Seemingly, to be consistent was not a characteristic of the old gentleman, a circumstance which rendered argument difficult. Wynne fell back on:
“After all, it was you who attacked them first.”
“Know I did. Good reason too. A lot of clattering feet thumping past my Leonardo! Scattering my thoughts. ’Taint right—’taint reverent. If I’d my way I’d allow no one to enter here who hadn’t graduated to a degree in the arts—or respect for the arts. ’Tisn’t decent for people to use as a waiting-room a gallery holding some of the world’s greatest achievements on canvas. It’s degrading and disgraceful. Why aren’t we taught to respect art from infancy, hey? And pay it proper compliments, too. We have to take our hats off in a twopenny tin chapel, and are thought blackguards and infidels if we keep ’em on, but do we ever touch a forelock to a masterpiece in paint, and does any one think any the worse of us however idiotically we behave before it? No! Then I say that we are no better than hooligans and savages, and have no right of contact with the glorious emblems of what a man’s hand and a man’s head can achieve.”
This speech he delivered with enthusiasm and a profusion of gesture. Wynne was properly impressed, and hoped the old gentleman would proceed, which he readily did.
“Good Gad a’mighty!” he ejaculated, pointing a claw-like forefinger at Leonardo’s Virgin. “Whenever I doubt the Scriptures I look at her and the doubt passes. Da Vinci saw her. Saw her, and he painted what he saw—the flesh and the spirit. See the eyelids, they tremble—don’t they? They are never at rest. That’s the woman essence—the mother essence—eyes trembling over the soul of her child. And the hands! Don’t you feel at any second they may move? One might come tomorrow and find them any-other-where. Motion—touch—a quickening sense of protection. Use the place as a shelter against the rain! Damnable! There’s just the same amazing mobility in the expression of La Jaconde—at the Louvre, but with this difference. The Virgin”—he pointed again at the picture—“and Monna Lisa, the woman who saw the world through eyes of understanding which curled her lips to humour. A courtesan some folks say she was—not unlikely—inevitable almost! Takes a courtesan to contrive a measured expression like that. Lord! if a good woman could understand as a courtesan must understand, what a superwoman she would be! Intellect springs from knowledge of the flesh, and is sunk in it too—more often the latter. The revelation of one sex to another is the well-head of all learning. Passion of the soul is the reaction of bodily passion—must be—is. What is it Pater says about Monna Lisa?—‘Represents what, in a thousand years, man had come to desire.’ True too! Even a fool would admit that. There’s a fleeting look in the eyes and the mouth that adjusts itself to every line of thought—gives an answer to every question—a compassion for every sin—an impetus to all betterment. Been to the Louvre? Know the picture?”
“No,” said Wynne, rather ruefully.
“Good Gad a’mighty! then you’ve plenty to learn, and the sooner you start the better. What are you—art student or what?”
“I am going to be a writer.”
“How old?”
“Seventeen and a bit.”