Page:Men of Letters, Scott, 1916.djvu/38

12 12 THE INNOCENCE OF BERNARD SHAW nature, good form ; the quiet is that of wisdom, not woodenness — the composure is not of torpor, but of powers tested and serene because sure ; but the debutant doesn't find this out till much later on. What he does do is to compare this bland calm with his own keenness, and to feel that his pre- vision of a Destiny was sound. He is different from these people, with their small talk and trifling; ex- citedly he sets his teeth and squares his jaw. Re- assured at the very moment he expected to be abashed, he buckles to with his book, picture, play. London has set him to work, very neatly, by pretending to be incapable of commands. Nine times out of ten, therefore, the trick works to admiration. But Shaw happened to come tenth. Remember the hour ; it was the eve of the eighties, when the arts joined the isms. And Carlyle begat Ruskin, and Ruskin begat Morris, and Morris begat Cunninghame-Graham, and the Carpenters and the Cranes and the Salts : instead of velvet jackets and a slap-dash joviality, young artists took to sceva indignatio and sandals. It was really very interest- ing. Just why poetry and proteids should suddenly seem natural affinities ; just what there was in the atmosphere to make Jaeger and Ibsen and Esoteric Buddhism appear inevitable associates ; and why to eat the leek, loudly declaring it to be the only pure and blameless form of food, should suddenly become the accepted sign of independence — these pro- found problems have never yet been adequately ex- plained, for we are still doubtless too much involved in the traditions then set on foot to get the full effect of this fearsome abnormality. But though the origins were intricate, there was one plain and large result — the arts went over with a rush to their tradi- tional enemy. They joined the majority. They made friends with the mob. Sculptors, painters, and poets,