“Before you go!” said Miss Mell. “Where are you going?”
“I’m giving up my place downstairs, and to-morrow, to-morrow, I’m off to Paris! Paris the kind, Paris the friendly! Paris the beneficent goddess of my student days! I have a nostalgia, my children.... So I shall kiss you all good-bye and give you a little fatherly advice before leaving....”
He swaggered over to Rosaleen’s table.
“No reason why you shouldn’t become successful,” he said. “You must know, my children, that brains are not necessary to an artist. An artist can be absolutely crude and ignorant, and yet be a genius. He needs only an ardent spirit. Of course, you haven’t got that, Rosaleen, but then you’re not an artist. But take this Enid girl. Give her a certain amount of knowledge, as definite as that of a brick-layer; teach this woman to draw, and she will be an artist—of a sort. She doesn’t need to know anything else. She won’t need to read, or to think....”
“Oh, so you’re beginning to see me, are you?” said Enid.
“I always did see you, my dear. You’re very nice to see. Children, listen to my advice. If a woman wishes to make herself irresistible, after attending to personal appearance, I recommend her to become an artist or an actress. Nothing else will give her the same prestige—not even a lot of money. There’s a rakishness about it—a spiciness. It gives a piquancy even to Rosaleen.”
He laughed.
“Good Lord!” he said. “How they all love us! It’s queer.... Of all artists, the painter is the favourite with the public. To most of them, artist means painter.... And yet, thinking it over, it’s not so hard to understand this favouritism. The painter is apt to be more ordinary, more normal, more human, than the poet or the musician. His art is more obvious, more facile. It certainly requires less ‘temperament.’ The painter is not required to be erratic and morbid. In fact, a proper painter is expected to be more or less rollicking. I ask you to consider for a moment the popular idea of what goes on in our studios! The public imagines the poet sitting up all night writing in ecstasy, the musician forever before his instrument. But the painter! Lord! They never think of us as working. We’re supposed to be eternally pawning our dead mother’s ring for money for Bohemian orgies, to be rowdy and care-free and generous, and all that sort of thing. The painter is the only artist that the public likes to see happy.”
“Of course it’s the easiest art to understand,” said Enid.
“Don’t talk, woman, but listen and try to learn. There’s no question here of ‘understanding’ art. But it’s easier and pleasanter for people to look at a painting, which takes only a minute, than it is to listen to an opera, or to read an epic.... So I advise you all to be artists, my children, and to enjoy yourselves.”