“It’s the only thing worthy of the artist’s dignity. The bulk of art is journeyman’s work. Besides, lots of ’em do it nowadays—with magic-lanterns to boot! Because one man by a fluke happens to be a better drawing-machine than another, is he to be counted the greater artist?” Matt felt small before this answer to his secret criticism. “Did you ever see the camera-obscura at the Crystal Palace? That does landscapes in a jiffy that we should go messing over for months. And then think of the looking-glass! They talk of Rembrandt and Franz Hals. I’ll back a bedroom mirror to put more life into its portraits than either of ’em. Why, if some process were invented—a sort of magic mirror to fix the image, living and colored, in the glass—here’s luck!”—he clinked his glass against Matt’s—”the governor would have to shut up shop.”
“Yes, but the mirror hasn’t got any imagination,” urged Matt, setting down his glass refreshed, the glow of brandy in his throat lending added intellectual charm to the discussion.
“Oh, I don’t know! There are distorting mirrors,” rejoined Herbert, laughing. “But you are quite right. Art is selection; nature à travers d’un tempérament. Art is autobiography. But painting, which somehow monopolizes the name of Art, is really the lowest form of Art. Nature is full of scenes quite as good as Art. Doesn’t Ruskin say an artist has got to copy Nature? But is there anything in Nature so closely akin to a poem, or to Ruskin’s own prose, or to a symphony of Beethoven, as a moonlit sea or a beautiful woman is to a picture? What is the skylark’s song compared to Shelley’s, or the music of the sea to Mozart’s? The real creation is in the other arts, which are called literature and music. They are an addition to Nature—something extra. Painting and acting—these are mere reduplications of Nature. Perhaps I was unfair to painting. That, at least, fixes the beauty of Nature, but acting is merely an evanescent imitation of the temporary.”
The younger man sat half bewildered beneath this torrent of words and quotations; the respect Herbert had lost in his eyes by his draughtsmanship (a trifling matter under Herbert’s disdainful analysis) returning, multiplied to reverence, and with a fresh undercurrent of humility and envy. How much there was to know in the world, how many languages and books and arts! How could he mix with Herbert and his set without being found out?
“That’s why I prefer literature and music,” said Herbert. “But then I’m not my own master, like you—you lucky beggar. If I had my way, pictures would be nothing but color-schemes, sheer imagination, with no relation to truth of Nature. What do I care how her shadows fall, if they don’t fall gracefully? And then why must my lines imitate Nature’s? That’s where the Japanese are so great. Don’t smoke that fag-end! Have another!” And he threw his cigarette-case across to his magnetized listener. It was the first time in his hard, busy existence Matt had ever heard any one talk like a book, discussing abstract relations of Art and Life.
“I wish I knew as much as you,” he said, naïvely.
“I wish I was as free as you,” retorted Herbert, laughingly; “though I certainly wouldn’t employ my liberty as you do. What in Heaven’s name made you want to study Art? I did laugh when the governor told the mater of your letter. I was just in the roughest grind, and felt like writing you on the sly to warn you.”
“I don’t think I should have taken your advice,” said Matt, with an embarrassed laugh.
“But what made you come to London, anyhow? Why didn’t you go to Paris?”
“To Paris!”