“When you have read the works of the Victorian giants,” said Wister, rather contemptuously, “you will perhaps understand what I mean by a giant.”
“You can’t really mean, Mr. Braintree,” remonstrated the lady, “that you want great men to be killed.”
“Well, I think there’s something in the idea,” said Braintree. “Tennyson deserved to be killed for writing the May-Queen, and Browning deserved to be killed for rhyming ‘promise’ and ‘from mice,’ and Carlyle deserved to be killed for being Carlyle; and Herbert Spencer deserved to be killed for writing ‘The Man versus the State’; and Dickens deserved to be killed for not killing Little Nell quick enough; and Ruskin deserved to be killed for saying that Man ought to have no more freedom than the sun; and Gladstone deserved to be killed for deserting Parnell; and Disraeli deserved to be killed for talking about a ‘shrinking sire,’ and Thackeray–”
“Mercy on us!” interrupted the lady, laughing, “you really must stop somewhere. What a lot you seem to have read!”
Wister appeared, for some reason or other, to be very much annoyed; almost waspish. “If you ask me,” he said, “it’s all part of the mob and its hatred of superiority. Always wants to drag merit down. That’s why your infernal trade unions won’t have a good workman paid better than a bad one.”
“That has been defended economically,” said Braintree, with restraint. “One authority has pointed out that the best trades are paid equally already.”
“Karl Marx, I suppose,” said the expert, testily.
“No, John Ruskin,” replied the other. “One of your Victorian giants.” Then he added, “But the text and title of the book were not by John Ruskin, but by Jesus Christ; who had not, alas, the privilege of being a Victorian.”
The stodgy little man named Hanbury possibly felt that the conversation was becoming too religious to be respectable; anyhow, he interposed pacifically, saying, “You come from the mining area, Mr. Braintree?”
The other assented, rather gloomily.