25 by Beverley Nichols — Read

I have always been puzzled by the universal tendency of democratic communities to attach the most revolting vices to those whom they have chosen to govern them. It is considered a matter of course that the King's Speech should be composed by men in the last stages of delirium tremens. And the majority of Cabinet Ministers are, of course, devotees of such diversions as unnatural vice, unless their fingers are perpetually itching to get at a hypodermic syringe. As an entertainment, one can spend many elevating hours by fixing particular vices to particular ministers, saying, for instance, that President Wilson used to beat his wife, or that Clemenceau had a morning bath of cocaine (which would still not account for his extraordinary vitality). But when one remembers that these libels are uttered with equal assurance by members of every party in the State, the consequent reflection on representative government is not a pleasing one.

Artists are a little luckier than politicians. It is taken for granted, by the great public, that they _must_ be immoral, being artists, and their immoralities are not therefore discussed with the same relish. Instead, it is merely asserted that they are mad, a statement which does no harm to anybody.