Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 1 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/258

 "I think that when you expect a man to produce beautiful and wonderful works of art you ought to allow him a certain freedom of action, you ought to give him a long rope, you ought to let him follow his fancy and look for his material wherever he thinks he may find it. A mother can't nurse her child unless she follows a certain diet; an artist can't bring his visions to maturity unless he has a certain experience. You demand of us to be imaginative, and you deny us the things that feed the imagination. In labour we must be as passionate as the inspired sibyl; in life we must be as regular as the postman and as satisfactory as the cook. It won't do, you know, my dear chap. When you 've an artist to deal with you must take him as he is, good and bad together. I don't say they 're pleasant creatures to know or easy creatures to live with; I don't say they satisfy themselves any better than other people. I only say that if you want them to produce you must let them conceive. If you want a bird to sing you must n't cover up its cage. Shoot them, the poor devils, drown them, exterminate them, if you will, in the interest of public morality: it may be morality would gain—I dare say it would. But if you suffer them to live, let them live on their own terms and according to their own inexorable needs!"

"I 've no wish whatever either to shoot you or to drown you," Rowland perhaps a little infelicitously laughed. "Why defend yourself with such very big guns against a warning offered you altogether in the interest of your freest development? Do you really mean that you 've an inexorable need of an intimate relation with Miss Light?—a relation as to the felicity 224