"Assuredly; to please what?—Our sense of the artistic. The Italians have a fine way of talking about 'beautiful ugliness,' and if the artist, working within the limits of his medium, proves to others that the thing he has produced—picture, statue, book—is in tune with Nature, let it be never so ugly, it must still please our artistic sense."
Henry found himself wandering in a cul de sac of thought. This man who opposed his mind to his could out-manœuvre him at every move. He was painfully conscious now that opinions he had thought to be his own were only unwinnowed sheaves of thought gleaned in the field of his reading. Still, he felt that with pen in hand, and no quick answer to each phrase, he could prove his case. How often does the writing man feel thus.
"But there is nothing in this book, so far as I can see," urged Henry warmly, "that tends to elevate the mind to better things. It may be true what you say of the butcher's shop, but the pastrycook's is a pleasanter place any day."
"Ah, my young friend, that way lies indigestion," the other retorted, smiling. "It is none of the artist's business to elevate; it is his function to interpret life, and you will tramp far along the dusty road of life to find anything that elevates. The fact is, when I—I mean, when Adrian Grant set himself to write that book, I believe his purpose was to attack the mawkish sentimentality of our contemporary fiction, to strike a blow at the shoddy romance which is the worst form of art. For my part, deliver me, I pray, from all writers who seek to elevate. The true watchword is 'Art for art's sake.'"
"To me it seems rather 'Art for dirt's sake,'" Henry rejoined a little savagely, and a shadow of displeasure clouded the features of his visitor at the words. "But admitting all you say, is there no Power apart from ourselves that tends to draw our thoughts, our very souls, upward?"
"I have looked for it in vain," the other speaker replied, with a languid wave of the hand. "What about the life of our slums, for instance? Is every man and woman there a villain, a lost soul? Surely not. Yet we see every evil rampant, we see every virtue dead; vice triumphant. Who is to blame? The people: the victims? Surely not. Reason says no, a thousand times. Where is this Power you speak of when slumland exists, a horror? But in Kensington there is as little that elevates as there is in Whitechapel. The honest man loses generally in the struggle; the scoundrel flaunts himself before high heaven; he rides in mayoral furs, he swarms into Parliament, he mounts the very pulpit itself."
Henry was abashed and silent before the impassioned language of the speaker, who had suddenly flamed up and risen from his seat, pacing the room with restless strides while he declaimed and gesticulated surprisingly for one who had seemed so self-possessed, so blasé. Henry was silent because of his inability to understand the mystery of pain—a mystery to older heads than his.
"I have searched the world for a principle, for a law of life," exclaimed Mr. P., stopping suddenly and looking the journalist straight in the face, "and I have never scented one."
"We are told to love one another," said Henry, almost timidly.
"Well, do you find that principle at work? I find hate, malice, inhumanity, wherever I turn my eyes. That is what I meant by the butcher's shop. I find ministers preaching the gospel of peace and buttressing the policy of war and plunder. I find hypocrisy enthroned, honesty contemned."