Satisfaction with the Country 161 



canvas, music, or common human words. 

 They conceive a noble ideal, and have 

 begun to paint or write it, when bang, 

 bang at the door ! It is the wolf in the 

 form of the landlord. Or it is worse : 

 some frivolling time-waster with his batch 

 of social gossip. How can a symphony, a 

 poem, or a picture find its way into the 

 world with scare-wits and clutch-purses to 

 bar the exit ? 



What we need in this day is a secular 

 monastery : a country house of art. If we 

 are to believe the sociologists and thera- 

 pists, the world is crowded and hustled, 

 the strain of business competition and 

 social rivalry is increasing, more and more 

 men have fallen into the way of working 

 for a wage, merely, so that their work lacks 

 care and thoroughness. But what is one 

 to do? The poverty of the artistic class 

 is traditional, inevitable. One cannot serve 

 two masters, and a combination of busi- 

 ness and art is rare indeed. By just so 

 much as a painter is a business man is he 

 the less of a painter. The world is full of 

 successful wrecks : makers of pot-boilers 

 ii 



