Mr. Hughes was grateful, because he had had no idea what to say next. His indebtedness, however, had to be ignored; else, what became of Dignity? An enlarged manner accepted a laurel or two due to lucidity, as he continued: "But I do say this, that, considered as a basis—perhaps I should say a fulcrum—or shall I say as a working hypothesis of the substratum or framework of the Idea?..." The speaker hesitated.
"That's the safest way to put it," said Mr. Aiken, but rather gloomily. He was re-lighting his pipe.
"I think so," said Mr. Hughes judicially. "Considered as ... what I said just now ... Wardour Street is, to my thinkin', played out. Quite distinctly played out.... What's that?"
"What's what?" The questions seemed to refer to something heard and unheard, by each speaker respectively. Mr. Aiken did not press for an answer, but went to the door, persuading his pipe to draw by the way. "Want anything, Mrs. Parples?" said he, looking out. But no answer came. "Mrs. P. is sleeping happily in the kitchen," said he, returning. "It wasn't her. It was an effect of something."
"I suppose it was. Thought I heard it, too!"
Perhaps, if you ever chanced to hear a conversation about nobody could exactly say what, you noticed that nobody did say anything very exactly, and everybody talked like these two gentlemen, who certainly had heard something, but who decided that they hadn't, because they couldn't find out what it was. It was too slight to discuss.
They each said "Rum!" and settled down to chat again, after turning down the gas, which made a beastly glare. Mr. Hughes had forgotten about the three heads, though, and taken his fingers down. He did, however, pursue the topic which claimed his attention, having embarked upon it, and feeling bound to conduct it to a close. He said something to this effect, and we hope our report is fairly accurate. He certainly appeared to say that something, which could hardly have been anything, grammatically, but the close to which he conducted the topic, embodied the point which underlay the whole of the extensive area which the Idea opened up for development, and turned upon the indisputable truth that the Highest Art—sculpture, music, painting, poetry—is never intelligible to the Vernacular Mind. How could any inference be more incontestable than that no Art could rise above mediocrity until a quorum of commonplace persons should be found honestly incapable of attaching any meaning to it? By making unintelligibility to the banal mind a criterion of superiority in Art, we established a Standard of Criticism, and eliminated from consideration a wilderness of insipidity which Mr. Hughes did not hesitate to call a nightmare. For his part, he was so confident that the system of Negative Juries, as they had been called, was sounder than any appeal to popular applause that he was quite willing that his own work should stand or fall by the decision of the Commonplace Intelligence as to which side up the picture should be looked at. He would go that length, and take the consequences. Let the Selection Committee of their proposed Annual Exhibition consist entirely of such Intelligences, and let the Hanging Committee hang all the pictures they were unable to make head or tail of, and such a galaxy of productions of Genius would be accumulated every year on their walls as the World had never before seen.
"Not work in practice?" said Mr. Hughes, replying to a morose doubt of Mr. Aiken's. "Just you redooce it to practice. Take the case that your Jury guesses the subject of a picture. Out it goes! Did you ever know that class able to make head or tail of the subject of a work of Genius? Gradual and infallible elimination, my boy—that's the ticket!" The speaker, who, though perhaps rather an idiot—only, mind you, he was subject now and then to something almost like Inspiration—threw himself back in his chair as though he had exhausted the subject, and might rest.
"Don't b'lieve it would work," said Mr. Aiken, sucking at his pipe. But he was evidently in a temper this evening, and Mr. Hughes paid no attention to his nonsense. However, it was no use talking about the Idea to him until he was more sympathetic. He would come right presently.
To cajole him into a better frame of mind, Mr. Hughes began talking of something else. "Queer sort of Studio, this of yours, Crocky," said he.