“Nous Avons Changé Tout Cela!”
Hoity-toity! my dear Henry!—What is all this? How can you startle the “Constant Reader,” Truth, Sept. 2, 1886. of this cold world, by these sudden dashes into the unexpected?
Perceive also what happens.
Sweet in the security of my own sense of things, and looking upon you surely as the typical “Sapem” of modern progress and civilization, here do I, in full Paris, à l’heure de l’absinthe, upon mischievous discussion intent, call aloud for “Truth.”
“Vous allez voir,” I say to the brilliant brethren gathered about my table, “you shall hear the latest beautiful thing and bold, said by our great Henry—‘capable de tout,’ beside whom ‘ce coquin d’Habacuc’ was mild indeed and usual!” And straightway to my stultification, I find myself translating paragraphs of pathos and indignation, in which a colourless old gentleman of the Academy is sympathized with, and made a doddering hero of, for no better reason than that he is old—and those who would point out the wisdom and comfort of his withdrawal into the wigwam of private life, sternly reproved and anathematized and threatened with shame—until they might well expect to find themselves come upon by the bears of the aged and irascible, though bald-headed, Prophet, whom the children had thoughtfully urged to “go up.”
Fancy the Frenchmen’s astonishment as I read, and their placid amusement as I attempted to point out that it was “meant drolly—that enfin you were a mystificateur!”
Henry, why should I thus be mortified? Also, why this new pose, this cheap championship of senility?
How, in the name of all that is incompetent, do you find much virtue in work spreading over more time! What means this affectation of naïveté?
We all know that work excuses itself only by reason of its quality.
If the work be foolish, it surely is not less foolish because an honest and misspent lifetime has been passed in producing it.
What matters it that the offending worker has grown old among us, and has endeared himself to many by his caprices as ratepayer and neighbour?
Personally, he may have claims upon his surroundings; but, as the painter of poor pictures, he is damned for ever.
You see, my Henry, that it is not sufficient to be, as you are in wit and wisdom, among us, amazing and astute; a very Daniel in your judgment of many vexed questions; of a frankness and loyalty withal in your crusade against abuses, that makes of the keen litigator a most dangerous Quixote.
This peculiar temperament gives you that superb sense of right, outside the realms of art, that amounts to genius, and carries with it continued success and triumph in the warfare you wage.
But here it helps you not. And so you find yourself, for instance, pleasantly prattling in print of “English Art.”
Learn, then, O! Henry, that there is no such thing as English Art. You might as well talk of English Mathematics. Art is Art, and Mathematics is Mathematics.
What you call English Art, is not Art at all, but produce, of which there is, and always has been, and always will be, a plenty, whether the men producing it are dead and called ——, or (I refer you to your own selection, far be it from me to choose)—or alive and called ——, whosoever you like as you turn over the Academy catalogue.
The great truth, you have to understand, is that it matters not at all whom you prefer in this long list. They all belong to the excellent army of mediocrity; the differences between them being infinitely small—merely microscopic—as compared to the vast distance between any one of them and the Great.
They are the commercial travellers of Art, whose works are their wares, and whose exchange is the Academy.
They pass and are forgotten, or remain for a while in the memory of the worthies who knew them, and who cling to their faith in them, as it flatters their own place in history—famous themselves—the friends of the famous!
Speak of them, if it please you, with uncovered head—even as in France you would remove your hat as there passes by the hearse—but remember it is from the conventional habit of awe alone, this show of respect, and called forth generally by the casual corpse of the commonest kind.
Paris, Aug. 21, 1886.