But, you see, they're so
scattered; you'll never get the public to look at them. Now, if you'd
taken a definite subject, such as 'London by Night,' or 'The Crystal
Palace in the Spring,' and made a regular series, the public would have
known at once what they were looking at. I can't lay too much stress
upon that. All the men who are making great names in Art, like Crum
Stone or Bleeder, are making them by avoiding the unexpected; by
specializing and putting their works all in the same pigeon-hole, so
that the public know pat once where to go. And this stands to reason,
for if a man's a collector he doesn't want people to smell at the canvas
to find out whom his pictures are by; he wants them to be able to say
at once, 'A capital Forsyte!' It is all the more important for you to be
careful to choose a subject that they can lay hold of on the spot, since
there's no very marked originality in your style."
Young Jolyon, standing by the little piano, where a bowl of dried rose
leaves, the only produce of the garden, was deposited on a bit of faded
damask, listened with his dim smile.
Turning to his wife, who was looking at the speaker with an angry
expression on her thin face, he said:
"You see, dear?"
"I do not," she answered in her staccato voice, that still had a little
foreign accent; "your style has originality.
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