FullReads

Baldwin groaned. “Defence of fiddlesticks! Defence of your vanity!”

“I don’t think so,” replied Cyril, “and I don’t think you understand me at all in this instance. There was no vanity in this matter. You know that since some time I have been asking myself what moral right a man has to consume his life writing verses, when there is so much evil to remove, and every drop of thought or feeling we have is needed to make the great river which is to wash out this Augean stable of a world. I tried to put the doubt behind me, and to believe in Art for Art’s own sake, and such bosh. But the doubt pricked me. And when suddenly my uncle left me all he had, I felt I must decide. As long as I was a mere penniless creature I might write poetry, because there seemed nothing else for me to do. But now it is different. This money and the power it gives are mine only as long as I live; after my death they may go to some blackguard; so, while I have them, I must give all my energies to doing with them all the good that I possibly can.”

“In that case better give them over to people who know best what to do with them–societies or hospitals, or that sort of thing–and write your verses as before. For I don’t think your thoughts will add much to the value of your money, Cyril. You’ve not a bit of practical head. Of course you may, if you choose, look on idly while other people are using your money. But I don’t think it is specially worth doing.”

Cyril sighed, hesitated, and then burst out rapidly–

“But it is the only thing I can do–do you understand? I can’t write poetry any more. Perhaps that may be the only thing for which I was ever fit, but I am fit for it no longer. I cannot do what I have got to despise and detest. For I do despise and detest the sort of poetry which I should write–mere ornamental uselessness, so much tapestry work or inlaid upholstery. You believe in Art for Art’s own sake–Goethianism–that sort of thing, I know. It is all very well for you, who have an active practical life with your Maremma drainings and mine diggings, a life in which art, beauty, so forth, have only their due share, as repose and refreshment. It was all very well in former days also, when the people for whom artists worked had a deal of struggle and misery, and required some pure pleasure to make life endurable; but now-a-days, and with the people for whom I should write, things are different. What is wanted now-a-days is not art, but life. By whom do you think, would all the beautiful useful things I could write, all the fiddle-faddle about trees and streams and statues and love and aspiration (fine aspiration, which never takes a practical shape!) be read? By wretched overworked creatures, into whose life they might bring a moment of sweetness, like a spray of apple blossom or a bunch of sweet-peas into some black garret? Nothing of the kind. They would be read by a lot of intellectual Sybarites, shutting themselves out, with their abominable artistic religion, from all crude real life; they would be merely so much more hothouse scents or exotic music ( con sordino ), to make them snooze their lives away. Of course it is something to be a poet like those of former days; something to be Tasso, and be read by that poor devil of a fever-stricken watchmaker whom we met down in the plain of Lucca; but to be a poet for the cultured world of to-day–oh, I would rather be a French cook, and invent indigestible dishes for epicures without any appetite remaining to them.”