I had to interpret Florence to Virginia. I said: “Florence did not mean completeness in the sense of exactness. She meant that the tree, no matter how indicated, must seem to us so complete, in a world of its own, as to leave nothing lacking or intruding; that everything in the picture is there in relation to the tree, and the whole makes a perfect little world. If there were suggestions of other things which had nothing to do with the tree, such as there always are in life, it would not be a perfect picture. You said it must be a complete expression of the artist’s thought. That is just the completeness Florence means. It must be a complete, self-sufficient harmonious vision of a tree. And harmony means wholeness, doesn’t it?”
“For instance,” said Florence, “even the smallest and most trivial poem would be beautiful if it were perfect in itself—and complete. Take Leigh Hunt’s ‘Jenny Kissed Me,’ such a little thing, and yet beautiful, telling the delights of a kiss. And then take ‘Faust,’ which is much larger and deeper; and yet each is perfect in its way, though ‘Faust’ expresses so much more.”
“Have you read ‘Faust’?” I answered her.
“No,” she said, “but I know all about it.” I knew that she had got her ideas ready-made from “brother Arthur,” and I was amused. But I did not wish to be hurried into the midst of my subject without beginning at the beginning, so I cut the discussion as short as might be.
Marian said: “I don’t understand what they mean.”
I told her she would understand when we had talked it over, that I only wanted her, before next week, to settle her own ideas as to what she thought beautiful.
Florence repeated: “Beauty is completeness.”
“I think,” said Marian, “I begin to see what Florence means by that. Like the drop of water.”
I like to suggest the subject for the following week at the close of each meeting, and, if possible, to speak enough of it to give them a starting-place for their thoughts.