“This always suggests the brain of London, immeasurable in this ugly poll of a Bloomsbury, with its watery eyes and dejected face, that seems to be perpetually meditating on death and influenza. I am going to work up the idea one of these days and turn it into copy.”
“It certainly does not look promising in the crude state,” observed Kent by way of encouragement.
They walked along Oxford Street and down Shaftesbury Avenue. Here, while passing in front of a photographer's window, their eyes were caught by a group of complacent people of both sexes—“with superior smiles and inferior clothes,” as Wither said—described by a legend printed on the mount as the “Parnassus House Mutual Improvement Society.” Wither entered the shop and purchased a copy, as a “monument of the stupendous fatuity of man.” In the comfortable smoking-room of the Junior Cosmopolitan, St. James's Square, Wither held the photograph out on his knees before him and discoursed upon it.
“Look at them,” he said, half hidden in the great armchair. “Dear old Philistia! When is the Almighty going to redeem his promise and triumph over it? Mutual improvement!—on the principle of Mark Twain's islanders, who eked out a precarious livelihood by taking in each other's washing! This pathetic kind of person belongs to home reading societies. Do you know what they are? I was staying with the Brownes last summer; asked the youngest to come and play tennis. She replied with awful solemnity that she was going to read her 'half hour.' I was impressed; good girl, I said, and pictured her to myself conducting her devotional exercises over St. Thomas à Kempis or St. Augustine's 'Confessions' in the sanctity of her maiden chamber. Next day I found her reading the report of an agricultural commission for the year 1831. Asked her what the deuce she was reading that for. She replied she was reading her 'half hour'; it was the only 'solid' book she could find downstairs! Novels and poetry and magazines were tabooed. I asked her whether she thought George Meredith or Dante flippant. She could not exactly say—but they were not solid. God help us!”
“You are as bad as my friend Miss Davenant,” said Kent, laughing. “She is always railing at Philistia. You might lend me the photograph to show her; it would amuse her—perhaps it might teach her something.”
Wither gave him the photograph, but after a short pause Kent returned it.
“I'll take it some other time. I don't quite know at present how we are going to stand to one another; we had a bit of a scene this morning.”
Wither raised his eyebrows and turned his head lazily, looking at Kent.
“You interest me, friend John. Is Saul also among the prophets? Expound.”
Kent roughly sketched the morning's episode in the studio.