“Art exists to keep in circulation those spiritual forces, such as æsthetic emotion, which are denied in ordinary human communications.
“Photography has released art from its ancient burden of representation,” etc., etc.
With the spirit of this manifesto Mendel was in agreement, though he could make but little of its letter. He refused to agree to it because so much talk seemed to him unnecessary.
“If we can say what we mean to say in paint, then we need not talk. If we cannot say it in paint, then we have no right to talk.”
“You’d soon bring the world to a standstill,” said Logan, “if you limited talk to the people who have a right to it. It is just those people who never open their mouths. I think it is criminal of them, just out of shyness and disgust, to give the buffoons and knaves an open field.”
“All the same,” grunted Mendel, “I am not going to agree to the manifesto. People will read it and laugh at it, and never look at the pictures. You seem to think of everything but them. I wonder you don’t set up as a dealer.”
“You’re overworking,” said Logan, “that’s what you are doing. And directly the exhibition is open I shall pack you off to Brighton.”
Already a week before the opening they began to feel that the eyes of London were upon them. They crept about the streets half-shamefacedly like conspirators, relaxed and wary, waiting for the moment when their triumph should send their shoulders back and their heads up, and they would march together through a London which owed its salvation to them. Not since his portrait had appeared in the Yiddish paper had Mendel been so defiant and so morosely arrogant.
He was ill with excitement and could not do a stroke of work. Every minute of the day he spent with Logan and Oliver, to whom Tysoe was often added. He dined with them at the Pot-au-Feu, took them all out to lunch and tea at places like Richmond and Kew, had them to his house, and was squeezed by the approaching success to buy Logan’s two largest pictures before the public could have access to them.
“They are masterpieces!” he cried, swinging his long hands, “absolute masterpieces! You don’t know how much good it does me to be with you two. Absolutely sincere, you are! That’s what I like about you. Sincere! One looks for sincerity in vain everywhere else. Sincerity has vanished from the theatre, the novel, music, poetry. I suppose it is democracy—letting the public in behind the scenes, so that they see through all the tricks.”