George Bernard Shaw

“ Still, Adrian is weak."
"I should think so. For my part," said Hoskyn, scratching his beard, and glancing at his wife as if he were going to make a venturesome remark, "I wonder how any woman could be bothered with him! I may be prejudiced: but that's my opinion."
"Oh, that is absurd," said Mary. "She may consider herself very fortunate in getting so good a man. He is too good for her: that is where the real difficulty lies. He is neglecting himself on her account. ”

“ You must know what I mean, Adrian. I felt in an excessively false position when she came in. I do not mean exactly that she might be jealous: but—
"Reassure yourself, Mary," he replied, with a sad smile. She is not jealous. I wish she were."
"You wish it!"
"Yes. It would be proof of love. I doubt if she is capable of jealousy.
"I hope not. She must have thought it very odd; and, of course, we looked as guilty as possible. Innocent people always do. Hush! here she is. Have you restored peace to the nursery, Mrs Herbert?
"My mother is doing so." said Aurélie. "It is a very unlucky child. ”

“ So I said, 'I will give Adrian a surprise.' And so I have."
"You came in at an interesting moment," said Mary, who had now partly regained some of her self-possession, and all her boldness. "Mr Herbert and I have had a serious quarrel; and we are just making it up. English fashion."
"Oh, it is not an English fashion. People quarrel like that everywhere. And you are now greater friends than ever. Is it not so?"
"I hope so," said Mary.
"I knew it," said Aurélie, with a wave of her fingers. "The human nature is the same things throughout the world. Ah yes. ”

“ You resemble him very much."
"No, I assure you," said Charlie eagerly. "I am not in the least like him. I know the fellow you mean: he was a drunken wretch whom you rescued from being run over or robbed in the street, and who made a most miserable ass of himself in return. He is dead."
"Jesu Christ!" ejaculated Aurélie with an irrepressible start: "do not say such things. What do you mean?"
"Dead as a doornail," said Charlie, triumphant at having shaken her composure, but still very earnest. ”

“ But he lifted the baby very expertly, and even gave it a kiss before he handed it to the old lady, who watched him as if he were handling a valuable piece of china.
"There. Take it away," said Aurélie. "You would make a good nurse, monsieur."
"What a mother!" whispered Madame Szczympliça. "Poor infant!" and she indignantly carried it away.
"I wish he would grow up all at once," said Aurélie. "By the time he is a man, I shall be an old woman, half deaf, with gout in my fingers. He will go to hear the new players, and wonder how I got my reputation. Ah, it is a stupid world! ”

“ Mrs Herbert is a very good example of my next heresy, which is, that earnestness of intention, and faith in the higher mission of art, are impotent to add an inch to my artistic capacity. They rather produce a mental stress fatal to all freedom of conception and execution. I cannot bring them to bear on drawing and painting: they seem to me to be more the concern of clergymen and statesmen. Your husband once told my mother that art was a backwater into which the soft chaps got to be out of the crush in the middle of the stream. ”

“ There are many things which are not reasonable, and are yet quite natural. I sometimes despise myself. That occurs when I contrast Aurélie's influence on my work with yours. Before I met her, I worked steadfastly in this studio, thinking of you whenever my work palled on me, and never failing to derive fresh courage from you. I know now, better than I did then, how much of my first success, and of the resolute labor that won it, was due to you. The new influence is a different—a disturbing one. When I think of Aurélie, there is an end of my work. ”

“ Laboriousness is, at best, only an appeal ad miseracordiam to oneself and the critics. 'Sir Lancelot' is a bad picture, if you like; but do you suppose that any expenditure of patience would have tortured it into a good one? My dear Mary—I beg Mr Hoskyn's pardon— "
"Beg Mrs Herbert's, rather. Go on." ”

“ To begin with, I am afraid that when I used to preach to you about the necessity of devoting oneself wholly and earnestly to the study of art in order to attain true excellence, I was talking nonsense—or at least exaggerating mere practice, which is a condition of success in tinkering and tailoring as much as in painting, into a great central principle peculiar to art. ”

“ My fingers would become hammers, like the fingers of all the world; and I should be excited, and have a great pleasure to hammer, as all the world has. But I could no longer make music. "
"Aurélie has rearkable theories of what she calls her fine touch," said Herbert. "Practically, I find that when she is in a musical humor, and enjoys her own playing, she says she has 'found her fingers'; but when only other people enjoy it, then the touch is gone; the fingers are like the fingers of all the world ”

“ You have not this fine touch; and you do not understand. If you had, ah, how you would draw! You would greater than no matter what artist in the world."
Mary burned with indignation at Aurélie, knowing how it hurt Herbert to be reminded that he was not a first-rate artist. Aurélie, indifferent to the effect of her speech, relapsed into meditation until they left the table, when she seated herself at the pianoforte and permitted Charlie to engage her in conversation, whilst Herbert became engrossed by a discussion with Mary on painting. ”

“ Mrs. Hoskyn!" he exclaimed, rising hastily.
'Yes, Adrian. Mrs. Hoskyn's compliments; and she is surprised to see Mr. Herbert reading the newspapers which he once despised, and neglecting the art in which he once gloried."
"I have taken to doing both since I established myself as a family man," he replied with a sigh. "Will you ascend the throne? It is the only seat in the place that can be depended upon not to break down."
"Thank you. Have you been reading the Times ever since your breakfast?"
"Have you seen it, Mary?" ”

“ It is quite pitiable to see a man like Adrian become the slave of a woman who obviously docs not care for him—or perhaps I should not say that; but she certainly does not care for him as he deserves to be cared for. I am beginning to think that she cares for nothing but money."
"Oh, come!" remonstrated Hoskyn. "You're too hard on her, Mary. She certainly doesn't seem to concern herself much about Herbert: but then I fancy that he is rather a milk-and-water sort of man. I know he is a very good fellow, and all that ”

“ It is impossible to find a cot that it cannot fall out of. But do not rise. Is it it possible that you are going?"
Mary, who in spite of Herbert's assurance was not comfortable, invented unanswerable reasons for returning home at once. Charlie had to go with her. He tried to bid Aurélie good night unconcernedly, but failed. Mary remarked to Herbert, who accompanied them to the door, that Charlie had behaved himself much 1ess akwardly a boy than he did now as a man. Adrian assented; let them out; stood for a moment to admire the beauty of the evening ”

“ But I do not say that it is not worth while to be an artist; for, you see, I have not given up my profession."
"But you have brought the Times down on you."
"True. The Times now sees defects in my work which I cannot see. Just as it formerly failed to see defects in my early work which are very plain to me now. It says very truly that I no longer take infinite pains. I do my best still ”

“ Yet if you spoke of her being a moral teacher with a great gift and a a great trust, she would not understand you, although she has some distorted fancy about her touch on the piano being a moral faculty. She thinks your husband a most original and profound thinker because he once happened to remark to her that musical people were generally clever. ”