; one's eye gets to be trained so that you know a promising
subject at sight, but then comes the labour. I've heard a man bore a
dinner-table to the yawning point with a story that had some excellent
points in it, but he had taken no trouble, perhaps had no insight.”
“And you succeeded with it...?”
“It is, in my humble judgment, as good a story of its kind now as you
would wish to hear, and it bears improvement, which is a good sign. A
really high-class story will take years to perfect, just as I am told
by clergymen that a sermon only begins to go after it has been preached
twenty times.”
“You have been working on that Shakespeare bit, by the way; I noticed at
least one new touch this evening which was excellent.”
“Now that is very gratifying,” and Bevan was evidently pleased; “it is
a great satisfaction to have one's work appreciated in an intelligent
manner; perhaps you are the only one present who saw any difference.
“What I think I like best”--and he tapped his snuff-box in a meditative
way--“is to get an old, decayed, hopeless story, and restore it.
Breaking out a window here, adding a porch there, opening up a room, and
touching up the walls--it is marvellous what can be done. Besides new
drains,” he added, with significance, “the sanitary state of some of
those old stories is awful. You feel the atmosphere at the door--quite
intolerable, and indeed dangerous.”
“Then you do not think that indecency...?”
“No, nor profanity. Both are bad art; they are cheap expedients, like
strong sauces to cover bad cooking. It sounds like boasting, but I have
redeemed one or two very unpleasant tales, which otherwise had been
uninhabitable, if I may trifle again with my little figure, and now are
charming.”
“You rather lean, one would gather, to old tales, while some of the
younger men are terrified of telling a 'chestnut,' always prefacing,
'This must be well known, but it is new to me; say at once if you have
heard it.'”
“Most humiliating, and quite unworthy of an artist. Heard it before!”
and the old gentleman was full of scorn. “Imagine a painter apologizing
for having taken a bend of the Thames or a Highland glen some man had
used before. Of course, if one makes a copy of a picture and exhibits it
as his own, that is fraud, and the work is certain to be poor. One must
respect another artist's labour, which is the ground of his copyright.
But if one makes a 'bit' of life as old as Aristophanes or Horace his
own, by passing it through his own fancy and turning it out in his
own style, then it is ever new. Then there is the telling! There are
musicians who can compose, but who cannot play, and _vice versâ_. So
with our art, there are story-tellers and story-makers. The former can
suffer no wrong, for they are self-protected, but the latter have never
been protected as they deserve in the fruit of their brains. You will
see at once that, if I am right, the ownership of an anecdote is quite
beyond dispute. The original material is really for the most part
common property, and usually very poor property--prairie land, in fact.
Personal rights come in when one has put capital into the land, has
cleared and ploughed and sown it; then it's his own, and he is entitled
to fence it, and he cannot be dispossessed except on fair terms.”
“Which would be?”
“Well, that depends. He might sell to an editor, or he might give the
use of it to a friend. Personally, as an artist of now thirty years'
standing, I do not part with my work; it may be an old-fashioned
prejudice, but I don't like to let it go to the public.”
“But to a friend?”
“Of course that is different; still, how few can be trusted. Now I once
gave Higginbotham a very nice little thing of French extraction, but not
too subtle, with just enough body to suit our palate. He beard me tell
it three times in exactly the same form, and I pledged him to make no
changes, for his hand is heavy. Would you believe me?”--and my friend
sat up in his indignation--“he gave it in my presence--but that did
not matter--and left out the best point, which I now think he had never
seen. Life has various trials in store for us as times go on,” and Bevan
leant back again. “Some are greater, some are less, but among our minor
vexations I know none like sitting at one end of a table and making talk
with your partner, while a rank amateur at the other end mangles one of
your pet anecdotes.”
“Torture, I should think; but isn't it rather trying when people miss
the point altogether or ask stupid questions?”
“Artists must take their chance of that, and one is careful; besides,
I've distinctly enjoyed such remarks,” and he looked quite genial. “It's
like a painter hearing the people criticize the pictures on a free day.
Once or twice I've got a very happy addition to a story in that way.
After all, the main end of a raconteur must be to give pleasure.
Yes”--and he began to glow--“no art is wholesome which lives for itself
or for a professional class. Art must be a criticism of life and an aid
to better living. No one can tell how much story-telling has contributed
to the brightness and elevation of life. How? By correcting foibles, by
explaining human nature, by destroying cant, by infusing good humour,
by diminishing scandal, by--but I remind myself that a raconteur ought
never to be excited or eloquent. He may, however, be a philanthropist,
as it would appear. Do you know,” with a tone of great delight, “that I
was once asked by a physician to call upon one of his patients, a mutual
friend, and spend an hour with him, as a... tonic, in fact. It was
after influenza, and the convalescent began by asking me whether I would
distribute a sum of money among the poor. 'I'm not sure what I'm dying
of; either peritonitis or pneumonia, but I'm glad to see you, Bevan,
and you will do this little kindness for me'--those were his affecting
words. 'Certainly,' I said, and that led me to give him a trifle from
Devonshire--excellent place for stories--which seemed to interest him.
I only told four stories--for he was rather weak, having had a slight
touch of bronchitis--and he is pleased still to thank me,” and Bevan
nodded with much satisfaction.
As I looked at him, so filled with the pride of his art, the time seemed
to have come for a question that had long been in my mind. But it was
necessary to be careful.
“What, may I ask, Mr. Bevan, do you feel about the matter of... well,
you won't misunderstand me... of accuracy?”
“You mean whether is there any difference between giving evidence in
a witness-box and relating an anecdote. Everything. The one is a land
surveyor's plan, and must be correct to an inch. The other is a picture,
and must interpret nature. The one is a matter of fact, the other a work
of art. Imagine the folly”--and the good man rose to his feet--“if one
should demand to know whether the figures in a historical painting stood
exactly so and were dressed in those particular colours; we should think
the man mad. A story is a miniature novel, shot through with humour, a
morsel of the irony of things, a tiny comedy, and for it there is but
one rule of judgment--does it represent the spirit of life?”
“What then do you think of one who should certify an anecdote as a
fact?”
“That he did not know his craft, for if the tale has no merit, then it
is little compensation to tell us it happened; if it has merit, we are
sure it ought to have happened.”
“And if one should interrupt a raconteur as he approached his point, and
should inquire whether the thing be true?”
“I am a merciful man,” said the venerable artist, “but my conviction is
that he ought to be shot.”