Be that as it may, the serious artists of the nineteenth century never dreamed of supposing that the pleasures of the rich were the proper stuff of art; so it was only natural that the twentieth should go to the hotel lounges for inspiration.  And, of course, it was delightful for those who sat drinking their cocktails and listening to nigger-bands to be told that, besides being the jolliest people on earth, they were the most sensitive and critically gifted.  They, along with the children and savages whom in so many ways they resembled, were the possessors of natural, uncorrupted taste.  They first had appreciated ragtime and surrendered themselves to the compelling qualities of Jazz.  Their instinct might be trusted:  so, no more classical concerts and music-lessons; no more getting Lycidas by heart; no more Baedeker; no more cricking one’s neck in the Sistine Chapel:  unless the coloured gentleman who leads the band at the Savoy has a natural leaning towards these things you may depend upon it they are noble, pompous, and fraudulent.  And it was delightful, too, for people without a vestige of talent—­and even then these were in the majority—­people who could just strum a tune or string a few lines of doggerel, to be told that all that distinguishes what used to be called “serious art” from their productions was of no consequence whatever, and that, on the contrary, it was these, if any, that ought to be taken seriously.  The output of verse, which was manifestly much too easy to write and difficult to read, went up suddenly by leaps and bounds.  What is more, some of it got printed:  publishers, and even editors, bowed the knee.  Naturally, the movement was a success at the Ritz and in Grub Street, Mayfair.  On the other hand, because to people who reflected for an instant it seemed highly improbable that fox-trotters and shimmy-shakers were sensitive or interesting people, that Christy Minstrels were great musicians, or that pub-crawlers and demi-mondaines were poets, there sprang simultaneously into existence a respectable, intelligent, and ill-tempered opposition which did, and continues to do, gross injustice to the genuine artists who have drawn inspiration, or sustenance at any rate, from Jazz.

During the last ten years Jazz had dominated music and coloured literature:  on painting, as I have said, its effect has been negligible.  What, for want of a better name, I must call the Cezanne movement was too profound a stream to be modified by so shallow a current.  All the great contemporary painters are extremely serious; they make no faces at their predecessors, or at anyone else.  They are not gavroche.  Surprise is the last emotion they wish to arouse.  And, assuredly, they have neither gone to the hotel-loungers for inspiration nor shown the slightest desire to amuse them.  This is as true of Picasso as of Derain:  only, Picasso’s prodigious inventiveness may sometimes give the impression of a will to surprise, while his