Spontaneous ease of obtaining effects is perhaps the most dangerous asset an artist may possess. You will find it in legions of draughtsmen, who will dash off what is seemingly the cleverest sketch and actually a mere tangle of inaccuracy—wrong in every line and detail. They are born with a box of tricks—any one of which may be drawn from its docket at a second’s notice.
Reach-me-down art—and as unlike the real thing as a city tailor’s ready-for-wear garments to the creations of a Savile Row expert.
It was beyond Eliphalet Cardomay’s skill to point out the fundamental fault in the girl’s acting, and it was beyond his skill to indicate the fortune to which her facile skill directed her. Had one of those wise and energetic gentlemen been present, those gentlemen who project their three-reel productions upon a white screen and who speak of “Close-ups,” “Eyes that register well,” “Panoraming the Camera,” and so forth, he would have recognised at once the great future awaiting Miss Mornice June in the broad estates of Filmland.
“I have nothing but admiration,” said Eliphalet. “You must have studied hard to do so well.”
“Studied! I just swotted up the lines, that’s all. How does one study?”
“By considering the relative values of what one is saying and inflecting the lines accordingly.”
“Oh, I should never be able to do that. I just get a thing, or I don’t get it. But d’you really think it’ll do?”
“I imagine it will do more than well.”
“Oh, you are a dear! I was sure you’d give me the ‘bird.’ ”
“Tell me: you have been on the stage for some long while?”