Masques & Phases Part 16

CLAUDE PHILLIPS. I think he wanted a good smacking.

P. G. KONODY. Ah, yes, his art _has_ a smack about it. (_Aside_.) Good heading for the _Daily Mail_, 'Art with a smack.' (_Writes in catalogue_.)

WILL ROTHENSTEIN. When I see pictures of this kind, my dear Gersaint, they seem to me to explain your existence. An artist without a conscience . . . (_Sees_ ROGER FRY.) My dear Fry, what are _you_ doing here? Buying for New York? (_Laughs meaningly_.)

ROGER FRY. Oh, no; but I hear Gersaint has a very fine picture by the Maitresse of the Moulin Rouge. Weale says it is School of Gheel (_p.r.o.nounced Kail_).

WILL ROTHENSTEIN. Kail Yard I should think; do look at these things.

ROGER FRY (_vaguely_). Who are they by? Oh, yes, Dubedat, of course.

[FRY _and_ ROTHENSTEIN _regard picture with disdain_; _it withers under their glance_. _Stage illusion by_ MASKELYNE _and_ THEODORE COOK.

STEPNEY _places a red star on it_.

GERSAINT. Well, Mr. Bowyer Nichols, I hope we shall have a good long notice in the _Westminster Gazette_. Now if there is any drawing . . .

BOWYER NICHOLS (_very stiffly_). No, there isn't. I don't think the Exhibition sufficiently important; everything seems to me cribbed: most of the pictures look like reproductions of John, Orpen or Neville Lytton.

GERSAINT. Ah, no doubt, influenced by Neville Lytton. That portrait of Mr. Cutler Walpole has a Neville Lytton feeling. Neville Lytton in his earlier manner.

_Enter_ SIR PATRICK CULLEN, SIR RALPH BLOOMFIELD BONNINGTON _and_ SIR COLENSO RIDGEON.

SIR C. RIDGEON. Ah, Sir Patrick, I have just heard that the pictures are for sale; now I am going to plunge a little. I think they will rise in value; and by the way I want to ask your opinion as a scientific man. If I treat four artists with _virus obscaenum_ for three weeks, what will be the condition of the remaining artists in the fourth week?

SIR P. CULLEN. Colenso, Colenso, you ought to have been a senior wrangler and then abolished.

SIR C. RIDGEON. What a cynic you are. All the same I've had great successes, though Dubedat _was_ one of our failures. A rather anaemic member of the New English Art Club come to me for treatment, and in less than a year he was an a.s.sociate of the Royal Academy; what do you say to that?

SIR P. CULLEN. Out of Phagocyte, out of mind.

SIR R. B. B. My dear Sir Patrick, how prejudiced you are. Take MacColl's case: a typical instance of _morbus ferox ars nova anglicana_: under dear Colenso he became an official at the Tate.

SIR C. RIDGEON. Then there's Sir Charles Holroyd, you remember his high tempera?

SIR P. CULLEN. There has been a relapse I hear from the catalogue.

SIR R. B. B. How grossly unfair; that is a false bulletin issued by the former nurse: 'the evil that men do lives after them.'

SIR P. CULLEN. My dear B. B., this is not Dubedat's funeral. Do you think Bernard Shaw will like the new epilogue?

BERNARD SHAW. He will; I'm shaw.

L. C. C. INSPECTOR. Excuse me, is Mr. Vedrenne here? Ah, yes! There is Mr. Vedrenne. Will you kindly answer some of my questions? Is that door on the left a real door? In case of fire I cannot allow property doors; the actors might be seized with stage fright, and they must have, as Sir B. B. would say, 'their exits and their entrances.'

VEDRENNE. Everything at the Court Theatre, my dear sir, is real. Ask Mr. Franks, he will tell you the door is not even a jar. The art, the acting, the plays, even the audience is real, except a few dramatic critics I cannot exclude. I admit the audience looks improbable at matinees; _out of Court_ is a truth in art of which we are only dimly beginning to understand the significance. [_Noise outside_.

_Enter_ JENNIFER, _dressed in deep mourning_.

JENNIFER (_with a bright smile_). Mr. Vedrenne, I have just had a telegram saying that my husband, Leo, was killed in his motor after leaving me at the Synagogue. His last words were: 'Jennifer, promise me that you will wear mourning if I die, merely to mark the difference between Dubedat and myself.' This afternoon I am going to marry Blenkinsop. How are the sales going?

VEDRENNE. Well, I think we might have the catechism or the churching of heroines. What is your name?

JENNIFER. Jennifer.

VEDRENNE. Where did you get that name?

JENNIFER. From Bernard Shaw in my baptism.

MR. REDFORD (_Licenser of Plays_). Mr. Shaw, I really must point out that this pa.s.sage comes from the Anglican Prayer-book. Are you aware of that? I have a suggestion of my own for ending the play.

BERNARD SHAW. Oh, shut up! Let us have my ten commandments.

GRANVILLE BARKER. My dear Shaw, you sent them to Wells for revision and he lost them in the Tube. I can remember the first one, 'Maude spake these words and said: "Thou shalt have none other Shaws but me."'

BERNARD SHAW. How careless of Wells. I remember the second: 'Do not indulge in craven imitation.'

W. L. COURTNEY. The third commandment runs: 'Thou shalt not covet George Alexander.'

GRANVILLE BARKER. One of them runs: 'Do not commit yourself to Beerbohm Tree, though his is His Majesty's . . . ' But we shall never get them right. We must offer a reward for their recovery. I vote that Walkley now says the _credo_. That, I think, expresses every one's sentiment.

A. B. WALKLEY (_reluctantly_). I believe in Bernard Shaw, in Granville Barker, and (_heartily_) in _The Times_.

WILLIAM ARCHER. Plaudite, missa est.

(1907.)

CURTAIN.

THE JADED INTELLECTUALS. A DIALOGUE.

_Scene: The Smoking-room of the Elivas Club_.

_Characters_: LAUDATOR TEMPOREYS, _aetat. 54, a distinguished literary critic, and_ LUKE CULLUS, _a rich connoisseur of art and life. They are not smoking nor drinking spirits. One is sipping barley water, the other Vichy_.

LUKE CULLUS. You are a dreadful pessimist!

LAUDATOR TEMPOREYS. Alas! there is no such thing in these days. We are merely disappointed optimists. When Walter Pater died I did not realise that English literature expired. Yet the event excited hardly any interest in the Press. Our leading weekly, the _Spectator_, merely mentioned that Brasenose College, Oxford, had lost an excellent Dean.

L. C. I can hardly understand you. Painting, I admit, is entirely a lost art, so far as England is concerned. The death of Burne-Jones brought our tradition to an end. I see no future for any of the arts except needlework, of which, I am told, there is a hopeful revival. But in your fields of literature, what a number of great names! How I envy you!

L. T. Who is there?

L. C. Well, to take the novelists first: you have the great Thomas Hardy, H. G. Wells, Henry James, Rudyard Kipling, Maurice Hewlett . . . I can't remember the names of any others just at present. Then take the poets: Austin Dobson, my own special favourite; and among the younger men, A. E. Housman, Laurence Housman, Yeats, Arthur Symons, Laurence Binyon, William Watson--