Rhone valley must be so small as to be entirely negligible. An ant's capacity to draw anything which remotely recalls Loch Assynt is nil. Handy little things though ants have been shown by scientists to be, they have never been found painting landscapes; not by the highest-powered microscope. Men do this. Let these humble-minded people, therefore, thank Heaven that they are men, and if they fear to paint, let them revel in the power to paint and in the power to enjoy. But let us have no more talk of worms and insects. Though I paint the most horrible pictures from which the most kindly connoisseur turns fainting away, this distressing circumstance cannot rob me of my achievement. Perhaps it may be said that no one would wish to rob me of it. That it is worth nothing, nothing at all. This is sheer commercialism. I cannot get sixpence for all my pictures put together. Granted. But I have got from them what no amount of money could buy me. I have learned my superiority to the worms, a matter about which in my youth I had some very uncomfortable doubts. I know that I have faculties which raise me above worms, and I have exercised one of those faculties as honestly as I can. This is a great deal.
Again, let these people, when they paint, paint on smallish Whatman boards. To produce a sort
