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THE INTELLIGENT
ORGANISATION

The Intelligent Organisation proposes a radical way of designing organisations

to capitalise on the potential offered by contemporary information capability.
Integrated, coherent information is taken as a competitive advantage enabling
synthesis of behaviour and processes in an organisation designed backwards from its
customers to achieve desired outcomes. An Intelligent Organisation uses information
to drive learning and adaptation at the level of individuals, tasks, processes and the
whole organisation, to deliver transformational changes in business performance.
This fully updated second edition explores how to enable this change through
systemic reinvention. Drawing on proven organisational applications exploiting
data, information and management science, and grounded in tested theory, this
book is not about incremental improvement but about fundamentally rethinking
the whole. Building on the first edition, two chapters have been added to apply
the ideas of the Intelligent Organisation to the individual as well as to the nation.
Further discussion on the current issues around technology and ethics have been
incorporated, as well as review questions and improved pedagogy.The text contains
updated case studies throughout and is accompanied by a dedicated website,
www.intelligentorganisation.com, with support materials for lecturers.
Uniquely bridging the gap between information systems and organisational
behaviour, The Intelligent Organisation will be of particular significance to master’s
and undergraduate students of Information Systems, Knowledge Management and
Organisational Theory.

John Beckford is a partner in Beckford Consulting and Visiting Professor both in

the Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering at University
College London, UK, and in the Centre for Information Management, School of
Business and Economics, Loughborough University, UK.
If your aspiration as CEO is to capture and exploit as much value as you can from
what your organisation knows but you are unsure how to achieve it, read Dr.
Beckford’s book. Based on practical experience but well-grounded in theory, these
ideas will help you to achieve a more purposeful and valuable enterprise and to
discover how being an intelligent organisation demands more than knowing what
you know; it is about how to generate purposeful value by making good decisions
and executing agile leadership.
Brian Collins CB, FREng, Professor of Engineering
Policy, Deputy Convenor of UKCRIC, Department of Civil,
Environmental and Geomatic Engineering, UCL

This is a challenging book: it calls for leaders to face the need to make their organi-
sations “intelligent” – and in doing so engages with a crucial issue of our age: using
data to create the information needed for decision-making while at the same time
learning in such a way as to change the very organisation involved in creating the
data. John Beckford illustrates his theses about how this can be done with examples
from a wider range of examples and accepts the challenge of trying to apply the
methodology to the individual (himself) and to the nation.
David Nussbaum, Chief Executive Officer,
The Elders Foundation, London

Professor Beckford’s revised and extended second edition of The Intelligent Organi-
sation should be required reading for leaders at all levels in 21st-century businesses.
He reiterates the central thesis of the need to think systemically about the way a
business works in order to put information at the heart of providing value – both
for customers and for the business. The text is accessible, with a balanced blend of
theory and practical examples drawn from Beckford’s eclectic consultancy work,
and occasionally lightened with apposite comment, opinion and a certain black
humour. More importantly the practical models, insights and guidance provide
a series of clear approaches to the very challenging issues facing all businesses in
today’s rapidly changing environment.
Jim Johnson, Director, Arup Digital Leader for UK,
India, Middle East & Africa

John Beckford’s achievement here is threefold. First he makes systemic thinking

accessible, while holding the reader to really consider systems in all their necessary
complexity. Second he layers the work, interweaving a practical workbook of how
we should do things with a philosophical exploration of why we should do them
that way. I like particularly the way he emphasises the recursive nature of systems.
Third he brings a sense of optimism and energy showing how, by thinking systemi-
cally and openly, we could do so much better.
Ronan Palmer, Associate Director, E3G

Professor Beckford’s second edition of The Intelligent Organisation is substantially

revised, adding two additional chapters and case reports including updates and
progress on the cases from the first edition. The book gives an academic basis for
the way of examining an organisation at all levels with practical application of
the theory with real life examples both in the public and private sector. I particu-
larly liked the emphasis on defining the core purpose of an organisation together
with the customer focus being prevalent throughout all the chapters. These val-
ues are often neglected in the chaos that often occurs in a busy, ever-changing
organisation. Today’s politicians would be well advised to read the chapter on the
Intelligent Nation! The chapter “The Individual as Intelligent Organisation” is a
welcome addition.This book is well written and very accessible to the reader.This
is essential reading for those who are serious about improving the way organisa-
tions perform.
Peter McDougall, Honorary Clinical Professor,
University of Melbourne and The Royal Children’s Hospital,
Melbourne, Senior Clinical Advisor, Consultative Council,
Obstetric and Paediatric Mortality and Morbidity,
Department of Health and Human Services,Victoria

In the second edition of Intelligent Organisation, Beckford further crystallises the

three principles of process, behaviour and information, providing a comprehensive
understanding of how all three concepts are intertwined to form an intelligent
organisation. He has again written an insightful study into organisations and pro-
vides the tools and methods to diagnose your business, rethink and then apply a
systematic approach to addressing problems. Using vignettes and cases studies, a
great addition, he brings the theory alive. This book certainly leaves you reflecting
that in order to survive in an ever-changing world, you need to have courage to
transform your business.
This is a must-read for any social entrepreneurs interested in embracing change
and moving away from traditional ways of working!
Kuljit Sandhu, CEO, Rise Mutual CIC

The second edition of John’s excellent book shows how, although we live in the
“information age”, we continue to run “machine age” organisations. In the book
he gives plenty of ideas and advice on how to create an “intelligent organisation”,
through the individuals in it being able to learn and adapt, using a series of continu-
ous learning cycles enable by value adding the use of information technology.Value,
quite rightly, is a major theme – a big deal – throughout the book.
The book is well illustrated with case studies and vignettes from John’s extensive
and wide-ranging experience and research. And it is also well referenced.
John Oakland, Emeritus Professor of Business Excellence and Quality,
Leeds University Business School, Chairman,The Oakland Group

This second edition of John Beckford’s masterful book The Intelligent Organisation
adds new depth to what was already an exceptional work. Of primary relevance to
consultants, academics and students of operations and information management, it
is also of potential interest and use to anyone either working in or managing in an
organisation in the 21st century (or indeed, and perhaps particularly so, for those
managing their career in a self-employed capacity). Previous chapters have been
reworked to make them more accessible to all, as well as to bring case studies fully
up-to-date (and some important new cases have been added); in addition, there
are new chapters on the Intelligent Nation and on the intelligent individual, and
a new chapter section on the intelligent manager. These substantially broaden the
relevance and remit of the book, enabling us to see not only how public administra-
tion and governance need to change, but how we as individuals can take mastery
of our own futures.
Louise Cooke, Professor of Information and
Knowledge Management, School of Business and Economics,
Loughborough University

Provides great insight on how we can get far more value out of the information
we have around us.
Jonathan Randall, Civil Aerospace Finance – Business
Planning & Forecasting Data Governance Lead, Rolls-Royce plc
THE INTELLIGENT
ORGANISATION
Driving Systemic Change with
Information

Second Edition

John Beckford
Second edition published 2020
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2020 John Beckford
The right of John Beckford to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in
accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by
any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying
and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from
the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used
only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
First edition published by Routledge 2015
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Beckford, John, 1958- author.
Title: The intelligent organisation : driving systemic change with information / John Beckford.
Description: Second edition. | Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2020. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019024206 (print) | LCCN 2019024207 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781138368484 (hbk) | ISBN 9781138368491 (pbk) | ISBN 9780429429200 (ebk)
Subjects: LCSH: Information technology—Management. | Knowledge management. |
Organizational effectiveness.
Classification: LCC HD30.2 .B443 2020 (print) | LCC HD30.2 (ebook) |
DDC 658.4/038—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019024206
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019024207

ISBN: 978-1-138-36848-4 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-138-36849-1 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-42920-0 (ebk)

Typeset in Bembo
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
 Intelligent:

Able to initiate or modify action in the light

of ongoing events

Collins Paperback English Dictionary, 1992

CONTENTS

List of vignettes xi
List of figures xiii
Acknowledgementsxvi
Preface to the first edition xviii
Preface to the second edition xxii

1 The information challenge 1

2 The value of information 15

3 Generating value 26

4 Generating value: cases 46

5 Enabling value 62

6 Enabling value: cases 79

7 Managing autonomy 98

8 Managing autonomy: cases 113

9 The information factory 124

10 The information factory: cases 138

x Contents

11 Managing performance 154

12 Managing performance: cases 168

13 The Intelligent Nation185

14 The Intelligent Organisation and public services 201

15 The individual as Intelligent Organisation 219

16 Dissolving the challenge 232

References250
Index255
VIGNETTES

Chapter 1:
I’m going to pick up my email
Procurement: outstanding payments
Intelligent autonomy
Chapter 2:
Accounting for information
Feeding the monster
Mushroom management
The benefit of understanding interdependency
Exploiting data for customer value
Chapter 3:
What is a core process?
Visiting the dentist
Chapter 7:
Technology versus autonomy
Chapter 9:
The data genie
Working backwards from the savings
The silent information system
Damping “hot” response
Beware of geeks bearing GIFs
Long-distance printing
xii Vignettes

Chapter 11:
Cheaper not to bother
Not solving quality
Chapter 13:
Offender management: not gaining the benefits
V8: polis and the new data challenge
Chapter 14:
Sparking a thought
Managing the railway
Chapter 15:
It’s tuesday – i must be kate
Chapter 16:
Process definition and diagnosis sprint
Arrow XL: the hackathon
Practical autonomy and invisible outcome
FIGURES

1.1 The Intelligent Organisation 9

3.1 The perpetually failing problem-solving engine 27
3.2 PDCA cycle 28
3.3 Organisational effectiveness 30
3.4 The interdependence of organisations 31
3.5 Core process 32
3.6 Processes, tasks and procedures 33
3.7 The emergence of hierarchy 37
3.8 Process and task regulation 38
3.9 The process of management 38
3.10 Information dissemination 39
3.11 The expanded homeostat 40
3.12 Multiple processes 42
3.13 The management of management 43
3.14 Senior management observing management 44
4.1 Fusion21: conventional hierarchy 47
4.2 Fusion21: process perspective 47
4.3 Fusion21: embedded tasks and procedures 49
4.4 Fusion21: procurement workstreams 50
4.5 The canal and river trust: the virtuous circle 53
4.6 Canal and river trust: the process chain 55
4.7 Canal and river trust: processes with embedded tasks 55
4.8 Southern mill: organisation chart 57
4.9 Southern mill: the process view 58
4.10 Southern mill: key processes 59
4.11 Southern mill: daily dashboard 60
5.1 Value-generating processes 64
xiv Figures

5.2 Value-enabling functions 65

5.3 Strategy formulation 67
5.4 The value-enabling process 68
5.5 Enabling value interacting with generating value 68
5.6 The multichannel value-enabling process 69
5.7 Managing the present and creating the future 72
5.8 The trialogue 74
5.9 The Intelligent Organisation 74
6.1 Enabling value for Fusion21 80
6.2 The strategic dialogue 81
6.3 Initial executive information requirements 85
6.4 Overview of UKCRIC facilities and founding partners 91
7.1 Managing autonomy 104
7.2 The business model 107
7.3 Process progression 108
7.4 Skills progression 108
7.5 Risk, probability and consequence 109
7.6 Aligning values 110
8.1 Integrated decision model for autonomy 114
8.2 Autonomy in Fusion21 114
8.3 Necessary and constrained autonomy 117
8.4 Autonomy in southern mill 119
8.5 Autonomy in UKCRIC 121
9.1 Information strategy 126
9.2 Mapping organisation and information architecture 128
9.3 Distributed decisions 129
9.4 A performance dashboard for a paper maker 130
10.1 Fusion21: value-generating activities 139
10.2 Fusion21: value-enabling activities 139
10.3 Fusion21: data flow diagram 142
10.4 Fusion21: information architecture 144
10.5 LIS-simulator: whole organisation adaptation 147
11.1 Dynamic interaction 159
11.2 The potentiometer 160
11.3 Synthesising potentiometers 162
11.4 Aggregating potentiometers 163
12.1 Train operating company interacting processes 170
12.2 The hierarchical organisation chart 172
12.3 The delivery process 173
12.4 Operational processes 174
12.5 Core process homeostats 175
12.6 Managing the present 176
12.7 Creating the future 177
12.8 Resolving tension 178
 Figures xv

12.9 Integrated businesses 179

12.10 Delivering the outcomes 180
12.11 Linked potentiometers 182
12.12 Measuring performance 183
13.1 Dimensions of economy and freedom 189
14.1 National interdependencies 206
14.2 A recursive decision structure 208
14.3 Asset management framework 209
15.1 Self at the centre of the network 221
15.2 Processes and roles 222
15.3 Managing my selves 224
15.4 Enabling value for the individual 227
15.5 Autonomy 230
16.1 Developing a shared model 235
16.2 Diagnostic process 236
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book was inspired by three groups of people. First are those who have gone
before; their insights and wisdom created the opportunity for a new question to
be asked. Notable amongst these is Stafford Beer, whose work inspired my initial
research and on whose foundations this work is built. Second are those in the many
organisations who have allowed me the privilege of working with them, testing
theory in practice on them and their organisations, helping me to understand what
appears to work and why.Third are the clients, consultants and academics on whose
support and friendship I have drawn to test practice in theory, to understand how
the practical pursuit of increasing effectiveness can be embedded in our theoretical
understanding of organisations.
In updating and changing the case studies I have drawn upon the support of a
number of individuals who have worked with me in the development and applica-
tion of the ideas. Many of the case studies have been written in partnership with
individuals involved in and affected by them, and I am grateful to

• Richard Berry, Assistant Chief Constable, NPCC Lead for the Investigatory
Powers Act Capabilities
• Mark Chadwick, Director of Business Services, Fusion21
• Andy Champness, CEO, Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner for
West Mercia
• Dr. Tom Dolan, Senior Research Associate, UKCRIC Coordination Node &
University College London
• Rev. Keith Elford, Director, Elford Consulting
• Dr. Charles House, Medical Director, University College Hospitals NHS
Foundation Trust
• Catherine Lawes
 Acknowledgements xvii

• Richard Parry, CEO, Canal and River Trust

• James Robbins, Chief Customer Officer and Chief Information Officer,
ArrowXL

for their great contributions both to those studies and for their comments on and
contributions to certain chapters.
Mary Pounder took on the task of making sense of and drawing all of the
diagrams.
A diverse group of friendly but demanding critics reviewed the proposal and
offered support and challenge in equal measure. The work is much better for their
contributions. The mistakes, errors and omissions are all mine.
Finally, as always, my thanks to Sara, Paul and Matthew, whose unending task it
is to keep me grounded.
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

Living in the information age, we continue to run machine age organisations. For
all our advances in technology we still focus inward on making the machine work
instead of outward on the value exchange with the customer. The result? We waste
lots of money pursuing nugatory improvements. As Eliot (1934) asks in The Rock,
“Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge, where is the knowledge we have
lost in information?” We have been in thrall to technology since the early 1960s.
Technology has delivered significant gains in performance, but those gains have
been constrained by our adherence to a conventional form of organisation.We have
at our disposal the technological means to transform our organisations, but without
radical change in the way we comprehend information we will remain trapped in
machine age thinking. Einstein (1946) suggests (in at least one version) that “You
cannot solve a problem from the same consciousness that created it. You must see
the world anew”. Machine age organisations are doomed to failure in a rapidly
changing world. An intelligent organisation exploits the value of information and
releases the capability of its people.
We need to invest ourselves in a new way of thinking, to understand the flaws
in current practices and to clearly see the unrealised value. There is a compelling
business case for change; simply appreciating the latent value of information will
allow us to realise potential for people and organisations.We continually tinker with
our machine age organisations to keep them running. How much better would it
be if we designed them so that they modify themselves? If we built in capability for
adaptation rather than bolting it on?
The machine age organisation is functionally arranged and siloed. The Intel-
ligent Organisation is systemic. It is made up of four interacting, interdependent
parts, and those interactions generate emergent properties, properties which belong
only to the whole not to the parts. Those four parts are a value-generating sys-
tem, a value-enabling system, an identity system (for maintaining a shared purpose)
 Preface to the first edition xix

synthesised through the fourth part, an information system. That allows a trialogue
(a conversation in three parts) ensuring that the organisation communicates with
itself and its environment and enables it to do three things simultaneously:

• manage its present (efficiently carry out value-generating activity);

• create its future (enable new value by anticipating, influencing and responding
to changing needs);
• nurture its identity (maintain alignment of its purpose, people and processes).

Every organisation exists for a reason. It is purposeful in pursuing its own sustain-
ability and in fulfilling the needs of its customers. It fulfils that purpose through
interactions with its customers which deliver value to both them and itself: the
relationship is dynamic and reciprocal, potentially symbiotic. Each organisation
must understand what it does that provides value to its customers, what need it
fulfils, what outcomes it seeks to achieve and focus on them and, as Wiener (1948)
suggests, “the importance of information and communication as mechanisms of
organisation proceeds beyond the individual into the community”.
Designed backwards from the customer, the value-generating system is com-
prised of the end-to-end processes (together with their embedded tasks and pro-
cedures) that deliver goods and services. It is self-regulating, self-aware at the level
of its processes, using information about its performance to control and improve
itself in a known environment.This self-regulating structure is called a “homeostat”
and is a core idea in the transformation. Its job is to ensure that we do things right.
The value-generating system is the customer of the value-enabling system
which provides resources to support and enable it. It does this by understanding,
anticipating and influencing both the organisation itself and what is happening in
the world outside it. It enables its adaptation to ensure survival. The value-enabling
system renders the whole organisation self-regulating and self-aware. It uses infor-
mation about the performance of all the value-generating activities and about the
unknown or problematic environment of the organisation to steer it towards the
future. Custodian of strategy, its job is to ensure that we do right things.
These distinct functions combine to constitute a logical hierarchy based on
information rather than positional or functional power. The whole is unified
through the shared purpose, a common sense of identity amongst the human actors
which needs to be nurtured and through which people’s different perspectives and
understanding can be reconciled.That whole is synthesised through an information
system which has both hard and soft dimensions. The hard dimension is quantita-
tive, addressing objective characteristics. The soft dimension is qualitative, address-
ing cultural and social characteristics.
In a logical hierarchy based on information, we also need to address the ques-
tion of autonomy. Control is distributed throughout the organisation; decisions are
made where the information is available, and, to enable responsiveness, that needs
to be close to the customer. The information available to the value-generating
system is constrained (it can only see its own part), whereas that available to the
xx Preface to the first edition

value-enabling system provides a view of the whole. It is therefore essential to

design appropriate autonomy into the organisation so that freedom to do things
right is preserved at the process level whilst the prerogative to do right things is
exercised at the whole organisational level in a manner consistent with the shared
purpose and values.
Now, if all that has been said so far is going to work then we need to provide
accurate, timely information in an appropriate format to the human actors in the
organisation. As the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust (2009) suggested, “If you think
IT is the solution to your problems, then you don’t understand IT and you don’t
understand your problem either”. The information system must itself be designed
backwards from the (highly distributed) decisions that need to be made through-
out the organisation so that it does not generate a costly and inefficient internal
“reporting” industry. At the operational level it must filter and segregate data to
provide only that information which is required at each decision point, while at
the strategic level it must aggregate, collate and interpret data to enable longer
term decisions. Only in this way can the information system and the people have
requisite variety to make useful decisions. In essence the Intelligent Organisation
is defined by the way it uses information, and the organisation and information
architecture need to be isomorphic images of each other.
In developing the organisational architecture, applying the notion of the home-
ostat, distributing decisions and creating an information system that supports all
of that, we have to a large extent embedded in the organisation the essentials of
performance management. It is self-regulating, aware of its “self ” in relation to its
environment and has capability for adaptation built in throughout. Nonetheless,
there remains a need to explore how we should manage the performance of the
whole. This is a paradox: we have built autonomy into the architecture, and now
we need to control it. That requires a deeper understanding of what we mean by
performance, a richer understanding of how information can help us to understand
and trace the roots of under- or overperformance and how we need to engage peo-
ple in decision-making.We also need to reconcile the short- and long-term aspects
of performance from which may arise tension.
All that has been said up to this point can be addressed to any organisation from
the ultra-large conglomerate to the individual (people are organisations too). The
public sector, however, requires some additional consideration. Challenged as they
are in most countries with the demand to “do more for less”, public sector organi-
sations operate under different constraints and conditions to organisations in the
private sector, and those affect both how we can think about them and how the
challenges can be addressed.
All that thinking is fine, but the point of thinking about organisations, the pur-
pose of this book, is to enable us to address their challenges. So, having started by
understanding the information challenge and explored how very differently we
can think about organisations, we finish by exploring how we might take action to
change them, to realise the Intelligent Organisation.
 Preface to the first edition xxi

Mature economies struggle to deliver growth (increase in the total value of the
economy), and mature organisations fight to increase productivity (increase in the
efficiency of use of all types of resources). Meanwhile developing economies and
developing organisations are mimicking the behaviour of both. Rather than pro-
posing and developing a new way of doing things, they are replicating established
practices with success often enabled by lower cost labour rather than substantial
innovation.
If, as is often attributed to Einstein, “insanity means doing the same thing over
and over again and expecting different results”, then perhaps many of us are trapped
in an insanity of tradition – following well-trodden paths, seeking and finding
marginal, incremental improvements but remaining closed to the possibility of real
innovation. Finding it easier to remain within “what is” and complain about it, we
perhaps lack the insight or the courage to consider “what could be” and embrace it.
The Intelligent Organisation is offered as a way out of this trap.
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

Opening the first edition of The Intelligent Organisation, I wrote, “Living in the
information age, we continue to run machine age organisations”. That line was
variously accepted, rejected, repudiated and repeated depending on the experi-
ence of the reader. In the intervening years, I have worked with a range of clients
in the private, public and third sectors embracing infrastructure, healthcare, social
care, policing, education, housing, energy, logistics, asset management and transport.
I have worked with chief executives and machine operators, accountants and deliv-
ery drivers, planners and mechanics, data scientists, information systems developers
and information technologists. My conclusion? That opening line still holds true.
There are numerous organisations whose conversion of data into information
for decisions is excellent, where synthesis of people, process and information into a
coherent whole underpins great performance.Yet for every organisation that con-
siders itself engaged in “4IR”, the Fourth Industrial Revolution (Schwab, 2017)
at the cutting edge of so-called big data analytics and leading the advancement
of the “Internet of Things” (Greengard, 2015), machine learning (Alpaydin, 2016)
and artificial intelligence (Warwick, 2012), there are several others mired in the
treacle of unstructured data, failing end-of-life systems and in some cases failing
beginning-of-life systems – those which fail on technical grounds or, more com-
monly, whose costs outweigh their benefits.
Perhaps, constrained by lack of appreciation of the opportunities, by lack of
funds for investment or by ignorance or denial of the world changing around
them, their approach to management, to data, to information and reporting has
not grasped the potential gains from new thinking and emerging technologies.
Unless these organisations recognise, comprehend and take action on the informa-
tion challenge, their efficiency and effectiveness are compromised, their continued
existence under severe threat. Doubtful? Consider the impact on global high streets
seemingly arising from Internet shopping. Accountants PWC, looking only at retail
 Preface to second edition xxiii

chains with more than five shops, reported a net reduction of 1123 shops in Britain
during the first six months of 2018. Webref1 It is not just retailing that is changing; the
ways that data can be captured, verified, codified and monetised are transforming
everything from construction to manufacturing to healthcare.
In parallel, many public service organisations, often under continued financial
pressure, are unable or unwilling to invest in information systems and, when they
do, are constrained (or perhaps constrain themselves) to opt for “safe” solutions, a
slightly better version of what they already have, rather than embracing the radical
and innovative. In one day, while writing this, I have had contact with three such
organisations.

• The first (healthcare) called to say “our data is wrong”, the consequence of
poor data capture and reporting design;
• The second (civil administration) sent a report that contained fundamental
logic flaws in the relationships between the numbers, which rendered the
beautifully presented content meaningless and valueless;
• The third (security) had bought a supposed artificial intelligence application
called a “chat bot”, which was simply an electronic version of a decision tree
yet was probably not as useful.

These cases have arisen because the organisations have disconnected data from
the processes that generate and use it, have disconnected the activity of report-
ing (administration) from the activity of decision-making (management) and have
failed to recognise where and how they need to innovate. There is a difference
between the competence to present data in a spreadsheet and the competence
to construct a meaningful decision model in which the gap between actual and
desired performance provides the basis for corrective action. Many organisations
and their people are falling behind 4IR at a dramatic rate; the survival of those
organisations and the jobs of their employees are threatened.
However, there is a need for individuals and organisations to be intelligent in
their acquiescence in the 4IR thinking. Not all new technology adds more value
than it does cost, nor is all of it as new as may be claimed, and not all data should
be collected, shared or monetised. As much as we collectively need to capitalise on
the capabilities being proffered, we need to be wise buyers, sceptical of the claimed
benefits and alert to the risks to our privacy and security and that of our customers.
As I revise this book just prior to submission, Apple, Google and Facebook are all in
the news over data privacy while TSB, a UK high-street bank, has reported substan-
tial losses arising from a problematic investment in technology, causing widespread
failures and impairments to its customers.
The traditional yet illusory certainties of centralised command and control
structures can no longer suffice. In a world of technology-enabled distributed
control, whether through different working practices or distributed ledgers (Tap-
scott & Tapscott, 2018), with freedom for action at the nearest point of the organi-
sation to its customer, perhaps it is customer activity that drives the management
xxiv Preface to second edition

of organisations. Perhaps the wider outcomes achieved for customers outweigh the
outputs delivered.
If your organisation and your work are going to survive and thrive in this con-
tinuing maelstrom of change, then you must individually and corporately create
capacity for rapid adaptation and learning. In a rapidly changing world it must be
sufficient to know enough, rather than expect to know everything, and to accept
and manage uncertainty and risk in new ways.
In revising the book for this second edition, I have tried to take account of the
comments and suggestions arising from readers of the first. Two chapters are added,
one applies the ideas of the Intelligent Organisation to the individual and explores
how that might help you to be more effective in achieving your aims; the other
considers how the ideas might be applied at the level of the nation. The chapter
on methodology has been substantially revised; other sections have been moved to
improve the flow and reader comprehension. Elsewhere throughout the text the
changes have been made for the sake of clarity or explanation, but the substance of
the ideas remains the same.
The book uses vignettes and case studies to bring the theory to life, to help
explore the challenges and dilemmas and to provide a systemic approach to resolv-
ing them. New case studies have been introduced embracing healthcare (University
College London Hospital), asset ownership and entertainment (Canal and River
Trust), public services (Policing, Public Sector Procurement), energy production,
distribution logistics (Arrow XL) and national infrastructure research (UKCRIC).
The Intelligent Organisation synthesises the organisation through the lenses of pro-
cess, behaviour and information in parallel, giving primacy to none but seeking the
optimal balance of the three for each circumstance. It deals with information sys-
tems from a business not a technological perspective, recognising that the function
of the information system is to provide information for decisions. It emphasises the
value of information in pursuit of viability as the primary driver for decisions about
all aspects of the information system. This systemic perspective is underpinned by
the comprehension that information systems are not themselves purposeful but are
enablers of the achievement of organisational objectives. For the Intelligent Organ-
isation, its information systems act as a “nervous system” distributed throughout
and aiming to deliver the right information, in the right form, at the right time to
the people who need it.
The job of this book is to address two challenges simultaneously. First is to share
ideas about how to better enable an organisation to adapt and the individuals within
it to learn. Second is to enable generation of increased value from the money spent
on information technology. The essence is to think of all organisational and human
activity as embedded in a series of connected virtuous learning cycles.
I do not claim to be the first with all of these ideas; I will let you see who and
where they stem from. I am able to show you how to make them work!
1
THE INFORMATION CHALLENGE

Introduction
The tsunami of big data flooding through organisations is overwhelming us. Organ-
isations, processes and decision-making commonly adhere to norms developed
when instant messaging meant sending a telegram and the telephone was a rare and
exotic instrument.We are beyond the once seemingly impossible idea of the paper-
less office (rarely realised) and are heading towards a world of blockchain (Tapscott,
2018): distributed systems under no single ownership, with data stored securely and
anonymously (or so it is claimed). Emerging generations of technology will exacer-
bate the organisational, informational, practical, legal and moral challenges we face
both in sustaining organisations and in preserving some semblance of privacy for
the individual. We cannot continue as we are and expect a good outcome.
The revolution in our organisations since the 1940s has been technological,
not informational. The development of data processing machines from Colossus
in 1943, the first digital programmable computer, to powerful and highly portable
devices, contemporary communications capability and emerging fifth generation
wireless has been astounding. Jackson (2015), citing Forrester Research, highlighted
how the growth in our ability to process, retrieve, store and transmit data is stupen-
dous, while our collective ability to make effective use of it lags far behind: “90% of
data stored within a company is not available for analysis”.
While, as Kaplan suggests (2015), we are seeing the emergence of “a new gener-
ation of systems that rival or exceed human capabilities” for a significant proportion
of organisations, the old rules are still being applied. They continue to capture and
store data in unstructured, difficult-to-search formats and to file or archive using, let
us be gentle for now in what we call them, “flexible” approaches and methods that,
in some cases, render the data irretrievable for practical purposes. Such approaches
make it ever more difficult for organisations to extract value from the data that
2 The information challenge

they hold let alone claim compliance with legislation such as the Data Protection
Act 2018 (UK), the EU GDPR (General Data Protection Regulations) and other
privacy requirements that underpin them. Webref 2
Pagnamenta, writing in The Daily Telegraph (2018), meanwhile speculated on the
death of email and its replacement by messaging systems. He stated that 269 billion
emails are posted every day, many generated by machines, damaging productivity
and with many unanswered. While he reports an average of 121 emails per worker
per day, 48% being spam and only a few actually warranting a reply, he also cites
a colleague claiming an unread total of over 100,000. To even attempt to read or
process that volume of data would be pointless.
Data, as Silver (2012) suggests, is just that. We have too much data when what
we need is information, although even an excess of information has been cautioned
against in the psychology literature on risk. Information is data which has been fil-
tered, integrated, assimilated, aggregated and contextualised. Critically, data enables
confusion, but information enables decisions.

Thinking inside the box?

Technology and technologists are very good data providers; organisations and man-
agers must become very good data converters, interpreters and users. For many
people and purposes the delivery technology is often quite irrelevant. What is rel-
evant is the information. It is information that allows us to comprehend things, to
understand them, to decide what to do.We need both thinking tools and intelligent
organisations to do this with; the “T” in information technology (IT) is predomi-
nantly the means of capturing then conveying the valuable thing, the information.
Value is what is derived from what we, people, do with the data and information,
that is, the thinking, the processes, problem-solving and analytical tools that we
apply to and with information. There is vastly more potential information avail-
able to us and our organisations than ever before, and that availability will increase,
possibly exponentially, in the coming years. It seems to me, though, that we are ill
equipped to exploit this potential, either through the software tools of business
intelligence (BI) or our human skills and ability in interpreting and understanding
it. Collectively we seem to neither appreciate the value of information nor design
our organisations to generate value from it.
Relative to the potential offered by information many of our organisations are
deeply dysfunctional. Their operating models are rooted in the idea of command
and control, the mechanistic, bureaucratic, functional, centralising structures and
managers who, frequently, secure decisions through bureaucratic means asserting
positional power: “It’s my decision. I am in charge”. While they are mainly kid-
ding themselves in that respect, for such organisations, much of the money spent
on IT has been wasted. Structured and organised in line with “traditional models
of organisation” (Beckford, 2017), they are not able to exploit their investment in
technologies. Both the hardware and software work; the machines operate with
extremely high levels of reliability (greater than six sigma uptime – 99.999%); parts
 The information challenge 3

and components are exchangeable, hot-swappable; data is backed-up, mirrored and

replicated; millions of messages are transmitted and received with almost no losses.
So, if that is all right, where is the failure?
IT has been attempting to deliver organisational value since the 1960s with the
implementation of computerised accounting. Some substantial progress has been
made, but, typically, the IT has been retrofitted to the established organisations
and structures, not used to create a new organisational paradigm. Technology has
commonly been applied to automate tasks previously carried out by people, tasks
which can be represented in machine logic (an algorithm or programme) as rou-
tine, logical, methodical, number crunching and, relatively, unchanging. Those tasks
are not characterised as needing “ideation, creativity and innovation” (Brynjolfs-
son & McAfee, 2014). Computers can, so far, only work inside the box.
Automation has delivered substantial efficiency gains but has often deliberately
and, even more often, unconsciously removed discretion from people in the organi-
sation, particularly those who directly deal with customers. Decision-making travels
further up the hierarchy as technology makes more data more available and more
rapidly to decision makers. This does not always lead to better decisions being
taken but to more decisions being taken further away from the customer, prob-
lem source or need. Many organisations are developing IT-enabled, dysfunctionally
over-centralised structures, not through intent, desire or need but simply because
the information systems enable it. No one notices it happening or thinks to stop
it. Collectively we have not re-examined the notion of what it means to “control”
an organisation. We have not grasped that, particularly for service organisations,
performance is subjective, an interpretation of events. When the service is created
and consumed on the fly, the quality of the service rests in the human interaction
not in the machine process. That cannot be controlled by an automaton, it requires
people and judgement. Revising my position from the previous edition, I suggest
performance is, ultimately, perhaps more a function of the customer than it is a func-
tion of the organisation.
Beynon-Davies (2013) determined that 67% of UK organisations have suffered
at least one “systems” project that has failed to deliver expected benefits or experi-
enced time and cost overruns, while Gartner (webref 3) state that 80% of SAP clients
are disappointed in benefits realised, the measurability of those benefits and the
competency of system users. They argue that 90% of IT projects do not return real
benefit to the organisation and that 40% fail completely. Meanwhile, McKinsey are
reputed to have stated that, historically, two-thirds of chief information officers have
not had to defend their budgets; because nobody else knew enough of the arcane
language of IT to ask them the right questions. Morgan Stanley (webref 4) estimated
that even as long ago now as 2002 companies threw away billions of dollars of
their IT capital expenditure on “shelfware” (software licences and systems never
used), a situation that has certainly deteriorated in the intervening years. I regu-
larly encounter CIOs proudly boasting of the number of software licences they
have cancelled, never apologising for having acquired them in the first place! In
2003 Reichheld and Markey in Harvard Business Review suggested that “IT doesn’t
4 The information challenge

matter”. HBR did not see IT as a source of strategic advantage; in this new age of
data science, online retailers and other information-intensive organisations might
not agree. Universities meanwhile continue to produce computer science graduates
who rely on “geek speak” (Times Higher Education, 14th August 2014), not having
the communication or business skills to render themselves useful to organisations.
If all this is true then somebody, somewhere must be doing something wrong – or
maybe we are collectively valuing and focusing on the wrong things.
The continuing convention in commissioning an information system or infor-
mation technology project is to identify a problem to be solved, to identify a tech-
nological means of addressing it, estimate the potential payback and measure the cost
of solving it, (that is the hardware, software, configuration, customisation, training,
backfilling and business disruption). The cost is capitalised; because such projects
have a value over time, the accountants can depreciate the investment. The payback
is then measured through productivity gains estimated through reduced headcount,
increased system availability, better compliance with regulators, improved report-
ing, reduced “clicks” to use the system, improved appearance and better toys. Still,
most organisations hold nobody properly accountable for any difference. Instead
they consider IT as a necessary evil, an infrastructure cost to be minimised rather
than a productivity-enabling tool to be, at least, optimised. Organisations are often
seduced into IT projects with the prospect of better technology, more data and
information which is faster rather than more valuable, failing to appreciate the dif-
ference. This mentality drives underinvestment in what really matters, the informa-
tion derived from the system.
The epiphenomena of an IT system are its gadgets: artefacts connected in the
“Internet of Things”, “home hubs” and other digital personal assistant devices,
mobile devices, smartphones and all the other physical, commoditised ephemera.
Software houses have modified their licensing models, lowering the initial cost
while, often, increasing the cost of support, configuration and upgrades – the total
life cost of the product increasing overall. The business opportunity to monetise
client data, dressed up as “reducing the capital required for new investment”, has
accelerated the trend towards “cloud-based” approaches, “software as a service”,
and “online everything”. While this approach can undoubtedly offer some benefit,
it introduces a new set of challenges, dependencies, interdependencies and risks
which many organisations fail to adequately comprehend and address.

I’m going to pick up my email

An organisation with a highly distributed network of locations, many in rural areas
with no access to high speed broadband services, decided to implement an “online”
suite of workplace applications. In a number of locations, employees requiring access to
those applications would leave the workplace several times each day to drive to a loca-
tion with good mobile connectivity to send and receive emails and access other systems.
Whatever financial performance gains were achieved at the centre of the organisation,
they were more than offset by losses in the distributed locations.
 Another Random Document on
Scribd Without Any Related Topics
must go about the matter of becoming a Christian in a more
practical way.
“‘After all,’ he said, ‘there is nothing very wicked about horse-
racing. I will keep my horses’—and he countermanded his order to
the head-groom—‘and go and give up Leila instead.’ Leila was a
Persian girl, and the most beautiful of his three mistresses. Once he
had given her up, it would be easier to dispense with the others.
“He went to see Leila, and told her about becoming a Christian. ‘Is
it the thing to do?’ she asked. ‘Then I will become one, too!’ Dear,
sweet, simple soul! He tried to explain, but she understood nothing,
until he said that it meant that he would have to part with her. Then
she burst into tears, and cast herself at his feet, and cried out, ‘Is it
true, then, that you no longer love me?’
“He told her that he loved her more than ever, but in a different
way: now he loved her soul. ‘You have a soul, Leila,’ he said, ‘an
immortal soul—and it is high time you began to think about saving
it, too!’
“‘Stay with me,’ she begged, ‘and explain all these things to me. I
think if you are kind to me I can understand you, and learn to save
my soul, whatever that means. But do not look at me coldly, for that
frightens me.’
“‘After all,’ he thought, ‘she has as much a right to save her soul
as I have to save mine. Perhaps I had better break it to her gently.
In the course of a few weeks—’ And so he kissed her and stayed to
explain.
“It was harder than he had realized to become a Christian. His
other mistress was angry at him when he proposed to leave her, and
said that it was because he preferred that Persian hussy with her
silly doll-face! It pained him to have his motives so misconstrued,
but why, after all, should he discriminate against this girl? She, too,
had a soul. As for the third one, he put off mentioning the subject to
her; he was discouraged with the results of his previous efforts, and
besides, he felt that women did not understand these things very
well.
“‘At least,’ he said, ‘I will receive baptism; and these other things
will go easier after that.’
“But on the day set for the ceremony, his mother reminded him
that it was the day of the festival of Diana, her favourite goddess. It
had been his filial custom to escort his mother to the temple, and
sprinkle with her a few grains of incense in the fire which burned
before the statue of the goddess. He had never believed in the gods
and goddesses—no cultivated Roman did—but it had seemed to him
a harmless and pretty custom.... Now he endeavoured to explain to
his mother why he could not accompany her. Of course the dear old
lady could not understand. It seemed to her that her child had fallen
under the influence of godless men, and she wept bitterly. ‘To have
this happen to me in my old age!’ she wailed.
“He could not bear to see his mother cry like that. And it seemed
to him that there must be some mistake: how could this new religion
of kindness and gentleness and love command him to break his
mother’s heart?
“He comforted her, and said he would go with her after all, and
sent word that the baptism was to be postponed for a while.
“Julian pondered this situation in the silent hours of the night,
when Leila was asleep. And it seemed to him that perhaps he, too,
was a martyr—a different kind of martyr than any his Christian slave
had told him about, but a martyr none the less. Upon him lay the
burden of seeming to be a mere pagan profligate, sunk in idleness
and debauchery, while in truth he was carrying out the precepts of
kindness and gentleness and love which he had learned from his
slave. He was a Christian after all—too much of a Christian to hurt
anybody’s feelings. And nobody would ever understand! That was
the saddest part of all, and he shed a few tears, waking Leila, who
was frightened by these tears, and had to be comforted....
 “He continued to live, in outward seeming, the ordinary life of a
young Roman profligate, while inwardly his heart was dedicated to
the austere practices of virtue. He wished that he could go to the
desert, and wear sackcloth, and go hungry, like his more fortunate
brethren. But, no—duty compelled him to bear the burden of
meaningless riches and idleness and pleasure. Eventually, he was
appointed governor of a Roman province, where he distinguished
himself in a quiet way by the economy and orderliness of his
rulership, and by a moderation of the severities currently practised
against new sects. Nevertheless, strange to say, the Christians of
that province hated him, and spread scandalous stories about him.
He bore all this meekly, but in his breast was a profound sadness.
None of those martyrs whom from his cushioned seat at the
gladiatorial games he saw go, pale but erect and proud—rather
spectacularly proud, he thought, to meet the lions (for after all, in
spite of his moderation, he had to sacrifice a Christian virgin or two
now and then to satisfy the mob)—none of them, year by year,
would ever know that he too was, in his quiet unassuming way, also
a martyr.”
XXXIV. Journeys

A
GAIN Felix tore up his unfinished play. Rose-Ann had shattered his
philosophy of compromise. But still he hesitated to accept her
philosophy of freedom. Throughout the summer he idled and
dreamed.
Late in August he took his vacation. Part of it they were to spend
in paying their long-due visits to their respective families; the rest
was to be given to a walking trip. They went first to Springfield.

Rose-Ann’s father lived, under the mismanagement of an

unmarried sister, a fussy, well-meaning woman, in the rambling old
house which Rose-Ann had described to Felix—the house in which
she had been born. It was filled with vexatiously new furniture,
except as to the old man’s study—a shabby, comfortable, low-
ceilinged, book-lined room at the top of the house. It was to this
room that Rose-Ann had once stolen, in the dead of night, to get the
Dan-Emp volume of the Encyclopedia, to read about dancing.
The Rev. Mr. Prentiss seemed more subdued in his home
surroundings—a picturesque and mildly eccentric clergyman, but by
no means the disturbing force he had been during his brief visit to
them in Chicago the year before.... And Rose-Ann’s brothers were
not at all the terrible persons he had been led to imagine—interested
only in money-making. They were quite obviously proud of their
father; and Felix felt that they were rather proud of him, too—
pleased, at least, to have a “writer” in the family. They—or their
wives—had severally subscribed to the Chicago Chronicle in order to
read Felix’s dramatic criticisms, which they took very seriously, and
sometimes clipped out and saved for their guidance when the plays
of which he wrote reached Springfield. Felix had expected to find
them alien and a little hostile; on the contrary he was rather
embarrassingly deferred to—treated distinctly as a personage.
He enjoyed his brief visit, and could not understand the relief
Rose-Ann showed when they had bade her family good-bye and
were on their way to visit his own parents on the farm further down
in the state. It ought to be easy enough, he felt, to get along with
such people as Rose-Ann’s relatives. It was the thought of seeing his
own parents that filled him with uneasiness.
“But, Felix,” she explained impatiently, “it’s because they are my
relatives. I feel their criticism all the time.”
“I don’t think they criticize you any more,” he said. “You’ve had a
struggle with them—and you’ve won. They’ve accepted the situation
now. I think they’ve even accepted me.”
“You’re not their property, and I am,” she said. “But it isn’t my
brothers that count so much any more—we look prosperous, and
that’s about as far as they can judge us. It’s my father—I feel as
though he were seeing right through me ... and smiling.”
 “Smiling at what?”
“At—my pretences. I can’t explain very well, but I feel as though I
were a—a fake, a fraud, when I’m with him.”
“But what about?”
“I don’t know, exactly. But he stirs up some childish confusion in
me.... I think I have all my life been trying to live up to my father’s
expectations—not of me, for I don’t think he expects anything of me
—but of womankind ... if that seems to you to make sense. It’s as if I
were trying to prove to him that women could be—I don’t know
what, but perhaps ... different from my mother. For instance, I want
to be a certain kind of wife to you, Felix—not possessive, not
interfering, and all that. I go along thinking I am that kind of wife—
and then I see him looking at me and smiling, and I have the feeling
that it isn’t true ... that I’m just Woman all over again, the only kind
of woman he knows, the kind he hates. Yes, I feel that I am just that
kind—and I wonder if there is any other kind—and I get desperate
and want to prove there is. I couldn’t have stood it there much
longer. I should have done some crazy thing!... I don’t suppose you
can understand—you aren’t a girl!”

He couldn’t understand; though it was true that as the train carried

them nearer and nearer to his own parents, he became more and
more uncomfortable.... The situation was different enough; Rose-Ann
had felt that their prosperous air secured them against family
criticism; Felix felt that same appearance as a reproach to his
conscience....
 “I’ve felt for years,” he said, “that I was an ungrateful child. I hate
to go there to exhibit my prosperity to them. Of course, it isn’t so
tremendous a prosperity—but it’s enough to make me feel ashamed.
You know how hard it is for me to write to my mother; and I hardly
ever can bring myself to write except when I can send her a little
money—as if, yes, as if in penance for my desertion of her!”
“Would you like to have her live with us?”
“No—I wouldn’t. I owe her too much, I couldn’t bear to be always
reminded of the debt. It’s a debt that’s too huge—I never can pay it,
and I try to forget it.”
“The thought that she loves you more than you love her—is that
what makes you feel ungrateful?”
“I suppose so. I do love her—”
“Of course you do, Felix!”
“More than I want to, perhaps! I can’t forget her, and I resent that.
I want to get away from her.... She petted and spoiled me when I
was a child. She wanted to keep me a child always. She kept me in
skirts, she kept me wearing long curls—she made a baby of me. My
whole life is in a sense trying to get away from that.... You’ll see—
she’ll wait on me, ‘hand and foot,’ as they say—try to make me her
baby again. She’ll anticipate my wishes, and jump up from the table
to get something for me, and follow me about with her eyes—and I’ll
get to feeling helpless, and then furious—and then I’ll say something
cross to her, and be ashamed of myself.... Oh, well!”
“So you have queer feelings about your parents, too!”
The visit did not justify all these forebodings.... The house was the
same as Felix had remembered it, only smaller; the same boxes of
moss-roses grew beside the door, and peacocks as of old screamed
in the yard; there was a little porch, with a wild-cucumber vine
trained up to screen out the light, and on that porch his father and
mother sat, the Sunday morning of their arrival, in rocking-chairs, his
mother reading a paper through spectacles that sat slightly askew,
his father smoking a fat pipe.... They were not so old as he had in
several years of absence begun to picture them; his father’s plump
little body looked surprisingly sturdy, and there was a youthful
humour in his mother’s smile as she sat talking, unaware of her son’s
approach....
The first greetings over, Felix’s two aunts appeared from within the
house—really old people these, Felix thought, but still wearing their
air of aggressive self-dependence. They had looked after their little
farm for so many years, without any masculine assistance except
from an occasional hired man, that they resented, somewhat Felix
thought, his father’s presence there, as a slur on their own capacity
for taking care of themselves. They treated him a little scornfully, as
if, being a man, he were a rather helpless person, and more of a
nuisance than a help. He understood this, and smiled genially and
tolerantly at their remarks, he being secure in the knowledge that it
took a man to run things and that the real boss of this establishment
was himself.... Just before they were seated at Sunday dinner, he led
Felix to a cupboard, and smilingly produced a bottle of whiskey.
“Have a little something to improve your appetite?” he asked.
Felix poured himself a drink, and his father did the same, carefully
raising the tumbler so as to let the light shine through the golden
liquid, and smacking his lips after he had poured it down his throat—
while Felix’s two aunts stonily ignored this masculine nonsense, and
his mother looked on with an air of mild disapproval.
At dinner they talked about the crops; his father was happy in
being a farmer again; happy, after years of increasing uselessness in
town while his children were growing up, in being master of a
situation, the real head of a household; happy, and boyishly active,
despite his spells of rheumatism, of which he also discoursed
seriously and uncomplainingly. He had had a bad spell this last winter
—in fact they had all been bothered with it—but they had found a
liniment which seemed to do some good. “Pretty powerful stuff!” he
said. “I sometimes wondered which was the worst, that liniment or
the rheumatism—but it appeared to do the work!”
 With the dessert they came to the fortunes of Felix—briefly alluded
to before, but saved to the last for thorough consideration. They
wanted to know all about Felix’s job, or rather all about how
important a personage he had become. Felix’s shame in his good
fortune gradually disappeared as he realized how immensely proud
they all were of him—how they hugged his success to their hearts
and enjoyed it. It was as though his good fortune were their own!

Rose-Ann liked them immensely, and that night reproached Felix

for never having told her what lovely people they were. She entered
into their domestic life, busied herself in the kitchen, and displayed
qualities as a cook which he had never, in their studio-life, realized
that she possessed. Their little studio-dinners had been masterpieces
in their way. But to see Rose-Ann coming in flushed and triumphant
from the kitchen with one dish after another of an old-fashioned
country dinner in her hands was a new experience.
Rose-Ann had smoked surreptitiously during her visit to her own
home, merely wishing not to offend her aunt by any ostentatious
indulgence of what that good lady regarded as a reprehensible
practice; but here she did not smoke at all, even in their room at
night. She did not want to do anything that Felix’s folks would not
like, and was seriously concerned to secure their approval.... And she
secured it—for who could resist Rose-Ann in her most buoyant
mood?
The visit had not been as disturbing as he had expected; and yet
he was glad to go.
 “Felix,” said Rose-Ann, as they took the train back to Chicago, “I
think I understand why we feel this way. It’s because all our lives—
and this is the truth—we’ve scorned the older generation. And we are
ashamed, coming back to face them, because we’ve nothing better—
really—to show for our lives than they have.”
“I wonder?” he said.
“But we can be happy in a way they knew nothing about, Felix. We
can. And we shall!”

Then came their real vacation—a week’s walking trip in Wisconsin.

The night-boat carried them from Chicago to Milwaukee; and from
thence, early in the morning, dressed now in their oldest clothes, and
with packs on their backs, they set out happily on foot. They stopped
by the roadside to make themselves a breakfast of eggs and bacon,
cooked in the ten-cent frying pan that dangled from one corner of
Felix’s pack; pausing again at mid-day for a luncheon of blackberries
and raspberries gathered in some bramble-patch. At night they
reached, in a drizzling rain that had accompanied them for the last
hour of their journey, a town with an ugly little hotel, where they
could at least dry their clothes, eat a poor dinner with a good
appetite, and sleep, dog-tired and happy, from ten o’clock till dawn.
And thus onward, in the general direction of “the dells.” Most of
the time they did not know just where they were going next, nor
care; they took the most promising road.
The “dells” at last—steep ravines, miniature canyons, up which
they went in the guide’s leaky little gasoline launch, landing to
explore the quaint caverns in the rocks, dim-lighted by the daylight
that sifted through the openings above.... And so back, by new
roads, glad they had no map to take the surprise out of their journey.
Felix had never realized how much robust strength and endurance
Rose-Ann had until they tramped those Wisconsin roads. They were
not above taking a lift in some farmer’s wagon or passing
automobile, if it promised to get them to a town with a hotel before
nightfall; but, having come in sight of the town, if the night promised
to be clear, they hunted up some promising spot and encamped
there: for what was the use of carrying two heavy woollen blankets,
if they were not going to sleep out under the stars by a camp-fire?
Felix’s old corduroys, splashed with kalsomine in all colours, caused
him to be taken for an “artist.” At first this displeased him—but he
soon discovered that all the world envies the artist, loves him, and
wishes to take care of him. Old farmers, burly truck-drivers, delivery-
boys, tourists, wanted to give them a lift, and offered them their best
counsel as to where to go next. Hotel-keepers, grocers at whose
shops they replenished their food supplies, and farmers’ wives at
houses where they stopped till a shower passed over, talked to them
with friendly eagerness. Felix perceived that a pair of foot-loose
vagabonds with enough money in their pockets to pay for their bread
and eggs and bacon, are fortunate beings, the world’s darlings,
beamed on and approved by those who sleep under roofs and hold
steady jobs and stay day after day in the same place—approved
because they are living life as all men and women know it should be
lived: if everybody cannot live that way themselves, they are glad to
see somebody else who can!
As they tramped, Felix’s mind went back to the songs of
vagabondia which he used to cherish, and then had rejected as
romantic and foolish; and at night, beside their dying camp-fire,
when Rose-Ann demanded poetry before she went to sleep, he
would say for her the little fragments that he remembered:
 “Down the world with Marna,
That’s the life for me!
Wandering with the wandering rain
Its unboundaried domain....

“Mm—I forget. Anyway—

“.... the joys of the road are chiefly these—
A crimson touch on the hard-wood trees....
A vagrant’s morning, wide and blue,
In early fall, when the wind walks, too....
A shadowy highway, cool and brown,
Alluring up and enticing down....
A scrap of gossip at the ferry,
And a comrade neither glum nor merry,
Asking nothing, revealing naught,
But minting his words from a fund of thought....
A keeper of silence eloquent....

“Mm....
“With only another mile to wend,
And two brown arms at the journey’s end....

“I forget the rest of it.”

“You are forgetting everything that’s important!” Rose-Ann
complained. “I’ll bet you know by heart Professor Humptydink’s law
of dramatic crisis.”
“No—I’ve stopped that foolishness, thanks to you. If I ever write
anything, it will be just what I want to write—and the devil take the
Great American Public!”
“No, Felix—that’s wrong, too. It’s what one really wants to say that
other people really like—I’m sure of it. Can’t you trust yourself?”
“I don’t know,” he said, looking up at the pale moon through a
tangle of leafy branches. “Somehow I have the notion that anything I
want to do will be foolish.... I used to trust in myself. I used to
believe this sort of thing:—it’s by Bliss Carman, the man that wrote
the vagabond poems.—
“‘Keep thou, by some large instinct,
Unwasted, fair and whole,
The innocence of nature,
The ardor of the soul—

“And through the realms of being

Thou art at liberty
To pass, enjoy, and linger,
Inviolate, and free!’”

“And don’t you believe that now, Felix?”

“That I can do as I please, if—”
“If it’s what you really please to do! Yes, Felix. You can have any
happiness you ever want, if you really want it—not cynically, nor
because other people seem to have it, but because it belongs to you.
I believe that. I don’t intend ever to keep from doing anything I want
to do. And I shan’t be ashamed of myself, either. Do you remember
the girl-goldsmith I told you about, in the story?”
“I remember her very well,” said Felix. “I know one of her
speeches almost by heart. ‘The only sins are telling lies, and not
keeping one’s body clean, and being careless about one’s work—ugly
things. Beautiful things—the things people sometimes call sins—
aren’t sins at all. Being in love isn’t ever a sin.’”
“Yes,” said Rose-Ann dreamily. “I want us to be like that—not
afraid of life, or of any of the beautiful things life brings us.”
Well ... yes ... it sounded simple enough. To live life beautifully,
and not be afraid! He had believed in that once. But now—or had he
really ceased to believe it possible? At this moment, in the moonlight,
it did not seem so absurd....
“Good night, Felix.”
“Good night, Rose-Ann.”
XXXV. Civilization

T HEY came back refreshed to civilization—to the studio, to a whirl

of exciting parties, to books and ideas, to the problems of
ambition, to the Chronicle office and a theatrical season just opening
with hectic announcements of “Alias Jimmy Valentine,” “The Case of
Becky,” “The Pink Lady” and “The Chocolate Soldier.”...
Hawkins was still in New York, assisting in the selection of a cast
for his play—which to Felix’s complete astonishment (for Hawkins
had not confided anything to him as to its theme or character) was
announced as “Tootsie-Wootsie.” A farce!—with, as it further
appeared, honeymoon couples and wrong bedrooms.... What?
Hawkins, the serious Hawkins, who had so often called upon
American drama to do its duty and deal with “the problems of the
time”—he the author of a play called “Tootsie-Wootsie”?
The news of Hawkins’s play brought up in Felix’s mind a practical
question which so far he had refused to consider. It had been
exciting enough to be the acting dramatic critic of the Chronicle; he
had not wanted to look ahead any further. But when one day at
lunch he ran into Jennison (“the dean of the critical fraternity”),
Jennison asked him, “Are you going to do the plays for the
Chronicle?” “Yes, while Hawkins is away,” Felix told him. “Does
Hawkins know it?” “Yes—he asked me to.” “Well,” said Jennison,
smiling, “then he’s a damn fool!” That was old Jennison’s way of
paying him an extravagant compliment. It was in its way an
accolade. It was an initiation, by the grand past master, into the
“critical fraternity.” And now Felix felt obliged to consider the
question of Hawkins and Hawkins’s play in its bearing upon his own
career.
If Hawkins’s play failed—and most plays did fail—Hawkins would
return and resume his post on the Chronicle. In that event, Felix
would be relegated to doing the odd jobs that Hawkins did not want
to do. He might even be put back to regular reporting. After all, the
present arrangement merely provided for a dramatic critic in
Hawkins’s absence; it was not likely they would want two men
continuously on the job. They had given Felix another raise that fall;
and when Hawkins came back, he would have to earn his salary
doing regular reporter’s work again, doubtless—if he could earn it
that way. It was rather a dismal prospect.... Felix hoped fervently
that the serious-minded Hawkins would somehow, improbably, turn
out a success as a farceur.
But if it was a success, and Hawkins resigned his position, how
could Felix know he would get it? After all, he was only twenty-three
years old. And though by a fluke he was actually being for a while
the dramatic critic of a great Chicago newspaper, the idea that he
should retain this position and be confirmed in its title was
incredible. He wished that he were not so fatally young....
Well—he could only wait and see what happened.
 It was at this period that he began wearing a moustache—a short,
well-defined moustache, aloof from the upper lip, trim and straight.
Nothing boyish, certainly about that moustache!

Felix and Rose-Ann had come back to Chicago eager to see Clive
Bangs again. They had been away just long enough to discover, in
apparently all human beings except themselves, a fundamental lack
of interest in all the ideas which most occupied their minds. Talk,
with people in general, was limited to an exchange of views, if not
on the weather, at least on things equally obvious. They felt the
need for talk, and so did Clive; and all at once, after what now
seemed to them these months of merely casual friendship, they
became inseparable. The three of them lunched together daily at a
corner table in a little Hungarian restaurant where they found what
they considered the best food in Chicago—a fond trio, laughing,
talking excitedly, arguing with the mingled gravity and extravagance
of youth, sometimes rehearsing passionately in private the opinions
which they would state tomorrow somewhat more soberly in print,
and again discussing each other’s characters with ironic humour—
perpetually criticizing and taking delight in each other’s criticism of
life.
XXXVI. “We Needs Must Know That in the Days to
Come”

T HEY had come back to civilization. But—unwittingly, at first—into

this life of talk, of ideas, of theory, of vague ambition and of self-
congratulatory superiority to the mere plain facts of life, they
brought somewhat more than a memory of their vagabond
adventuring. In their brief and joyous return to nature they had
surrendered themselves to its purposes more deeply than they had
been aware. But presently Rose-Ann announced that she would have
to visit the doctor of whom Dorothy Sheridan had once told her.
Rose-Ann did not say that she was with child—that phrase was never
used between them in their few discussions of the incident. For that
phrase would have implied that she intended to bear a child. It was
discussed rather as an accident, an annoying but not serious
interruption to their plans. Rose-Ann took the matter, not lightly, but
in a soberly practical spirit. And so convincing was her tone that it
did not occur to Felix to question the sincerity of her apparent
attitude.
Secretly he was troubled. In spite of Rose-Ann’s confidence, he
distressed himself with what appeared to be needless forebodings. It
seemed to be true that real life was, in this matter as in others,
different from fiction. In a story, this would have been a desperate
situation; but in actual fact it appeared to have no such gravity. He
hoped that was indeed the truth; and, afterward, it appeared that
she had been right.... He wondered why he had been so absurd
about it!
She would never know how absurd.... He would never tell her
how, one night, walking alone along a dark stretch of lake shore, his
courage had failed him utterly; how all the terrible things of which
he had ever heard had rushed into his mind, filling and flooding it
with a kind of nameless remorse, until he had ceased to be a man,
and had become a mere terrified child—and how in the influence of
that guilty terror he had sunk on his knees in the wet sand, praying
to a God he did not believe in, whispering like a child to a kind
Father: “God, don’t let anything happen to her!” He had not thought
of her then as a free woman acting wisely in her own right—no, but
only as a helpless and lovely girl, his beloved, given him to cherish
and protect, whom he had let go down to the very gates of death—
in vain! Not in the terrible triumph of creation, but meaninglessly....
And he prayed: “Give me back Rose-Ann!”...
No, he would never tell her what a fool he had been.

And he would never tell her—for he had safely forgotten now—the

moment when, knowing that their lives could go on now as before,
they had walked again in the Park under great trees that lifted their
shivering glooms to the sky. Through the bushes had come the
gleam of motor-cars that glided swiftly down the avenue. “You were
a dear to worry,” she had said. “But you needn’t any more.
Everything’s quite all right now.”
He had looked at her, cut through with a strange unreal pain, his
whole mind quivering. Forces that he did not understand were
hurling themselves on his heart, crushing and stunning it. He
breathed with difficulty. He looked away from her. He could not
speak.
But one forgets things like that. It would not be pleasant to
remember them. Nor is it hard to forget unpleasant things in the
midst of civilization, with its friendships, parties, talk, books and
theories.
So, looking at life realistically, Felix felt that he and Rose-Ann were
very fortunate, after all.
XXXVII. Symbols

R OSE-ANN had become restless again. Once more she threatened

to go out and get a job. Books no longer contented her; and if
she had secretly cherished, as Felix had thought, some dreams of
writing, they had vanished, like her notebook, which was no more to
be seen. They gave wild parties, extended the number of their
friends, and went to dinner-parties, where Rose-Ann shone as
always, and even Felix began to be able to take care of himself. She
went to the theatre with Felix and took down his criticisms on her
typewriter from dictation, as she had a year ago. But these activities
did not quite content her volatile spirit.
Her restlessness expressed itself, delightfully enough, in a
resumption of the endless midnight talks which had marked the first
period of their married intimacy. Their daylight hours together now
seemed never to suffice them for talking. Those hours were too filled
up with work, and play, and friends. During the day a thousand
ideas, observations, comments, stories, had been stored away by
each for the other’s benefit. A glance at dinner had meant: “Did you
see that? Yes—we’ll talk about it tonight.” In these gatherings,
however friendly and outspoken, something was always left unsaid,
reserved especially for each other. The heart of every occasion was
in its midnight aftermath, in the long wakeful hours in bed,
remembering, criticizing, laughing, talking, talking.... Marriage had
come to mean above all else the peculiar magic of that intimacy.
Sometimes her voice would come mysteriously out of the dark at his
side, and again the moonlight would creep in over the roofs and
tease the scene with its glamour. Their beds, in summer two little
oases of coolness in the sultry night, became in winter warm-
coverleted citadels against the cold—two little friendly islands, with
two voices floating pleasantly back and forth. “Light me another
cigarette,” Rose-Ann would say sleepily. Tired, but kept awake by all
they had to tell each other, the mere thoughts and incidents of the
day made precious by this re-living of them together, they lay and
talked out their hearts.

“Felix strikes me as rather paintable. Could you spare him a few

afternoons for a sitting now and then? I mean, some time this
winter? I’m getting interested in doing portraits again.”
“I’d love to have you!”
Dorothy Sheridan had come back from her fishing village, and a
little trip abroad to boot, and she and the Fays were dining in a little
restaurant to which she had taken them—not very far from their
studio, a little Italian place frequented by artists, where the food was
good and the prices low. The men one saw there wore soft collars,
like Felix’s own, sometimes turned up to flare about the chin,
sometimes open at the neck; one of the girls at the tables wore a
Russian smock, like Dorothy Sheridan, and all of them seemed, like
her, comfortably uncorseted. They all seemed to know each other,
and each new person who came greeted the whole roomful. It was a
friendly place.
Felix was rather amused at having his afternoons asked for and
given away without his being consulted. But he was flattered by the
invitation. He had never been painted, and he considered it a
distinction.
“It will be a bore,” Dorothy warned him. “You’ll get awfully tired of
it before I’m through. But I’ll do you in half a dozen sittings, I
promise you, or give it up. Give him a cup of coffee, before he
comes. I don’t talk to my subjects, and they are likely to fall asleep!”
They had been to Dorothy Sheridan’s studio that afternoon, and
looked at her paintings and sketches. The paintings were, with one
or two exceptions, in a vivid, splashing style that Felix liked. “I’ve
changed my style since going to Paris,” she said. “These things are
what they call over there Post-Impressionist. I’ll do you in my best
Cezanne-Matisse manner, Felix, with some variations all my own. You
won’t know yourself!”
Rose-Ann had been most impressed by some of Dorothy’s old
sketches, particularly a series of lovely nudes done in pencil with a
hard, vibrant line. Dorothy picked one of them out and gave it to
Rose-Ann. “Here’s one that looks like you,” she said, appraising Rose-
Ann’s figure with a judicious eye. “You can use it for a book-plate if
you like.”
It was like Rose-Ann, Felix thought, when she pinned it on the wall
that night—it had the same firm and delicate contours, the same
sweet livingness of a body that is made for movement, for action, for
intense and poignant use. The figure in the drawing was poised in
the hesitant instant before flight, with head turned to look backward,
and the whole body ready at the next moment either to relapse
again into reassured repose or to put all its force into some wild dash
for freedom. And somehow that too reminded him of Rose-Ann—of
Rose-Ann’s soul.
 Rose-Ann was looking at the picture with eyes in which some
purpose fulminated darkly.
“What are you thinking?” he asked.
“That I shall never wear corsets again! It’s really absurd, isn’t it?
To imprison one’s body in such a thing as that.... I’m going to burn
mine up—now!” And presently, in her chemise and stockings, she
solemnly knelt before the Franklin stove and laid the offending article
upon the live coals.
“The last of my conventions!” she said, as if to herself.
And then, as it commenced to smoulder, and an acrid odour of
burnt rubber emerged, she wrinkled her nostrils and put her thumb
and finger to them. “It thmells bad!” she said. And reflectively: “I
suppose conventions always do, at the end.... Well, it’s gone now,
and my body is free.—Gone forever, leaving nothing but a ... faint
unpleasant odour, shall I say?—behind.... Felix—would you mind if I
cut off my hair?”
“Cut off—!”
“Short, you know. Like Dorothy Sheridan’s. I’ve always wanted to.
And I never quite had the nerve. Living here, it seems only natural.
You wouldn’t mind?”
She loosened her hair and it fell about her shoulders, like a flame.
“I think it would curl if it were cut. It did when I was a little girl.”
“We’ve no scissors,” said Felix, practically—deferring in his own
mind the question of whether he would like her hair cut short or not.
He did not know. It would look well—there was no doubt at all of
that. He had always wondered at the foolish vanity of women, in
putting up with the inconvenience of long hair. He had felt that long
hair was in some way a badge of woman’s dependence on man, a
symbol of her failure to achieve freedom for herself. And yet ... when
it came to Rose-Ann’s hair—
Rose-Ann read his face as a wife can. “No, I suppose not,” she
said, and sighed. “No scissors! Well, there’s always something to
prevent one from being rash. In the morning I shan’t want to—
because I’m going out to look for a job....”
Felix smiled. “Wolf! wolf!” he mocked gently. He had heard that
threat of a job too often to be alarmed about it now.
“You’ll see,” said Rose-Ann gaily.

Felix was accustomed, by masculine prerogative, to get up first on

cold mornings and shake down the fire and make the coffee. But this
morning, having dreamed that he had arisen and performed these
duties (a very realistic dream—he had heard the noise of the poker
among the coals and smelled the fragrance of hot coffee!) he awoke
to see Rose-Ann coming toward him with a cup and saucer, on a
lacquered tray.
“Your morning draught, my lord!”
“Rose-Ann!” he said angrily. She should have let him make that
coffee....
She knelt and offered him the cup, with the air of a page-boy.
Then it was that he saw that her hair was shorn. Short bronze locks
fell clustering about her face in tiny curls, making it boyish, and yet,
it seemed, more girlish than ever. She turned sideways as he stared,
and tilted her head. For the first time its proud contour stood fully
and beautifully revealed. “Isn’t that better than an old top-knot?” she
said.
“But how—” he began.
 “Borrowed scissors from neighbour,” she replied. “What are
neighbours for, if not to depend on in an emergency?”
“Why is this an emergency?” he demanded, still withholding his
approval. “Couldn’t you wait and go to the barber?” Some of the
edges, he noted, were rather jagged.
“No, Felix. Don’t you remember Browning’s poem about the Statue
and the Bust? One puts off things. ‘So days grew months, years.’
Moral: do it now.—But do you like me this way, Felix?”
“Of course I like you.” And then, since he did, he added:
“Tremendously!”
“You—you approve?”
“Yes, but what of that? Can’t you do what you like whether I
approve or not? Aren’t you a free woman?” he teased her.
“That’s what I said to myself. And so I did it. But—I’m glad you like
it, Felix, because—because I’m not sure whether I do or not!”
He laughed. “It will grow again.”
“No—I shan’t let it grow again. I’m going to like it, I know—
eventually; perhaps very soon. It’s just at first.... But I suppose
that’s the way with freedom!... Drink your coffee, Felix, before it gets
cold. I’ll bring mine over there, too. Do you love me—very much?
Look out—you’ll spill the coffee!”
XXXVIII. The Portrait of Felix Fay

R OSE-ANN’S bobbed hair was generally applauded. There were

more studio parties. Felix frivoled, theorized, and wrote jocund
dramatic criticisms, with the thought of Hawkins always at the back
of his mind.
Hawkins’s play had been cast, re-cast, rewritten, and finally tried
out “on the dog,” that is to say, an audience at Atlantic City. And
something was still wrong. So the cast had been dismissed, the
scenery stored, and Hawkins was desperately rewriting his play for
the seventeenth time—this time in collaboration with an expert farce-
builder. And Felix remained for a while longer the acting dramatic
critic of the Chronicle. He figured that if enough misfortunes
happened to Hawkins’s farce, his own tenure in office might last long
enough to entitle him to it in the end. With the most amiable feelings
toward Hawkins, he nevertheless fervently wished “Tootsie-Wootsie”
the worst of bad luck.
 Meanwhile, early in January, he began having his portrait painted
by Dorothy Sheridan.

Having one’s portrait painted was decidedly an experience. When

he came for his first sitting, he found Dorothy Sheridan in a big
kitchen apron, with her sleeves rolled up, looking more as if she
were going to cook a meal than paint a picture. She had called
“Come!” to his knock, and when he entered she went on scraping
the paint from a palette with no more than a casual nod to him. He
put his hat under his arm, and shifting his stick to the crook of his
elbow, took out a cigarette and lighted it; then turned and looked
curiously and hesitantly about the room.
“There! Keep that! Just that way!” Dorothy Sheridan called. “That’s
very good. Very characteristic. No, just as you were. That’s right—
relax a little.”
She gave him these orders from half way across the large studio
room, where she stood in a brusque commanding attitude. Felix
obeyed.
“One minute!” And she ran up the steps to the mezzanine behind
and above Felix, and presently he heard from overhead the swish of
falling cloth. He half turned, and saw that she had flung over the
edge of the mezzanine railing a long piece of rose-coloured silk,
which reached the floor behind him.
“That’s for a background,” she said, and Felix resumed his pose.
She came back, pushed out an easel not far from him and a little
to one side, and then took up a position at a distance from both him
and the easel, armed with a brown crayon. She looked at him
intently, with wide eyes, bending a little, with head forward and face
uplifted. “Mm,” she said, reflectively, and walked swiftly up to the
easel and commenced to draw upon the blank canvas with swift,
vigorous strokes of her crayon. After a little, she walked back to her
former place, resumed her wide-eyed stare, and then returned once
more to the canvas.
After half an hour of this, looking at her subject and drawing on
the canvas in turn, she threw down her crayon. “Can you remember
that pose?” she asked.
Of course Felix could remember it. It was a pose into which he fell
naturally. “Yes,” he said. “May I look?”
“If you want to,” she said indifferently, taking off her apron.
Felix strolled over and looked at the crayon sketch on the canvas.
It was a bold caricature of himself, poised hesitantly with stick and
cigarette, blithe, debonair, and above all a figure of indecision. Was
that himself?
“That’s all for today,” said the painter. “Same time, same day, next
week. Don’t forget.”
He went away, startled and puzzled.
Next week, as he came in, eager for one more look at that
disconcerting caricature, he found the artist painting it out with a
thin grey wash.
“Why do you do that?” he asked.
“Oh, that was only to get the pose,” she said. “This time I want to
get the likeness.”
The portrait seemed to Felix completed at the end of an hour,
when she declared the sitting over and took off her apron. It was
utterly different from the crayon caricature which had preceded it on
the canvas. Out of the misty grey background emerged a face and
two hands, delicately painted, and catching the quizzical expression
of mouth and eyes and the rather limp gesture of the hands, but in a
manner which did not carry more than a few feet from the canvas.
Moreover, this painting was utterly unlike the other things of hers
that he had seen. He wondered, but the painter had hung up her
apron and was looking at a portfolio of drawings, indifferent to his
existence, so he withdrew.
The next time provided still a new surprise. The painter had just
washed out the face and hands on the canvas with turpentine, and
was scraping off the paint when he came in. Was this a confession of
failure? or some new way of painting? or simply the way all painters
went to work?
He was pretty certain, however, that the method pursued in this
present sitting was extraordinary; for this time the painter measured
his head with a pair of calipers, up and down and in every direction,
and noted down the figures on a piece of paper and regarded them
thoughtfully. Then she came up to him and felt of his skull with her
hands; it was not in the least like a caress—it was exactly as if she
were a surgeon, and he were a patient, about to be operated upon.
“Bones!” she said, as if that explained everything, and went to
work on her canvas with a brush dipped in blue paint.... The result,
which Felix viewed with a very queer sensation at the end of the
sitting, was a skeleton-like figure done in blue, with arms and legs
like pieces of steel machinery, and a face with dark blue eye sockets
and a pale blue jaw.... “Lines of force,” explained the painter, and he
went away not knowing whether to laugh or not.
This skeleton was obliterated at the beginning of the fourth sitting,
as the other stages of the picture had been, and Felix wondered,
what next? Colour, it seemed, this time! Great splashes and daubs of
colour, put on anyhow, spread out with a palette-knife, or the
painter’s thumb—a riot, an orgy of rose and green and purple-brown,
with only a suggestion of Felix amid the chromatic swirls....
Felix described each of these stages to Rose-Ann with zest, and
went with infinite curiosity to every new sitting....
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