Products of observation and imagination

Abstract

Nona Vincent (1892) presents three different members of the artistic community: Allan Wayworth, a playwright, Miss Violet Grey, an actress, and Mrs Alsager, who is ‘an ideal public’:¹

She loved the perfect work — she had the artistic chord. This chord could vibrate only to the touch of another, so that appreciation, in her spirit, had the added intensity of regret. She could understand the joy of creation, and she thought it scarcely enough to be told that she herself created happiness …. She had not the voice — she had only the vision. The only envy she was capable of was directed to those who, as she said, could do something. (p. 155)