On his writing-desk appeared a few sheets of manuscript that increased only very slowly.  He was trying to express his Cambridge view of aristocracy in terms of Finacue Street, West.

The artistic and intellectual movements of London had made their various demands upon his time and energies.  Art came to him with a noble assumption of his interest and an intention that presently became unpleasantly obvious to sell him pictures that he did not want to buy and explain away pictures that he did.  He bought one or two modern achievements, and began to doubt if art and aristocracy had any necessary connection.  At first he had accepted the assumption that they had.  After all, he reflected, one lives rather for life and things than for pictures of life and things or pictures arising out of life and things.  This Art had an air of saying something, but when one came to grips with it what had it to say?  Unless it was Yah!  The drama, and more particularly the intellectual drama, challenged his attention.  In the hands of Shaw, Barker, Masefield, Galsworthy, and Hankin, it, too, had an air of saying something, but he found it extremely difficult to join on to his own demands upon life anything whatever that the intellectual drama had the air of having said.  He would sit forward in the front row of the dress-circle with his cheek on his hand and his brow slightly knit.  His intentness amused observant people.  The drama that did not profess to be intellectual he went to with Lady Marayne, and usually on first nights.  Lady Marayne loved a big first night at St. James’s Theatre or His Majesty’s.  Afterwards, perhaps, Sir Godfrey would join them at a supper party, and all sorts of clever and amusing people would be there saying keen intimate things about each other.  He met Yeats, who told amusing stories about George Moore, and afterwards he met George Moore, who told amusing stories about Yeats, and it was all, he felt, great fun for the people who were in it.  But he was not in it, and he had no very keen desire to be in it.  It wasn’t his stuff.  He had, though they were nowadays rather at the back of his mind, quite other intentions.  In the meanwhile all these things took up his time and distracted his attention.

There was, as yet, no practicable aviation to beguile a young man of spirit, but there were times when Benham found himself wondering whether there might not be something rather creditable in the possession and control of a motor-car of exceptional power.  Only one might smash people up.  Should an aristocrat be deterred by the fear of smashing people up?  If it is a selfish fear of smashing people up, if it is nerves rather than pity?  At any rate it did not come to the car.

6

Among other things that delayed Benham very greatly in the development of his aristocratic experiments was the advice that was coming to him from every quarter.  It came in extraordinary variety and volume, but always it had one unvarying feature.  It ignored and tacitly contradicted his private intentions.