Now, I shouldn't like to
think that any one had to make allowances for me."
"I don't quite agree, Richard," said Mrs. Dalloway. "Think of Shelley. I
feel that there's almost everything one wants in 'Adonais.'"
"Read 'Adonais' by all means," Richard conceded. "But whenever I hear
of Shelley I repeat to myself the words of Matthew Arnold, 'What a set!
What a set!'"
This roused Ridley's attention. "Matthew Arnold? A detestable prig!" he
snapped.
"A prig--granted," said Richard; "but, I think a man of the world.
That's where my point comes in. We politicians doubtless seem to you"
(he grasped somehow that Helen was the representative of the arts)
"a gross commonplace set of people; but we see both sides; we may be
clumsy, but we do our best to get a grasp of things. Now your artists
_find_ things in a mess, shrug their shoulders, turn aside to their
visions--which I grant may be very beautiful--and _leave_ things in a
mess. Now that seems to me evading one's responsibilities. Besides, we
aren't all born with the artistic faculty."
"It's dreadful," said Mrs. Dalloway, who, while her husband spoke, had
been thinking. "When I'm with artists I feel so intensely the delights
of shutting oneself up in a little world of one's own, with pictures and
music and everything beautiful, and then I go out into the streets and
the first child I meet with its poor, hungry, dirty little face makes me
turn round and say, 'No, I _can't_ shut myself up--I _won't_ live in a
world of my own.
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