Point Counter Point - Aldous Huxley [35]
‘Not that Burne-Jones was a particularly good painter,’ she hastened to add. (‘He painted,’ John Bidlake had said—and how shocked she had been, how deeply offended!—’as though he had never seen a pair of buttocks in the whole of his life.’) ‘But his subjects were noble. If you had his dreams, I used to tell John Bidlake, if you had his ideals, you’d be a really great artist.’
Burlap nodded, smiling his agreement. Yes, she’s On the side of the angels, he was thinking; she needs encouraging. One has a responsibility. The demon winked. There was something in his smile, Mrs. Betterton reflected, that reminded one of a Leonardo or a Sodoma—something mysterious, subtle, inward.
‘Though, mind you,’ he said regurgitating his article slowly, phrase by phrase, ‘the subject doesn’t make the work of art. Whittier and Longfellow were fairly stuffed with Great Thoughts. But what they wrote was very small poetry.’
‘How true!’
‘The only generalization one can risk is that the greatest works of art have had great subjects; and that works with small subjects, however accomplished, are never so good as…’
‘There’s Walter,’ said Mrs. Betterton, interrupting him. ‘Wandering like an unlaid ghost. Walter!’
At the sound of his name, Walter turned. The Betterton—good Lord! And Burlap! He assumed a smile. But Mrs. Be and his colleague on the Literary World were among the last people he wanted at this moment to see.
‘We were just discussing greatness in art,’ Mrs. Betterton explained. ‘Mr. Burlap was saying such profound things.’
She began to reproduce the profundities for Walter’s benefit.
He meanwhile was wondering why Burlap’s manner towards him had been so cold, so distant, shut, even hostile. That was the trouble with Burlap. You never knew where you stood with him. Either he loved you, or he hated. Life with him was a series of scenes—scenes of hostility or, even more trying in Walter’s estimation, scenes of affection. One way or the other, the emotion was always flowing. There were hardly any intervals of comfortably slack water. The tide was always running. Why was it running now towards hostility?
Mrs. Betterton went on with her exposition of the profundities. To Walter they sounded curiously like certain paragraphs in that article of Burlap’s, the proof of which he had only that morning been correcting for the printers. Reproduced—explosion after enthusiastic explosion—from Burlap’s spoken reproduction, the article did sound rather ridiculous. A light dawned. Could that be the reason? He looked at Burlap. His face was stony.
‘I’m afraid I must go,’ said Burlap abruptly, when Mrs. Betterton paused.
‘But no,’ she protested. ‘But why?’
He made an effort and smiled his Sodoma smile. ‘The world is too much with us,’ he quoted mysteriously. He liked saying mysterious things, dropping them surprisingly into the middle of the conversation.
‘But you’re not enough with us,’ flattered Mrs. Betterton.
‘It’s the crowd,’ he explained. ‘After a time, I get into a panic. I feel they’re crushing my soul to death. I should begin to scream if I stayed.’ He took his leave.
‘Such a wonderful man!’ Mrs. Betterton exclaimed before he was well out of earshot. ‘It must be wonderful for you to work with him.’
‘He’s a very good editor,’ said Walter.
‘But I was thinking of his personality. How shall I say? The spiritual quality of the man.’
Walter nodded and said, ‘Yes,’ rather vaguely. The spiritual quality of Burlap was just the thing he wasn’t very enthusiastic about.
‘In an age like ours,’ Mrs. Betterton continued, ‘he’s an oasis in the desert of stupid frivolity and cynicism.’
‘Some of his ideas are first rate,’ Walter cautiously agreed.
He wondered how soon he could decently make his escape.
‘There’s Walter,’ said Lady Edward.
‘Walter who?’ asked Bidlake. Borne by the social currents, they had drifted together again.
‘Your Walter.’
‘Oh, mine.’ He was not much interested, but he followed the direction of her glance. ‘What a weed!’ he said. He disliked his children for growing up; growing, they pushed him backwards, year