Of Human Bondage (36 page)

  A man was standing at the studio door with a large
dish into which each person as he went in dropped his half franc.
The studio was much fuller than it had been in the morning, and
there was not the preponderance of English and Americans; nor were
women there in so large a proportion. Philip felt the assemblage
was more the sort of thing he had expected. It was very warm, and
the air quickly grew fetid. It was an old man who sat this time,
with a vast gray beard, and Philip tried to put into practice the
little he had learned in the morning; but he made a poor job of it;
he realised that he could not draw nearly as well as he thought. He
glanced enviously at one or two sketches of men who sat near him,
and wondered whether he would ever be able to use the charcoal with
that mastery. The hour passed quickly. Not wishing to press himself
upon Miss Price he sat down at some distance from her, and at the
end, as he passed her on his way out, she asked him brusquely how
he had got on.

  "Not very well," he smiled.

  "If you'd condescended to come and sit near me I
could have given you some hints. I suppose you thought yourself too
grand."

  "No, it wasn't that. I was afraid you'd think me a
nuisance."

  "When I do that I'll tell you sharp enough."

  Philip saw that in her uncouth way she was offering
him help.

  "Well, tomorrow I'll just force myself upon
you."

  "I don't mind," she answered.

  Philip went out and wondered what he should do with
himself till dinner. He was eager to do something characteristic.
Absinthe! of course it was indicated, and so, sauntering towards
the station, he seated himself outside a cafe and ordered it. He
drank with nausea and satisfaction. He found the taste disgusting,
but the moral effect magnificent; he felt every inch an
art-student; and since he drank on an empty stomach his spirits
presently grew very high. He watched the crowds, and felt all men
were his brothers. He was happy. When he reached Gravier's the
table at which Clutton sat was full, but as soon as he saw Philip
limping along he called out to him. They made room. The dinner was
frugal, a plate of soup, a dish of meat, fruit, cheese, and half a
bottle of wine; but Philip paid no attention to what he ate. He
took note of the men at the table. Flanagan was there again: he was
an American, a short, snub-nosed youth with a jolly face and a
laughing mouth. He wore a Norfolk jacket of bold pattern, a blue
stock round his neck, and a tweed cap of fantastic shape. At that
time impressionism reigned in the Latin Quarter, but its victory
over the older schools was still recent; and Carolus-Duran,
Bouguereau, and their like were set up against Manet, Monet, and
Degas. To appreciate these was still a sign of grace. Whistler was
an influence strong with the English and his compatriots, and the
discerning collected Japanese prints. The old masters were tested
by new standards. The esteem in which Raphael had been for
centuries held was a matter of derision to wise young men. They
offered to give all his works for Velasquez' head of Philip IV in
the National Gallery. Philip found that a discussion on art was
raging. Lawson, whom he had met at luncheon, sat opposite to him.
He was a thin youth with a freckled face and red hair. He had very
bright green eyes. As Philip sat down he fixed them on him and
remarked suddenly:

  "Raphael was only tolerable when he painted other
people's pictures. When he painted Peruginos or Pinturichios he was
charming; when he painted Raphaels he was," with a scornful shrug,
"Raphael."

  Lawson spoke so aggressively that Philip was taken
aback, but he was not obliged to answer because Flanagan broke in
impatiently.

  "Oh, to hell with art!" he cried. "Let's get
ginny."

  "You were ginny last night, Flanagan," said
Lawson.

  "Nothing to what I mean to be tonight," he answered.
"Fancy being in Pa-ris and thinking of nothing but art all the
time." He spoke with a broad Western accent. "My, it is good to be
alive." He gathered himself together and then banged his fist on
the table. "To hell with art, I say."

  "You not only say it, but you say it with tiresome
iteration," said Clutton severely.

  There was another American at the table. He was
dressed like those fine fellows whom Philip had seen that afternoon
in the Luxembourg. He had a handsome face, thin, ascetic, with dark
eyes; he wore his fantastic garb with the dashing air of a
buccaneer. He had a vast quantity of dark hair which fell
constantly over his eyes, and his most frequent gesture was to
throw back his head dramatically to get some long wisp out of the
way. He began to talk of the Olympia by Manet, which then hung in
the Luxembourg.

  "I stood in front of it for an hour today, and I
tell you it's not a good picture."

  Lawson put down his knife and fork. His green eyes
flashed fire, he gasped with rage; but he could be seen imposing
calm upon himself.

  "It's very interesting to hear the mind of the
untutored savage," he said. "Will you tell us why it isn't a good
picture?"

  Before the American could answer someone else broke
in vehemently.

  "D'you mean to say you can look at the painting of
that flesh and say it's not good?"

  "I don't say that. I think the right breast is very
well painted."

  "The right breast be damned," shouted Lawson. "The
whole thing's a miracle of painting."

  He began to describe in detail the beauties of the
picture, but at this table at Gravier's they who spoke at length
spoke for their own edification. No one listened to him. The
American interrupted angrily.

  "You don't mean to say you think the head's
good?"

  Lawson, white with passion now, began to defend the
head; but Clutton, who had been sitting in silence with a look on
his face of good-humoured scorn, broke in.

  "Give him the head. We don't want the head. It
doesn't affect the picture."

  "All right, I'll give you the head," cried Lawson.
"Take the head and be damned to you."

  "What about the black line?" cried the American,
triumphantly pushing back a wisp of hair which nearly fell in his
soup. "You don't see a black line round objects in nature."

  "Oh, God, send down fire from heaven to consume the
blasphemer," said Lawson. "What has nature got to do with it? No
one knows what's in nature and what isn't! The world sees nature
through the eyes of the artist. Why, for centuries it saw horses
jumping a fence with all their legs extended, and by Heaven, sir,
they were extended. It saw shadows black until Monet discovered
they were coloured, and by Heaven, sir, they were black. If we
choose to surround objects with a black line, the world will see
the black line, and there will be a black line; and if we paint
grass red and cows blue, it'll see them red and blue, and, by
Heaven, they will be red and blue."

  "To hell with art," murmured Flanagan. "I want to
get ginny."

  Lawson took no notice of the interruption.

  "Now look here, when Olympia was shown at the Salon,
Zola – amid the jeers of the Philistines and the hisses of the
pompiers, the academicians, and the public, Zola said: `I look
forward to the day when Manet's picture will hang in the Louvre
opposite the Odalisque of Ingres, and it will not be the Odalisque
which will gain by comparison.' It'll be there. Every day I see the
time grow nearer. In ten years the Olympia will be in the
Louvre."

  "Never," shouted the American, using both hands now
with a sudden desperate attempt to get his hair once for all out of
the way. "In ten years that picture will be dead. It's only a
fashion of the moment. No picture can live that hasn't got
something which that picture misses by a million miles."

  "And what is that?"

  "Great art can't exist without a moral element."

  "Oh God!" cried Lawson furiously. "I knew it was
that. He wants morality." He joined his hands and held them towards
heaven in supplication. "Oh, Christopher Columbus, Christopher
Columbus, what did you do when you discovered America?"

  "Ruskin says..."

  But before he could add another word, Clutton rapped
with the handle of his knife imperiously on the table.

  "Gentlemen," he said in a stern voice, and his huge
nose positively wrinkled with passion, "a name has been mentioned
which I never thought to hear again in decent society. Freedom of
speech is all very well, but we must observe the limits of common
propriety. You may talk of Bouguereau if you will: there is a
cheerful disgustingness in the sound which excites laughter; but
let us not sully our chaste lips with the names of J. Ruskin, G. F.
Watts, or E. B. Jones."

  "Who was Ruskin anyway?" asked Flanagan.

  "He was one of the Great Victorians. He was a master
of English style."

  "Ruskin's style – a thing of shreds and purple
patches," said Lawson. "Besides, damn the Great Victorians.
Whenever I open a paper and see Death of a Great Victorian, I thank
Heaven there's one more of them gone. Their only talent was
longevity, and no artist should be allowed to live after he's
forty; by then a man has done his best work, all he does after that
is repetition. Don't you think it was the greatest luck in the
world for them that Keats, Shelley, Bonnington, and Byron died
early? What a genius we should think Swinburne if he had perished
on the day the first series of Poems and Ballads was
published!"

  The suggestion pleased, for no one at the table was
more than twenty-four, and they threw themselves upon it with
gusto. They were unanimous for once. They elaborated. Someone
proposed a vast bonfire made out of the works of the Forty
Academicians into which the Great Victorians might be hurled on
their fortieth birthday. The idea was received with acclamation.
Carlyle and Ruskin, Tennyson, Browning, G. F. Watts, E. B. Jones,
Dickens, Thackeray, they were hurried into the flames; Mr.
Gladstone, John Bright, and Cobden; there was a moment's discussion
about George Meredith, but Matthew Arnold and Emerson were given up
cheerfully. At last came Walter Pater.

  "Not Walter Pater," murmured Philip.

  Lawson stared at him for a moment with his green
eyes and then nodded.

  "You're quite right, Walter Pater is the only
justification for Mona Lisa. D'you know Cronshaw? He used to know
Pater."

  "Who's Cronshaw?" asked Philip.

  "Cronshaw's a poet. He lives here. Let's go to the
Lilas."

  La Closerie des Lilas was a cafe to which they often
went in the evening after dinner, and here Cronshaw was invariably
to be found between the hours of nine at night and two in the
morning. But Flanagan had had enough of intellectual conversation
for one evening, and when Lawson made his suggestion, turned to
Philip.

  "Oh gee, let's go where there are girls," he said.
"Come to the Gaite Montparnasse, and we'll get ginny."

  "I'd rather go and see Cronshaw and keep sober,"
laughed Philip.

  There was a general disturbance. Flanagan and two or
three more went on to the music-hall, while Philip walked slowly
with Clutton and Lawson to the Closerie des Lilas.

  "You must go to the Gaite Montparnasse," said Lawson
to him. "It's one of the loveliest things in Paris. I'm going to
paint it one of these days."

  Philip, influenced by Hayward, looked upon
music-halls with scornful eyes, but he had reached Paris at a time
when their artistic possibilities were just discovered. The
peculiarities of lighting, the masses of dingy red and tarnished
gold, the heaviness of the shadows and the decorative lines,
offered a new theme; and half the studios in the Quarter contained
sketches made in one or other of the local theatres. Men of
letters, following in the painters' wake, conspired suddenly to
find artistic value in the turns; and red-nosed comedians were
lauded to the skies for their sense of character; fat female
singers, who had bawled obscurely for twenty years, were discovered
to possess inimitable drollery; there were those who found an
aesthetic delight in performing dogs; while others exhausted their
vocabulary to extol the distinction of conjurers and
trick-cyclists. The crowd too, under another influence, was become
an object of sympathetic interest. With Hayward, Philip had
disdained humanity in the mass; he adopted the attitude of one who
wraps himself in solitariness and watches with disgust the antics
of the vulgar; but Clutton and Lawson talked of the multitude with
enthusiasm. They described the seething throng that filled the
various fairs of Paris, the sea of faces, half seen in the glare of
acetylene, half hidden in the darkness, and the blare of trumpets,
the hooting of whistles, the hum of voices. What they said was new
and strange to Philip. They told him about Cronshaw.