UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL UBRARV FAOU 
 
 ■ llll 
 
 ■■■«li|il«
 
 I 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 Copyrighted in the United States. 
 All i^Ms reserved.
 
 
 10 
 
 MY DEAREST 
 
 AND BEST FRIEND, 
 
 % A. C, 
 
 LISRARf
 
 PREFATORY 
 
 He was, I remember, short, but by no 
 means conspicuously short, and of a bright, 
 almost juvenile, complexion, very active in 
 his movements and garrulous — or at least 
 very talkative. His judgments were 
 copious and frequent in the old days, 
 and some at least I found entertaining. 
 At times his fluency was really remark- 
 able. He had a low opinion of eminent 
 people — a thing I have been careful to 
 suppress, and his dissertations had ever an 
 irresponsible gaiety of manner that may 
 have blinded me to their true want of 
 merit. That, I say, was in the old days, 
 before his abrupt extinction, before the 
 cares of this world suddenly sprang upon, 
 and choked him. I would listen to him 
 cheerfully, and afterwards I would go 
 away and make articles out of him for the
 
 PREFATORY 
 
 Pcdl Mall Gazette, so adding a certaih 
 material advantage to my mental and moral 
 benefit. But all that has gone now, to 
 my infinite regret ; and sorrowing, I have 
 arranged this unworthy little tribute to 
 his memory, this poor dozen of casual 
 monologues that were so preserved. The 
 merits of the monument are his entirely ; 
 its faults entirely my own.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 SELECT CONVERSATIONS— 
 
 OF CONVERSATION AND THE ANATOMY OF 
 FASHION 
 
 THE THEORY OP THE PERPETUAL DISCOM- 
 FORT OP HUMANITY 
 
 THE USE OP IDEALS . 
 
 THE ART OP BEING PHOTOGRAPHED 
 
 BAGSHOT'S MURAL DECORATIONS . 
 
 ON SOCIAL MUS-IC 
 
 THE JOYS OP BEING ENGAGED . 
 
 LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI 
 
 ON A TRICYCLE .... 
 
 AN UNSUSPECTED MASTERPIECE . 
 
 10 
 17 
 23 
 33 
 
 42 
 48 
 57 
 67 
 
 77
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 SELECT CONVERSATIONS— cow^mwf?— 
 
 THE GREAT CHANGE 84 
 
 THE PAINS OP MARRIAGE .... 91 
 
 A MISUNDERSTOOD ARTIST . . 100 
 
 THE MAN WITH A NOSE . .109
 
 OF CONVERSATION AND THE 
 ANATOMY OF FASHION 
 
 This uncle of mine, you must understand, 
 having attained — by the purest accident 
 — some trifles of distinction and a cer- 
 tain affluence in South Africa, came over 
 at the earliest opportunity to London to 
 be photographed and lionised. He took 
 to fame easily, as one who had long 
 prepared in secret. He lurked in my 
 chambers for a week while the new dress 
 suit was a-making — his old one I really 
 had to remonstrate against — and then we 
 went out to be admired. During the 
 week's retirement he secreted quite a 
 wealth of things to say — appropriate re- 
 marks on edibles, on music, on popular 
 books, on conversation, off-hand little 
 things, jotting them down in a note-book 
 as they came into his mind, for he had 
 A
 
 2 OF CONVERSATION AND 
 
 a high conception of social intercourse, and 
 the public expectation. He was ever a 
 methodical little gentleman, and all these 
 accumulations that he could not get into 
 his talk, he proposed to put away for the 
 big volume of " Reminiscences " that was 
 to round off his life. At last he was a 
 mere conversational firework, crammed with 
 latent wit and jollity, and ready to blaze 
 and sparkle in fizzing style as soon as the 
 light of social intercourse should touch 
 him. 
 
 But after we had circulated for a week 
 or so, my uncle began to manifest symptoms 
 of distress. He had not had a chance. 
 People did not seem to talk at all in his 
 style. " Where do the literary people meet 
 together, George ? I am afraid you have 
 chosen your friends ill. Surely those long- 
 haired serious people who sat round my 
 joke like old cats round a beetle — what is 
 it ? — were not the modern representatives 
 of a salon. Those abominable wig-makers' 
 eccentricities who talked journalistic ' shop/ 
 and posed all over that preposterous room
 
 THE ANATOMY OF FASHION 3 
 
 with the draperies ! Those hectic young 
 men who have done nothing except run 
 down everybody ! Don't tell me that is the 
 literary society of London, George. Where 
 do they let off wit now, George ? Where 
 do they sparkle? I want to sparkle. Badly. 
 I shall burst, George, if I don't." 
 
 Now really, you know, there axe no 
 salons now — I suppose we turn all our 
 conversation into "copy" — or the higher 
 education has eliminated the witty woman 
 — and my uncle became more and more 
 distressed. He said a lot of his good 
 things to me, which was sheer waste. 
 I became afraid. I got him all the intro- 
 ductions I could, pushed him into every 
 lion's den I had access to. But there was 
 no relief. 
 
 "I see what it is, George," said my 
 uncle, "these literary people write them- 
 selves out. They say nothing for private 
 use. Their brains are weary when they 
 come into company. They get up in the 
 morning fresh and bright, and write, write, 
 write. Then, when they are jaded, they
 
 4 OF CONVERSATION AND 
 
 condescend to social intercourse. It is 
 their way of resting. But why don't they 
 go to bed ? No more clever people for 
 me, George. Let us try the smart. Per- 
 haps among them we shall find smart 
 talking still surviving. Allons, George ! " 
 
 That is how my uncle came into 
 collision with fashion, how I came to 
 take him to the Fitz-Brilliants. 
 
 Of course you have heard of the Fitz- 
 Brilliants ? If you have not, it is not 
 their fault. They are the smartest people 
 in London. Always hard at work, keep- 
 ing up to date, are the Fitz-Brilliants. 
 But my uncle did not appreciate them. 
 Worse ! They did not appreciate my 
 uncle. He came to me again, more pent 
 up than ever, and the thing I had feared 
 happened. He began to discourse to me. 
 It was about Fashion, with a decided 
 reference to the Fitz-Brilliants, and some 
 reflections upon the alleys of literary 
 ability and genius I had taken him 
 through. 
 
 " George," said my uncle, " this Fashion
 
 THE ANATOMY OF FASHION 5 
 
 is just brand-new vulgarity. It is 
 merely the regal side of the medal. 
 The Highly Fashionable and the Ab- 
 solutely Vulgar are but two faces of the 
 common coin of humanity, struck millions 
 at a time. Spin the thing in the light 
 of wealth, and I defy you, as it whizzes 
 from the illumination of riches to the 
 shadow of poverty, to distinguish the one 
 stamp from the other. You cannot say, 
 here the mode ends, and there the unspeak- 
 able thing, its counterpart, has its begin- 
 ning. Their distinction of mere position 
 has vanished, and they are in seeming as 
 in substance one and indivisible." 
 
 My uncle was now fairly under way. 
 
 " The fashionable is the foam on the 
 ocean of vulgarity, George, cast up by 
 the waves of that ocean, and caught by 
 the light of the sun. It is the vulgar — 
 blossoming. The flower it is of that 
 earthly plant, destined hereafter to run 
 to seed, and to beget new groves and 
 thickets, new jungles, of vulgar things. 
 
 " Note, George, how true this is of
 
 6 OF CONVERSATION AND 
 
 that common property of the vulgar and 
 fashionable — slang. The apt phrase falls 
 and applause follows, and then down it 
 goes. The essential feature of slang is 
 words misapplied ; the essential distinc- 
 tion of a coarse mind from one refined, 
 an inability to appreciate fine distinctions 
 and minor discords ; the essential of the 
 vulgar, good example misused. First the 
 fashionable get the apt phrase, and bandy 
 it about in inapt connections until even 
 the novelty of its discordance has ceased 
 to charm, and thereafter it sinks down, 
 down. Fin de si^cle and cliche have, 
 for instance, passed downward from the 
 courts of the fashionable among journalists 
 into the unspeakable depths below. Soon, 
 if not already, fin de siecle gin and 
 onions and haddocks will be for sale in 
 the Whitechapel-road, and Harriet will 
 be calling Billy a " cliche faced swine." 
 Even so do ostrich feathers begin a career 
 of glory at the Drawing-Room and the 
 fashionable photographer's, and, after end- 
 less re-dyeing, come to their last pose
 
 THE ANATOMY OF FASHION 7 
 
 before a Hampstead camera on a bright 
 Bank Holiday. 
 
 " The fashionable and vulgar are after 
 all but the expression of man's gregarious 
 instinct. Every poor mortal is torn by 
 the conflicting dreads of being ' common- 
 place/ and of being * eccentric' He, and 
 more particularly she, is continually imitat- 
 ing and avoiding imitation, trying to be 
 singular and yet like other people. In 
 the exquisitely fashionable and in the 
 entirely vulgar the sheep-like longing is 
 triumphant, and the revolting individual 
 has disappeared. The former is a 
 mechanical vehicle upon which the new 
 * correct thing ' rides forth, to extort the 
 astonishment of men ; the latter a life- 
 less bier bearing its corrupt and unre- 
 cognisable remains away to final oblivion, 
 amidst universal execration. 
 
 *'It is curious to notice, George, that there 
 has of late been a fashion in ' originality.' 
 The commonplace has turned, as it were, 
 upon itself, and vehemently denied its 
 identity. So that people who were not
 
 8 OF CONVERSATION AND 
 
 eccentric have become rare, and genius, 
 so far as it is a style of hairdressing, 
 and originality, so far as it is a matter 
 of etiquette or morals, have become the 
 habitual garments of the commonplace. 
 The introduction of the word 'bourgeois' 
 as a comminatory epithet into the English 
 language, by bourgeois writers writing for 
 the bourgeois, will remain a memorial for 
 ever, for the philological humourist to 
 chuckle over. If good resolutions could 
 change the natures of men, opinion has 
 lately set so decidedly against the fashion- 
 able and the vulgar that their continued 
 existence in this world would be very 
 doubtful. But the leopard cannot change 
 his spots so easily. While the stars go 
 on in their courses, until the cooling of 
 the earth puts an end to the career of 
 life, and the last trace of his ancestral 
 tendency to imitation disappears as the 
 last man becomes an angel, depend 
 upon it, George, the fashionable will ever 
 pursue this chimsera of distinguished cor- 
 rectness, and trail the inseparable howling
 
 THE ANATOMY OF FASHION 9 
 
 vulgar in its wake — for ever chased, like 
 a dog with a tin can attached, by the 
 horror of its own tail." 
 
 Thus my uncle. He had said a few 
 of his things. It is possible his trick of 
 talking like a disarticulated essay bad 
 something to do with his social discomfort. 
 But anyhow he seemed all the better for 
 the release. 
 
 " Talking of tails, George," he said, 
 " reminds me. I noticed the men at 
 the Fitz-Brilliants' had their coats cut — 
 well, I should say, just a half inch shorter 
 here than this of mine. Your man is 
 not up to date. I must get the thing 
 altered to-morrow."
 
 THE THEORY OF THE PERPETUAL 
 DISCOMFORT OF HUMANITY 
 
 He had been sitting with his feet upon 
 the left jamb of my mantel, admiring the 
 tips of his shoes in silence for some 
 time. 
 
 " George," he said, dropping his cigar-ash 
 thoughtfully into my inkstand, in order, 
 I imagine, to save my carpet, ''have you 
 ever done pioneer work for Humanity ? " 
 
 " Never," I said. '' How do you get 
 that sort of work ? " 
 
 " I don't know. I met a man and a 
 woman, though, the other night, who said 
 they were engaged in that kind of thing. 
 It seems to me to be exhausting work, and 
 it makes the hair very untidy. They do 
 it chiefl}^ with their heads. It consists, so 
 I understand, of writing stuff in a hurry, 
 rushing about in cabs, wearing your hair 
 
 10
 
 DISCOMFORT OF HUMANITY 11 
 
 in some unpleasant manner, and holding 
 disorderly meetings." 
 
 " Who are these people ? " 
 
 "Never heard of them before, though 
 they told me they were quite well known. 
 The lady asked me if I had been to 
 Chicago." 
 
 I chuckled. I could imagine no more 
 hideous insult to my uncle. 
 
 "I told her that I had been to most 
 places south-eastward and eastward, but 
 never across the Atlantic. She informed 
 me that I ought to have gone to Chicago, 
 and that America was a great country, and 
 I remarked that I had always thought it 
 was so great that one could best appreciate 
 it at a distance. Then she asked me 
 what I thought of the condition of the 
 lower classes, and I told her I was per- 
 suaded, from various things I had noticed, 
 that a lot of them were frightfully hard up. 
 And with that she started off to show 
 whose fault it was, by the Socratic method." 
 
 " Entertaining ? " 
 
 " A little. I did not get all my answers
 
 12 THE THEORY OF THE PERPETUAL 
 
 right. For instance, when she asked, 
 * Who sends the members of Parliament 
 to Westminster ? ' I answered her, ' The 
 governors of the young ones and the wives 
 of the others.' And when she said that 
 was wrong — I don't remember Socrates 
 ever saying bluntly that an answer was 
 wrong — I said I supposed she referred to 
 the Evil One. It was very dull of me, of 
 course, and it obliged her to dictate the 
 right solution. 
 
 " Afterwards she threw over teaching 
 me anything, and explained to me all 
 about her Movements. At least, I got 
 really interested in her Movements. One 
 thing she said struck me very much, though 
 it could hardly be called novel. It was 
 that the fads of one age were the fashions 
 of the next ; that while the majority of 
 people were engaged in their little present- 
 day chores, persons like herself are making 
 the laws and preparing the customs for the 
 generation to follow." 
 
 " Poor generations to follow ! " I said. 
 
 " Yes, but there is a lot of truth in it ;
 
 DISCOMFORT OF HUMANITY 13 
 
 and do you know there flashed upon me 
 all at once a great theory, the Theory of 
 the Perpetual Discomfort of Humanity. 
 Just let me explain it to you, George," 
 he said, bringing himself round so that 
 his legs hung over the arm of his chair. 
 " I think you will see I have made a 
 very great discovery, gone to the root of 
 the whole of this bother of reform move- 
 ment, advancement of humanity, and the 
 rest of it." He sucked his cigar for a 
 moment. "Each age," he said, "has its 
 own ideals of what constitutes human 
 happiness." 
 
 *' A very profound observation," said I. 
 
 "Looking down the vista of history, 
 one may generalise and say that we see 
 human beings continually troubled by the 
 conditions under which they live. I can 
 think of no time in the world when there 
 was not some Question or other getting 
 fussed about : at one time episcopal 
 celibacy, at another time the Pict and 
 Scot problem, and so on. Always a 
 crumpled rose-leaf. Hence reform move-
 
 14 THE THEORY OF THE PERPETUAL 
 
 ments. Now, reforms move slowly, and 
 by the time these reforms come about, 
 the people whom they would have made 
 happy, and who fussed and encountered 
 dislike and satire and snubbing, and 
 burning and boiling in oil, and suchlike 
 discouragements, for the sake of them, 
 were dead and buried and mere sanitary 
 problems. The new people had new 
 and quite different needs, and the reforms 
 for which their fathers fought and died 
 more or less uncomfortably, and got into 
 debt with the printers, so soon as there 
 were printers to get into debt with, were 
 about as welcome as belated dinner guests. 
 You take me ? Ireland, when Home Rule 
 comes home to it, will simply howl with 
 indignation. And we are living in the 
 embodied discontent of the eighteenth 
 century. Adam Smith, Tom Paine, and 
 Priestley would have looked upon this age 
 and seen that it was good — devilish good ; 
 and as you know, George, to us it is — 
 well, a bit of a nuisance anyhow. How- 
 ever, most people are like myself, and try
 
 DISCOMFORT OF HUMANITY 15 
 
 to be as comfortable as tbey can, and no 
 doubt the next generation might do very- 
 well with it. And then the pioneer 
 people begin legislating, agitating, and 
 ordering things differently. As you know, 
 George, I am inclined to conservatism. 
 Constitutionally, I tend to adapt myself 
 to my circumstances. It seems to me 
 so much easier to fit the man to the age 
 than to fit the age to the man. Let us, 
 I say, settle down. We shall never be 
 able to settle down while they keep 
 altering things. It may not be a perfect 
 world, but then I am not a perfect man. 
 Some of the imperfections are, at least, 
 very convenient. So my theory is this : 
 the people whom the age suits fairly well 
 don't bother — / don't bother ; the others 
 do. It is these confounded glaring and 
 unshorn anachronisms that upset every- 
 thing. They go about flapping their 
 ideals at you, and writing novels with 
 a motive, and starting movements and 
 societies, and generally poking one's epoch 
 to rags, until at last it is worn out and
 
 16 DISCOMFORT OF HUMANITY 
 
 you have to start a new one. My con- 
 ception of the progress of humanity is 
 something after the Wandering Jew 
 pattern. Your average humanity I figure 
 as a comfortable person like myself, always 
 trying to sit down and put its legs some- 
 where out of the way, and being con- 
 tinually stirred up by women in felt hats 
 and short skirts, and haggard men with 
 those beastly, long, insufficient beards, and 
 soulful eyes, and trumpet-headed creatures, 
 and bogles with spectacles and bald heads, 
 and nephews who look at watches. What 
 are you looking at your watch for, George ? 
 I'm very happy as I am. 
 
 "Has it ever occurred to you, George, 
 that one of the most uncomfortable things 
 in the world must be to outlive your age ? 
 To have all the reforms of your boyish 
 liberalism coming home to roost, just as 
 you are settling down to the old order. . . . 
 
 " Six o'clock, by Jove ! We shall keep 
 them waiting if we don't mind."
 
 THE USE OF IDEALS 
 
 '' Ideals ! " said my uncle ; " certainly 
 Ideals. Of course one must have ideals, 
 else life would be bare materialism. Bare 
 fact alone, naked necessity, is impossible 
 barren rock for a soul to root upon. Life, 
 indeed, is an unfurnished house, an empty 
 glass in a thirsty land — good and necessary 
 for foundation, but insufficient for any 
 satisfaction unless we have ideals. Or, again, 
 ideals are the flesh upon the skeleton of 
 reality, and it cannot live without them. 
 
 " It always appears to me," said my 
 uncle, '' that the comparison of ideals to 
 furniture is particularly appropriate. They 
 are the draperies of the mind, and they 
 hide the nakedness of truth. Your fire- 
 place is ugly, your mere necessary shelves 
 and seats but planks and crudity, all your 
 surroundings so much office furniture, until 
 
 B 17
 
 18 THE USE OF IDEALS 
 
 the skilful hand and the draperies 
 come in. Then a few cunning loopings 
 and foldings, and behold softness and 
 delicacy, crudity gone, and life well worth 
 the living. So that you cannot value 
 ideals too highly. 
 
 " Yet at the same time " My 
 
 uncle became meditative. 
 
 " I would not have a man the slave of 
 his ideals. Hangings make the room 
 comfortable, but, after all, hangings are 
 hangings. Perhaps, now and then — of 
 course, I would not suggest continual 
 inconstancy- — a slight change, a little re- 
 arrangement, even a partial replacement, 
 might brighten up the dear old dwelling- 
 place. An ideal may be clung to too 
 fondly. When the moth gets into it, or 
 the dust — did not Carlyle warn us against 
 this, lest they ' accumulate and at last 
 produce suffocation ' ? I am exactly at one 
 with him there. 
 
 ^' And that, as any Cabinet Minister 
 explains every time he opens a public 
 library, is why we have literature. Good
 
 THE USE OF IDEALS 19 
 
 books are the warehouses of ideals. Does 
 it strike you your furniture is sombre, 
 a bit Calvinistic and severe — try a statuette 
 by Pope, or a classical piece out of Heine. 
 Too much white and gold for e very-day 
 purposes — then the Reverend Laurence 
 Sterne will oblige. Urban tone may be 
 corrected by Hardy, and Lowell will give 
 you urbanity. And, however well you 
 match and balance them, remember there 
 is a time for ideals, and a time when 
 they are better out of the way. 
 
 " The Philistine of Victorian literature, 
 is a person without ideals, the practical 
 man. But just now the fashion is all for 
 the things. Ruskin and Carlyle set it 
 going, and to-day the demand for ideals 
 exceeds the supply. And as a result, 
 we meet with innumerable people anxious 
 to have the correct thing, but a little 
 unsympathetic or inexpert, and those 
 unavoidable people who do not like the 
 things but feel compelled to get them. 
 Ideals are not the easiest possessions to 
 have and manage, and they may even rise
 
 20 THE USE OF IDEALS 
 
 to the level of serious inconveniences. So 
 that I sometimes wonder these Extension 
 people have not taken up the subject of 
 their management and use. 
 
 '' Note, for instance, the folly of bring- 
 ing ideals too much into the daily life ; 
 it is childish, like a baby insisting on its 
 new toy at meal times, and taking it to 
 bed. Never use an ideal as a standard, 
 and avoid any that reflect upon your con- 
 duct. The extremest decorative people 
 refrain from enamelling their kettles, and 
 my cook though a ' born lady ' does not 
 wear her silk dress in the kitchen. 
 Ideals are the full dress of the soul. A 
 business man, for instance, Avho let visions 
 of reverend Venetian and Genoese seigniors 
 interfere with his agile City movements — 
 who, to carry out our comparison, draped 
 his mind wdth these things — would be 
 uncommonly like a bowler in a dressing- 
 gown. 
 
 ''Then an ideal, we are also told, is an 
 elevating influence in life ; but unless one 
 is very careful one may get hoist with one's
 
 THE USE OF IDEALS 21 
 
 own petard to a pitifully transitory soar 
 above common humanity. The soar itself 
 is not unpleasant, but the sequel is some- 
 times disagreeable. 
 
 " To show how an ideal may trip up an 
 inexpert mortal, take that man Javvers 
 and his wife. She also had an ideal hus- 
 band, which was, indeed, a kind of bigamy, 
 and her constant references to this creation 
 of hers used to drive poor old Javvers 
 frantic. It became as objectionable as if 
 she had been its sorrowing widow, and 
 ultimately it wrecked the happiness of 
 their little home very completely. 
 
 " The seat of ideals, then, in one's mind, 
 should be, as it were, a lounge, over which 
 these hangings may drape and flap harm- 
 lessly ; but it may easily become as the 
 bed of Procrustes. To turn ideals to idols, 
 and to command your whole world to bow 
 down to them, savours of the folly of 
 Nebuchadnezzar the king. Let your ideal 
 world be far away from reality, fit it with 
 rococo furniture, angels and birds-of- para- 
 dise, Minnesinger flowers and views of the
 
 22 THE USE OF IDEALS 
 
 Delectable Mountains : and go there occa- 
 sionally and rest — to return without illu- 
 sions, without encumbrance, but with re- 
 newed zest, to the sordid world of the 
 actual, the world of every day. Herein 
 is the real use of the ideal ; all other is 
 fanaticism and folly."
 
 THE 
 AET OF BEING PHOTOGRAPHED 
 
 " An album/' said my uncle, as he sat 
 and turned over my collection of physiog- 
 nomy, " is, I think, the best reading in the 
 world. You get such sidelights on the 
 owner's heredity, George ; distant cousins 
 caricature his features and point the moral 
 of his nose, and ancestral faces prophesy his 
 fate. His friends, moreover, figure the secret 
 of his soul. But what a lot we have to learn 
 yet in the art of being photographed, what 
 grotesque and awkward blunders your 
 common sitters make ! Why, for instance, 
 do men brush their hair so excessively when 
 they go before the lens ? Your cousin here 
 looks like a cheap chess pawn about the head, 
 whereas as I know him his head is a thing 
 like a worn-out paint-brush. Where but 
 in a photograph would you see a parting 
 
 23
 
 24 THE ART OF 
 
 so straight as this ? It is unnatural. You 
 flatten down all a man's character ; for 
 nothing shows that more than the feathers 
 and drakes' tails, the artful artlessness, or 
 revolutionary tumult of his hair. Mind 
 you, I am not one of those who would 
 prohibit a man wearing what he conceives 
 to be his best clothes to the photographer's. 
 I like to see the little vanity peeping out — 
 the last moment's folly of a foolish tie, 
 nailed up for a lifetime. Yet all the same, 
 people should understand that the camera 
 takes no note of newness, but much of 
 the cut and fit. And a man should cer- 
 tainly not go and alter his outline into 
 a feminine softness, by pouring oil on his 
 troubled mane and plastering it down with 
 a brush and comb. It is not tidiness, but 
 hypocrisy. 
 
 " We have indeed very much to learn in 
 this matter. It is a thing that needs teach- 
 ing, like deportment or dancing. Plenty of 
 men I have noticed, who would never do 
 it in real life, commit the sin of being over- 
 gentlemanly in an album. Their clothes
 
 BEING PHOTOGRAPHED 25 
 
 are even indecently immaculate. They 
 become, not portraits, but fashion-plates. I 
 hate a man who is not rumpled and creased 
 a little, as much as I do a brand new pipe. 
 And, as a sad example of sin on the other 
 hand, on the side of carelessness, I have 
 seen renderings of a very august personage 
 indeed, in a hat — a Tiat ! It was tilted, 
 and to add to the atrocity, he was holding 
 a cigar. This I regard as horrible. Think ! 
 your photograph may go into boudoirs. 
 Imagine Gladys opening the album to 
 iEnone ; ' Now I will show you liiifYi.' 
 And there you sit, leering at their radiant 
 sweetness, hat on, and a cigar reeking 
 between your fingers. 
 
 " No, George, a man should go very 
 softly to a photographer's, and he should 
 sit before the camera with reverence in his 
 heart and in his attitude, as if he were in 
 the presence of the woman he loved." 
 
 He turned to Mrs Harborough's portrait, 
 looked at it, hesitated, looked again, and 
 passed on. 
 
 " I often think w^e do not take this
 
 26 THE ART OF 
 
 business of photography in a sufficiently 
 serious spirit. Issuing a photograph is like 
 marriage : you can only undo the mischief 
 with infinite woe. I know of one man 
 who has an error of youth of this kind on 
 his mind — a fancy-dress costume affair, 
 Crusader or Templar — of which he is more 
 ashamed than many men would be of the 
 meanest sins. For sometimes the camera 
 has its mordant moods, and amazes you by 
 its saturnine estimate of your merits. 
 This man was perhaps a little out of har- 
 mony with the garments of chivalry, and 
 a trifle complacent and vain at the time. 
 But the photograph of him is so cynical 
 and contemptuous, so merciless in its ex- 
 posure of his element of foolishness, that 
 we may almost fancy the spook of Carlyle 
 had got mixed up with the chemicals upon 
 the film. Yet it never really dawned upon 
 him until he had distributed this advertise- 
 ment of his little weakness far and wide, that 
 the camera had called him a fool to his face. 
 I believe he would be glad now to buy 
 them all back at five pounds a copy.
 
 BEING PHOTOGRAPHED 27 
 
 "This of Minnie Hobson is a work of 
 art. Bless me, the girl must be thirty- 
 seven or thirty-eight now, and just look at 
 her ! These photographers have got a 
 trick now, if your face is one of the long 
 kind, of raising the camera, bending your 
 head forward, and firing down at you. 
 So our Minnie becomes quite chubby again. 
 Then, this thing has been retouched." My 
 uncle peered into the photograph. " It 
 seems to me it is pretty nearly all retouch- 
 ing. For instance, if you look at the eye, 
 that high light is not perfectly even ; that 
 was touched in on the negative with a 
 pencil. Then about the neck of our 
 Minnie I have observed certain bones, just 
 the slightest indication of her collar-bone, 
 George, but that has disappeared under 
 the retoucher's pencil. Then the infantile 
 smoothness of her cheek, and the beauti- 
 fully-rounded outline, is produced by the 
 retoucher carefully scraping off the surface 
 of the film where the cheekbone projected 
 with a sharp knife. There are also in 
 real life little lines between the corner of
 
 28 THE ART OF 
 
 our Minnie's moutli and her nostril. And 
 again, Minnie is one of those people whose 
 dresses never seem to fit, but this fits like 
 a glove. These retouchers are like Midas, 
 and they turn all that comes to their hands 
 to gold ; or, like Spring, the flowers come 
 back at their approach. They reverse the 
 work of Ithuriel, and restore brightness to 
 the fallen. They sit at their little desks, 
 and scratch, scratch, scratch with those 
 delicate pencils of theirs, scratching away 
 age, scratching away care, making the 
 crooked straight, and the rough smooth. 
 They are the fairies of photography, and 
 fill our albums with winsome changelings. 
 Their ministry anticipates in a little way 
 the angels who will take us when we die, 
 releasing us from the worn and haggard 
 body of this death, and showing some- 
 thing of the eternal life and youth that 
 glows within. Or one might say that the 
 spirit of the retoucher is the spirit of Love. 
 It makes plain women beautiful, and 
 common men heroic. Her regal fingers 
 touch for the evil of ungainliness, and,
 
 BEING PHOTOGRAPHED 29 
 
 behold, we are restored. Her pencil is 
 like the Queen's sword, and it makes 
 knights out of common men. 
 
 '' When I have my photograph taken," 
 said my uncle, " I always like to think of 
 the retoucher. I idealise her ; I fancy 
 her with the sweetest eyes I have ever 
 seen, and an expression infinitely soft and 
 tender. And she looks closely into my 
 face, and her little pencil goes gently and 
 lovingly over my features. Tickle, tickle. 
 In that way, George, I get a really very 
 nice expression indeed." My uncle turned 
 to his own presentment, and mused 
 pleasantly for a space. Then he looked 
 again at Mrs Harborough as if inadvert- 
 ently, and asked her name. 
 
 " I like this newer way of taking your 
 photograph, against a mere grey back- 
 ground ; just the head of you. One 
 should always beware of the property 
 furniture of the photographer. In the 
 seventies they were great at such aids — a 
 pedestal, a cork rustic stile, wide landscape 
 in the distance, but I think that we are at
 
 30 THE ART OF 
 
 least getting beyond that now. People in 
 those days must have been afraid to be 
 left alone before a camera, or they wanted 
 it to seem that they were taken unawares, 
 quite against their modesty — did not know 
 what the camera was, and were just looking 
 at it. A very favourite pose for girls was 
 a graceful droop over a sofa, chin on 
 elegant hand. When I was at Dribble- 
 bridge — I was a bright young fellow then 
 — I collected a number of local photo- 
 gi^aphs, ladies chiefly, and the thing was 
 very noticeable when I put them in a row 
 over my mantleshelf The local ' artist ' 
 was intensely fond of that pose. But 
 fancy the local leader finding her cook 
 drooping over the same sofa as herself! 
 Nowadays, I see, you get merely the heads 
 of your girls, with their hair flossed up, 
 intense light from above, and faces in 
 shadow. I think it is infinitely better. 
 
 What horrible things hands become in 
 a photograph ! I wonder how it is that 
 the hand in a photograph is always four 
 shades darker than the arm. Every girl
 
 BEING PHOTOGRAPHED 31 
 
 who goes to be photographed in evening 
 dress should be solemnly warned to keep 
 her hands out of the picture. They will 
 look as though she has been enamelling 
 the grate, or toyiag with a bucket of pitch. 
 There is something that sins against my 
 conception of womanly purity in those 
 dark hands," 
 
 My uncle shut the album. " Yes, it is 
 a neglected field of education, an important 
 branch of deportment altogether forgotten. 
 Our well-bred ease fails us before the 
 camera ; we are lucky if we m.erely look 
 stiff and self-conscious. I should fancy 
 there would be an opening for some clever 
 woman to teach people how to dress for 
 the occasion and how to sit, what to avoid 
 and how to avoid it. As it is, we go in 
 a state of nervous agitation, obsequiously 
 costumed ; our last vestige of self-assertion 
 vanishes before the unwinking Cyclops eye 
 of the instrument, and we cower at the 
 mercy of the thing and its attendant. 
 They make what they will of us, and the 
 retoucher simply edits the review with an
 
 32 THE ART OF BEING PHOTOGRAPHED 
 
 eye to the market. So history is falsified 
 before our faces, and we prepare a lie for 
 our grandchildren. We fail to stamp our 
 individualities upon our photographs, and 
 are mere ' dumb-driven cattle ' in the 
 matter. We sin against ourselves in this 
 neglect, and act against the spirit of the 
 age. Sooner or later this haphazard 
 treatment of posterity must come to an 
 end." He meditated for a moment. 
 Then, as if pursuing a train of thought, 
 " That Mrs Harborough is a very pretty 
 woman, George. Where did you happen 
 to meet her ? "
 
 BAGSHOT'S MURAL DECORATIONS 
 
 Bagshot was rather proud of his new 
 quarters until my uncle called upon him. 
 Up to then he felt assured he was doing 
 right ; had, indeed, not the faintest doubt 
 in the matter until my uncle unsettled 
 him. "Nice carpet, Bagshot," said my 
 uncle, " nice and soft. This chair certainly 
 very comfortable. But what the mischief 
 do you mean — you, with your pretence to 
 culture — by hanging your dwelling with all 
 those framed and glazed photograph and 
 autograph dittoes ? I should have thought 
 you at least would have known better. 
 Love and Life, and Love and Death, the 
 Daphnephoria, Rembrandt's portrait — Wild 
 Havoc, man ! What were you thinking of?" 
 Bagshot seemed staggered. He ven- 
 tured to intimate feebly his persuasion 
 that the things were rather good. 
 
 C 33
 
 34 BAGSHOT'S MURAL DECORATIONS 
 
 " Good they certainly are, and well 
 reproduced, but only the Bible and 
 Shakspeare could stand this incessant re- 
 iteration, and not all Shakspeare. These 
 things are in shop windows, man — draw- 
 ing-rooms, offices, everywhere. They 
 afflict me like popular songs — like popular 
 quotations. They are good enough — as a 
 matter of fact they are too good. Only, 
 don't you know Willis has Love and Life 
 and Love and Death ? And so has Smith, 
 and Bays has Bembrandt's portrait in his 
 office, and my niece Euphemia has the 
 Daphnephoria in her drawing-room. I 
 can't understand, George, why you let it 
 stay there. It is possible to have too 
 much of a good thing. There is no 
 getting away from these all too popular 
 triumphs. They cover up the walls 
 everywhere. They consume all other 
 art. I shall write a schedule some day of 
 the Fifty Correct Pictures of the British 
 People. And to find you, Bagshot, 
 among the Philistines ! " 
 
 '' I thought they showed rather an
 
 BAGSHOT'S MURAL DECORATIONS 35 
 
 improvement in the general taste," said 
 Bagshot. "There is no reason why a 
 thing should not be common, and yet 
 very beautiful. Primroses, for in- 
 stance " 
 
 " That is true enough, but pictures are 
 not primroses," said my uncle. " Besides, 
 I think we like primroses all the better 
 because they must soon be over ; but these 
 are perennial blossoms, like the ever- 
 lasting flowers and dried grass of a lodging 
 house. They may still be beautiful, but 
 by this time, Bagshot, they are awfully 
 dry and dusty. Who looks at them ? 
 I notice our eyes avoid them even while 
 we talk about them. We have all noticed 
 everything there is to be noticed, and said 
 all the possible things that are to be said 
 about them long ago. Surely a picture 
 must be a little fresh to please. Else we 
 shall come at last to the perfect picture, 
 and art will have an end. Don't you see 
 the mere popularity of these things of the 
 pavement is enough to condemn them in 
 the estimation of every right-minded 
 person ? "
 
 36 BAGSHOT'S MURAL DECORATIONS 
 
 '' I don't see it," said Bagshot, making 
 head against the torrent. '' I cannot 
 afford to go to these swells and get 
 original work of theirs " 
 
 '' What do you want with ' these 
 swells ' and their original work ? " inter- 
 rupted my uncle fiercely. " Haven't they 
 used up all their originality ages ago ? Is 
 it not open to such men as yourself to 
 discover new men ? There are men pining 
 in garrets now for you, Bagshot. Fancy 
 the delight of having pictures that are 
 unfamiliar, pictures that catch the eye and 
 are actually to be looked at, pictures that 
 suggest new remarks, pictures by a name 
 that the stray visitor has never heard of 
 and which therefore puzzle him dreadfully 
 because he hasn't the faintest idea whether 
 to praise or blame them ! Isn't it worth 
 hunting studios for, and even, maybe, 
 going to the Academy ? Besides, suppose 
 your struggling artist comes to the front. 
 What price the five-guinea specimen of 
 his early style then ? Your artistic virtue 
 is indeed its own reward, and, besides, you
 
 BAGSHOT'S MURAL DECORATIONS 37 
 
 can boast about finding him. The poor 
 man of culture and the struggling artist 
 live for one another, or at least they ought 
 to — though I am afraid it is not much of 
 a living for the struggling artist." He 
 paused abruptly. " I suppose that auto- 
 type cost thirty shillings, and this carpet 
 about five pounds ? " 
 
 Bagshot assumed an elegant attitude 
 against his bureau. He had discovered 
 his reply. " You know you are bitten 
 by the fashion for originality. Why should 
 I make my room hideous with the work 
 of third-rate mediocrity, or of men who 
 are still learning to paint, simply in order 
 to be unlike my neighbour ? " 
 
 " Why," returned my uncle, '' should 
 you hang up things less interesting than 
 your wall paper, in mere imitation of your 
 neighbours ? For this on your walls, 
 Bagshot, deny it though you may, is not 
 art but fashion. I tell you, you do not care 
 a rap for art. You think pictures are a 
 part of virtue, like a silk hat — or evening 
 dress at dinner. And in your choice of
 
 38 BAGSHOT'S MURAL DECORATIONS 
 
 pictures you follow after your kind. I 
 never met a true-born Briton yet who 
 dared to buy a picture on his own accord 
 — unless he was a dealer. And then 
 usually he was not really a true-born 
 Briton. He waits to see what is being 
 hung. He has these things now because 
 he thinks they are right, not because they 
 are beautiful, just as he used to have the 
 Stag at Bay and the Boastful Hound. It 
 is Leighton now ; it was Landseer then. 
 Beally I believe that very soon the ladies' 
 papers will devote a column to pictures. 
 Something in this style. 'Smart people 
 are taking down their Kossetti's Annun- 
 ciations now, and are hanmngj Gambler 
 Bolton's new Hippopotamus in the place 
 of it. This Hippopotamus is to be the 
 correct thing in pictures this year, and no 
 woman with any claim to be considered 
 smart will fail to have it over her piano. 
 Marcus Stone's new engraving will also be 
 rather chic, Watts's Hope is now con- 
 sidered a little dowdy.' And so forth. 
 This gregarious admiration is the very
 
 BAGSHOT'S MURAL DECORATIONS 39 
 
 antithesis of artistic appreciation, which I 
 tell yon, simply must be individual." 
 '' Go on," said Bagshot, " go on." 
 " And that," said my uncle, with the 
 glow of discovery in his face, '" that is 
 where the vulgar critic goes wrong. He 
 conceives an orthodoxy. He tries to 
 explain why Velasquez is better than 
 Eaphael and Kaphael better than Gerard 
 Dow. As well say why a cirrus cloud is 
 better than a sycamore and a sycamore 
 better than a scarlet hat. Every painter, 
 unless he is a mere operative, must have 
 his peculiar public. It is incredible that 
 any painter can really satisfy the aesthetic 
 needs of such a public as these repro- 
 ductions indicate. True art is always 
 sectarian. Why were Landseer and Sidney 
 Cooper popular a few years ago, and why 
 does every tea-table sneer at them now ? 
 There must be something admirable in 
 them, or they would never have been 
 admired. Then why has my niece Annie 
 dropped admiring Poynter, and why does 
 she pretend — and a very thin pretence it 
 is — to admire Whistler ? "
 
 40 BAGSHOT'8 MURAL DECORATIONS 
 
 " You are wandering from my pictures," 
 said Bagshot. 
 
 " I want to," said my uncle. '' But 
 
 why do you try and hide your taste under 
 
 these mere formalities in frames ? Why 
 
 do you always say ' I pass ' in the game 
 
 of decoration ? Better a mess of green 
 
 amateurs and love therewith, than the 
 
 richest autotypes and dull complacency. 
 
 Have what you like. There is no such 
 
 thing as absolute beauty. That is the 
 
 Magna Charta of the world of art. What 
 
 is beautiful to me is not beautiful to 
 
 another man, in art as in women. But 
 
 take care to get the art that fits you. 
 
 Frankly, that ' Love and Death' suits you, 
 
 Bagshot, about as much as a purple toga 
 
 would. Orchardson is in your style. I tell 
 
 you that the greengrocer who buys an 
 
 original oil painting for sixteen shillings 
 
 with frame complete is far nearer artistic 
 
 salvation than the patron of the popular 
 
 autotype. Surely you will wake up 
 
 presently, Bagshot, and wonder what you 
 
 have been about.
 
 BAGSHOT'S MURAL DECORATIONS 41 
 
 " Half-past four, by Jove ! I must be 
 getting on. Well, Bagshot, ta-ta. One 
 must talk, you know. I really hope you 
 will be comfortable in your new rooms." 
 
 And so good-bye to Bagshot, staring in 
 a puzzled way at his reviled and desecrated 
 walls.
 
 ON SOCIAL MUSIC 
 
 My poor uncle came to me the other 
 evening in a most distressful state, broken 
 down to common blasphemy. His ample 
 front was rumpled with sorrow and his 
 tie disorderly aslant. His hair had gone 
 rough with his troubles. "The time I 
 have had, George ! " he panted. " Give 
 me something to drink in the name of 
 Holy Charity." 
 
 Since the Pall Mall Gazette took to 
 reporting his little sayings about photo- 
 graphs and ornaments, ideals and fashions, 
 he has been setting up as a conversa- 
 tionalist. He thinks he was designed 
 by Providence to that end, and aids his 
 destiny as much as he can by elaborately 
 preparing remarks. 
 
 Yet this thing had happened. " They 
 put," said my uncle, '' a little chap at the 
 
 42
 
 ON SOCIAL MUSIC 43 
 
 piano, and me at a very nice girl indeed 
 as she looked ; and the little chap began, 
 and so did I. I said a prelude thing of 
 mine, brand new and rather pretty." 
 
 He stopped. He turned to nerve him- 
 self with whisky. 
 
 '' Well," I said, when the pause seemed 
 sufficient ; " what did she say ? " 
 
 My uncle looked unspeakable things. 
 Then in a whisper, bending towards me : 
 
 " She said Sssh ! " 
 
 He repeated it that I might grasp its 
 full enormity, '' Sssh ! — so ! " 
 
 " What is music," said my uncle, after 
 a moody silence, '' that reasonable people 
 should listen to it ? I had to listen to it 
 myself, and it struck me. It was just a 
 tune this little chap was trying to re- 
 member, and now he would come at it 
 this way and now that. He never got it 
 quite right, though he fumbled about it 
 for ten minutes or a quarter of an hour. 
 And then two girls went, and one punished 
 the piano while the other, with a wrist 
 rather than an ear for music, drowned its
 
 44 ON SOCIAL MUSIC 
 
 cries with a violin. So it went on all the 
 evening, and when I moved they all 
 looked at me ; I had been put on a 
 nervous wicker chair, and I knew my 
 shoes squeaked like a carnival of swine, 
 and so I could not get away. And all 
 the things that kept coming into my 
 head, George, the neat remarks and 
 graceful sayings ! 
 
 " You see, I look at it in this light. 
 Music is merely background, and ought to 
 be kept in its place. I am no enemy of 
 music, George. The air in a room should 
 be melodious, for the same reason that it 
 should be faintly pleasing to the olfactory 
 sense, and neither hot nor stuffy. Just 
 as the walls should be delightfully coloured 
 and softly lit, and the refreshments pleasant 
 and at the moment of need. But surely 
 we meet for human intercourse. When I 
 go to see people I go to see the people — 
 not to hear a hired boy play the piano. 
 But these people plant a chevaux de frise 
 of singers and performers upon instruments 
 of music between themselves and me.
 
 ON SOCIAL MUSIC 45 
 
 They gag me with a few pennyworths of 
 second-hand opera. There I was bursting 
 to talk, and nice, intelligent -looking girls 
 to talk to, and whenever I began to say 
 something they said ' Sssh ! ' Tantalus 
 in a drawing-room it was — the very 
 Hades of hospitality. 
 
 '' Surely some day we shall learn re- 
 finement in our entertaining. Your 
 modern hostess issues her invitations and 
 seems overcome with consternation at her 
 gathering. ' "What shall I do with all 
 these people ? ' she seems to ask. So 
 she dabs cakes upon them, piles coffee 
 cups over them : ' Eat,' she says, ' and 
 shut up ! ' and stifles their protests with 
 a clamorous woman and a painful piano. 
 
 " No, of course I don't object to having 
 music. But it is an accessory, not an 
 object, in life. It is, after all, a physical 
 comfort, a pleasant vibration in one's ears. 
 To make an object of it is sensuality. It 
 is on all-fours with worshipping the wall- 
 paper. Some wall-papers are very beauti- 
 ful 'things nowadays, harmonious in form
 
 46 ON SOCIAL MUSIC 
 
 and colour, skilful in invention ; but 
 people do not expect you to sit down and 
 admire wall-paper, or promise you ' wall- 
 paper at eight.' Neither do they put an 
 extinguisher over any girl who does not go 
 with the wall-paper, or expect you to dress 
 in neutral tint on account of it, and they 
 are not hurt if you go away without seem- 
 ing to see it. Gustatory harmony, too, is 
 very delicious. Yet there is no hush 
 during dinner ; they do not insist upon a 
 persistent gnawing in honour of the feast. 
 But these musical people ! their god is 
 their piano. They set up an idol in their 
 salon, and command all the world to bow 
 down to it. They found a priestcraft of 
 pianists, and an Inquisition of fiddlers. 
 When I came away they were all crowded 
 round a violin, the women especially. 
 They could not have fussed more if it had 
 been a baby. They stroked it and ad- 
 mired its figure. It had rather a fashion- 
 able figure, but the neck was too 
 long. . . ." 
 
 I began to suspect the cause of this 
 bitterness.
 
 ON SOCIAL MUSIC 47 
 
 " Yes. She ivas there. And while 
 some of this piano was going on she 
 looked at the ear of the man who was 
 playing with a dreamy, tender look. . . . 
 No. I couldn't get a word with her the 
 whole evening."
 
 THE JOYS OF BEING ENGAGED 
 
 As I was passing the London University 
 the other day I saw my uncle emerge 
 from the branch of the Bank of England 
 opposite, and proceed in the direction of 
 the Burlington Arcade. He was elabo- 
 rately disguised as a young man, even to 
 the youthful flower, and I was incontinently 
 smitten with curiosity respecting the dark 
 purpose he might veil in this way. There 
 is, to me, a peculiar and possibly rather a 
 childish fascination in watching my more 
 intimate friends unobserved, and, curiously 
 enough, I had never before studied the 
 avuncular back view. I found something 
 singularly entertaining in the study of the 
 graceful contour of his new frock coat, and 
 in the cheerful carriage of his cane. He 
 paraded, a dignified procession of one, 
 some way down the Arcade, hesitated for 
 
 48
 
 THE JOYS OF BEING ENGAGED 49 
 
 a moment outside a jeweller's shop, and 
 then entered it. I strolled on as far as 
 Piccadilly, returned to the shop, and so 
 fell upon him suddenly in the midst of 
 his buying. 
 
 " Hullo, George ! " he said hastily, facing 
 me so as to hide as much of the counter as 
 possible. '' How's Euphemia ? " 
 
 I looked him fairly in the eye. " You 
 are buying a ring,'' I said in a firm, 
 decided voice. 
 
 He turned to the counter with an air 
 of surprise. " By Jove, so I am ! " 
 
 "A lady's ring," I said. He was, I 
 could see, hastily collecting his sufficiently 
 nimble powers of subterfuge. " One must 
 buy something, you know, George, some- 
 times," he said feebly. 
 
 He had selected some dozen or so 
 already, the most palpable engagement 
 rings I think I ever saw. One of them 
 had visible on its inner curvature the four 
 letters MIZP — . He looked at them, 
 saw the posy, and then, glancing at me, 
 laughed affably. " I meant to tell you
 
 50 THE JOYS OF BEING ENGAGED 
 
 yesterday, George — I will take these," to 
 the shopman. And we emerged with a 
 superficial amiability ; the case of rings 
 in my uncle's pocket. The thing was 
 rather a shock to me, coming so suddenly 
 and unexpectedly. I had anticipated some 
 innocent purchase of the jewellery he re- 
 viles so much, but certainly not significant 
 rings, golden fetters for others to wear and 
 enslave him ; and we were past the flower- 
 shop towards Hyde Park before either of 
 us spoke. It seemed so dreadful to me 
 that the cheerful, talkative man beside me, 
 my own father's little brother, a traveller 
 in distant countries, and a most innocent 
 man, and with all the inveterate habits of 
 thirty years' honourable bachelorhood and 
 all the mellowness of life upon him, should, 
 without consulting me, have taken the 
 first irrevocable step towards becoming a 
 ratepayer, a pew tenant, paterfamilias, a 
 fighter with schoolmasters, and the serf of 
 a butler, that I scarcely knew what to say 
 adequate to the occasion. 
 
 ''Well/' said I at last, with an in-
 
 THE JOYS OF BEING ENGAGED 51 
 
 voluntary sigh, " I suppose T must con- 
 gratulate you." 
 
 " Don't look at it in that light, George," 
 said my uncle; and he added in a more 
 cheerful tone, " I am only going to get 
 engaged, you know." 
 
 " You can scarcely imagine, George," 
 he proceeded, " how I have longed to be 
 engaged. All my life it has been my 
 hope and goal. It is, I think, the ideal 
 state of man. There was a chap with me 
 when I was at Kimberley who first put 
 the idea into my head. His ways were 
 animated and cheerful even for a diamond 
 field, where you know animation and 
 cheerfulness are, so to speak, de rigueur. 
 Whisky he affected, and jesting of the 
 kind that paints cities scarlet. And he 
 used every night, before festivities began, 
 to write a long letter to some girl in 
 England, and say, within limits, how bad 
 he had been and how he longed to reform 
 and be with her, and never, never do 
 anything wrong any more. He poured 
 all the higher and better parts of his
 
 52 THE JOYS OF BEING ENGAGED 
 
 nature into the letter, and folded it up 
 and sealed it very carefully. And then 
 he came to us in a singularly relieved 
 frame of mind, and would be the life and 
 soul of as merry a game of follow-your- 
 leader as one can well imagine." 
 
 Pleasant reminiscences occupied him for 
 a moment. " Every man should be en- 
 gaged, I think, to at least one woman. It 
 is the homage we owe to womankind, and 
 a duty to our souls. His fiancee is indeed 
 the Madonna of a true-hearted man ; the 
 thought of her is a shrine at the wayside 
 of one's meditations, and her presence a 
 temple wherein we cleanse our souls. She 
 is mysterious, worshipful, and inaccessible, 
 something perhaps of the woman, possibly 
 even propitious and helpful, and yet some- 
 thing of the Holy Grail as well. You 
 have no rights with her, nor she with you ; 
 you owe her no definite duties, and yet 
 she is singularly yours. A smile is a 
 favour, a touch of her fingers, a faint pres- 
 sure of your hand, is an infinite privilege. 
 You cannot demand the slightest help or
 
 THE JOYS OF BEING ENGAGED 53 
 
 concern of her, so you ask it with diffident 
 grace and there is an everflowing stream 
 of gratitude from small occasions. What- 
 ever you give her is a gift too, while a 
 hushand is just property, a mere draught- 
 camel for her service. All your functions 
 are decorative, you hang her shrine with 
 flowers and precious stones. You treat her 
 to art and literature, and as for vulgar 
 necessities — some one else sees to that." 
 
 " Until you are married," began I. 
 
 " I am speaking of being engaged. 
 Marriage is altogether a different thing. 
 The essence of a proper engagement is 
 reverence, distance, and mystery ; the 
 essence of marriage is familiarity. A 
 fiancee is a living eidolon ; a wife, from 
 my point of view at least, should be a 
 confidential companion, a fellow-conspirator, 
 an accessory after the fact, at least, to one's 
 little errors ; should take some share of the 
 burthen and heat of the day with one, and 
 have the humour to bear with a mood of 
 vexation or a fit of the blues. I doubt, 
 do you know, if the same kind of girl is
 
 54 THE JOYS OF BEING ENGAGED 
 
 suitable for engagements as for marriage. 
 For an engagement give me something 
 very innocent, a little awe-inspiring on 
 that account, absolutely and tenderly wor- 
 shipful, yet given to moods of caressing affec- 
 tion, and altogether graceful and beautiful. 
 A man, I think, ought to be incapable of 
 smoking or lounging in front of the girl he 
 professes to love, so reverent ought his love 
 to be. But for marriage let me have humour 
 and some community of taste, a woman 
 who can climb stiles and stand tobacco 
 smoke, and who knows a good cook by her 
 fruits. ... It is a complicated business, 
 this marrying. 
 
 ''The familiarity of the marriage state, 
 if it does not breed positive contempt on 
 the part of the angel, engenders at times, 
 I think, a considerable craving for change 
 on the side of both parties. We men are 
 poor creatures at the best — I always pity 
 your Euphemia. Married people, for 
 instance, always get too much of each 
 other's conversation. They do not have 
 sufficient opportunity to recuperate their
 
 THE JOYS OF BEING ENGAGED 55 
 
 topics from original sources. They get 
 interested in outside people, merely from 
 a perfectly legitimate desire to get some 
 amusing novel ideas for each other, and 
 then comes jealousy. I sometimes think 
 that if Adam and Eve had been merely 
 engaged, she would not have talked with 
 the serpent ; and the world had been 
 saved an infinity of misery. 
 
 *' No, George : engagements for me. It 
 is the state we were made for. I have 
 delayed this matter all too long. But, 
 thank heaven, I am engaged at last — I 
 hope for all the rest of my life. Now, 
 will you not congratulate me ? " 
 
 " It may be very nice as you put it, 
 but engagements end as well as begin," I 
 insisted. " You cannot be a law unto 
 yourself in these matters. When will you 
 get married ? " 
 
 " Good Heavens ! " exclaimed my uncle. 
 " Get married and end this delightful state! 
 You don't think she will want me to marry 
 her, do you ? Besides, she told me some 
 time ago that she did not intend to marry
 
 56 THE JOYS OF BEING ENGAGED 
 
 again. It was only that encouraged me to 
 suggest an engagement to her. Though 
 she is a wonderful woman, George — a 
 wonderful woman. Still, I think she looks 
 at things very much as I do." 
 
 He paused thoughtfully. Then added 
 with fervour, " At least I hope so."
 
 LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI 
 
 A RHAPSODY 
 
 I FOUND him in his own apartments, and 
 strangely disordered. He went to and fro, 
 raving — beginning so soon as I entered 
 the room. I noticed a book half out of 
 its cover, flung carelessly into the corner 
 of the room. 
 
 " I am enchanted of an impalpable 
 woman, George," he said, " I am in bonds 
 to a spirit of the air. I can neither think 
 nor work nor eat nor sleep because of her. 
 Sometimes I go out suddenly, tramping 
 through seething streets, through fog and 
 drizzle or dry east wind, mourning for her 
 sake. My life is rapidly becoming one 
 colourless melancholy through her spells 
 and twining sorceries. I sometimes wish 
 that I were dead. 
 
 57
 
 58 LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI 
 
 " Yet I have never seen her. Often, 
 indeed, I imagine her, anon as of this 
 shape, and anon of that. I know her 
 only by her victims, those she slays daily, 
 and daily revives to slay. They come 
 to me with their complaints, mutilated, 
 pathetic, terrible. I try to shut my ears 
 to them in vain. I have tried wool, but 
 it made little or no difference. 
 
 "The business always begins with the 
 slamming of a door and a healthy footfall 
 across the room. The piano is opened. 
 Then some occasional noises — the falling 
 of a piece of music behind the piano, 
 perhaps, and its extraction by means of 
 the tongs — I know it is tongs she uses by 
 the clang. Then the music-stool creaks, 
 and La Belle Dame is ready to play. She 
 puts both her hands upon the key-board, 
 and the treble shrieks apprehensively, and 
 the bass roars like a city in revolt. After 
 that this hush. Just this interval. 
 
 " Yet I sometimes think this hush is 
 really the worst of it all. It is a volumin- 
 ous apprehension, a towering impendency.
 
 LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI 59 
 
 You don't understand, George, You can't. 
 The poor devil in Poe's 'Pit and the 
 Pendulum ' must have had a taste of my 
 sensations. A first victim is being chosen. 
 I have a vision of the spirits of composers 
 small and great — standing up like suspects 
 awaiting identification, while her eye ranges 
 over them. Chopin tries to edge behind 
 Wagner, a difficult and forbidding person, 
 and Gounod seeks eclipse of Mendels- 
 sohn, who suddenly drops and crawls on 
 all fours between Gounod's legs ; Sullivan 
 cowers, and even Piccolomini's iron-framed 
 nerves desert him. She extends her hand. 
 There is a frantic rush to escape. Have 
 you ever seen a little boy picking dormice 
 out of a cage ? I always see this same 
 nightmare during that dreadful pause, a 
 vision of a writhing heap of kicking, 
 struggling, maddened composers, and of 
 a ghoulish piano grinning expectant, jaw 
 raised — lid I mean — and showing all its 
 black and yellow keys. ... A melancholy 
 shriek. Do you hear, George ? Tito 
 Mattel is captured. A song.
 
 60 LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI 
 
 tc < 
 
 Pum — So long the way — Pum — so 
 dark the day — Pum — Dear Heart ! 
 before you come.' So Tito Mattel comes 
 pumming through the wall into my pre- 
 sence. I don't pity him. Indeed it is a 
 positive relief that it is only Tito Mattel. 
 The man's no deity at the best, and a 
 little pulling out, and pulling crooked, and 
 general patching together of limbs in the 
 wrong place scarcely matters so far as he 
 and my taste are concerned. Yet I always 
 leave my work, George, when that begins, 
 and walk about the room. I try to per- 
 suade myself that I need fresh air, but the 
 autumnal day, the damp shiny street, has 
 all the uninviting harshness of truth — I 
 admit I do not. Tito flops about, is 
 riddled with dropped notes and racked 
 with hesitations, and presently becomes 
 still. The murder is over. 
 
 " What next ? That Study of Chopin's ! 
 This time the thing is more inspiring. 
 Once upon a time it was a favourite of 
 mine. Now it is a favourite of the un- 
 seen lady's. She plays it with spirit.
 
 LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI 61 
 
 and conjures up strange fancies in my 
 brain. The noises that come through 
 the wall now, quicker, thicker, louder, 
 are full of a tale of weltering confusion, 
 marine disaster, a ship in sore labour ; 
 there is a steady beating like the sound of 
 pumps, and a trickle of treble notes. There 
 are black silences, like thunderclouds, that 
 burst into flashes of music. Now the 
 poor melody swings up into the air — 
 then comes one of those terrible pauses, 
 and now down into the abyss. A crash, 
 an ineffectual beating, a spasmodic rush. 
 I seem to hear the pumps again, distant, 
 remote, ineffectual. But that is not so ; 
 the struggle is over. Chopin's Study has 
 been battered to pieces ; only disarti- 
 culated fragments toss amidst the froth. 
 High up the confusion of the stormy sky 
 she drives in a sieve dropping notes — 
 the witch of the storm, La Belle Dame 
 Sans Merci. 
 
 ''But the third piece in her repertory 
 has begun — Rubinstein. This, at any 
 rate, is familiar. She plays with the
 
 62 LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI 
 
 confidence born of long unpunished mis- 
 doing. That Rubinstein must indeed be 
 sorry, and unless their elysium is like the 
 library of the Linnsean Society, and fitted 
 •with double windows, all the great de- 
 parted musicians must be sorry too, that 
 he ever wrote a Melody in F. Daily 
 from the altars of a thousand, of ten 
 thousand, school pianos that melody cries 
 to heaven. From the empire of the 
 music master, upon which the sun never 
 sets, day and night, week in week out, 
 from year to year, Rubinstein's Melody 
 in F streams up for ever. These school 
 pieces are like the Latin ritual before the 
 Reformation, they link all Christendom 
 by a common use. As the earth spins, 
 and the sunlight sweeps ever westward, 
 that melody passes with the day. Now 
 it is tinkling in a grey Moravian school, 
 now it dawns upon the Adige and begins 
 in Alsace, now it has reached Madrid, 
 Paris, London. Then a devotee in some 
 Connemara Establishment for Young 
 Ladies sets to. Presently tall ships upon
 
 LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI 63 
 
 the silent main resound with it, and 
 they are at it in the Azores and in 
 Iceland, and then — one solitary tinkling, 
 doubling, reduplicating, manifolding into 
 an innumerable multitude — New York 
 takes up the wondrous tale. On then 
 with the dawn to desolate cattle ranches, 
 the tablelands of Mexico, the level plains 
 of Illinois and Michigan. So the great 
 tide that started in Rubinstein's cranium 
 proceeds upon its destiny. Always some- 
 where between the hours of eleven and 
 two it comes back to me here, poor 
 hunted composition, running its eternal 
 world gauntlet, pursuing its Wandering 
 Jew pilgrimage, and I curse and pity it 
 as it goes by. . . . It has gone. The 
 ' Maiden's Prayer ' is next usually. Then 
 one of the ' Lieder ohne Worte,' then the 
 ' Dead March ' — all of them but the 
 meagre and mutilated skeletons of them- 
 selves; things of gaps and tatters, like 
 gibbet trophies. They are as knocked 
 about as a fleet comino^ out of action, 
 they are as twisted and garbled as a
 
 64 LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI 
 
 Chinese war telegram ; it is like an 
 hospital for congenitally diseased com- 
 positions taking the air. And they have 
 to hobble along sharply too ; there is a 
 certain cruel decision in the way the 
 notes are struck, a Nurse Gillespie touch 
 about this Invisible Lady. Or it may 
 be the callousness of old habit, a certain 
 sense of a duty overdone, a certain im- 
 patience at the long delay. You will hear. 
 " Listen ! — Turn Turn Ti-ti-tum — 
 No ! — turn. Slight pause. Turn turn 
 twiddle — vigorous crescendo — TUM. This 
 is unusual ! A stranger ? A new piece 
 for La Belle Dame Sans Merci 1 Her 
 wonted reckless dash deserts her. She 
 is, as it were, exploring a new region, 
 and advances with mischievous coyness, 
 with an affectation of a faltering heart, 
 with hesitating steps. My imagination 
 is stimulated by these dripping notes. 
 I see her, as it were, on an uneven 
 pavement ; here the flags are set on end, 
 there fungi have tilted them, a sharp 
 turning of the page may reveal heaven
 
 LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI 65 
 
 knows what horrors ; presently comes a 
 black gap with a vault of dusty silence 
 below. A pause, an incoherency, a re- 
 petition ! She has encountered some 
 difficulty, some slumbering coil of sharps 
 and r flats, and it raises its bristling front 
 in her way. . . . She has fled back to 
 the opening again. I begin to wonder 
 what unhappy musician lies hidden in 
 this new ruin, behind the bars of this 
 melancholy confusion. There is some- 
 thing familiar but elusive, like a face 
 that one has known and loved and lost 
 and met again after the cruel changes 
 of intervening years. It conjures up 
 oddly enough a vision of a long room in 
 the twilight, and an acacia in silhouette 
 against the pale gold of the western sky. 
 Ah ! now I know ! 
 
 *' That of all pieces ! 
 
 " I must have my walk, George. I can- 
 not bear to hear that old-familiar music 
 so evilly entreated. But, all the same, 
 the memory it has touched will vibrate 
 and smart ; to-day and to-morrow, and 
 
 E
 
 66 LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI 
 
 I know not for how many days., it will 
 re-echo in my brain. All the old cloudy 
 remorse that has subsided will be set 
 astir again. I shall hear again a light 
 touch upon the keys, see again the 
 shadowy face against the sunset, try to 
 recall the sound of a voice. . . . What 
 evil spirit has put this mockery into the 
 head of La Belle Dame ? Surely without 
 
 this " 
 
 He made a dive at the folding doors 
 and presently reappeared in his coat. It 
 was the only intimation I ever had that 
 my dear little uncle had such a thing 
 as a Past.
 
 ON A TRICYCLE 
 
 I SAT on the parapet of the bridge, and 
 swung my feet over the water that frothed 
 and fretted at the central pier below. 
 Above the bridge the stream broadened 
 into a cress-bespangled pool, over which 
 the sapphire dragon-flies hovered, and its 
 earlier course Avas hidden by the big oak 
 trees that bent towards each other from 
 either bank. Through their speckled 
 tracery of green one saw the hazy blue 
 depths of the further forest. I was watch- 
 ing the proceedings of some quick-moving 
 brown bird amid the rushes and marsh 
 marigolds of the opposite bank. 
 
 '" Pleasant," said a voice beside me. 
 
 I turned, and saw my uncle. He was 
 disguised in a costume of reddish-brown 
 cloth. " Golf here ? " said I, and then 
 I noticed the tricycle. '^ A vagrom man 
 on wheels ! " ^^
 
 68 ON A TRICYCLE 
 
 Both the suit and the machine became 
 him very well. The machine was low, 
 and singularly broad between the wheels, 
 and altogether equal to him, and it had 
 chubby pneumatic tires and a broad and 
 even imposing wallet. 
 
 " Yes," said he, following my eye. " It 
 is a handsoKie machine, a full dress con- 
 cern with all its plating and brown leather, 
 and in use it is as willing and quiet as 
 any tricycle could be, a most urbane and 
 gentlemanly affair — if you will pardon the 
 adjective. I am glad these things have 
 not come too late for me. Frankly, the 
 bicycle is altogether too flippant for a man 
 of my age, and the tricycle hitherto, with 
 its two larofer wheels behind and a smaller 
 one in front, has been so indecently sug- 
 gestive of a perambulator that really, 
 George, I could not bring myself to it. 
 But a Bishop might ride that thing." 
 
 He swung himself up upon the parapet 
 beside me and lit a cigar. 
 
 '' The bicycle for boys, George — or 
 fools. The things will not keep up for
 
 ON A TRICYCLE 69 
 
 a moment without you work at them, 
 they need constant attention ; I would as 
 soon ride a treadmill. You cannot loaf 
 with them, and the only true pleasure of 
 cycling is to loaf. Yet only this morning 
 did I meet an elderly gentleman with a 
 beard fit for Abraham, his face all crimson 
 and deliquescent with heat, and all dis- 
 torted with the fury of his haste, toiling 
 up a hill on one of these unstable instru- 
 ments. When he saw me coming down 
 in all my ease and dignity he damned at 
 me with his bell. Now, I do not like to 
 see a bicycle wobble under a load of years, 
 and steer into the irascible. As years 
 increase tempers shorten, and bicycles, 
 even the best of bicycles, are seductively 
 irritating. 
 
 " Besides, the devil of the Wandering 
 Jew has power over all such as go upon 
 two wheels. ' Onward,' he says, ' onward ! 
 Faster, thou man ! This green and breezy 
 earth is no abiding place for you ! ' And 
 hard-breathing, crook-shaped, whirling, bell- 
 banging lunatics try and race you. They
 
 70 ON A TRICYCLE 
 
 whiz by, thinking indignities of your 
 dignified progress, and sometimes saying 
 them. Not one cyclist in a dozen, George, 
 and seemingly not a solitary bicyclist, 
 seems to think of anything but getting to 
 the end of his pleasure. I meet these 
 servants of the wheel at the inns, and they 
 tell short stories and sketches about their 
 pace, and show each other their shoes and 
 saddles, and compare maps and roads ; 
 some even try to trade machines. They 
 talk most indecently of the makes and 
 prices. I would as soon ask a man who 
 was his tailor or where he got his hair 
 cut and how much he paid. One man I 
 met was not so much a man as a hoard- 
 ing, blatant about the Gaspipe Machine 
 Company. For them no flowers exist, no 
 wild birds, no trees, no landscapes, no 
 historical memorials, and no geological 
 associations, nothing but the roads they 
 traverse and the bicycles they ride. Those 
 that have other interests have them in the 
 form of cheap portable cameras, malignant 
 things that can find no beauty in earth or 
 heaven."
 
 ON A TRICYCLE 71 
 
 " George," said my uncle, suddenly, and 
 I knew he had come upon a great discovery ; 
 '' real human beings are scarce in this 
 world." 
 
 " You speak bitterly," said I. '' I know 
 what has happened. You are hot from 
 an inn full of the viler type of cyclist, and 
 I presume that, after their custom, they 
 mocked at your machinery. But don't 
 blacken a popular exercise on that account." 
 
 " But these men are so aggressive ! I tell 
 you, George, it requires moral courage to 
 ride a tricycle about at a moderate pace, 
 as a man of discretion should. They want 
 to make a sport of it ; they are race-struck, 
 incapable of understanding a man who rides 
 at seven miles an hour when he might ride 
 at fifteen. Read their special papers. 
 They mock and sneer at everything but 
 pace ; they worship the makes of '94 in 
 the interests of their advertising columns ; 
 touring simply means hotel-touting to 
 them, and landscape, deals in cameras ; in 
 the end they will kill cycling — indeed, 
 they are killing it. It is not nice to be
 
 72 ON A TRICYCLE 
 
 mocked at even when you are in the right ; 
 a blatant cad is like a rhinoceros, and 
 admits of no parleying, only since you must 
 not kill him you are obliged to keep out 
 of his way. The common cyclist has 
 already driven ladies off the roads by 
 forcing the pace, the honeymoon tandem 
 returns with its feelings hurt at his jesting, 
 and now he is driving off all quiet men." 
 
 '' All this," said I, " because they said 
 something disrespectful about your machine 
 at the last inn . . . You don't, I see, 
 approve of the feminine bicycle ? " 
 
 My uncle did his best to be calm and 
 judicial. 
 
 "A woman in a hurry is one of the 
 most painful sights in the world, for exer- 
 tion does not become a woman as it does 
 a man. Let us avoid all prejudice in this 
 matter, George, and discuss it with open 
 minds. She has, in the first place, a 
 considerable length of hair, and she does 
 it up into rich and beautiful shapes with 
 things called hairpins and with curling 
 irons. Very few people have hair that
 
 ON A TRICYCLE 73 
 
 curls naturally, George. You are young, 
 but you are married, and I see nothing 
 improper in telling you these things. 
 Well, when a woman rides about, exerting 
 herself violently to keep a bicycle going, 
 her hair gets damp and the pleasing 
 curls lose their curliness and become 
 wet, straggling bands of hair plastered 
 over her venous forehead. And a tragic 
 anxiety is manifest, an exj^ression painful 
 for a man to meet. Also her hairpins 
 come out and fall on the road to wait 
 for pneumatic tires, and her hair is no 
 longer rich and beautiful in form. Then 
 she gets dirty, horribly dirty, as though 
 she had been used to sweep the roads 
 with. And her skirts have to be weirdly 
 altered, even to the divided skirt, so that 
 when she rides she looks like a short, 
 squat little man. She not only loses her 
 beauty but her dignity. Now, for my 
 own part, I think a man wants a woman 
 to worship — it is a man's point of view, 
 of course, but I can't help my sex — and 
 the worshipping of these zouaves is in-
 
 74 ON A TRICYCLE 
 
 credible. She is nothing more than a 
 shorter, fuller, and feebler man. Heaven 
 help her ! For the woman on the tricycle 
 there are ampler excuses as well as ampler 
 skirts, the exertion is not too violent for 
 grace and coolness, and the offensive bulging 
 above one narrow wheel is avoided. But 
 women will never sacrifice so much for so 
 little ; worshipfulness, beauty, repose, and 
 comfort for a paltry two or three miles 
 more an hour of pace. They know too 
 well the graces of delay. To do things 
 slowly, George, is part of the art of living. 
 Our sex learns that when its youthful 
 fervour is over and all the things are 
 done. But women are born wise." 
 
 " By the bye," said I, " how is Mrs 
 Harborough ? " 
 
 " Very well, thanks. How is Euphemia? 
 Your bit of view, George, is pretty, but 
 I think I will have some heather now. 
 There is a common three miles ahead. 
 This indeed is the true merit of cycling. 
 For a view, a panorama ; for one picture, 
 a gallery. Your true artist in cycling
 
 ON A TRICYCLE 75 
 
 sits by the roadside, and rides only by 
 way of an interlude. As for the worship 
 of the machine, I would as soon worship 
 a scene-shifter." 
 
 He dropped off the bridge and mounted 
 his machine, and was presently pursuing 
 his smooth and noiseless way. As he 
 vanished round the corner he sounded his 
 gong. It was really a most potent, grave, 
 and reverend gong, with a certain note 
 of philosophical melancholy in its tone, 
 as different from the vulgar tang of your 
 common cycle as one can well imagine. 
 It asked you, at your convenience, sir (or 
 madam), to get out of the way, to stand 
 aside and see a most worthy and dignified 
 spectacle roll by, if so be you had the 
 mind for it. As for any scolding insist- 
 ence, any threat of imminent collision, 
 there was none of it. It was the bell 
 of a man who loved margins, who was 
 at his ease, and would have all the world 
 at its ease. More than anything else, it 
 reminded me of the boom of some ivy-clad 
 church tower, warning the world without
 
 76 ON A TRICYCLE 
 
 unseemly haste that another hour had, 
 with leisurely completeness, accomplished 
 itself. 
 
 And so he passed out of my sight and
 
 AN UNSUSPECTED MASTERPIECE 
 (authoress unknown) 
 
 He pushed it away from him. 
 
 " I felt as though I had disturbed the 
 graves of the long departed," he said with 
 a grimace, and then addressing the egg : 
 " Forgive me the sacrilege : they sold 
 you to me as new laid, a mere thing of 
 yesterday. I had no idea I was opening 
 the immemorial past. De mortuis nihil 
 nisi bonwn — to you at least the quotation 
 will be novel. Or I might call you bad, 
 you poor mummy. 
 
 " Unhappy, pent-up, ineffectual thing ! " 
 he said, waving his jilted bread and butter, 
 and addressing the discarded inedible. 
 " Poor old maid among eggs ! And so 
 it has come to this absolute failure with 
 you. ■ Why were you ever laid ? Surely, 
 
 77
 
 78 AN UNSUSPECTED MASTERPIECE 
 
 since you were once alive, some lurking 
 aspiration, some lowly, and yet not lowly, 
 but most divine, striving towards the 
 Higher and the Better, hath stirred within 
 you. The warm sunlight shone through 
 your translucent shell, the sweet air 
 stirred the sweet hay of the nest, and 
 life called you from your dreaming to 
 awake, and join it in its interplay. And 
 now ! You might have been — what 
 might you not have been ? A prize 
 hen, fountain of a broadening stream of 
 hens, chicks, dozens of chicks, hundreds 
 of chicks, a surging ocean of chickens. 
 Had you been hatched among the early 
 Victorian chickens that were, I presume, 
 your contemporaries, by now you might 
 have been a million fowl, and the delight 
 and support of hundreds of thousands of 
 homes. You might have been worth 
 thousands of pounds and have eaten corn 
 by the ton. They might have written 
 articles about you in half-crown reviews 
 and devoted poultry farms to your sole 
 support. And instead you have been
 
 AN UNSUSPECTED MASTERPIECE 79 
 
 narrowed down to this sordid back-street 
 tragedy, a mere offence, tempting a 
 struggling tradesman to risk the honour 
 of my patronage of his books, for a paltry 
 fraction of a pennyworth of profit. Why, 
 I ask you, were you not hatched ? Was 
 it lack of courage ? a fear of the unknown 
 dans^ers that lie outside the shell ? 
 
 " An indescribable pity wells up in 
 me for this lost egg, this dead end in the 
 tree of life, George. One thinks of the 
 humble but deserving amoeba, the prim- 
 ordial metazoon, the first fish, the remote 
 reptile ancestor, the countless generations 
 of forefathers that, so far as this egg 
 went, have lived and learnt and suffered 
 in vain. The torrent of life had split 
 and rushed by on either side of it. And 
 you might," cried he, turning to the egg 
 again, *'have been a Variety, a novelty, 
 and an improvement in chickens. No 
 chick now will ever be exactly the chick 
 you might have been. Only an Olive 
 Schreiner could do full justice to your 
 failure, you poor nun, you futile eremite.
 
 80 AN UNSUSPECTED MASTERPIECE 
 
 you absolute and hopeless ionpasse. Was 
 it, I ask again, a lack of courage ? 
 
 " Perhaps a lack of opportunity ? It 
 may be you stirred and hoped in the 
 distant past, and the warmth to quicken 
 you never came. Ambition may have 
 fretted you. Indeed, now I think of it, 
 there is something in the flavour of you^ 
 singularly suggestive of disappointed ambi- 
 tion. In literature, and more particularly 
 in criticism, I can assure you I have met 
 the very fellow of your quality, from 
 hterary rotten eggs whose opening came 
 too late. They are like the genii in the 
 ' Arabian Nights ' whom Solomon, the son 
 of David, sealed in the pot. At first he 
 promised infinite delights to his discoverer 
 — and his discoverer lagged. In the end 
 he was filled with unreasonable hatred 
 against all the feeble free, and emerged 
 as a malignant fume, eager to wreak him- 
 self upon the world. 
 
 " A sudden thought, George ! I see 
 my egg in a new light, and all my pity 
 changes to respect. Surely it is a most
 
 AN UNSUSPECTED MASTERPIECE 81 
 
 potent egg, a gallinaceous Swift. After 
 all, anything but pointless and childless, 
 since it has this strange quality of being 
 offensive and engendering thought. Food 
 for the mind if not food for the body — 
 didactic if not delightful — a bit of modem 
 literature, earnest and fundamentally real. 
 I must try and understand you, Ibsen 
 Ovarum. Possibly it is a profound parable 
 I have stumbled upon. Though I scarcely 
 reckoned on a parable with my bread and 
 butter. Frankly, I must confess I bought 
 it for the eating." 
 
 Now that my uncle had at last begun 
 to grasp the true greatness of his egg, he 
 apparently considered it becoming to drop 
 the tone of half-patronising pity he had 
 previously adopted. '' Come," said he, 
 smiling, with a dash of raillery, over his 
 coffee-cup ; " admit you are a humbug, 
 you whitened sepulchre of an anticipated 
 chick ! Until you found a congenial soul 
 and overwhelmed me with your confidence, 
 what a career of deception — not mean, of 
 course, but cynical — ironical — you have
 
 8^ 82 AN UNSUSPECTED MASTERPIECE 
 
 been leading. What a jest it must have 
 been to you to be sold as new laid ! How 
 you laughed in your quiet way at the 
 mockery of life. Surely it was a worthy 
 pair to Swift in cassock and bands conduct- 
 ing a marriage service. 1 can well fancy 
 your silent scorn of the hand that put you 
 in the bag. New laid ! But now I have 
 the full humour of you. You must pardon 
 my dulness of apprehension. I grasp your 
 meaning now^; your quiet insistent teaching 
 that all life is decay and all decay is life. 
 No forcing the accent, no crudity, but a per- 
 vading persuasion. A noble gospel ! " 
 
 He paused impressively, placed the egg 
 respectfully upon his bureau, and presently 
 went off at a tangent to something else. 
 
 " Shall I throw this away ? " said the 
 girl. 
 
 " Good heavens ! Throw it away ? 
 Certainly not. Put it in the library." 
 (The library used to be the corner of the 
 room by the window.) 
 
 She stared at me with a certain attempt 
 at confidence. She is a callous, impertinent
 
 AN UNSUSPECTED MASTERPIECE 83 
 
 kind of girl, and I fear inclined to be bold. 
 " It do smell, sir," she said to him. 
 
 ''That's the merit of it. It's irony. 
 Go and put it on the fourth shelf near the 
 window. There are some yellow-covered 
 books there, and Swift, some comedies by 
 a gentleman named Ibsen, and a couple of 
 novels by two gentlemen named George 
 
 . But there ! you don't know one 
 
 book from another ! The fourth shelf from 
 the top on the right-hand side." 
 
 As the girl did so she looked over her 
 hand at me, and lifted her eyebrows very 
 slightly.
 
 THE GREAT CHANGE 
 
 My uncle had been hectic all day. I 
 knew and dreaded what was coming, and 
 said nothing that by any chance could 
 lead up to it. 
 
 He absent-mindedly tipped the emu 
 sixpence. Then we came to the wart 
 hog. 
 
 "A bachelor," he said, meditatively, 
 scratching the brute's back. 
 
 I hastily felt for a saving topic in the 
 apprehensive darkness of my mind, and 
 could find none. 
 
 " I expect I shall be married in 
 October," said my uncle. Then, sighing : 
 "The idyll of my engagement was short- 
 lived." 
 
 It was out. Now, the day — my last 
 idle day with my poor uncle — was a 
 hideous wreck. All the topics he had 
 
 84
 
 THE GREAT CHANGE 85 
 
 fluttered round vanislaed, and, cold and 
 awful, there loomed over us the one great 
 topic. 
 
 *'What do you think of marriage, 
 George ? " said my uncle, after a pause, 
 prodding the wart hog suddenly. 
 
 " That's your privilege," said I. 
 " Married men don't dare to think 
 of it. Bigamy." 
 
 " Privilege ! Is it such a headlong 
 wreck of one's ideals as they say ? " said 
 my uncle. '' Is that dreamland furniture 
 really so unstable in use ? " 
 
 " Of course," said I, " it's different from 
 what one expects. But it seems to be 
 worse for the other party. At least to 
 judge from the novels they engender in 
 their agony." 
 
 " So far as I can see," he proceeded, 
 " what happens is very similar to a thing 
 a scientific chap was explaining to me the 
 other day. There are some little beasts 
 in the sea called ascidians, and they begin 
 life as cheerful little tadpole things, with 
 waggling tails and big expressive eyes.
 
 86 THE GREAT CHANGE 
 
 They move freely about hither and thither, 
 and often travel vast distances in an ad- 
 venturous way. Then what he called 
 metamorphosis begins. The little tadpole 
 waggles his way to a rock and fixes himself 
 head downward. Then he undergoes the 
 oddest changes, becomes indeed a mere 
 vegetative excrescence on the stone, secretes 
 a lot of tough muck round himself, and is 
 altogether lost to free oceanic society. He 
 loses the cheerful tail, loses most of his 
 brain, loses his bright expressive eye." 
 
 "The bother of it," said I, ''is that 
 very often the wandering expressive eye 
 is not lost in the human metamorphosis." 
 
 " Putting it in another way, one might 
 say that the kind of story that Ovid is so 
 fond of describing, the affairs of Daphne 
 and lo, for instance, are fables of the same 
 thing : an interlude of sentiment and then 
 a change into something new and domesti- 
 cated, rooted, fixed, and bounded in." 
 
 " It is certainly always a settling down," 
 said I. 
 
 '' I don't like this idea of settling down.
 
 THE GREAT CHANGE 87 
 
 George." He shuddered. " It must be 
 a dreadful thing to go about always with 
 a house on your mind." 
 
 " You get used to it. And, besides, 
 you don't go about so much." 
 
 He gave the bachelor wart hog a part- 
 ing dig, and we walked slowly and silently 
 through the zebra-house towards the ele- 
 phants. '' Of course we do not intend to 
 settle down," he said presently, with a 
 clumsy effort to render his previous re- 
 marks impersonal. 
 
 '^ A marriage invalidates all promises," 
 I explained. " The law recognises this 
 in the case of wills." 
 
 •'' That's a new view," he said, evidently 
 uncomfortable about something. 
 
 " It follows from your doctrine of 
 metamorphosis. A marries B. Then 
 the great change begins. A gradually 
 alters into a new fixed form, C, while B 
 flattens and broadens out as D. It is a 
 different couple, and they cannot reason- 
 ably be held responsible for the vagaries 
 of A and B."
 
 88 THE GREAT CHANGE 
 
 "That ought to be better understood." 
 
 ''It would perhaps be as well. Before 
 marriage Edwin vows to devote his life 
 to Angelina, and Angelina vows she will 
 devote her life to Edwin. After marriage 
 this leads to confusion if they continue 
 to believe such promises. Marriage cer- 
 tainly has that odd effect on the memory. 
 You remember Angelina's promises and 
 forget your own, and vice versa." 
 
 '' There is no apparition more distressing 
 than the ghost of a dead promise/' said 
 my uncle. '' Especially when it is raised 
 in the house of your friends." 
 
 We passed through the elephant house 
 in silence. 
 
 ''I wonder what kind of man I shall 
 be after the change, George. It's all a 
 toss-up," he continued, after an interval. 
 "I have seen some men improved by it. 
 You, for instance. You were a mere 
 useless, indecent aspirant to genius before 
 the thing came upon you. Now you are 
 a respectable journalist and gracefully 
 anxious to give satisfaction to your editor.
 
 THE GREAT CHANGE 89 
 
 But my own impression is that a man 
 has to be a bit of an ass before he can 
 be improved by marriage. Most men 
 get so mercenary, they simply work and 
 do nothing a rational creature should. 
 They are like the male ants that shed 
 their wings after the nuptial flight. And 
 their wives go round talking fashion 
 articles, and calling them dear old stupids, 
 and flirting over teacups with the un- 
 married men, or writing novelettes about 
 the child-man, and living their own lives. 
 I've been an unmarried man aud I know 
 all about it. Every intelligent woman 
 now seems to want to live her own life 
 when she is not engaged in taking the 
 child-man out into polite society, and 
 trying to wean him from alcohol and 
 tobacco. However, this scarcely applies 
 to me." 
 
 " Not now," I said. And he winced. 
 
 " I wonder how it feels. Most men 
 go into this without knowing of the 
 change that hangs over them. But I 
 am older. It would not be nice for a cater-
 
 90 THE GREAT CHANGE 
 
 pillar if he knew he was going to rip up 
 all along his back in a minute or so. 
 Yet I could sympathise with such a cater- 
 pillar now. Anj^how, George, I hope the 
 change will be complete. I would not 
 like to undergo only a partial metamor- 
 phosis, and become a queer speckled 
 monster all spotted with bachelor habits. 
 Yet I sometimes think I am be3^ond the 
 adolescent stage, and my habits rather 
 deeply rooted. Hitherto, I have always 
 damned a little at braces and collars and 
 things like that. I wish I knew where 
 one could pick up a few admissible 
 expletives. And I loaf about London 
 all day sometimes without any very 
 clear idea of what I am after, telling 
 chaps in studios how to paint, and talk- 
 ing to leisurely barristers, and all that 
 kind of thing." 
 
 '' She," I said, " will probably help you 
 to conquer habits of that sort." 
 
 " Yes, I dare say she will," said my 
 uncle. " I forgot that for the minute."
 
 THE PAINS OF MARRIAGE 
 
 My uncle came to a stop outside a stationer's 
 shop in Oxford-street. When I saw what 
 had caught his attention I reproached 
 myself for my thoughtlessness. 
 
 " Come/' said I, " tell me what you 
 think of — of representative government." 
 
 "It's no good, George. You did the 
 same thing at the cake shop. Do you 
 think I never saw the cake shop ? Since 
 this affair was settled I think every shop 
 I pass reminds me of it — even the gun- 
 smith's. I never suspected before how 
 entirely retail trade turned on marriage — 
 except, perhaps, the second-hand book shops. 
 The whole world seems a-marrying. 
 
 "It's queer," said he, ''that a little 
 while ago the thing that worried me to 
 the exclusion of everything else was the 
 idea of being married, and now it is so 
 
 91
 
 92 THE PAINS OF MARRIAGE 
 
 near it's entirely the getting married that 
 upsets me. I have forgotten the horrid 
 consequences in the horror of the operation." 
 
 ''It's much the same," said I, ''at an 
 execution." 
 
 "Look at those cards." He waved his 
 hand towards a neat array of silver and 
 white pasteboard. " ' Jemima Smith,' with 
 an arrow through the Smith, and ' Podger ' 
 written above it, and on the opposite 
 side ' Mr and Mrs John Podger.* That 
 is where it has me, George." 
 
 We went on past a display of electro- 
 plate with a card about presents in the 
 window, past a window full of white flowers, 
 past a carriage-builder's and a glove shop. 
 " It's like death," said my uncle ; "it 
 turns up everywhere and is just the same 
 for everybody. In that cake shop there 
 were piles and piles of cakes, from little 
 cakes ten inches across up to cakes of 
 three hundredweight or so ; all just the 
 same rich, uneatable, greasy stuff, and with 
 just the same white sugar on the top of 
 them. I suppose every day they pack off
 
 THE PAINS OF MARRIAGE 93 
 
 scores. It makes one think of marrying 
 in swarms, like the gnats. I catch myself 
 wondering sometimes if the run of people 
 really are separate individuals, or only 
 a kind of replicas, without any tastes of 
 their own. There are people who would 
 rather not marry than marry without one 
 of those cakes, George. To me it seems 
 to be almost the most asinine position 
 a couple of adults can be in, to have to 
 buy a stone or so of that concentrated 
 biliousness and cut it up, or procure other 
 people to cut it up, and send it round to 
 other adults who would almost as soon eat 
 arsenic. And why cake — infantile cake ? 
 Why not biscuits, or cigarettes, or choco- 
 late? It seems to me to be playing the 
 fool with a solemn occasion." 
 
 " You see, it is the custom to have cake." 
 
 '' Well, anyhow, I intend to break the 
 custom." 
 
 '' So did I, but I had it all the same." 
 
 My uncle looked at me. 
 
 " You see," said I, " when a woman 
 says you must do this or that — must have
 
 94 THE PAINS OP MARRIAGE 
 
 cake at a wedding, for instance — you must 
 do it. It is not a case for argument. It 
 is a kind of privilege they have — the 
 categorical imperative. You will soon 
 learn that." 
 
 Evidently the question was open. '' But 
 why do they say you must ? " 
 
 " Other women tell them to. They 
 would despise any one dreadfully who did 
 not have a really big cake — from that 
 shop." 
 
 ''But why?" 
 
 " My dear uncle/' said I, " you are 
 going into matrimony. You do not show 
 a proper spirit." 
 
 " The cake," said my uncle, " is only a 
 type. There is this trousseau business 
 again. Why should a woman who is 
 going to marry require a complete outfit 
 of that sort ? It seems to suggest — well, 
 pre-nuptial rags at least, George. Then 
 the costume. Why should a sane healthy 
 woman be covered up in white gauze like 
 the confectionery in a shop window when 
 the flies are about ? And why ? "
 
 THE PAINS OF MARRIAGE 93 
 
 He was going on in quite an aggressive 
 tone. " There isn't a why'' I said, " for 
 any of it." This sort of talk always irri- 
 tates a married man because it revives his 
 own troubles. '' It's just the rule. Surely, 
 if a wife is worth having she is worth 
 being ridiculous for ? You ought to be 
 jolly glad you don't have to wear a fool's 
 cap and paint your nose red. ' More 
 
 precious than rubies ' " 
 
 " Don't," he said. 
 
 " It must be these tradesmen," he began 
 bitterly after an interval. " Some one 
 must be responsible, and it's just their way. 
 Do you know, George, I sometimes fancy 
 that they have hypnotised womankind into 
 the belief that all these uncomfortable 
 things are absolutely necessary to a valid 
 marriage — just as they have persuaded the 
 landlady class that no house is complete 
 without a big mirror over the fireplace and 
 a bulgy sideboard. There is a very strong 
 flavour of mesmeric suggestion about a 
 woman's attitude towards these matters, 
 considered in the light of her customary
 
 96 THE PAINS OF MARRIAGE 
 
 common sense. Do you know, George, I 
 really believe there is a secret society of 
 tradesmen, a kind of priesthood, who get 
 hold of our womenkind and muddle them up 
 with all these fancies. It's a sort of white 
 magic. Have you ever been in a draper's 
 shop, George ? " 
 
 " Never," I said : "I always wait out- 
 side — among the dogs." 
 
 " Have you ever read a ladies' news- 
 paper ? " 
 
 ''I didn't know," said T, "that there 
 was any part to read. It's all advertise- 
 ments ; all the articles are advertisements, 
 all the paragraphs, the stories, the answers 
 to correspondents — everything." 
 
 " That's exactly what makes me think 
 the tradesmen have hypnotised the sex. 
 It may be they do it in those drapers' dens. 
 A man spots that kind of thing at once 
 and drops the paper. Women go on year 
 after year, simply worshipping a paper 
 hoarding of that kind, and doing patiently 
 everything they are told to do therein. 
 Anyhow, it is only in this way that I can
 
 THE PAINS OF MARRIAGE 97 
 
 account for all these expensive miseries of 
 matrimony. I can't understand a woman 
 in full possession of her faculties deliber- 
 ately exasperating the man she has to live 
 with — I suppose all men submit to 
 it under protest — for these stale and 
 stereotyped antics. She must be mag- 
 netised." 
 
 " They are not stale to her," I said. 
 
 " Mrs Harborough " he began. 
 
 " Of course, a widow ! — I forgot," I said. 
 " But she seems so young, you know." 
 
 "And putting aside the details," said my 
 uncle, with a transient dash of cheerfulness 
 at my mistake; "I object to the publicity 
 of the whole thing. It's not nice. To 
 bring the street arab into the affair, to 
 subject yourself to the impertinent con- 
 gratulations and presents of every aspirant 
 to your intimacy, to be patted on the 
 back in the local newspapers as though 
 you were going to do something clever. 
 Confound them ! It's not their affair. 
 And I'm too old to be a blushing bride- 
 groom. Then think, what am I to do, 
 G
 
 98 THE PAINS OF MARRIAGE 
 
 George, if that cad Hagshot sends me a 
 present ? " 
 
 " It would be like him if he did," I said. 
 " I fancy he will." 
 
 " I can't go and kick him," said my 
 uncle. 
 
 " Declined with thanks," I suggested, 
 " owing to pressure of other matter." 
 
 " You are getting shoppy, George," said 
 my uncle, in as near an approach to a 
 querulous tone as I have heard from him. 
 
 " You are getting married," I replied, 
 with the complacency of one whose troubles 
 are over. " But it's a horrible nuisance, 
 anyhow. Still, the world grows wiser, and 
 the burden is not quite so bad as it used 
 to be. A hundred years hence " 
 
 " I'd be willing enough to wait," said my 
 uncle ; " but I'm not the only party in 
 this affair." 
 
 He was willing enough to wait, perhaps, 
 but time was inexorable. Save for one 
 hurried interview, I did not see him again 
 for a week, and then it was before the
 
 THE PAINS OF MARRIAGE 99 
 
 altar. His garrulity had fallen from him 
 like a garment. He was preoccupied and a 
 trifle bashful. He fumbled with the ring. 
 I felt almost as though he was my younger 
 brother. 
 
 I stood by him to the end, and at last 
 came the hour of parting. I grasped his 
 hand in silence : silently he mastered a 
 becoming emotion. And in silence he 
 went from me unto the New Life.
 
 A MISUNDERSTOOD ARTIST 
 
 The gentleman with the Jovian coiffure 
 began to speak as the train moved. '' 'Tis 
 the utmost degradation of art/' he said. 
 He had apparently fallen into conversation 
 with his companion upon the platform. 
 
 "I don't see it," said this companion, 
 a prosperous-looking gentleman with a 
 gold watch-chain. " This art for art's 
 sake — I don't believe in it, I tell you. 
 Art should have an aim. If it don't do 
 you good, if it ain't moral, I'd as soon 
 not have it. What good is it ? I be- 
 lieve in Ruskin. I tell you " 
 
 " Ball ! " said the gentleman in the 
 corner, with almost explosive violence. 
 He fired it like a big gun across the 
 path of the incipient argument, and slew 
 the prosperous-looking gentleman at once. 
 He met our eyes, as we turned to him, 
 
 100
 
 A MISUNDERSTOOD ARTIST 101 
 
 with a complacent smile on his large 
 white, clean-shaven face. He was a cor- 
 pulent person, dressed in black, and with 
 something of the quality of a second- 
 hand bishop in his appearance. The de- 
 molished owner of the watch-chain made 
 some beginnings of a posthumous speech. 
 
 " Ball ! " said the gentleman in the 
 corner, with even more force than before, 
 and so finished him. 
 
 '' These people will never understand," 
 he said, after a momentary pause, address- 
 ing the gentleman with the Jovian coiffure, 
 and indicating the remains of the pros- 
 perous gentleman by a wave of a large 
 white hand. " Why do you argue ? Art 
 is ever for the few." 
 
 " I did not argue," said the gentleman 
 with the hair. ''I was interrupted." 
 
 The owner of the watch-chain, who 
 had been sitting struggling with his 
 breath, now began to sob out his in- 
 dignation. '' What do you mean, sir ? 
 Saying Bah ! sir, when I am talking " 
 
 The gentleman with the large face held
 
 102 A MISUNDERSTOOD ARTIST 
 
 up a soothing hand. '' Peace, peace/' 
 he said. " I did not interrupt you. I 
 annihilated you. Why did you presume 
 to talk to artists about art ? Go away, 
 or I shall have to say Bah ! again. Go 
 and have a fit. Leave us — two rare 
 souls who may not meet again — to our 
 talking." 
 
 " Did you ever see such abominable 
 rudeness, sir ? " said the gentleman with 
 the watch-chain, appealing to me. There 
 were tears in his eyes. At the same 
 time the young man with the aureole 
 made some remark to the corpulent 
 gentleman that I failed to catch. 
 
 " These artists," said I, '' are unac- 
 countable, irresponsible. You must " 
 
 "Take it from whence it comes," said 
 the insulted one, very loudly, and bitterly 
 glaring at his opponent. But the two 
 artists were conversing serenely. I felt 
 the undignified quality of our conversa- 
 tion. " Have you seen Punch ? " said I, 
 thrusting it into his hand. 
 
 He looked at the paper for a moment
 
 A MISUNDERSTOOD ARTIST 103 
 
 in a puzzled way ; then understood, 
 thanked me, and began to read with a 
 thunderous scowl, every now and then 
 shooting murderous glances at his an- 
 tagonist in the opposite corner, or cough- 
 ing in an aggressive manner. 
 
 '' You do your best," the gentleman 
 with the long hair was saying ; " and 
 they say, ' What is it for ? ' ' It is for 
 itself,' you say. Like the stars." 
 
 " But these people," said the stout 
 gentleman, " think the stars were made 
 to set their clocks by. They lack the 
 magnanimity to drop the personal refer- 
 ence. A friend, a confrere, saw a party 
 of these horrible Extension people at 
 Rome before that exquisite Venus of 
 Titian. ' And now, Mr Something-or- 
 other,' said one of the young ladies, 
 addressing the pedagogue in command, 
 * what is this to teach us ? ' " 
 
 " I have had the same experience," 
 said the young gentleman with the hair. 
 "A man sent to me only a week ago 
 to ask what my sonnet 'The Scarlet 
 Thread ' meant ? "
 
 104 A MISUNDERSTOOD ARTIST 
 
 The stout person shook his head as 
 though such things passed all belief. 
 
 '' Gur-r-r-r," said the gentleman with 
 Punchy and scraped with his foot on the 
 floor of the carriage. 
 
 " I gave him answer," said the poet, 
 " 'Twas a sonnet, not a symbol." 
 
 "Precisely," said the stout gentleman. 
 
 " 'Tis the fate of all art to be mis- 
 understood. I am always grossly mis- 
 understood — by every one. They call me 
 fantastic, whereas I am but inevitably new ; 
 indecent, because I am unfettered by mere 
 trivial personal restrictions ; unwholesome." 
 
 *' It is what they say to me. They are 
 always trying to pull me to eartli. ' Is it 
 wholesome ? ' they say ; ' nutritious ? ' 
 I say to them, ' I do not know. I am an 
 artist. I do not care. It is beautiful.' " 
 
 " You rhyme ? " said the poet. 
 
 " No. My work is — more plastic. I 
 cook." 
 
 For a moment, perhaps, the poet was 
 disconcerted. " A noble art," he said, 
 recovering.
 
 A MISUNDERSTOOD ARTIST 105 
 
 ''The noblest," said the cook. ''But 
 sorely misunderstood ; degraded to utilitar- 
 ian ends ; testsd by impossible standards. 
 I have been seriously asked to render oily 
 food palatable to a delicate patient. 
 Seriously ! " 
 
 " He said, ' Bah ! ' Bah ! to me ! " 
 mumbled the defunct gentleman with 
 Punch, apparently addressing the cartoon. 
 " A cook ! Good Lord ! " 
 
 " I resigned. ' Cookery,' I said, ' is 
 an art. I am not a fattener of human 
 cattle. Think : Is it Art to write a book 
 with an object, to paint a picture for 
 strategy ? ' ' Are we,' I said, ' in the 
 sixties or the nineties ? Here, in your 
 kitchen, I am inspired with beautiful 
 dinners, and I produce them. It is your 
 place to gather together, from this place 
 one, and from that, one, the few precious 
 souls who can appreciate that rare and 
 wonderful thing, a dinner, graceful, har- 
 monious, exquisite, perfect.' And he 
 argued I must study his guests ! " 
 
 " No artist is of any worth," said the
 
 106 A MISUNDERSTOOD ARTIST 
 
 poet, " who primarily studies what the 
 public needs." 
 
 " As I told him. But the next man 
 was worse — hygienic. While with this 
 creature I read Poe for the first time, and 
 I was singularly fascinated by some of 
 his grotesques. I tried — it was an alto- 
 gether new development, I believe, in 
 culinary art — the Bizarre. I made some 
 curious arrangements in pork and straw- 
 berries, with a sauce containing beer. 
 Quite by accident I mentioned my design 
 to him on the evening of the festival. 
 All the Philistine was aroused in him. 
 ' It will ruin my digestion.' ' My friend,' 
 I said, ' I am not your doctor ; I have 
 nothing to do with your digestion. Only 
 here is a beautiful Japanese thing, a 
 quaint, queer, almost eerie dinner, that 
 is in my humble opinion worth many 
 digestions. You may take it or leave it, 
 but 'tis the last dinner I cook for you.' 
 ... I knew I was wasted upon him. 
 
 " Then I produced some Nocturnes in 
 imitation of Mr Whistler, with mushrooms,
 
 A MISUNDERSTOOD ARTIST 107 
 
 truffles, grilled meat, pickled walnuts, 
 black pudding, French plums, porter — 
 a dinner in soft velvety black, eaten in a 
 starliofht of small scattered candles. That, 
 too, led to a resignation : Art will ever 
 demand its martyrs." 
 
 The poet made sympathetic noises. 
 
 '' Always. The awful many will never 
 understand. Their conception of my skill 
 is altogether on a level with their concep- 
 tions of music, of literature, of painting. For 
 wall decorations they love autotypes ; for 
 literature, harmless volumes of twaddle that 
 leave no vivid impressions on the mind ; for 
 dinners, harmless dishes that are forgotten 
 as they are eaten. My dinners stick in 
 the memory. I cannot study these people 
 — my genius is all too imperative. If I 
 needed a flavour of almonds and had 
 nothing else to hand, I would use prussic 
 acid. Do right, I say, as your art instinct 
 commands, and take no heed of the con- 
 sequences. Our function is to make the 
 beautiful gastronomic thing, not to pander 
 to gluttony, not to be the Jesuits of
 
 108 A MISUNDERSTOOD ARTIST 
 
 hygiene. My friend, you should see some 
 of my compositions. At home I have 
 books and books in manuscript, Symphonies, 
 Picnics, Fantasies, Etudes . . ." 
 
 The train was now entering Clapham 
 Junction. The gentleman with the gold 
 watch-chain returned my Punch. " A 
 cook/' he said in a whisper ; "just a 
 common cook ! " He lifted his eyebrows 
 and shook his head at me, and proceeded 
 to extricate himself and his umbrella 
 from the carriage. '' Out of a situation 
 too ! " he said — a little louder — as I pre- 
 pared to follow him. 
 
 " Mere dripping ! " said the artist in 
 cookery, with a regal wave of the hand. 
 
 Had I felt sure I was included, I should 
 of course have resented the phrase.
 
 THE MAN WITH A NOSE 
 
 " I never see tliy face but I think upon hell-fire, 
 and Dives that lived in purple, for there he is in his 
 robes, burning, burning." 
 
 " My nose has been the curse of my 
 life." 
 
 The other man started. 
 
 They had not spoken before. They 
 were sitting, one at either end, on that seat 
 on the stony summit of Primrose Hill 
 which looks towards Regent's Park. It 
 was night. The paths on the slope below 
 were dotted out by yellow lamps ; the 
 Albert-road was a line of faintly luminous 
 pale green — the tint of gaslight seen among 
 trees ; beyond, the park lay black and 
 mysterious, and still further, a yellow mist 
 beneath and a coppery hue in the sky 
 above marked the blaze of the Marylebone 
 thoroughfares. The nearer houses in the
 
 110 THE MAN WITH A NOSE 
 
 Albert-terrace loomed large and black, 
 their blackness pierced irregularly by 
 luminous windows. Above, starlight. 
 
 Both men had been silent, lost 
 apparently in their own thoughts, mere 
 dim black figures to each other, until one 
 had seen fit to become a voice also, with 
 this confidence. 
 
 "Yes," he said, after an interval, ''my 
 nose has always stood in my way, always." 
 
 The second man had scarcely seemed to 
 notice the first remark, but now he peered 
 through the night at his interlocutor. It 
 was a little man he saw, with face turned 
 towards him. 
 
 " I see nothing wrong with your nose." 
 
 "If it were luminous you might," said 
 the first speaker. " However, I will 
 illuminate it." 
 
 He fumbled with something in his 
 pocket, then held this object in his hand. 
 There was a scratch, a streak of greenish 
 phosphorescent light, and then all the 
 world beyond became black, as a fusee 
 vesta flared.
 
 THE MAN WITH A NOSE 111 
 
 There was silence for the space of a 
 minute. An impressive pause. 
 
 *' Well ? " said the man with the nose, 
 putting his heel on the light. 
 
 "I have seen worse," said the second 
 man. 
 
 " I doubt it," said the man with the 
 nose ; " and even so, it is poor comfort. 
 Did you notice the shape ? the size ? the 
 colour ? Like Snowdon, it has a steep 
 side and a gentle slope. The size is 
 preposterous : my face is like a hen-house 
 built behind a portico. And the tints I " 
 
 "It is not all red," said the second 
 man, " anyhow." 
 
 " No, there is purple, and blue, ' lapis 
 lazuli, blue as a vein over the Madonna's 
 breast,' and in one place a greyish mole. 
 Bah ! the thing is not a nose at all, but a 
 bit of primordial chaos clapped on to my 
 face. But, being where the nose should 
 be, it gets the credit of its position from 
 unthinking people. There is a gap in the 
 order of the universe in front of my face, a 
 lump of unwrought material left over. In
 
 112 THE MAN WITH A NOSE 
 
 that my true nose is hidden, as a statue 
 is hidden in a lump of marble, until the 
 appointed time for the revelation shall 
 
 come. At the resurrection But one 
 
 must not anticipate. Well, well. I do 
 not often talk about my nose, my friend, 
 but you sat with a sympathetic pose, it 
 seemed to me, and to-night my heart is 
 full of it. This cursed nose ! But do T 
 weary you, thrusting my nose into your 
 meditations ? " 
 
 " If," said the second man, his voice a 
 little unsteady, as though he was moved, 
 " if it eases your mind to talk of your nose, 
 pray talk." 
 
 " This nose, I say then, makes me think 
 of the false noses of Carnival times. Your 
 dullest man has but to stick one on, and 
 lo ! mirth, wit, and jollity. They are 
 enough to make anything funny. I doubt 
 if even an Anglican bishop could wear one 
 with impunity. Put an angel in one. 
 How would you like one popped on to you 
 now ? Think of going love-making, or 
 addressing a public meeting, or dying
 
 THE MAN WITH A NOSE 113 
 
 gloriously, in a nose like mine ! Angelina 
 laughs in your face, the public laughs, the 
 executioner at your martyrdom can hardly 
 light the faggots for laughing. By heaven ! 
 it is no joke. Often and often I have 
 rebelled, and said, ' I will not have this 
 nose ! ' " 
 
 " But what can one do ? " 
 
 " It is destiny. The bitter tragedy of it 
 is that it is so comic. Only, God knows, 
 how glad I shall be when the Carnival is 
 over, and I may take the thing off and put 
 it aside. The worst has been this business 
 of love. My mind is not unrefined, my 
 body is healthy. I know what tenderness 
 is. But what woman could overlook a 
 nose like mine 1 How could she shut out 
 her visions of it, and look her love into my 
 eyes, glaring at her over its immensity ? 
 I should have to make love through an 
 Inquisitor's hood, with its holes cut for the 
 eyes — and even then the shape would 
 show. I have read, I have been told, I 
 can imagine what a lover's face is like — 
 a sweet woman's face radiant with love.
 
 114 THE MAN WITH A NOSE 
 
 But this Millbank penitentiary of flesh 
 chills their dear hearts." 
 
 He broke off suddenly, with loud 
 ferocious curses. A young man who had 
 been sitting very close to a young woman 
 on an adjacent seat, started up and said 
 " Ssh ! " 
 
 He whom the man with the nose had 
 addressed now spoke. " I have certainly 
 never thought before of a red nose as a 
 sorrowful thing, but as you put it. . . ." 
 
 " I thought you would understand. I 
 have had this nose all my life. The out- 
 line was done, even though the colour was 
 wanting, in my school days. They called 
 me ' Nosey,' ' Ovid,' ' Cicero,' ' Rhino,' and 
 the 'Excrescence.' It has ripened with 
 the slow years, as fate deepens in the 
 progress of a tragedy. Love, the business 
 of life, is a sealed book to me. To be 
 alone ! I would thank heaven. . . . But 
 no ! a blind woman could feel the shape 
 of it." 
 
 *' Besides love," interrupted the young 
 man thoughtfully, '' there are other things
 
 THE MAN WITH A NOSE 115 
 
 worth living for — duty. An unattractive 
 nose would not interfere with that. Some 
 people think it is rather more important 
 than love. I admit your loss, of course." 
 
 " That only carries out the evidence of 
 your voice, and tells me you are young. 
 My dear young fellow, duty is a very fine 
 thing indeed, but believe me, it is too 
 colourless as a motive. There is no delight 
 in duty. You will know that at my age. 
 And besides, I have an infinite capacity 
 for love and sympathy, an infinite bitter- 
 ness in this solitude of my soul. I infer 
 that you would moralise on my discontent, 
 but I know I have seen a little of men 
 and things from behind this ambuscade — 
 only a truly artistic man would fall into 
 the sympathetic attitude that attracted me. 
 My life has had even too much of observa- 
 tion in it, and to the systematic anthropo- 
 logist, nothing tells a man's character more 
 than his pose after dark, when nobody 
 seems watching. As you sit, the black 
 outline of you is clear against the sky. 
 Ah ! now you are sitting stiffer. But you
 
 116 THE MAN WITH A NOSE 
 
 are no Calvinist. My friend, the best of 
 life is its delights, and the best of delights 
 is loving and being loved. And for that — 
 this nose ! Well, there are plenty of second- 
 best things. After dark I can forget the 
 monster a little. Spring is delightful, air 
 on the Downs is delightful; it is fine to 
 see the stars circling in the sky, while 
 lying among the heather. Even this 
 London sky is soothing at night, though 
 the edge is all inflamed. The shadow of 
 my nose is darkest by day. But to-night 
 I am bitter, because of to-morrow." 
 
 " Why, to-morrow ? " said the younger 
 man. 
 
 " I have to meet some new people to- 
 morrow," said the man with the nose. 
 " There is an odd look, a mingling of 
 amusement and pity, I am only too familiar 
 with. My cousin, who is a gifted hostess, 
 promises people my nose as a treat." 
 
 "Yes, that must be bad for you," said 
 the young man. 
 
 And then the silence healed again, and 
 presently the man with the nose got up
 
 THE MAN WITH A NOSE 117 
 
 and passed into the dimness upon the 
 slope of the hill. The young man watched 
 him vanish, wondering vainly how it would 
 be possible to console a soul under such a 
 burthen. 
 
 XURNBULL AND SPEARS, PRINTKRS, EDINBDRGH
 
 List of Books 
 
 m 
 
 Belles Lettres 
 
 ALL BOOKS IN THIS CATALOGUE 
 ARE PUBLISHED AT NET PRICES 
 
 1895 
 
 Telegraphic Address — 
 'Bodleian, London'
 
 1895. 
 
 List of Books 
 
 IN 
 
 BELLES LETT RES 
 
 (^Including some Transfers^ 
 
 Published by John Lane 
 
 VIGO STREET, LONDON, W. 
 
 N.B. — The Authors and Publisher reserve the right of reprinting 
 any book in this list if a new edition is called for, except in cases 
 where a stipulation has been made to the contrary, and of printing 
 a separate edition of any of the books for America irrespective of the 
 numbers to which the E?igHsh editions are Hmited. The ?iufnbers 
 mentioned do not include copies sent to the public libraries, nor those 
 sent for review. 
 
 Most of the books are published simultaneously in England and 
 America, and in viany instances the names of the AmericaJi 
 Publishers are appended. 
 
 ADAMS (FRANCIS). 
 
 Essays in Modernity. Crown 8vo. 5s. net. \Shortly. 
 
 Chicago : Stone & Kimball. 
 A Child of the Age. (^See Keynotes Series.) 
 
 ALLEN (GRANT). 
 
 The Lower Slopes : A Volume of Verse. With Title- 
 page and Cover Design by J. Illingworth Kay. 
 600 copies. Crown 8vo. 5s. net. 
 Chicago : Stone & Kimball. 
 
 The Woman who Did. {See Keynotes Series.)
 
 THE PUBLICATIONS OF JOHN LANE 
 
 BEARDSLEY (AUBREY). 
 
 The Story of Venus and Tannhauser, in which is set 
 forth an exact account of the Manner of State held by 
 Madam Venus, Goddess and Meretrix, under the 
 famous Horselberg, and containing the adventures of 
 Tannhauser in that place, his repentance, his jour- 
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