“Not financially. I hardly know enough about it. One thing I don't quite understand. I thought an artist gave out the experience he had gathered in his contact with real life. How is he going to get that contact if he buries himself in what amounts to a desert island?”
“He goes direct to nature,” replied Sir Decimus, platitudinously.
“Does he?” argued Sylvester. “Rocks and trees are all very well for pretty pictures. But what about love and sorrow and other human emotions. He seems to get away entirely from the important side of nature.”
“Yes, yes, so I grant. But it's hardly that,” puffed Sir Decimus, mopping his forehead. “Ah, here is Urquhart; he will tell you all about it. Don't you know Urquhart?”
He performed the introduction, stated the case at great length with a confusion that irritated the scientist's trained mind, and then, with visible relief, moved away. Bevis Urquhart, a slight young man, with a tiny silky black moustache and a languid manner, began a patient explanation. Sylvester had heard of him as a lad of great wealth who had convulsed a whole county by refusing to ride to hounds and uttering blasphemy against partridge shooting. It was whispered that he had invented a new religion and had an oratory in his bedroom fitted with expensive idols made of chrysoprasus.
“It is the mistake of the crowd,” said he, “to regard Art as an interpretation of experience. Art has nothing to do with Life. Life claims all for itself and so kills Art, drains it of its blood. In other words, Life claims Art, Art does not claim Life. If not, Art would be unexpressed. The poem would remain a pure crystal in the soul of the poet, the picture a fair-hued mist in the fantasy of the painter. Art is the revelation of the Undetermined, and this can only reach its fulness in the quietude of the soul.”
“Thank you,” said Sylvester; “you have given me a lucid solution of my difficulty.”
The young man smiled deprecatingly.
“Pardon me. I try to be an artist in words, and lucidity is so brutal and commonplace. Do you read Mallarmé?”
“No,” said Sylvester. “When I want wholesome unintelligibility I read Rabelais.”