Part 7

It was clearly this which caused him to feel so much like God when they were about. Glad enough, as any man might be, of that discovery, it did not set his mind at rest. He felt that he ought rather to be humbled than elated. And he went to work at once to be so, saying to himself: “I am just, perhaps, a little nearer to the Creative Purpose than the rest of the world--a mere accident, nothing to be proud of; I can’t help it, nothing to make a fuss about, though people will!” For it did seem to him sometimes that the whole world was in conspiracy to make him feel superior--as if there were any need! He would have felt much more comfortable if that world had despised him, as it used to in the old days, for then the fire of his conviction could with so much better grace have flared to heaven; there would have been something fine about a superiority leading its own forlorn hope. But this trailing behind the drums and trumpets of a press and public so easily taken in he felt to be both flat and a little degrading. True, he had his moments, as when his eyes would light on sentences like this (penned generally by clergymen): “All this talk of art is idle; what really matters is morals.” Then, indeed, his spirit would flame, and after gazing at “is morals” with flashing eye and curling lip, and wondering whether it ought to have been “are morals,” he would say to whomsoever might happen to be there: “These bourgeois! What do they know? What can they see?” and, without waiting for an answer, would reply: “Nothing! Nothing! Less than nothing!” and mean it. It was at moments such as these that he realised how he not only despised, but almost hated, those dense and cocky Philistines who could not see his obvious superiority. He felt that he did not lightly call them by such names, because they really _were_ dense and cocky, and no more able to see things from his point of view than they were to jump over the moon. These fellows could see nothing except from their own confounded view-point! They were so stodgy too; and he gravely distrusted anything static. Flux, flux, and once more flux! He knew by intuition that an artist alone had the capacity for concreting the tides of life in forms that were not deleterious to anybody. For rules and canons he recognised the necessity with his head (including his tongue), but never with his heart; except, of course, the rules and canons of art. He worshipped these; and when anybody like Tolstoi came along and said, “Blow art!” or words to that effect, he hummed like bees caught on a gust of wind. What did it matter whether you had anything to express, so long as you expressed it? That only was “pure æsthetics,” as he often said. To place before the public eye something so exquisitely purged of thick and muddy actuality that it might be as perfectly without direct appeal to-day as it would be two thousand years hence--this was an ambition to which in truth he nearly always attained; this only was great art. He would assert with his last breath--which was rather short, for he suffered from indigestion--that one must never concrete anything in terms of ordinary nature. No! one must devise pictures of life that would be equally unfamiliar to men in A.D. 2520 as they had been in A.D. 1920; and when an inconsiderate person drew his attention to the fact that to the spectator in 2520 the most naturalistic pictures of the life of 1920 would seem quite convincingly fantastic, so that there was no need for him to go out of his way to devise fantasy--he would stare. For he was emphatically not one of those who did not care a button what the form was so long as the spirit of the artist shone clear and potent through the pictures he drew. No, no; he either demanded the poetical, the thing that got off the ground, with the wind in its hair (and he himself would make the wind, rather perfumed); or--if not the poetical--something observed with extreme fidelity and without the smallest touch of that true danger to art, the temperamental point of view. “No!” he would say; “it’s our business to put it down just as it is, to see it, not to feel it. In feeling damnation lies.” And nothing gave him greater uneasiness than to find the emotions of anger, scorn, love, reverence, or pity surging within him as he worked, for he knew that they would, if he did not at once master them, spoil a certain splendid vacuity that he demanded of all art. In painting, Raphael, Tintoretto, and Holbein pleased him greatly; in fiction, “Salammbô” was his model, for, as he very justly said, you could supply to it what soul you liked--there being no inconvenient soul already in possession.

As can be well imagined, his conviction of being, in a small way, God, permeated an outlook that was passionless, and impartial to a degree--except perhaps toward the bourgeoisie, with their tiring morals and peculiar habits. If he had a weakness, it was his paramount desire to suppress in himself any symptoms of temperament, except just that temperament of having no temperament, which seemed to him the only one permissible to an artist, who, as he said, was nothing if not simply either a recorder or a weaver of beautiful lines in the air.

Record and design, statement and decoration--these, in combination, constituted creation! It was to him a certain source of pleasure that he had discovered this. Not that he was, of course, neglectful of sensations, but he was perfectly careful not to _feel_ them--in order that he might be able to record them, or use them for his weaving in a purely æsthetic manner. The moment they impinged on his spirit, and sent the blood to his head, he reined in, and began tracing lines in the air, a practice that never failed him.

It was his deliberate opinion that a work of art quite as great as the “Bacchus and Ariadne” could be made out of a kettle singing on a hob. You had merely to record it with beautiful lines and colour; and what--in parenthesis--could lend itself more readily to beautiful treatment of lines woven in the air than steam rising from a spout? It was a subject, too, which in its very essence almost precluded temperamental treatment, so that this abiding temptation was removed from the creator. It could be transferred to canvas with a sort of immortal blandness--black, singing, beautiful. All that cant, such as, “The greater the artist’s spirit, the greater the subject he will treat, and the greater achievement attain, technique being equal,” was to him beneath contempt. The spirit did not matter, because one must not intrude it; and, since one must not intrude it, the more unpretentious the subject, the less temptation one had to diverge from impersonality, that first principle of art. Oranges on a dish afforded probably the finest subject one could meet with; unless one chanced to dislike oranges. As for what people called “criticism of life,” he maintained that such was only permissible when the criticism was so sunk into the very fibre of a work as to be imperceptible to the most searching eye. When this was achieved he thought it extremely valuable. Anything else was simply the work of the moralist, of the man who took sides and used his powers of expression to embody a temperamental and therefore an obviously one-sided view of his subject; and, however high those powers of expression might be, he could not admit that this was in any sense real art. He could never forgive Leonardo da Vinci, because, he said, “the fellow was always trying to put the scientific side of himself into his confounded paintings, and not just content to render faithfully in terms of decoration”; nor could he ever condone Euripides for letting his philosophy tincture his plays. And, if it were advanced that the former was the greatest painter and the latter the greatest dramatist the world had ever seen, he would say: “That may be, but they weren’t artists, of course.”

He was fond of the words “of course”; they gave the impression that he could not be startled, as was right and proper for a man occupying his post, a little nearer to the Creative Purpose than those others. As mark of that position, he always permitted himself just one eccentricity, changing it every year, his mind being subtle--not like those of certain politicians or millionaires, content to wear orchids or drive zebras all their lives. Anon it would be a little pointed beard and no hair to speak of; next year, no beard, and wings; the year after, a pair of pince-nez with alabaster rims, very cunning; once more anon, a little pointed beard. In these ways he singled himself out just enough, no more; for he was no _poseur_, believing in his own place in the scheme of things too deeply.

His views on matters of the day varied, of course, with the views of those he talked to, since it was his privilege always to see either the other side or something so much more subtle on the same side as made that side the other.

But all topical thought and emotion was beside the point for one who lived in his work; who lived to receive impressions and render them again so faithfully that you could not tell he had ever received them. His was--as he sometimes felt--a rare and precious personality.

VII.--THE HOUSEWIFE

Though frugal by temperament, and instinctively aware that her sterling nature was the bank in which the national wealth was surely deposited, she was of benevolent disposition; and when, as occasionally happened, a man in the street sold her one of those jumping toys for her children, she would look at him and say:

“How much? You don’t look well!” and he would answer: “Tuppence, lidy. Truth is, lidy, I’ve gone ’ungry this lawst week.” Searching his face shrewdly, she would reply: “That’s bad--a sin against the body. Here’s threepence. Give me a ha’penny. You don’t look well.” And, taking the ha’penny, she would leave the man inarticulate.

Food appealed to her, not only in relation to herself, but to others. Often to some friend she would speak a little bitterly, a little mournfully, about her husband. “Yes, I quite like my ‘hubby’ to go out sometimes where he can talk about art, and war, and things that women can’t. He takes no interest in his food.” And she would add, brooding: “What he’d do if I didn’t study him, I really don’t know.” She often felt with pain that he was very thin. She studied him incessantly--that is, in due proportion to their children, their position in society, their Christianity, and herself. If he was her “hubby,” she was his “hub”--the housewife, that central pivot of society, that national pivot, which never could or would be out of gear. Devoid of conceit, it seldom occurred to her to examine her own supremacy, quietly content to be “integer vitæ, scelerisque pura”--just the one person against whom nobody could say anything. Subconsciously, no doubt, she _must_ have valued her worth and reputation, or she would never have felt such salutary gusts of irritation and contempt toward persons who had none. Like cows when a dog comes into a field, she would herd together whenever she saw a woman with what she suspected was a past, then advance upon her, horns down. If the offending creature did not speedily vacate the field, she would, if possible, trample her to death. When, by any chance, the female dog proved too swift and lively, she would remain sullenly turning and turning her horns in the direction of its vagaries. Well she knew that, if she once raised those horns and let the beast pass, her whole herd would suffer. There was something almost magnificent about her virtue, based, as it was, entirely on self-preservation, and her remarkable power of rejecting all premises except those familiar to herself. This gave it a fibre and substance hard as concrete. Here, indeed, was something one could build on; here, indeed, was the strait thing. Her husband would sometimes say to her: “My dear, we don’t know what the poor woman’s circumstances were, we really don’t, you know. I think we should try to put ourselves in her place.” And she would fix his eye, and say: “James, it’s no good. I can’t imagine myself in that woman’s place, and I won’t. Do you think that _I_ would ever leave _you_?” And, watching till he shook his head, she would go on: “Of course not. No. Nor let you leave me.” And, pausing a second, to see if he blinked, because men were rather like that (even those who had the best of wives), she would go on: “She deserves all she gets. I have no personal feeling, but, if once decent women begin to get soft about this sort of thing, then good-bye to family life and Christianity, and everything. I’m not hard, but there are things I feel strongly about, and this is one of them.” And secretly she would think: “That’s why he keeps so thin--always letting himself doubt, and sympathise, where one has no right to. Men!” Next time she passed the woman, she would cut her deader than the last time, and, seeing her smile, would feel a sort of divine fury. More than once this had led her into courts of law on charges of libel and slander. But, knowing how impregnable was her position, she almost welcomed that opportunity. For it was ever transparent to judge and jury from the first that she was that crown of pearls, a virtuous woman, and so she was never cast in damages.

On one such occasion her husband had been so ill-advised as to remark: “My dear, I have my doubts whether our duty does not stop at seeing to ourselves, without throwing stones at others.”

“Robert,” she had answered, “if you think that, just because there’s a chance that you may have to pay damages, I’m going to hold my tongue when vice flaunts itself, you make a mistake. I always put your judgment above mine, but this is not a matter of judgment--it is a matter of Christian and womanly conduct. I can’t admit even your right to dictate.”

She hated that expression, “The grey mare is the better horse”; it was vulgar, and she would never recognise its truth in her own case--for a wife’s duty was to submit herself to her husband, as she had already said. After this little incident she took the trouble to go and open her New Testament and look up the story of a certain woman. There was not a word in it about women not throwing stones; the discouragement referred entirely to men. Exactly! No one knew better than she the difference between men and women in the matter of moral conduct. Probably there _were_ no men without that kind of sin, but there were plenty of women, and, without either false or true pride, she felt that she was one of them. And there the matter rested.

Her views on political and social questions--on the whole, very simple--were to be summed up in the words, “That _man_--!” and, so far as it lay in her power, she saw to it that her daughters should not have any views at all. She found this, however, an increasingly hard task, and on one occasion was almost terrified to find her first and second girls abusing “that man--,” not for going too fast, but for not going fast enough. She spoke to William about it, but found him hopeless, as usual, where his daughters were concerned. It was her principle to rule them with good, motherly sense, as became a woman in whose hands the family life of her country centred; and it was satisfactory on the whole to find that they obeyed her whenever they wished to. On this occasion, however, she spoke to them severely: “The place of woman,” she said, “is in the home.” “The whole home--and nothing but the home.” “Ella! The place of women is by the side of man; counselling, supporting, ruling, but never competing with him. The place of woman is in the shop, the kitchen, and--” “The--bed!” “_Ella!_” “In the soup!” “Beatrice! I wish--I do wish you girls would be more respectful. The place of woman is in the home. Yes, I’ve said that before, but I shall say it again, and don’t you forget it! The place of woman is--the most important thing in national life. If you want to realise that, just think of your own mother; and--” “Our own father.” “Ella! The place of woman is in the--!” She left the room, feeling that, for the moment, she had said enough.

In disposition sociable, and no niggard of her company, there was one thing she liked to work at alone--her shopping, an art which she had long reduced to a science. The principles she laid down are worth remembering: Never grudge your time to save a ha’penny. Never buy anything until you have turned it well over, recollecting that the rest of you will have turned it over too. Never let your feelings of pity interfere with your sense of justice, but bear in mind that the girls who sell to you are paid for doing it; if you can afford the time to keep them on their legs, they can afford the time to let you. Never read pamphlets, for you don’t know what may be in them about furs, feathers, and forms of food. Never buy more than your husband can afford to pay for; but, on the whole, buy as much. Never let any seller see that you think you have bought a bargain, but buy one if you can; you will find it pleasant afterward to talk of your prowess. Shove, shove, and shove again!

In the perfect application of these principles, she had found, after long experience, that there was absolutely no one to touch her.

In regard to meat, she had sometimes thought she would like to give it up, because she had read in her paper that being killed hurt the poor animals; but she had never gone beyond thought, because it was very difficult to do that. Henry was thin, and distinctly pale; the girls were growing girls; Sunday would hardly seem Sunday without; besides, it did not do to believe what one read in the paper, and it would hurt her butcher’s feelings--she was sure of that. Christmas, too, stood in the way. It was one’s duty to be cheerful at that season, and Christmas would seem so strange without the cheery butchers’ shops and their appropriate holocaust. She had once read some pages of a disgraceful book that seemed going out of its way all the time to prove that _she_ was just an animal--a dreadful book, not at all nice! And if she would eat those creatures if they were really her brother animals, and not just sent by God to feed her. No; at Christmas she felt especially grateful to the good God for his abundance, for all the good things he gave her to eat. For all these reasons she swallowed her scruples religiously. But it was very different in regard to dairy produce; for here there was, she knew, a real danger--not, indeed, to the animals, but to her family and herself. She was for once really proud of the thoroughness with which she dealt with that important nourishment--milk. None came into her house except in sealed bottles, with the name of the cow, spiritually speaking, on the outside. Some wag had suggested, in her hearing, that hens should be compelled to initial their eggs when they were delivered, as well as to put the dates on them. This she had thought ribald; one could go too far.

She was, before all things, an altruist; and in nothing more so than in her relations with her servants. If they did not do their duty, they went. It was the only way, she had found, to really benefit them. Country girls and town girls, they passed from her in a stream, having learned, once for all, the standard that was expected from them. She christened and educated more servants, perhaps, than any one in the kingdom. The Marthas went first, being invariably dirty; the Marys and Susans lasted, on an average, perhaps four months, and then left for many reasons. Cook seldom hurried off before her year was over, because it was so difficult to get her before she came, and to replace her after she was gone; but when she did go it was in a gale of wind. The “day out” was, perhaps, the most fruitful source of disillusionment--girls of that class, no matter how much they protested their innocence, seemed utterly unable to keep away from man’s society. It was only once a fortnight that she required them to exercise their self-control and self-respect in that regard, for on the other thirteen days she took care that they had no chance, suffering no male footstep in her basement. And yet--would you believe it?--on those fourteenth days, she was never able to be easy in her mind. But, however kindly and considerate she might be in her dealings with those of lowly station, she found ever the same ingratitude, the same incapacity, or, as she had reluctantly been forced to believe, the same deliberate unwillingness to grasp her point of view. It was as if they were always rudely saying to themselves: “What do you know of us? We wish you’d leave us alone!” The idea! As if she could, or would! As if it were not an almost sacred charge on her in her station, with the responsibilities that attached to it, to look after her poorer neighbours and see that they acted properly in their own interests. The drink, the immorality, the waste amongst the poor was notorious, and anything she could do to lessen it she always did, dismissing servants for the least slip, and never failing to point a moral. All that new-fangled talk about the rich getting off the backs of the poor, about the law not being the same for both, about how easy it was to be moral and clean on two thousand a year, she put aside as silly. It was just the sort of thing that discontented people would say. In this view she was supported daily by her newspaper and herself, wherever she might be. No, no! If the well-to-do did not look after and control the poor, no one would, which was just what they would like. They were, in her estimation, incurable; but, so far as lay in her power, she would cure them, however painful it might be.

A religious woman, she rarely missed the morning, and seldom went to evening, service, feeling that in daylight she could best set an example to her neighbours.

God knew her views on art, for she was not prodigal of them--her most remarkable pronouncement being delivered on hearing of the disappearance of the “Monna Lisa”: “Oh, that dreadful woman! I remember her picture perfectly. Well, I’m glad she’s gone. I thought she would some day.” When asked why, she would only answer: “She gave me the creeps.”

She read such novels as the library sent, to save her daughters from reading a second time those which did not seem to her suitable, and promptly sent them back. In this way she preserved purity in her home. As to purity outside the home, she made a point of never drawing Frederick’s attention to female beauty; not that she felt she had any real reason to be alarmed, for she was a fine woman; but because men were so funny.

There were no things in life of which she would have so entirely disapproved, if she had known about them, as Greek ideals, for she profoundly distrusted any display of the bare limb, and fully realised that, whatever beauty may have meant to the Greeks, to her and George it meant something very different. To her, indeed, Nature was a “hussy,” to be tied to the wheels of that chariot which she was going to keep as soon as motor-cars were just a little cheaper and really reliable.

It was often said that she was a vanishing type, but she knew better. Pedantic fools murmured that Ibsen had destroyed her, but she had not yet heard of him. Literary folk and artists, socialists and society people, might talk of types, and liberty, of brotherhood, and new ideas, and sneer at Mrs. Grundy. With what unmoved solidity she dwelt among them! They were but as gadflies, buzzing and darting on the fringes of her central bulk. To those flights, to that stinging she paid less attention than if she had been cased in leather. In the words of her favourite Tennyson: “They may come, and they may go, but--whatever you may think--I go on forever!”

VIII.--THE LATEST THING