I. THE GENERAL'S WIFE REFUSES
It isn't that I don't like them,
My dear Mrs. Kinfoot,
But I know
I am not clever,
And I like your old friends best.
As for the General
He disapproves of Art,
And does not believe in it.
He has noticed
That Artists
Have an odd look in their eyes,
And a shifty expression.
In fact,
The General disapproves of Art.
He finds that Artists
Are stupid
And difficult to talk to—
He remembers meeting one
In '97
Who was not interested
In Polo,
—And appeared
To be unaware of the existence
Of the old Duke of Cambridge.
My husband didn't get angry,
He just said to him, like that,
"What are you interested in?
ART, I suppose?"
In spite of this
The General thinks
That music is more dangerous
—And subversive of discipline
Than painting—
For—in painting—
That is to say
In good painting—
You can see put down on canvas
What you can see yourself—
—And you can touch it
With your finger—
A picture should be the same
As a coloured photograph,
Except that the camera
Reveals things
Invisible to the Human Eye;
That is wrong!
(By the Human Eye
The General says
He means
His own eye)
But in Music
You can see nothing,
And you are unable
To touch it
With your fingers;
The General disapproves of Art,
—But it makes him positively nervous
To hear music.
The General says that,
As far as he can make out,
All musicians
Have been German—
But he can only remember
The name of one—
Nietzsche!
As the war
Was German in origin,
It is obvious that it was made
By German Composers
And not
By German Generals
—Many of whom were fine fellows
Who loved a good joke.
The General remembers one
Who laughed like anything
At one of his stories.
The war was made by German musicians
—Just as surely
As our own
Pacific and imaginative policy
Was interpreted
By Kipling and Lady Butler.
"Never trust a Man
Who plays the piano,"
The General says.
He thinks that
In the main,
The British have a sound interest
In this matter.
Probably Charles I,
Played the piano—
And, at any rate,
He collected Pictures.
The English would never
Behead anyone
For governing badly;
It is only Barbarians,
Like the Russians,
Who would do this.
The General
Disapproves of Art.