Part 14

“By all means, sir,” replied his dragoman; “after work--play. It will afford you an opportunity to witness modern pleasures in our great industrial centres. But what a blessing is electric power!” he added. “Consider these lilies of the town, they toil not, neither do they spin----”

“Yet Solomon in all his glory,” chipped in the Angel eagerly, “had not their appearance, you bet.”

“Indeed they are an insouciant crowd,” mused his dragoman; “How tinkling is their laughter! The habit dates from the days of the Great Skirmish, when nothing but laughter would meet the case.”

“Tell me,” said the Angel, “are the English satisfied at last with their industrial conditions, and generally with their mode of life in these expanded towns?”

“Satisfied? Oh dear, no, sir! But you know what it is: They are obliged to wait for each fresh development before they can see what they have to counteract; and, since that great creative force, ‘the good of trade,’ is always a little stronger than the forces of criticism and reform, each development carries them a little further on the road to----”

“Hell! How hungry I am again!” exclaimed the Angel. “Let us sup!”

IV

“Laughter,” said the Angel Æthereal, applying his wineglass to his nose, “has ever distinguished mankind from all other animals with the exception of the dog. And the power of laughing at nothing distinguishes man even from that quadruped.”

“I would go further, sir,” returned his dragoman, “and say that the power of laughing at that which should make him sick distinguishes the Englishman from all other varieties of man except the negro. Kindly observe!” He rose, and taking the Angel by the waist, fox-trotted him among the little tables.

“See!” he said, indicating the other supper-takers with a circular movement of his beard, “they are consumed with laughter. The habit of fox-trotting in the intervals of eating has been known ever since it was introduced by Americans a generation ago, at the beginning of the Great Skirmish, when that important people had as yet nothing else to do; but it still causes laughter in this country. A distressing custom,” he wheezed, as they resumed their seats, “for not only does it disturb the oyster, but it compels one to think lightly of the human species. Not that one requires much compulsion,” he added, “now that music-hall, cinema, and restaurant are conjoined. What a happy idea it was of Berlin’s, and how excellent for business! Kindly glance for a moment--but not more--at the left-hand stage.”

The Angel turned his eyes towards a cinematograph film which was being displayed. He contemplated it for the moment without speaking.

“I do not comprehend,” he said at last, “why the person with the arrested moustaches is hitting so many people with that sack of flour.”

“To cause amusement, sir,” replied his dragoman. “Look at the laughing faces around you.”

“But it is not funny,” said the Angel.

“No, indeed,” returned his dragoman. “Be so good as to carry your eyes now to the stage on the right, but not for long. What do you see?”

“I see a very red-nosed man beating a very white-nosed man about the body.”

“It is a real scream, is it not?”

“No,” said the Angel drily. “Does nothing else ever happen on these stages?”

“Nothing. Stay! _Revues_ happen!”

“What are _revues_?” asked the Angel.

“Criticisms of life, sir, as it would be seen by persons inebriated on various intoxicants.”

“They should be joyous.”

“They are accounted so,” his dragoman replied; “but for my part, I prefer to criticise life for myself, especially when I am drunk.”

“Are there no plays, no operas?” asked the Angel from behind his glass.

“Not in the old and proper sense of these words. They disappeared towards the end of the Great Skirmish.”

“What food for the mind is there, then?” asked the Angel, adding an oyster to his collection.

“None in public, sir, for it is well recognised, and has been ever since those days, that laughter alone promotes business and removes the thought of death. You cannot recall, as I can, sir, the continual stream which used to issue from theatres, music-halls, and picture-palaces in the days of the Great Skirmish, nor the joviality of the Strand and the more expensive restaurants. I have often thought,” he added with a touch of philosophy, “what a height of civilisation we must have reached to go jesting, as we did, to the Great Unknown.”

“Is that really what the English did at the time of the Great Skirmish?” asked the Angel.

“It is,” replied his dragoman solemnly.

“Then they are a very fine people, and I can put up with much about them which seems to me distressing.”

“Ah! sir, though, being an Englishman, I am sometimes inclined to disparage the English, I am yet convinced that you could not fly a week’s journey and come across another race with such a peculiar nobility, or such an unconquerable soul, if you will forgive my using a word whose meaning is much disputed. May I tempt you with a clam?” he added more lightly. “We now have them from America--in fair preservation, and very nasty they are, in my opinion.”

The Angel took a clam.

“My Lord!” he said, after a moment of deglutition.

“Quite so!” replied his dragoman. “But kindly glance at the right-hand stage again. There is a _revue_ on now. What do you see?”

The Angel made two holes with his forefingers and thumbs and, putting them to his eyes, bent a little forward.

“Tut, tut!” he said; “I see some attractive young females with very few clothes on, walking up and down in front of what seem to me, indeed, to be two grown-up men in collars and jackets as of little boys. What precise criticism of life is this conveying?”

His dragoman answered in reproachful accents:

“Do you not feel, sir, from your own sensations, how marvellously this informs one of the secret passions of mankind? Is there not in it a striking revelation of the natural tendencies of the male population? Remark how the whole audience, including your august self, is leaning forward and looking through their thumb-holes?”

The Angel sat back hurriedly.

“True,” he said, “I was carried away. But that is not the criticism of life which art demands. If it had been, the audience, myself included, would have been sitting back with their lips curled dry, instead of watering.”

“For all that,” replied his dragoman, “it is the best we can give you; anything which induces the detached mood of which you spoke, has been banned from the stage since the days of the Great Skirmish; it is so very bad for business.”

“Pity!” said the Angel, imperceptibly edging forward; “the mission of art is to elevate.”

“It is plain, sir,” said his dragoman, “that you have lost touch with the world as it is. The mission of art--now truly democratic--is to level--in principle up, in practice down. Do not forget, sir, that the English have ever regarded æstheticism as unmanly, and grace as immoral; when to that basic principle you add the principle of serving the taste of the majority, you have perfect conditions for a sure and gradual decrescendo.”

“Does taste, then, no longer exist?” asked the Angel.

“It is not wholly, as yet, extinct, but lingers in the communal kitchens and canteens, as introduced by the Young Men’s Christian Association in the days of the Great Skirmish. While there is appetite there is hope, nor is it wholly discouraging that taste should now centre in the stomach; for is not that the real centre of man’s activity? Who dare affirm that from so universal a foundation the fair structure of æstheticism shall not be rebuilt? The eye, accustomed to the look of dainty dishes and pleasant cookery, may once more demand the architecture of Wren, the sculpture of Rodin, the paintings of--dear me--whom? Why, sir, even before the days of the Great Skirmish, when you were last on earth, we had already begun to put the future of æstheticism on a more real basis, and were converting the concert-halls of London into hotels. Few at the time saw the far-reaching significance of that movement, or realised that æstheticism was to be levelled down to the stomach, in order that it might be levelled up again to the head, on true democratic principles.”

“But what,” said the Angel, with one of his preternatural flashes of acumen, “what if, on the other hand, taste should continue to sink and lose even its present hold on the stomach? If all else has gone, why should not the beauty of the kitchen go?”

“That indeed,” sighed his dragoman, placing his hand on his heart, “is a thought which often gives me a sinking sensation. Two liqueur brandies,” he murmured to the waiter. “But the stout heart refuses to despair. Besides, advertisements show decided traces of æsthetic advance. All the great painters, poets, and fiction writers are working on them; the movement had its origin in the propaganda demanded by the Great Skirmish. You will not recollect the war poetry of that period, the patriotic films, the death cartoons, and other remarkable achievements. We have just as great talents now, though their object has not perhaps the religious singleness of those stirring times. Not a food, corset, or collar which has not its artist working for it! Toothbrushes, nut-crackers, babies’ baths--the whole caboodle of manufacture--are now set to music. Such themes are considered subliminal if not sublime. No, sir, I will not despair; it is only at moments when I have dined poorly that the horizon seems dark. Listen--they have turned on the ‘Kalophone,’ for you must know that all music now is beautifully made by machine--so much easier for every one.”

The Angel raised his head, and into his eyes came the glow associated with celestial strains.

“The tune,” he said, “is familiar to me.”

“Yes, sir,” answered his dragoman, “for it is _The Messiah_ in ragtime. No time is wasted, you notice; all, even pleasure, is intensively cultivated, on the lines of least resistance, thanks to the feverishness engendered in us by the Great Skirmish, when no one knew if he would have another chance, and to the subsequent need for fostering industry. But whether we really enjoy ourselves is perhaps a question to answer which you must examine the English character.”

“That I refuse to do,” said the Angel.

“And you are wise, sir, for it is a puzzler, and many have cracked their heads over it. But have we not been here long enough? We can pursue our researches into the higher realms of art to-morrow.”

A beam from the Angel’s lustrous eyes fell on a lady at the next table. “Yes, perhaps we had better go,” he sighed.

V

“And so it is through the fields of true art that we shall walk this morning?” said the Angel Æthereal.

“Such as they are in this year of Peace 1947,” responded his dragoman, arresting him before a statue; “for the development of this hobby has been peculiar since you were here in 1910, when the childlike and contortionist movement was just beginning to take hold of the British.”

“Whom does this represent?” asked the Angel.

“A celebrated publicist, recently deceased at a great age. You see him unfolded by this work of multiform genius, in every aspect known to art, religion, nature, and the population. From his knees downwards he is clearly devoted to nature, and is portrayed as about to enter his bath. From his waist to his knees he is devoted to religion--mark the complete disappearance of the human aspect. From his neck to his waist he is devoted to public affairs; observe the tweed coat, the watch-chain, and other signs of practical sobriety. But the head is, after all, the crown of the human being, and is devoted to art. This is why you cannot make out that it is a head. Note its pyramidal severity, its cunning little ears, its box-built, water-tightal structure. The hair you note to be in flames. Here we have the touch of beauty--the burning shrub. In the whole you will observe that aversion from natural form and the single point of view, characteristic of all twentieth-century æsthetics. The whole thing is a very great masterpiece of childlike contortionism. To do things as irresponsibly as children and contortionists--what a happy discovery of the line of least resistance in art that was! Mark, by the way, this exquisite touch about the left hand.”

“It appears to be deformed,” said the Angel, going a step nearer.

“Look closer still,” returned his dragoman, “and you will see that it is holding a novel of the great Russian, upside down. Ever since that simple master who so happily blended the childlike with the contortionist became known in this country they have been trying to go him one better, in letters, in painting, in sculpture, and in music, refusing to admit that he was the last cry; and until they have beaten him this movement simply cannot cease; it may therefore go on for ever, for he was the limit. That hand symbolises the whole movement.”

“How?” said the Angel.

“Why, sir, somersault is its mainspring. Did you never observe the great Russian’s method? Prepare your characters to do one thing, and make them very swiftly do the opposite. Thus did that terrific novelist demonstrate his overmastering range of vision and knowledge of the depths of human nature. Since his characters never varied this routine in the course of some eight thousand pages, people have lightly said that he repeated himself. But what of that? Consider what perfect dissociation he thereby attained between character and action; what nebulosity of fact; what a truly childlike and mystic mix-up of all human values hitherto known! And here, sir, at the risk of tickling you, I must whisper.” The dragoman made a trumpet of his hand: “Fiction can only be written by those who have exceptionally little knowledge of ordinary human nature, and great fiction only by such as have none at all.”

“How is that?” said the Angel, somewhat disconcerted.

“Surprise, sir, is the very kernel of all effects in art, and in real life people _will_ act as their characters and temperaments determine that they shall. This dreadful and unmalleable trait would have upset all the great mystic masters from generation to generation if they had only noticed it. But did they? Fortunately not. These greater men naturally put into their books the greater confusion and flux in which their extraordinary selves exist! The nature they portray is not human, but super- or subter-human, which you will. Who would have it otherwise?”

“Not I,” said the Angel. “For I confess to a liking for what is called the ‘tuppence coloured.’ But Russians are not as other men, are they?”

“They are not,” said his dragoman, “but the trouble is, sir, that since the British discovered him, every character in our greater fiction has a Russian soul, though living in Cornwall or the Midlands, in a British body under a Scottish or English name.”

“Very piquant,” said the Angel, turning from the masterpiece before him. “Are there no undraped statues to be seen?”

“In no recognisable form. For, not being educated to the detached contemplation which still prevailed to a limited extent even as late as the days of the Great Skirmish, the populace can no longer be trusted with such works of art; they are liable to rush at them, for embrace, or demolition, as their temperaments may dictate.”

“The Greeks are dead, then,” said the Angel.

“As door-nails, sir. They regarded life as a thing to be enjoyed--a vice you will not have noticed in the British. The Greeks were an outdoor people, who lived in the sun and the fresh air, and had none of the niceness bred by the life of our towns. We have long been renowned for our delicacy about the body; nor has the tendency been decreased by constituting Watch Committees of young persons in every borough. These are now the arbiters of art, and nothing unsuitable to the child of seven passes their censorship.”

“How careful!” said the Angel.

“The result has been wonderful,” remarked his dragoman. “Wonderful!” he repeated, dreamily. “I suppose there is more smouldering sexual desire and disease in this country than in any other.”

“Was that the intention?” asked the Angel.

“Oh! no, sir! That is but the natural effect of so remarkably pure a surface. All is within instead of without. Nature has now wholly disappeared. The process was sped-up by the Great Skirmish. For, since then, we have had little leisure and income to spare on the gratification of anything but laughter; this and the ‘unco guid’ have made our art-surface glare in the eyes of the nations, thin and spotless as if made of tin.”

The Angel raised his eyebrows. “I had hoped for better things,” he said.

“You must not suppose, sir,” pursued his dragoman, “that there is not plenty of the undraped, so long as it is vulgar, as you saw just now upon the stage, for that is good business; the line is only drawn at the danger-point of art, which is always very bad business in this country. Yet even in real life the undraped has to be grotesque to be admitted; the one fatal quality is natural beauty. The laugh, sir, the laugh--even the most hideous and vulgar laugh--is such a disinfectant. I should, however, say in justice to our literary men, that they have not altogether succumbed to the demand for cachinnations. A school, which first drew breath before the Great Skirmish began, has perfected itself, till now we have whole tomes where hardly a sentence would be intelligible to any save the initiate; this enables them to defy the Watch Committees, with other Philistines. We have writers who mysteriously preach the realisation of self by never considering anybody else; of purity through experience of exotic vice; of courage through habitual cowardice; and of kindness through Prussian behaviour. They are generally young. We have others whose fiction consists of autobiography interspersed with philosophic and political fluencies. These may be of any age from eighty odd to the bitter thirties. We have also the copious and chatty novelist; and transcribers of the life of the Laborious, whom the Laborious never read. Above all, we have the great Patriotic school, who put the national motto first, and write purely what is good for trade. In fact, we have every sort, as in the old days.”

“It would appear,” said the Angel, “that the arts have stood somewhat still.”

“Except for a more external purity, and a higher internal corruption,” replied his dragoman.

“Are artists still noted for their jealousies?” asked the Angel.

“They are, sir; for that is inherent in the artistic temperament, which is extremely touchy about fame.”

“And do they still get angry when those gentlemen--the----”

“Critics,” his dragoman suggested. “They get angry, sir; but critics are usually anonymous, and from excellent reasons; for not only are the passions of an angry artist very high, but the knowledge of an angry critic is not infrequently very low, especially of art. It is kinder to save life, where possible.”

“For my part,” said the Angel, “I have little regard for human life, and consider that many persons would be better buried.”

“That may be,” his dragoman retorted with some irritation; “‘_errare est humanum_.’ But I, for one, would rather be a dead human being any day than a live angel, for I think they are more charitable.”

“Well,” said the Angel genially, “you have the prejudice of your kind. Have you an artist about the place, to show me? I do not recollect any at Madame Tussaud’s.”

“They have taken to declining that honour. We could see one in real life if we went to Cornwall.”

“Why Cornwall?”

“I cannot tell you, sir. There is something in the air which affects their passions.”

“I am hungry, and would rather go to the Savoy,” said the Angel, walking on.

“You are in luck,” whispered his dragoman, when they had seated themselves at a table covered with prawns; “for at the next on your left is our most famous exponent of the mosaic school of novelism.”

“Then here goes!” replied the Angel. And, turning to his neighbour, he asked pleasantly: “How do you do, sir? What is your income?”

The gentleman addressed looked up from his prawn, and replied wearily: “Ask my agent. He may conceivably possess the knowledge you require.”

“Answer me this, at all events,” said the Angel, with more dignity, if possible: “How do you write your books? For it must be wonderful to summon around you every day the creatures of your imagination. Do you wait for afflatus?”

“No,” said the author; “er--no! I--er----” he added weightily, “sit down every morning.”

The Angel rolled his eyes and, turning to his dragoman, said in a well-bred whisper: “He sits down every morning! My Lord, how good for trade!”

VI

“A glass of sherry, dry, and ham sandwich, stale, can be obtained here, sir,” said the dragoman; “and for dessert, the scent of parchment and bananas. We will then attend Court 45, where I shall show you how fundamentally our legal procedure has changed in the generation that has elapsed since the days of the Great Skirmish.”

“Can it really be that the Law has changed? I had thought it immutable,” said the Angel, causing his teeth to meet with difficulty: “What will be the nature of the suit to which we shall listen?”

“I have thought it best, sir, to select a divorce case, lest you should sleep, overcome by the ozone and eloquence in these places.”

“Ah!” said the Angel: “I am ready.”

The Court was crowded, and they took their seats with difficulty, and a lady sitting on the Angel’s left wing.

“The public _will_ frequent this class of case,” whispered his dragoman. “How different when you were here in 1910!”

The Angel collected himself: “Tell me,” he murmured, “which of the grey-haired ones is the judge?”

“He in the bag-wig, sir,” returned his dragoman; “and that little lot is the jury,” he added, indicating twelve gentlemen seated in two rows.

“What is their private life?” asked the Angel.

“No better than it should be, perhaps,” responded his dragoman facetiously; “but no one can tell that from their words and manner, as you will presently see. These are special ones,” he added, “and pay income tax, so that their judgment in matters of morality is of considerable value.”

“They have wise faces,” said the Angel. “Which is the prosecutor?”

“No, no!” his dragoman answered, vividly: “This is a civil case. That is the plaintiff with a little mourning about her eyes and a touch of red about her lips, in the black hat with the aigrette, the pearls, and the fashionably sober clothes.”

“I see her,” said the Angel: “an attractive woman. Will she win?”

“We do not call it winning, sir; for this, as you must know, is a sad matter, and implies the breaking-up of a home. She will most unwillingly receive a decree, at least, I think so,” he added; “though whether it will stand the scrutiny of the King’s Proctor we may wonder a little, from her appearance.”

“King’s Proctor?” said the Angel. “What is that?”

“A celestial Die-hard, sir, paid to join together again those whom man have put asunder.”

“I do not follow,” said the Angel fretfully.