Henry James

“ Before a week had elapsed he met Miss Fancourt in Bond Street, at a private view of the works of a young artist in “black-and-white” who had been so good as to invite him to the stuffy scene. The drawings were admirable, but the crowd in the one little room was so dense that he felt himself up to his neck in a sack of wool. A fringe of people at the outer edge endeavoured by curving forward their backs and presenting, below them, a still more convex surface of resistance to the pressure of the mass, to preserve an interval between their noses and the glazed mounts of the pictures ”

“ There was a certain shock for Paul Overt in the knowledge that the fine genius they were talking of had been reduced to so explicit a confession and had made it, in his misery, to the first comer; for though Miss Fancourt was charming what was she after all but an immature girl encountered at a country-house? Yet precisely this was part of the sentiment he himself had just expressed: he would make way completely for the poor peccable great man not because he didn’t read him clear, but altogether because he did. ”

“ George’s lesson by heart, had tested and proved its doctrine. Nevertheless he did a very inconsistent thing: before crossing the Alps he wrote to Marian Fancourt. He was aware of the perversity of this act, and it was only as a luxury, an amusement, the reward of a strenuous autumn, that he justified it. She had asked of him no such favour when, shortly before he left London, three days after their dinner in Ennismore Gardens, he went to take leave of her. It was true she had had no ground—he hadn’t named his intention of absence. ”

“ Paul declared.
“She is indeed. I’ve never seen any one like her. Her interest in literature’s touching—something quite peculiar to herself; she takes it all so seriously. She feels the arts and she wants to feel them more. To those who practise them it’s almost humiliating—her curiosity, her sympathy, her good faith. How can anything be as fine as she supposes it?”
“She’s a rare organisation,” the younger man sighed.
“The richest I’ve ever seen—an artistic intelligence really of the first order. And lodged in such a form!” St. George exclaimed. ”

“ An indefinite envy rose in Paul Overt’s heart as he took his way on foot alone; a feeling addressed alike strangely enough, to each of the occupants of the hansom. How much he should like to rattle about London with such a girl! How much he should like to go and look at “types” with St. George!
The next Sunday at four o’clock he called in Manchester Square, where his secret wish was gratified by his finding Miss Fancourt alone. ”

“ She reads everything—everything!” he went on to Paul. The girl smiled at him and then laughed at her father. The General turned away and his daughter spoke—“Isn’t papa delightful?”
“He is indeed, Miss Fancourt.”
“As if I read you because I read ‘everything’!”
“Oh I don’t mean for saying that,” said Paul Overt. “I liked him from the moment he began to be kind to me. Then he promised me this privilege.”
“It isn’t for you he means it—it’s for me. If you flatter yourself that he thinks of anything in life but me you’ll find you’re mistaken. He introduces every one. He thinks me insatiable.” ”

“ George was still before the chimney-piece, but now he was alone—fixed, waiting, as if he meant to stop after every one—and he met the clouded gaze of the young friend so troubled as to the degree of his right (the right his resentment would have enjoyed) to regard himself as a victim. Somehow the ravage of the question was checked by the Master’s radiance. It was as fine in its way as Marian Fancourt’s, it denoted the happy human being; but also it represented to Paul Overt that the author of “Shadowmere” had now definitely ceased to count—ceased to count as a writer. ”

“ So when he said to her, “Ah don’t talk of anything I’ve done, don’t talk of it here; there’s another man in the house who’s the actuality!”—when he uttered this short sincere protest it was with the sense that she would see in the words neither mock humility nor the impatience of a successful man bored with praise.
“You mean Mr. St. George—isn’t he delightful?”
Paul Overt met her eyes, which had a cool morning-light that would have half-broken his heart if he hadn’t been so young. “Alas I don’t know him. I only admire him at a distance.” ”

“ At the end of an hour spent in her company Paul Overt thought her still prettier than at the first radiation, and if her profane allusions to her husband’s work had not still rung in his ears he should have liked her—so far as it could be a question of that in connexion with a woman to whom he had not yet spoken and to whom probably he should never speak if it were left to her. Pretty women were a clear need to this genius, and for the hour it was Miss Fancourt who supplied the want. ”

“ I think of that pure spirit as a man thinks of a woman he has in some detested hour of his youth loved and forsaken. She haunts him with reproachful eyes, she lives for ever before him. As an artist, you know, I’ve married for money.” Paul stared and even blushed a little, confounded by this avowal; whereupon his host, observing the expression of his face, dropped a quick laugh and pursued: “You don’t follow my figure. I’m not speaking of my dear wife, who had a small fortune—which, however, was not my bribe. ”

“ Lastly Paul Overt had a vague sense that if the gentleman with the expressionless eyes bore the name that had set his heart beating faster (he also had contradictory conventional whiskers—the young admirer of the celebrity had never in a mental vision seen his face in so vulgar a frame) he would have given him a sign of recognition or of friendliness, would have heard of him a little, would know something about “Ginistrella,” would have an impression of how that fresh fiction had caught the eye of real criticism. ”

“ His hostess was so good as to remark, with her liberal humanity, that it was delightful they weren’t interrupted; it was so rare in London, especially at that season, that people got a good talk. But luckily now, of a fine Sunday, half the world went out of town, and that made it better for those who didn’t go, when these others were in sympathy. It was the defect of London—one of two or three, the very short list of those she recognised in the teeming world-city she adored—that there were too few good chances for talk; you never had time to carry anything far. ”

“ That’s what makes them so superior,” St. George amusingly added. “Fancy an artist with a change of standards as you’d have a change of shirts or of dinner-plates. To do it—to do it and make it divine—is the only thing he has to think about. ‘Is it done or not?’ is his only question. Not ‘Is it done as well as a proper solicitude for my dear little family will allow?’ He has nothing to do with the relative—he has only to do with the absolute; and a dear little family may represent a dozen relatives.”
“Then you don’t allow him the common passions and affections of men?” Paul asked. ”

“ George listened a while, courteously; then he said, laying his hand on his visitor’s: “That’s all very well; and if your idea’s to do nothing better there’s no reason you shouldn’t have as many good things as I—as many human and material appendages, as many sons or daughters, a wife with as many gowns, a house with as many servants, a stable with as many horses, a heart with as many aches.” The Master got up when he had spoken thus—he stood a moment—near the sofa looking down on his agitated pupil. “Are you possessed of any property?” ”

“ The smoking-room at Summersoft was on the scale of the rest of the place; high light commodious and decorated with such refined old carvings and mouldings that it seemed rather a bower for ladies who should sit at work at fading crewels than a parliament of gentlemen smoking strong cigars. The gentlemen mustered there in considerable force on the Sunday evening, collecting mainly at one end, in front of one of the cool fair fireplaces of white marble, the entablature of which was adorned with a delicate little Italian “subject.” ”

“ The sense of having done the best—the sense which is the real life of the artist and the absence of which is his death, of having drawn from his intellectual instrument the finest music that nature had hidden in it, of having played it as it should be played. ”

“ Ah the vile things they make one do!”
“But surely one’s right to want to place one’s children.”
“One has no business to have any children,” St. George placidly declared. “I mean of course if one wants to do anything good.”
“But aren’t they an inspiration—an incentive?”
“An incentive to damnation, artistically speaking.”
“You touch on very deep things—things I should like to discuss with you,” Paul said. “I should like you to tell me volumes about yourself. This is a great feast for me!” ”

“ I’ve tried to write a novel.”
“Mr. St. George oughtn’t to discourage you,” Paul went so far as to say.
“You do much more—when you wear that expression.”
“Well, after all, why try to be an artist?” the young man pursued. “It’s so poor—so poor!”
“I don’t know what you mean,” said Miss Fancourt, who looked grave.
“I mean as compared with being a person of action—as living your works.”
“But what’s art but an intense life—if it be real?” she asked. “I think it’s the only one—everything else is so clumsy!” Her companion laughed, and she brought out with her charming serenity what next struck her. ”

“ Paul anxiously submitted.
“Amusing?”
“For a strong man—yes.”
“They’ve given me subjects without number, if that’s what you mean; but they’ve taken away at the same time the power to use them. I’ve touched a thousand things, but which one of them have I turned into gold? The artist has to do only with that—he knows nothing of any baser metal. I’ve led the life of the world, with my wife and my progeny; the clumsy conventional expensive materialised vulgarised brutalised life of London. ”

“ As I said to you the other night at Summersoft, let my example be vivid to you.”
“Why your books are not so bad as that,” said Paul, fairly laughing and feeling that if ever a fellow had breathed the air of art—!
“So bad as what?”
“Your talent’s so great that it’s in everything you do, in what’s less good as well as in what’s best. You’ve some forty volumes to show for it—forty volumes of wonderful life, of rare observation, of magnificent ability.” ”

“ He explained that it was only for the Master—the idea of a little talk—that he had sat up, and that, not finding him, he had been on the point of going to bed.
“Well, you know, I don’t smoke—my wife doesn’t let me,” said St. George, looking for a place to sit down. “It’s very good for me—very good for me. Let us take that sofa.”
“Do you mean smoking’s good for you?”
“No no—her not letting me. It’s a great thing to have a wife who’s so sure of all the things one can do without. One might never find them out one’s self. She doesn’t allow me to touch a cigarette.” ”

“ George to me once. He said, apropos of something or other, that she didn’t care for perfection.”
“That’s a great crime in an artist’s wife,” Paul returned.
“Yes, poor thing!” and the girl sighed with a suggestion of many reflexions, some of them mitigating. But she presently added: “Ah perfection, perfection—how one ought to go in for it! I wish I could.”
“Every one can in his way,” her companion opined.
“In his way, yes—but not in hers. Women are so hampered—so condemned! Yet it’s a kind of dishonour if you don’t, when you want to do something, isn’t it?” ”

“ We’ve got everything handsome, even a carriage—we’re perfect Philistines and prosperous hospitable eminent people. But, my dear fellow, don’t try to stultify yourself and pretend you don’t know what we haven’t got. It’s bigger than all the rest. Between artists—come!” the Master wound up. “You know as well as you sit there that you’d put a pistol-ball into your brain if you had written my books!”
It struck his listener that the tremendous talk promised by him at Summersoft had indeed come off, and with a promptitude, a fulness, with which the latter’s young imagination had scarcely reckoned. ”

“ Paul turned it over: it took, from eyes he had never felt open so wide, so much looking at. “For myself I’ve an idea I need incentives.”
“Ah well then, n’en parlons plus!” his companion handsomely smiled.
“You are an incentive, I maintain,” the young man went on. “You don’t affect me in the way you’d apparently like to. Your great success is what I see—the pomp of Ennismore Gardens!”
“Success?”—St. George’s eyes had a cold fine light. “Do you call it success to be spoken of as you’d speak of me if you were sitting here with another artist—a young man intelligent and sincere like yourself? ”

“ It was responsive admiration of the life she embodied, the young purity and richness of which appeared to imply that real success was to resemble that, to live, to bloom, to present the perfection of a fine type, not to have hammered out headachy fancies with a bent back at an ink-stained table. ”