"But still I do not understand how it is done," urged Lillie.
"You shall have my formula in a nutshell. I had to be a musical critic and an art critic. I was ignorant of music and knew nothing of art. But I was a dab at language. When I was talking of music, I used the nomenclature of art. I spoke of light and shade, color and form, delicacy of outline, depth and atmosphere, perspective, foreground and background, nocturnes and harmonies in blue. I analyzed symphonies pictorially and explained what I saw defiling before me as the music swept on. Sunsets and belvedere towers, swarthy Paynims on Shetland ponies, cypress plumes and Fra Angelico's cherubs, lumps of green clay and delicate pillared loggias, fennel tufts and rococo and scarlet anemones, and over all the trail of the serpent. Thus I created an epoch in musical criticism. On the other hand, when I had to deal with art, I was careful to eschew every suggestion of the visual vocabulary and to confine myself to musical phrases. In talking of pictures, I dwelt upon their counter-point and their orchestration, their changes of key and the evolution of their ideas, their piano and forte-passages, and their bars of rest, their allegro and diminuendo aspects, their suspensions on the dominant. I spoke of them as symphonies and sonatas and masses, said one was too staccato and another too full of consecutive sevenths, and a third in need of transposition to the minor. Thus I created an epoch in art criticism. In both departments the vague and shifting terms I introduced enabled me to evade mistakes and avoid detection, while the creation of two epochs gave me the very first place in contemporary criticism. There is nothing in which I would not undertake to create an epoch. I do not say I have always been happy, and it has been a source of constant regret to me that I had not even learnt to play the piano when a girl and that unplayed music still remained to me little black dots."
"And so you did not dare marry the composer?"
"No, nor tell him why. Volume Three: I said I admired him so much that I wanted to go on devoting critical essays to him, and my praises would be discounted by the public if I were his wife. Was it not imprudent for him to alienate the leading critic by marrying her? Rather would I sacrifice myself and continue to criticise him. But I love him, and it is for his sake I would become an Old Maid."
"I would rather you didn't," said Lillie, her face still white. "I have found so much inspiration in your books that I could not bear to be daily reminded I ought not to have found it."
Poor president! The lessons of experience were hard! The Club taught her much she were happier without.
That day Lord Silverdale appropriately intoned (with banjo obligato) a patter-song which he pretended to have written at the Academy, whence he had just come with the conventional splitting headache.
AFTER THE ACADEMY—A JINGLE.
(NOT BY ALFRED JINGLE.)
Brain a-whirling, pavement twirling,
Cranium aching, almost baking,
Mind a muddle, puddle, fuddle.
Million pictures, million mixtures,
Small and great 'uns, Brown's and Leighton's,
Sky and wall 'uns, short and tall 'uns,
Pseudo classic for, alas! Sic
Transit gloria sub Victoriâ),
Landscape, figure, white or nigger,
Steely etchings, inky sketchings,
Genre, portrait (not one caught trait),
Eke historic (kings plethoric),
Realistic, prize-fight-fistic,
Entozoic, nude, heroic,
Coarse, poetic, homiletic,
Still-life (flowers, tropic bowers),
Pure domestic, making breast tick
With emotion; endless ocean,
Glaze or scrumble, craze and jumble,
Varnish mastic, sculpture plastic,
Canvas, paper (oh, for taper!)
Oil and water, (oh, for slaughter!)
Children, cattle, 'busses, battle,
Seamen, satyrs, lions, waiters,
Nymphs and peasants, peers and pheasants,
Dogs and flunkeys, gods and monkeys
Half-dressed ladies, views of Hades,
Phillis tripping, seas and shipping,
Hearth and meadow, brooks and bread-dough,
Doves and dreamers, stars and steamers,
Saucepans, blossoms, rags, opossums,
Tramway, cloudland, wild and ploughed land,
Gents and mountains, clocks and fountains,
Pan and pansy—these of fancy
Have possession in procession
Never-ending, ever blending,
All a-flitter and a-glitter,
Ever prancing, ever dancing,
Ever whirling, ever curling,
Ever swirling, ever twirling,
Ever bobbing, ever throbbing.
Ho, some brandy—is it handy?
Air seems tainting, I am fainting.
Hang all—no, don't hang all—painting!