Tea-Table Talk — Story, Setting & Ideas

nd, that spoilt the whole effect. The artist left it out. If necessary, he could put in a cow or a pretty girl to help the thing. The actual cow, if it happened to be there at all, would probably be standing the wrong way round; the girl, in all likelihood, would be fat and plain, or be wearing the wrong hat. The artist knew precisely the sort of girl that ought to be there, and saw to it that she was there, with just the right sort of hat. She said she had found it so all through life—the poster was always an improvement on the play.”

[Picture: The artist knew precisely the sort of girl that ought to be there]

“It is rapidly coming to that,” answered the Minor Poet. “Nature, as a well known painter once put it, is not ‘creeping up’ fast enough to keep pace with our ideals. In advanced Germany they improve the waterfalls and ornament the rocks. In Paris they paint the babies’ faces.”

“You can hardly lay the blame for that upon civilisation,” pleaded the Girton Girl. “The ancient Briton had a pretty taste in woads.”

“Man’s first feeble steps upon the upward path of Art,” assented the Minor Poet, “culminating in the rouge-pot and the hair-dye.”

“Come!” laughed the Old Maid, “you are narrow-minded. Civilisation has given us music. Surely you will admit that has been of help to us?”

“My dear lady,” replied the Minor Poet, “you speak of the one accomplishment with which Civilisation has had little or nothing to do, the one art that Nature has bestowed upon man in common with the birds and insects, the one intellectual enjoyment we share with the entire animal creation, excepting only the canines; and even the howling of the dog—one cannot be sure—may be an honest, however unsatisfactory, attempt towards a music of his own. I had a fox terrier once who invariably howled in tune. Jubal hampered, not helped us. He it was who stifled music with the curse of professionalism; so that now, like shivering shop-boys paying gate-money to watch games they cannot play, we sit mute in our stalls listening to the paid performer. But for the musician, music might have been universal. The human voice is still the finest instrument that we possess. We have allowed it to rust, the better to hear clever manipulators blow through tubes and twang wires. The musical world might have been a literal expression. Civilisation has contracted it to designate a coterie.”

“By the way,” said the Woman of the World, “talking of music, have you heard that last symphony of Grieg’s? It came in the last parcel. I have been practising it.”

“Oh! do let us hear it,” urged the Old Maid. “I love Grieg.”

The Woman of the World rose and opened the piano.

“Myself, I have always been of opinion—” I remarked.

“Please don’t chatter,” said the Minor Poet.

“I NEVER liked her,” said the Old Maid; “I always knew she was heartless.”

“To my thinking,” said the Minor Poet, “she has shown herself a true woman.”

“Really,” said the Woman of the World, laughing, “I shall have to nickname you Dr. Johnson Redivivus. I believe, were the subject under discussion, you would admire the coiffure of the Furies. It would occur to you that it must have been naturally curly.”

“It is the Irish blood flowing in his veins,” I told them. “He must always be ‘agin the Government.’”

“We ought to be grateful to him,” remarked the Philosopher. “What can be more uninteresting than an agreeable conversation I mean, a conversation—where everybody is in agreement? Disagreement, on the other hand, is stimulating.”

“Maybe that is the reason,” I suggested, “why modern society is so tiresome an affair. By tabooing all difference of opinion we have eliminated all zest from our intercourse. Religion, sex, politics—any subject on which man really thinks, is scrupulously excluded from all polite gatherings. Conversation has become a chorus; or, as a writer wittily expressed it, the pursuit of the obvious to no conclusion. When not occupied with mumbling, ‘I quite agree with you’—‘As you say’—‘That is precisely my opinion’—we sit about and ask each other riddles: ‘What did the Pro-Boer?’ ‘Why did Julius Cæsar?’”

“Fashion has succeeded where Force for centuries has failed,” added the Philosopher. “One notices the tendency even in public affairs. It is bad form nowadays to belong to the Opposition. The chief aim of the Church is to bring itself into line with worldly opinion. The Nonconformist Conscience grows every day a still smaller voice.”