and dangerous.  How many men know England—­I mean the actual earth and flesh that make England—­as Mr. Hudson knows it?  This is his twelfth book, and four or five of the dozen are already classics.  Probably no literary dining club or association of authors or journalists male or female will ever give a banquet in Mr. Hudson’s honour.  It would not occur to the busy organizers of these affairs to do so.  And yet—­But, after all, it is well that he should be spared such an ordeal.

NEO-IMPRESSIONISM AND LITERATURE

[8 Dec. ’10]

The exhibition of the so-called “Neo-Impressionists,” over which the culture of London is now laughing, has an interest which is perhaps not confined to the art of painting.  For me, personally, it has a slight, vague repercussion upon literature.  The attitude of the culture of London towards it is of course merely humiliating to any Englishman who has made an effort to cure himself of insularity.  It is one more proof that the negligent disdain of Continental artists for English artistic opinion is fairly well founded.  The mild tragedy of the thing is that London is infinitely too self-complacent even to suspect that it is London and not the exhibition which is making itself ridiculous.  The laughter of London in this connexion is just as silly, just as provincial, just as obtuse, as would be the laughter of a small provincial town were Strauss’s “Salome,” or Debussy’s “Pelleas et Melisande” offered for its judgment.  One can imagine the shocked, contemptuous resentment of a London musical amateur (one of those that arrived at Covent Garden box-office at 6 a.m. the other day to secure a seat for “Salome”) at the guffaw of a provincial town confronted by the spectacle and the noise of the famous “Salome” osculation.  But the amusement of that same amateur confronted by an uncompromising “Neo-Impressionist” picture amounts to exactly the same guffaw.  The guffaw is legal.  You may guffaw before Rembrandt (people do!), but in so doing you only add to the sum of human stupidity.  London may be unaware that the value of the best work of this new school is permanently and definitely settled—­outside London.  So much the worse for London.  For the movement has not only got past the guffaw stage; it has got past the arguing stage.  Its authenticity is admitted by all those who have kept themselves fully awake.  And in twenty years London will be signing an apology for its guffaw.  It will be writing itself down an ass.  The writing will consist of large cheques payable for Neo-Impressionist pictures to Messrs. Christie, Manson, and Woods.  London is already familiar with this experience, and doesn’t mind.

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