“I know that. But is it right to hold aloof when one might do some good by disregarding considerations of that sort? It is always safest to do nothing. But I doubt if it is generous.”
“Well, you can do as you like. If I were in your place, I wouldn’t meddle.”
“You are running away with an idea that I am going to make mischief, and talk to Adrian about his wife. I only want to give him a little lecture, such as I have given him twenty times before. I am in some sort his fellow student. Don’t you think I might venture? I cannot see how I can do any harm by speaking to him about what the Times says.”
Hoskyn pursed his lips, and shook his head. Mary, who had made up her mind to exhort Adrian, and wanted to be advised to do so, added, with some vexation, “Of course I will not go if you do not wish me to.”
“I! Oh Lord no, my dear: I don’t want to interfere with you. Go by all means if you like.”
“Very well, John. I think I had better.” As she said this as if she were about to go in deference to his wishes, he seemed inclined to remonstrate; but he thought better of it, and buried himself in the newspaper until it was time for him to go to the city.
After luncheon that day, Mary put on her broad hat and cloak — her matronhood had not reconciled her to bonnets — walked and to South Kensington where Herbert still kept his studio. The Avenue, Fulham Road, resembles a lane leading to the gates of the back-gardens of the neighboring houses rather than an artist’s courtyard. Except when some plaster colossus, crowded out of a sculptors studio, appears incongruously at the extremity of the short perspective, no person would dream of turning down there in quest of statues or pictures. Disregarding a gigantic clay horse which ramped in the sun, its nostrils carved into a snort of a type made familiar to Mary by the Elgin marbles and the knights in her set of chessmen, she entered at a door on the right which led to a long corridor, on each side of which were the studios. In one of these she found Adrian, with his palette set and his canvas uncovered on the easel, but with the Times occupying all his attention as he sat uncomfortably on the rung of a broken chair.
Mrs. Hoskyn!” he exclaimed, rising hastily.
‘Yes, Adrian. Mrs. Hoskyn’s compliments; and she is surprised to see Mr. Herbert reading the newspapers which he once despised, and neglecting the art in which he once gloried.”
“I have taken to doing both since I established myself as a family man,” he replied with a sigh. “Will you ascend the throne? It is the only seat in the place that can be depended upon not to break down.”
“Thank you. Have you been reading the Times ever since your breakfast?”
“Have you seen it, Mary?”
“Yes.”
Herbert laughed, and then glanced anxiously at her.
“It is all very well to laugh,” she said, “ — and, as you know, nobody despises newspaper criticism more thoroughly than I, when it is prejudiced or flippant.”
“In this instance, perhaps you agree with the Times.”
Mary immediately put on her glasses, and looked hardily at him, by which he knew that she was going to say “I do.” When she had said it, he smiled patiently.
Adrian,” she said, with some remorse: “do you feel it to be true yourself? If you do not, then I shall admit that I am in error.”
“There may be some truth in it — I am hardly an impartial judge in the matter. It is not easy to explain my feeling concerning it. To begin with, I am afraid that when I used to preach to you about the necessity of devoting oneself wholly and earnestly to the study of art in order to attain true excellence, I was talking nonsense — or at least exaggerating mere practice, which is a condition of success in tinkering and tailoring as much as in painting, into a great central principle peculiar to art. I have discovered since that life is larger than any special craft. The difficulty once seemed to lie in expanding myself to the universal comprehensiveness of art: now I perceive that it lies in contracting myself within the limits of my profession, and I am not sure that that is quite desirable.”
“Well, of course, if you have lost your conviction that it is worth while to be an artist, I do not know what to say to you. You once thought it worth any sacrifice.
“Yes, when I was a boy, and had nothing to sacrifice. But I do not say that it is not worth while to be an artist; for, you see, I have not given up my profession.”
“But you have brought the Times down on you.”
“True. The Times now sees defects in my work which I cannot see. Just as it formerly failed to see defects in my early work which are very plain to me now. It says very truly that I no longer take infinite pains. I do my best still; but I confess that I work less at my pictures than I used to, because then I strove to make up for my shortcomings by being laborious, whereas I now perceive that mere laboriousness does not and cannot amend any shortcoming in art except the want of itself, which is not always a shortcoming — sometimes quite the reverse. Laboriousness is, at best, only an appeal ad miseracordiam to oneself and the critics. ‘Sir Lancelot’ is a bad picture, if you like; but do you suppose that any expenditure of patience would have tortured it into a good one? My dear Mary — I beg Mr Hoskyn’s pardon—”
“Beg Mrs Herbert’s, rather. Go on.”
“Mrs Herbert is a very good example of my next heresy, which is, that earnestness of intention, and faith in the higher mission of art, are impotent to add an inch to my artistic capacity. They rather produce a mental stress fatal to all freedom of conception and execution. I cannot bring them to bear on drawing and painting: they seem to me to be more the concern of clergymen and statesmen. Your husband once told my mother that art was a backwater into which the soft chaps got to be out of the crush in the middle of the stream. He was thinking about me, I suppose — oh, don’t apologize, Mary: I quite agree with him. It is a backwater; and faith and earnestness are of no use in it: mere brute skill carries everything before it. You once asked me how I should like to be Titian and a lot of other great painters all rolled into one. At present I should be only too glad to be as good as Titian alone; but I would not pay five years of my life for the privilege: it would not be worth it. What view did Titian take of his mission in life? Simply that he was to paint pictures and sell them. He painted religious pictures when the church paid him to do it; he painted indecent pictures when licentious noblemen paid him to do it; and he painted portraits for the wealthy public generally. Believe me, Mary, out in the middle the stream of life, from the turbulences and vulgarities of which we agreed to hold aloof, there may be many different sorts of men — earnest men, frivolous men, faithful men, cynical men and so forth; for the backwater there are only two sorts of painters, dexterous ones and maladroit ones. I am not a dexterous one; and that is all about it: self-criticism on moral principles, and the culture of the backwater library, won’t mend my eyes and fingers. I said that Aurélie’s was a case in point. Even the Times does not deny that she is a perfect artist. Yet if you spoke of her being a moral teacher with a great gift and a a great trust, she would not understand you, although she has some distorted fancy about her touch on the piano being a moral faculty. She thinks your husband a most original and profound thinker because he once happened to remark to her that musical people were generally clever. As I failed to be overwhelmed by her account of this, she, I believe, thought I was jealous of him because I had not hit on the observation myself.”
“Perhaps she would play still better if she did look upon herself as the holder of a great gift and a great trust.”
“Did I paint the Lady of Shalott the better because I would have mixed the colors with my blood if the picture would have gained by my doing so? No: I could paint it twice as well now, though I should not waste half as much thought on it. But put Aurélie out of the question, since you do not admire her. Take—”
“Oh, Adrian, I ad—”
“ — the case of Jack. You will admit that he is a genius: he has the inexhaustible flow of ugly sounds which constitutes a composer