Anno Dracula - Kim Newman [36]
‘Dreadful business,’ spluttered Art.
‘Indeed. But deuced good for the circulation. The Star and the Gazette and all the other dogs are in it to the death. The Agency can’t keep them fed. They’ll take almost anything.’
Penelope did not care for talk of murder and vileness. She did not take the newspapers, and indeed read nothing but improving books.
‘Miss Churchward,’ Mr Reed addressed himself to her, ‘I understand congratulations are the order of the day.’
She smiled at him in such a way as not to line her face.
‘Where’s Charles?’ asked Kate, blundering as usual. Some girls should be beaten regularly, Penelope thought, like carpets.
‘Charles has let us down,’ Art said. ‘Most unwisely, in my opinion.’
Penelope burned inside, but hoped it did not show on her face.
‘Charles Beauregard, eh?’ said Mr Reed. ‘Good man in a pinch, I understand. You know, I could swear I saw the fellow in Whitechapel only the other night. With some of the detectives on the Silver Knife case.’
‘That is highly unlikely,’ Penelope said. She had never been to Whitechapel, a district where people were often murdered. ‘I cannot imagine what would take Charles to such a quarter.’
‘I don’t know,’ said Art. ‘The Diogenes Club has queer interests, in all manner of queer quarters.’
Penelope wished Art had not mentioned that institution. Mr Reed’s ears pricked up and he was about to quiz Art further when they were all saved from embarrassment by another arrival.
‘Look,’ squealed Florence with delight, ‘at who has come again to plague us with his incorrigibility. It’s Oscar.’
A large new-born with plenty of wavy hair and a well-fed look was swanning over to them, green carnation in his lapel, hands in his pockets to bulge out the front of his striped trousers.
‘Evening, Wilde,’ said Art.
The poet sneered a curt ‘Godalming’ of acknowledgement at Art, and then extravagantly paid court to Florence, pouring so much charm over her that a quantity of it naturally splashed over on to Penelope and even Kate. Mr Oscar Wilde had apparently once proposed to Florence, when she was Miss Balcombe of Dublin, but been beaten out by the now-never-mentioned Bram. Penelope found it easy to believe Wilde might have made proposals to a number of persons, simply so the rebuffs would give him something else about which to be wittily unconventional.
Florence asked him his opinion of Clarimonde’s Coming-Out, whereupon Wilde remarked that he was thankful for its existence, for it might spur a canny critic, such as he obviously adjudged himself, to erect a true work of genius on its ruins.
‘Why, Mr Wilde,’ Kate said, ‘it sounds as if you place the critic higher than the creator.’
‘Indeed. Criticism is itself an art. And just as artistic creation implies the working of the critical faculty, and, indeed, without it cannot be said to exist at all, so criticism is really creative in the highest sense of the word. Criticism is, in fact, both creative and independent.’
‘Independent?’ Kate queried, surely aware she invited a lecture.
‘Yes, independent. Just as out of the sordid and sentimental amours of the silly wife of a small country doctor in the squalid village of Yonville-l’Abbaye, near Rouen, Flaubert was able to create a classic, and make a masterpiece of style, so, from subjects of little or no importance, such as the pictures in this year’s Royal Academy, or in any year’s Royal Academy for that matter, Mr Lewis Morris’s poems, or the plays of Mr Henry Arthur Jones, the true critic can, if it be his pleasure so to direct or waste his faculty of contemplation, produce work that will be flawless in beauty and instinct. Dullness is always an irresistible temptation for brilliancy, and stupidity is the permanent Bestia Trionfans that calls wisdom from its cave.’
‘But what did you think of the play, Wilde?’ asked Mr Reed.
Wilde waved his hand and made a face, the combination of gesture and expression communicating considerably more than his little speech, which even Penelope found off the point, albeit