wiki formatting help

Ideals: a romance.

[illegible] delicate perfume the sound of the music drifted into the dimly-lit alcove, slightly damped by the powder-blue silken curtains. Through the opening of their folds he could see, across the room, the lights on the other side of the river, shimmering against the darkness. He lay back on the tasselled silken cushions, and watching them, dreamed of Spanish terraces and argosies and galleons weighted with precious freights. There seemed a perfect, unconscious artistry in the undercurrent of music which mingled with his dreams. How wonderfully the antique, familiar strains blended with his stately mediations. The airs greeted him like old friends. They were singing Elisabethan songs by Morley, Lumbye, and Ford. His hostess had told him what they were when she played them to him for the first time the night before. How glorious to be English, with all the golden record of past achievement to weave dreams upon ...... Closing his eyes, he could see the ivory fingers of noblewomen, in all the exquisite grace of ruff and farthingale, gliding over the manuals of virginals, or touching lightly the strings of silver lutes ...... he stroked the ears of the white Persian cat which lay curled up at his side. White and blue, ..... the colour of cloud and sea ..... O! for the open sea-ways of old tales, and the swaying of waters beneath gilded prows, and he, in stainless face and satins, sweeping over the waters, seeking adventure! - - - - Suddenly his exalted mood was cruelly shattered. The calm of the older music, - - - - - He was sure that it must be all "perfect chords" - - - - - had given place to a restless, harsh-sounding piece. It must be one of those decadent moderns! Why was modern art, or what to-day passed for art, always so restless? He loved calm; only the plaudits of an Elisabethan throng, with its quaint speech, could be bearable.

He rose and crossed the room; he could bear those discords no longer. They were exactly like the noises, the terrible activity, so vulgar, so commonplace, of everyday life. They reminded him of trains, of streets abominably wide, of rushing, hawk-like business men. Stepping out through the open window, he closed the long panes, and stood gazing out into the night. His nerves throbbed. This modern music, it was unpleasant. He did not mind pathetic art; that developed one's emotional nature. But this other newer pretence of art, it was not art at all: it was revoltingly real; it sounded as though it had something in it. No, the modern people, they are not artists, they have not the calm, detached spirit which art needs; they try to foist their own insignificant experience onto the world. Of course there was Elgar, he must have purer ideals; he set texts from the Greek Anthology. "Eastward I watch" - - or was it "Westward"? - - He tried to remember the words of a choral song by the composer which he had once heard. Never mind, - - - he could at least remember that it was from the Greek Anthology, - - so he knew that

BC Archives, MS-2570 Box 1 File 6 / MIST, Henry Masterman / Ruhleben magazine, Prisoners’ Pie, 1916.

wiki formatting help