Half Moon Street - Anne Perry [75]
Pitt passed the first table, the conversation being so earnest he thought interrupting it would earn him no favor. At the second, where the company was far more relaxed, he saw a face he thought in some way familiar, although he was not sure from where. It was heavyset, with thick, dark hair and dark eyes.
“Lesser men will always criticize what they do not understand,” the man said vehemently. “It is their only way of feeling that they have in some way made themselves masters of the subject, whereas in truth they have only displayed their failure to match it. It is a ceaseless source of amazement to me that the greater the fool, the more he is compelled to acquaint everyone with his shortcomings.”
“But doesn’t it anger you?” a fair young man asked, his eyes wide and bright.
The darker man raised his eyebrows. “My dear fellow, what would be the point? For some men, another man’s work of art is simply a mirror. They see a reflection of themselves in it, according to their obsession of the moment, and then criticize it for all they are worth, which admittedly is very little, because they do not like what it shows them. So Mr. Henley believes I am advocating the love of beauty above all things, precisely because he has no love for it. It frightens him. It is clear, yet ungraspable, it taunts him by its very elusiveness. In attacking The Picture of Dorian Gray, he is in some way of his own finding a weapon to attack his personal enemy.”
Another of the company seemed fiercely interested. “Do you believe that, Oscar? You could reduce him to pieces if you wanted to. You have everything with which to do it, the wit, the perception, the vocabulary . . .”
“But I don’t want to,” Oscar argued. “I admire his work. I refuse to allow him to turn me into something I do not wish to be . . . namely, an artist who has lost sight of art and will descend to criticizing in public, for retaliation’s sake, what he truly admires in private. Or even worse, to deny myself the pleasure of enjoying what he has created because he is foolish enough to deny himself the enjoyment of what I have made. That, my dear friend, is a truly stupid thing to do. And when an ignorant or frightened man calls me immoral it hurts me, but I can tolerate it. But were an honest man to call me stupid, I should have to consider the possibility that he was right, and that would be awful.”
“We live in an age of Philistines,” another young man said wearily, pushing back a heavy quiff of hair. “Censorship is a creeping death, the beginning of a necrosis of the soul. How can a civilization grow except with new ideas, and any man who suffocates a new idea is a murderer of thought and the enemy of the generations who follow him, because he has robbed them of a little of their life. He has diminished them.”
“Well said!” Oscar applauded generously.
The young man blushed with pleasure.
Oscar smiled at him.
“Excuse me, Mr. Wilde . . .” Pitt seized the lull in the conversation to interrupt.
Wilde looked up at him curiously. There was no hostility in his eyes, not even a guardedness as to a stranger.
“You agree, sir?” he asked warmly. He looked Pitt up and down, his eyes resting a moment on Pitt’s untidy hair and on his crooked shirt collar, less well cared for than usual in Charlotte’s absence. “Let me assay a guess. You are a poet whom some narrow and grubby-minded critic has censored? Or are you an artist who has painted his view of the reality of the soul of man, and no one will hang it in public because it challenges the comfortable assumptions of society?”
Pitt grinned. “Not quite right, sir. I am Thomas Pitt, a policeman who has misplaced a French diplomat and wondered if you might know where he is.”
Wilde looked thunderstruck, then he burst into a roar of laughter, thumping his fist on the table. It was several moments before he controlled himself.
“Good heavens, sir, you have a dry sense of the absurd. I like you. Please, sit down and