GEORGE SHAW - The Complete Works

“Beg Mrs Herbert’s, rather. Go on.”

“Mrs Herbert is a very good example of my next heresy, which is, that earnestness of intention, and faith in the higher mission of art, are impotent to add an inch to my artistic capacity. They rather produce a mental stress fatal to all freedom of conception and execution. I cannot bring them to bear on drawing and painting: they seem to me to be more the concern of clergymen and statesmen. Your husband once told my mother that art was a backwater into which the soft chaps got to be out of the crush in the middle of the stream. He was thinking about me, I suppose — oh, don’t apologize, Mary: I quite agree with him. It is a backwater; and faith and earnestness are of no use in it: mere brute skill carries everything before it. You once asked me how I should like to be Titian and a lot of other great painters all rolled into one. At present I should be only too glad to be as good as Titian alone; but I would not pay five years of my life for the privilege: it would not be worth it. What view did Titian take of his mission in life? Simply that he was to paint pictures and sell them. He painted religious pictures when the church paid him to do it; he painted indecent pictures when licentious noblemen paid him to do it; and he painted portraits for the wealthy public generally. Believe me, Mary, out in the middle the stream of life, from the turbulences and vulgarities of which we agreed to hold aloof, there may be many different sorts of men — earnest men, frivolous men, faithful men, cynical men and so forth; for the backwater there are only two sorts of painters, dexterous ones and maladroit ones. I am not a dexterous one; and that is all about it: self-criticism on moral principles, and the culture of the backwater library, won’t mend my eyes and fingers. I said that Aurélie’s was a case in point. Even the Times does not deny that she is a perfect artist. Yet if you spoke of her being a moral teacher with a great gift and a a great trust, she would not understand you, although she has some distorted fancy about her touch on the piano being a moral faculty. She thinks your husband a most original and profound thinker because he once happened to remark to her that musical people were generally clever. As I failed to be overwhelmed by her account of this, she, I believe, thought I was jealous of him because I had not hit on the observation myself.”

“Perhaps she would play still better if she did look upon herself as the holder of a great gift and a great trust.”

“Did I paint the Lady of Shalott the better because I would have mixed the colors with my blood if the picture would have gained by my doing so? No: I could paint it twice as well now, though I should not waste half as much thought on it. But put Aurélie out of the question, since you do not admire her. Take—”

“Oh, Adrian, I ad—”

“ — the case of Jack. You will admit that he is a genius: he has the inexhaustible flow of ugly sounds which constitutes a composer a genius nowadays. I take Aurélie’s word and yours that he is a great musician, in spite of the evidence of my own ears. Judging him as a mere unit of society, he is perhaps the most uncouth savage in London. Does he ever think of himself as having a mission, or a gift, or a trust?”

“I am sure he does. Consider how much he endured formerly because he would not write down to the level of the popular taste.”

“Depend upon it, either he did not get the chance or he could not. Mozart, I believe, wrote ballets and Masses in the Italian style. If Jack had Mozart’s versatility, he would, in similar circumstances, act just as Mozart acted. I do not make a virtue of never having condescended to draw for the illustrated papers, because if anyone had asked me to do it, I should certainly have tried, and probably have failed.”

“Adrian,” said Mary, coming down from the throne, and approaching him: “do you know that it gives me great pain to hear you talk in this way? If there was one vice more than another which I felt sure could never taint your nature, it was the vice of cynicism.”

“You reproach me with cynicism!” he said, with a smile, evidently enjoying some inconsistency in her.

“Why not?”

“There is, of course, no reason why you should not — , except that you seem to have come to very similar conclusions yourself.”

“You never made a greater mistake, Adrian. My faith in the ennobling power of Art, and in the august mission of the artist, is steadfast as it was years ago, when you first instilled it into me.”

“And that faith has never wavered?*

“Never.”

“Not even for a moment”

“Not even for a moment.”

A slight shrug was his only comment. He took up his palette and busied himself with it, with a curious expression at the corners of his mouth.

“What do you mean, Adrian?”

“Nothing. Nothing.”

“You used to be more candid than that.”

“I used to be many that I am not now.”

“You admit that you are changed!”

“Surely.”

“Then the change in me that you hint at is only a change in your way of looking at me.”

“Perhaps so.”

A pause followed, during which he put a few touches on the canvas, and she watched him in growing doubt.”

“You won’t mind my working whilst you are here.” he said, presently.

“Adrian: do you remember that day on the undercliff at Bonchurch, when I announced my falling off, in principle, from the austerity of our worship of art?”

“I do. Why do you ask?”

“I little thought, then, which of us would be the first to fall off in practice. If a prophet had shewn you to me as you are now, contemning loftiness of purpose and renouncing arduous work, I should have been at a loss for words strong enough to express my repudiation of the forecast.”

“I cannot say that I did not suspect then who would be the first to fall off,” said Adrian, quietly, though his color deepened a little. “But I should have been as sceptical as you, if your prophet had shewn me you—” He checked himself.

“Well, Adrian?”

“No. I beg your pardon: I was going to say something I have no right to say.”

“Whatever it may be, you think it: and I have a right to hear it, so that I may justify myself. How could a prophet have shewn me so as to astonish you?”

“As Mrs Hoskyn,” he replied, looking at her steadily for a moment, and then resuming his work.

“I don’t understand,” said Mary anxiously, after a pause.

“I told you there was nothing to understand,” said he, relieved. “I meant that it is odd in the first place that we are both married, and not to one another — I suppose you don’t mind my alluding to that. It is still odder that I should be married to Aurélie, who knows nothing about painting. But it is oddest that you should be married to Mr Hoskyn, who knows nothing about art at all.”

Mary, understanding him well now, became very red, and for a moment tried hard to keep back a retort which came to her lips. He continued to paint attentively. Then she said indignantly, “Do you conclude that I do not care for my husband because I can still work and think and respect myself — because I am not his slave when he is present, and a slave to my thoughts of him when he is absent?”

“Mary!” exclaimed Herbert, putting down his palette and confronting her with a color as deep as her own. She stood her ground without flinching. Then he recovered himself, and said, “I beg your pardon. I was quite wrong to say anything about your marriage. Have I annoyed you?”

“You have let slip your opinion of me, Adrian.”

“And you yours of me, I think, Mary.”

After this there was another strained pause, disconcerting to both. This time Mary gained her self-possession first. “I was annoyed just now,” she said: “but I did not mean that we should quarrel. I hope you did not.”