You try to run with the hare and hunt
with the hounds. You talk about truth and paint things not true."
"From your standpoint possibly. Yours is the truth of naturalism; mine is
the truth of Faith."
"If you are going to entrench yourself behind Faith, I have done, of
course. Only, don't go about saying, as you did just now, that Art is the
noblest labor man can employ time upon. That's bosh, pure and simple. There
are some occupations not so noble, that is all. Art is a heathen and always
will be, and you missionary-men, with a paint-brush in one hand and a Bible
in the other, are even worse than certain objectionable literary
celebrities, whose novels reek of the 'new journalism' and the Sermon on
the Mount--the ridiculous and sublime in tasteless combination. You
missionaries, I say, sap the primitive strength of Art; you demoralize her.
To dare to make Art pander to a passing creed is vile--worse than the
spectacle of the Salvation Army trying to convert Buddhists. That I saw in
India, and laughed. But we won't quarrel. You paint Faith's jewelry; I'll
amuse myself with Truth's drabs and duns. The point of view is all. I
depict pretty Joan Tregenza looking over the sea to catch a glimpse of her
sweetheart's outward-bound ship. I paint her just as I saw her. There was
no occasion to leave out or put in. I reveled in a mere brutal transcript
of Nature. You would have set her down by one of the old Cornish crosses
praying to Christ to guard her man.
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