CHAPTER V

OF THE ARTIST IN MAN AND HIS MATERIALS

There is only one way to give life to the dead or the moribund, the way of the Hebrew prophet,—­to give it one’s own.  Theophilus Londonderry instinctively knew this, and he began at once to breathe mightily upon New Zion.

The goldsmith blows merrily all day through his little blowpipe, but it is gold he is working on.  The poet breathes upon the dictionary, and lo! it flushes and breaks into flower.  But then he is breathing on words.  The material of such artists is a joy in itself.  They are workers in the precious metals.  Theophilus Londonderry had very different material to mould,—­an old chapel and some very dull humanity.  Humanity is not a precious metal, but if you know how to use it, it is excellent clay,—­a clay not without streaks of gold.

What was Theophilus Londonderry’s purpose with his material, his will towards the uncreated world over which his young vitalising spirit was moving?  To save it?  Yes, incidentally; but primarily to express himself by means of it, to set it vibrating to the rhythm of his nature, to set it dancing to a tune of his piping.  Already he was being stamped in gold on Jenny’s face.  The coarser face of the world was to wear his smile too.  For the pebble had only been thrown in at New Zion.  Who knows to what coasts of fame the imperious ripples of his personality would circle on before they touched the shores of death?

We may be polite as we please to humanity in the mass, and humanity in occasional rarely encountered individuals is—­well, divine; and to such we gladly and humbly and rapturously pay divine honours.  But in any given thousand human beings, poor or rich, what would be your calculation for the average of such divine,—­how many faces would you fall down and worship, how many hands would you care to take, how many hearts would you dare to trust?

Alas, the rather good eyes must go so often with the disastrous chin, the mouth succeed where the nose fails, the expansive impulse be checked by the narrow habit, the little gleam of gold be lost in the clay.

Preponderant charm does not crowd into chapels or anywhere else to be minted, it is busy on some vantage height of its own, impressing its own image; and it is with minds maimed by the cruel machinery of life, natures stunted and starved by adverse and innutritive condition, that the artist in man must be satisfied.  With what pathetic little flashes of faculty, what fleeting and illusory glimpses of insight, what waifs and strays of attractiveness, must he work and be happy, and with what a thankfulness that the tenth rate is not twentieth or thirtieth!