Various

“ One point emerges very clearly from the murky chaos of the industrial situation to-day; and that is that the brain-worker will not for ever be content to be merely a brain-worker, thinking and thinking, hour after hour, day after day. He is beginning to realise his latent capacity for manual labour; and he demands as his right a larger opportunity for self-development, so that he too may escape from the drudgery of brain-work and rise at last to the higher, freer life of muscular exertion. ”

“ There have been such characters as Armand in fiction who yet made some appeal to the reader’s affection; it is the book’s worst defect that Armand makes none. His recurring despairs and passions grow tedious; his final but rather incomplete change of heart left me sceptical as to how long it would have lasted had the book carried his history any further. Armand as a study of a certain type of egoist is supreme; my difficulty was that I had no desire to study him. Even Maria-Thérèse Colbert, the decadent wife of his publisher, a very monster among women, is more interesting. ”

“ But then they don’t appreciate the luxury of their lot. They don’t realise that theirs is one of the few forms of labour in which a man has some tangible result (well, not tangible, perhaps) to show for his work at the end of the day. There is nothing more satisfactory than that. It is true, no doubt, that the professional painter would rather have a windy article like this to show; all I can say is I would rather have a bright-blue basement or a middle-green conservatory. ”

“ Without a driers or some drier or whatever it is, the basement remains wet for ever, and all work ceases while the staff amble about, ecstatically rubbing themselves against the doorposts and saying “T’tt, t’tt,” in a meaning way.
It is a sad quality of oil-paint that when it is dry it no longer looks so lovely and shiny as it looks when it is wet. It was found that the sense of disappointment which this produced was greater than the Painters’ Union could bear ”

“ On the pavement, his hand outstretched to open the car door, was he of the rasping voice.
“This is the owner,” said Willoughby, and he laughed quietly to himself. He always giggles in a crisis. I could have kicked him. But at the moment I was hurriedly debating whether I could possibly escape by the door on the far side without being seen. “A small thin man might have done it,” I thought. But, alas! I am neither small nor thin.
Then the door of the car opened and Willoughby stepped forth into the limelight, as it were. ”

“ Of the peace-time sketches “Manna,” with the theme of a penniless and eccentric parson charged with stealing a loaf of bread and acquitted against the evidence, is as admirable as it is unexpected in flavour. For the rest there is good Galsworthy, if not of the very best, and but little that one would not praise highly if it came from an author of lower standards. ”

“ In my house the cry goes up with peculiar force about Easter-time, when I repaint as much of the house as I am allowed and whitewash the rest, and can appreciate what I am missing in my everyday calling. It is astonishing to think that one used actually to pay people money to paint and whitewash, and looked on with meek wonder, for six weeks, while they did it. Bourgeois I may be, but I have put aside that folly. The Easter holidays now are to me the best holidays of the year, because for four whole days I can do almost unlimited decorating. I begin with the conservatory ”

“ I don’t like my art to be hampered by petty notions of economy, and if brushes persist in crystallising into tooth-brushes when left to themselves for an hour or two I simply use a new brush.
Nor do I insist on “cleaning thoroughly the surface before the paint is applied.” Anyone who sets out in practice to clean thoroughly the surface of the basement before applying the paint will find that the Easter holidays have slipped away long before any paint is applied at all. Besides, one of the main objects of paint is to hide the dirt, so why waste time in removing it? ”

“ There must already be many brain-workers who are well-fitted to take their place in the ranks of manual labour; and the cry goes up with increasing force that, given only that opportunity which is every man’s due, millions of their fellows are capable of lifting themselves to the same standard. ”

“ Armand de Vaucourt is a self-deceiving sensualist who justifies his amours as necessary to literary inspiration and neglects his wife only to find, too late, that she has been his guardian angel, her love the source of all that was worth while in his life and work. ”

“ John Murray, the famous publisher, has recently given a representative of The Pall Mall Gazette some interesting facts and figures bearing on the impending crisis in the publishing trade. It is a gloomy recital. Men doing less work per hour with the present forty-eight hour week than with the old fifty-one hour week, and agitating for a further reduction of hours; paper rising in price by leaps and bounds. ”

“ This point is more important than you may suppose; since if the staff are at home and you want to use the basement bucket or the soft broom (both of which are essential for efficient whitewashing) it is almost certain that they will at the same time want to put them to some preposterous use of their own; and this causes either delay or friction, probably both. Besides, they keep bustling about behind you and saying, “’T’t, ’t’t,” or “Busy to-day!” in a surprised voice. This is most irritating, and an irritated painter always goes over the edges. ”

“ Butsova had a great triumph. She has all the arts and graces of her craft that can be taught, and to these she adds one of the few gifts that no training can confer—the natural joy of life that comes of just being young. ”

“ In time no doubt the idea would take on with the masses and an immense amount of useful work would be performed disguised as sport. August Bank Holiday might become the great yearly fixture for a sort of Gentlemen v. Players bricklaying competition, and we may one day read of huge crowds being attracted to the East India Docks on Easter Monday to watch stockbrokers, flushed with their victory of Boxing Day, playing a return match with the dockers at unloading margarine. The movement might expand until even on Labour Day work would be in progress. ”

“ Especially, perhaps, for outside walls, because in one’s artistic frenzy it is usual to cover most of the rose-trees with whitewash; they look then like those whitewashed orchards, and visitors think you are a scientific gardener, combating Plant Pests.
Personally I don’t pay too much attention to the rather arbitrary rules on painting laid down by the Painters’ Union. Life is too short. For instance, I don’t put my brushes in turpentine when I have finished for the day ”

“ The other thing about whitewashing is that it is done with a broom, not with a finicking brush and a small pot, but a good fat bucket and the housemaid’s soft-broom. In this way you can really get some bravura into your work. And, except perhaps for watering the garden with a hose, there is no quicker way of making a really good mess. Whitewashing by this method, I find that it takes much longer to remove the whitewash from the floors and other places where it is not intended to go than it does to put the whitewash on the places where it is intended to go ”

“ The only thing that stops me painting is a turpentine crisis, which usually occurs just before church on Sunday morning, when one has three workmanlike coats of glossy enamel or pale-green on one’s hands. Week-end painters should keep a close eye on the situation, and cease work while there is yet sufficient turpentine to cope with the workmanlike coats ”

“ Driers and gold-size are extremely necessary when painting the basement, because if there is one thing the staff enjoy more than tea-cups coming away in the ’and, it is really rubbing themselves against wet paint and wandering round muttering complaints about it. ”

“ Mr. Galsworthy has less than most men the kind of mind that can put off the burden of the suffering of war or submit easily to the difficult need for us all to think one way in a time of national crisis. ”

“ The instrument upon which Booth played was human nature, and he played upon it with a sure hand because he understood how difficult it is to touch the spirit when the body is suffering from physical degradation. To this must be added a genuine spiritual exaltation and love of his fellow-man and also an indomitable courage. Few men could have emerged with hope and enthusiasm unquenched from such a childhood as Booth’s ”

“ In other words, we are threatened with not merely a shortage but an absolute deprivation of all new books. The horror of the situation is almost unthinkable, but it must be faced. We can dispense with many luxuries—encyclopædias and histories and scientific treatises and so forth—but among the necessities of modern life the novel stands only third to the cinema and the jazz. ”

“ Miss Patterson is on the side of the angels, but she makes her way to them through some nasty mire, calling spades spades with a vigour which seems to have prevented her from paying much attention to some beautiful and hopeful things which also have everyday names. ”

“ Perhaps the cleverest feature of an unusual tale is the idea of Wyndwards, the modern “artistic” house that is its setting—a house rather over deliberate and self-conscious in its simplicity and beauty, lacking soul, but swept and garnished for the reception of the seven devils of bogiedom. ”

“ It is one of the few inventions which make a man grateful for the advance of science.
Well, that is all there is about painting. The only difficulty, once you have begun, is to know when to stop. Painting is a kind of fever. The painting of a single chair makes the whole room look dirty ”

“ A visit to the Royal Academy this year again encourages us to believe that, though we may be a bad nation, we are not so bad as we are painted.
According to a morning paper a commercial traveller who became violently ill in the Strand was found to have a small feather stuck in the lower part of the throat. If people will eat fresh eggs in restaurants they must be prepared to put up with the consequences. ”

“ The bricklayers have agreed to admit a few disabled men to their union—bricklaying apparently being a less strenuous occupation than leather-stitching—but exclude other ex-service men unless they have served their apprenticeship as well as their country. ”

“ Besides, the fact that every day brings news of policemen murdered, barracks burned, tax-collectors assaulted and mail-bags stolen, while to one class of mind it may argue that the present is a most inopportune moment for a great constitutional change, may to another suggest that only such a change will give any hope of improvement. ”

“ This is not our experience. On a Saturday we have often withdrawn without any pressure after the first turn or two.
Sir L. Worthington Evans, says a contemporary, has been asked to investigate the mutton glut. What is wanted, we understand, is more glutton and less mutt.
Mme. Landru, the wife of the Parisian “Bluebeard,” has been granted a divorce. We gather that there is something or other about her husband which made their tastes incompatible.
It appears that Mr. Jerry McVeagh is of the opinion that the Home Rule Bill is quite all right except where it applies to Ireland. ”

“ Wednesday, May 5th.—Apparently it is not always selfishness that makes Trade Unionists unwilling to admit ex-service men to their ranks, but sometimes solicitude for the welfare of these brave fellows. ”

“ I retired to my office, that is the desk that I sit at in a room with two other officers, and I armed myself with a file which would act as a passport to the Assistant of a Great Man, who in turn is Assistant to a Very Great Man. They all reside at the War Office. ”

“ The Ministry of Information is closed, but should be at once reorganised as the Ministry of Fiction, with a staff of no fewer than five hundred clerks, and installed in suitable premises, the British Museum for choice, thus emancipating the younger generation from the dead hand of archæology. ”

“ We are glad to be able to supplement it by information, derived from a trustworthy source, of the corresponding intentions of the University of Oxford.
The Oxford list is not yet complete, but the following names and the reasons for which the distinction is to be conferred may be regarded as certain and authentic:—
The Right Hon. Winston Churchill, M.P., for his strenuous efforts to brighten Sunday journalism.
Mr. Augustus John, for unvarnished portraiture and the stoical fortitude exhibited by him in face of the persecution of the Royal Academy. ”

“ Belloc Lowndes’s young ladies enjoy singularly poor luck, as is shown notably by their habit when in foreign parts of picking up the worst people and generally surrounding themselves with a society that it would be flattery to call dubious. ”

“ But the fact that elderly statesmen occasionally add to the gaiety of the populace at public celebrations by tripping over their “toasting-forks” hardly seems a sufficient reason for burdening young officers with a totally needless expense. ”

“ The Postmaster-General is all for a quiet life. When the Dublin postal workers announced their intention of stopping work for two days in sympathy with a Sinn Fein strike, did he dismiss them? Not he. You can’t, as he said, dismiss a whole service. No, he simply gave them two days’ leave on full pay, a much simpler plan.
Thanks to the Irish Nationalists, who have announced their intention of taking no part in the discussion of the Government of Ireland Bill, Mr. ”