l and false, I was told that it was typical
and spiritual, and that the conception of the artist must not be
limited by his experience, but that he arrived at correct intuitions by
the force of penetrating insight and by the swift inference of genius.

What seemed to me to be absent from it all was the spirit of liberty,
of frank enjoyment, of eager apprehension. I do not say that my friends
seemed to me to admire all the wrong things; they had abundant
appreciation for certain masters, both in art and music; but I felt
that they swallowed masters whole, without any discrimination, and that
the entire thing was a matter of tradition and rule and precept and
authority, not of irresponsible and ardent enjoyment. It was all
systematised and regulated; there was no question of personal
preferences. The aim of the perceptive man was to find out what was the
correct standard of good taste, and then to express his agreement with
it in elaborate phrases. Most of the party were of the same type. Not
that they were oddly-dressed, haggard, affected women or long-haired,
pretentious, grotesque men. I have been at such coteries, too, where
they praised each other's work with odd, passionate cries and
wriggling, fantastic gestures. That is terrible too, because that is
culture which has turned rancid. But at my friend's house it was not
rancid at all, it was simply unassimilated. My friend himself handed
out culture in neat pieces, carefully done up, as a vendor of toffee
might hand it out to purchasers; and the people who came there,
well-dressed, amiable, quiet, courteous people, would have been
delightful if they had not been so cultivated. Culture lay about in
lumps; it had never soaked in. The result was that I felt I could never
get to know any of these agreeable people at all. One tried to talk,
and one was met with a proffer of a lump of culture. Then, as I say, it
was all in pieces; it was not part of a plan or an attitude of mind; it
had all been laboriously collected, and it was just as it had been
discovered; it did not seem to have undergone any mental process.

And then, further, I felt that it was all too comfortable--it was all
built on a foundation of comfort; that lay really at the bottom of it
all. The house was too full of beautiful things; the dinner was too
long and too good; the wine was too choice. I am not going to pretend
that I do not like comfort; but I do not like luxury, and this was
luxurious. I do not