The Windlestraw

A certain writer, returning one afternoon from rehearsal of his play, sat down in the hall of the hotel where he was staying. “No,” he reflected, “this play of mine will not please the Public; it is gloomy, almost terrible. This very day I read these words in my morning paper: ‘No artist can afford to despise his Public, for, whether he confesses it or not, the artist exists to give the Public what it wants.’ I have, then, not only done what I cannot afford to do, but I have been false to the reason of my existence.”

The hall was full of people, for it was the hour of tea; and looking round him, the writer thought “And this is the Public — the Public that my play is destined not to please!” And for several minutes he looked at them as if he had been hypnotised. Presently, between two tables he noticed a waiter standing, lost in his thoughts. The mask of the man’s professional civility had come awry, and the expression of his face and figure was curiously remote from the faces and forms of those from whom he had been taking orders; he seemed like a bird discovered in its own haunts, all unconscious as yet of human eyes. And the writer thought: “But if those people at the tables are the Public, what is that waiter? How if I was mistaken, and not they, but he were the real Public?” And testing this thought, his mind began at once to range over all the people he had lately seen. He thought of the Founder’s Day dinner of a great School, which he had attended the night before. “No,” he mused, “I see very little resemblance between the men at that dinner and the men in this hall; still less between them and the waiter. How if they were the real Public, and neither the waiter, nor these people here!” But no sooner had he made this reflection, than he bethought him of a gathering of workers whom he had watched two days ago. “Again,” he mused, “I do not recollect any resemblance at all between those workers and the men at the dinner, and certainly they are not like any one here. What if those workers are the real Public, not the men at the dinner, nor the waiter, nor the people in this hall!” And thereupon his mind flew off again, and this time rested on the figures of his own immediate circle of friends. They seemed very different from the four real Publics whom he had as yet discovered. “Yes,” he considered, “when I come to think of it, my associates painters, and writers, and critics, and all that kind of person — do not seem to have anything to speak of in common with any of these people. Perhaps my own associates, then, are the real Public, and not these others!” Perceiving that this would be the fifth real Public, he felt discouraged. But presently he began to think: “The past is the past and cannot be undone, and with this play of mine I shall not please the Public; but there is always the future! Now, I do not wish to do what the artist cannot afford to do, I earnestly desire to be true to the reason of my existence; and since the reason of that existence is to give the Public what it wants, it is really vital to discover who and what the Public is!” And he began to look very closely at the faces around him, hoping to find out from types what he had failed to ascertain from classes. Two men were sitting near, one on each side of a woman. The first, who was all crumpled in his arm-chair, had curly lips and wrinkles round the eyes, cheeks at once rather fat and rather shadowy, and a dimple in his chin. It seemed certain that he was humourous, and kind, sympathetic, rather diffident, speculative, moderately intelligent, with the rudiments perhaps of an imagination. And he looked at the second man, who was sitting very upright, as if he had a particularly fine backbone, of which he was not a little proud. He was extremely big and handsome, with pronounced and regular nose and chin, firm, well-cut lips beneath a smooth moustache, direct and rather insolent eyes, a some what receding forehead, and an air of mastery over all around. It was obvious that he possessed a complete knowledge of his own mind, some brutality, much practical intelligence, great resolution, no imagination, and plenty of conceit. And he looked at the woman. She was pretty, but her face was vapid, and seemed to have no character at all. And from one to the other he looked, and the more he looked the less resemblance he saw between them, till the objects of his scrutiny grew restive. . . . Then, ceasing to examine them, an idea came to him. “No! The Public is not this or that class, this or that type; the Public is an hypothetical average human being, endowed with average human qualities — a distillation, in fact, of all the people in this hall, the people in the street outside, the people of this country everywhere.” And for a moment he was pleased; but soon he began again to feel uneasy. “Since,” he reflected, “it is necessary for me to supply this hypothetical average human being with what he wants, I shall have to find out how to distil him from all the ingredients around me. Now how am I to do that? It will certainly take me more than all my life to collect and boil the souls of all of them, which is necessary if I am to extract the genuine article, and I should then apparently have no time left to supply the precipitated spirit, when I had obtained it, with what it wanted! Yet this hypothetical average human being must be found, or I must stay for ever haunted by the thought that I am not supplying him with what he wants!” And the writer became more and more discouraged, for to arrogate to himself knowledge of all the heights and depths, and even of all the virtues and vices, tastes and dislikes of all the people of the country, without having first obtained it, seemed to him to savour of insolence. And still more did it appear impertinent, having taken this mass of knowledge which he had not got, to extract from it a golden mean ma............