Matilda, I gather, is a fashion. I never knew her follow anything but her own desire, and as her desires are human and reasonable she has risen by the law of gravity above the rout, above the difficulties of her own nature, above any incongruities that arise between her individuality and the conventions of the common life of England. And of course she rises above the work she has to do, the idiotic songs written for her, the meaningless dances devised to sort with the pointless tunes. And when she suffers from the emptiness of it all, she has you, and she has the memory of myself to guard her against the filthy welter from which she sprang. She used me--(you will let her read this)--and I am proud to have served her.
There are many people like Matilda, comedians and entertainers, who develop a certain strength of personality in their revolt against the conditions of their breeding. It is impossible to educate them. Their intentions are too direct. . . . Not all of them succeed, or have the luck to become the fashion. You are one of them yourself, my dear Panoukian, and in the days when I was living with you two I used excitedly to think that there was a whole generation of them; that the young men and women of England were at last insisting on growing out of adolescence. Sometimes I felt very sure of it, but I was too sanguine. Life does not act like that; there are no sudden general growths. There are violent reactions, but they are soon swallowed up in the great forward flow.
"Comedians and entertainers" I said just now. You are all that, all you public characters. You depend upon the crowd, you are too near them. You are in dread of falling back, and also you are aware that the size of a man can only be gauged at a distance, and you have to contend with the charlatan. A better comedian you may be, but he has not your scruples, your sensitiveness, and is therefore more dexterous at drawing the crowd's attention. . . . Again I turn with relief to my puppets; they have no temptation to insincerity; they obey the strings, play their parts, and are put back into their boxes. They need no bread for body or mind. They have no life except the common life of the stage, no individuality and no torturing need of fulfilling it.