Of Human Bondage (47 page)

  Clutton put his hands over his eyes so that he might
concentrate his mind on what he wanted to say.

  "The artist gets a peculiar sensation from something
he sees, and is impelled to express it and, he doesn't know why, he
can only express his feeling by lines and colours. It's like a
musician; he'll read a line or two, and a certain combination of
notes presents itself to him: he doesn't know why such and such
words call forth in him such and such notes; they just do. And I'll
tell you another reason why criticism is meaningless: a great
painter forces the world to see nature as he sees it; but in the
next generation another painter sees the world in another way, and
then the public judges him not by himself but by his predecessor.
So the Barbizon people taught our fathers to look at trees in a
certain manner, and when Monet came along and painted differently,
people said: But trees aren't like that. It never struck them that
trees are exactly how a painter chooses to see them. We paint from
within outwards – if we force our vision on the world it calls us
great painters; if we don't it ignores us; but we are the same. We
don't attach any meaning to greatness or to smallness. What happens
to our work afterwards is unimportant; we have got all we could out
of it while we were doing it."

  There was a pause while Clutton with voracious
appetite devoured the food that was set before him. Philip, smoking
a cheap cigar, observed him closely. The ruggedness of the head,
which looked as though it were carved from a stone refractory to
the sculptor's chisel, the rough mane of dark hair, the great nose,
and the massive bones of the jaw, suggested a man of strength; and
yet Philip wondered whether perhaps the mask concealed a strange
weakness. Clutton's refusal to show his work might be sheer vanity:
he could not bear the thought of anyone's criticism, and he would
not expose himself to the chance of a refusal from the Salon; he
wanted to be received as a master and would not risk comparisons
with other work which might force him to diminish his own opinion
of himself. During the eighteen months Philip had known him Clutton
had grown more harsh and bitter; though he would not come out into
the open and compete with his fellows, he was indignant with the
facile success of those who did. He had no patience with Lawson,
and the pair were no longer on the intimate terms upon which they
had been when Philip first knew them.

  "Lawson's all right," he said contemptuously, "he'll
go back to England, become a fashionable portrait painter, earn ten
thousand a year and be an A. R. A. before he's forty. Portraits
done by hand for the nobility and gentry!"

  Philip, too, looked into the future, and he saw
Clutton in twenty years, bitter, lonely, savage, and unknown; still
in Paris, for the life there had got into his bones, ruling a small
cenacle with a savage tongue, at war with himself and the world,
producing little in his increasing passion for a perfection he
could not reach; and perhaps sinking at last into drunkenness. Of
late Philip had been captivated by an idea that since one had only
one life it was important to make a success of it, but he did not
count success by the acquiring of money or the achieving of fame;
he did not quite know yet what he meant by it, perhaps variety of
experience and the making the most of his abilities. It was plain
anyway that the life which Clutton seemed destined to was failure.
Its only justification would be the painting of imperishable
masterpieces. He recollected Cronshaw's whimsical metaphor of the
Persian carpet; he had thought of it often; but Cronshaw with his
faun-like humour had refused to make his meaning clear: he repeated
that it had none unless one discovered it for oneself. It was this
desire to make a success of life which was at the bottom of
Philip's uncertainty about continuing his artistic career. But
Clutton began to talk again.

  "D'you remember my telling you about that chap I met
in Brittany? I saw him the other day here. He's just off to Tahiti.
He was broke to the world. He was a brasseur d'affaires, a
stockbroker I suppose you call it in English; and he had a wife and
family, and he was earning a large income. He chucked it all to
become a painter. He just went off and settled down in Brittany and
began to paint. He hadn't got any money and did the next best thing
to starving."

  "And what about his wife and family?" asked
Philip.

  "Oh, he dropped them. He left them to starve on
their own account."

  "It sounds a pretty low-down thing to do."

  "Oh, my dear fellow, if you want to be a gentleman
you must give up being an artist. They've got nothing to do with
one another. You hear of men painting pot-boilers to keep an aged
mother – well, it shows they're excellent sons, but it's no excuse
for bad work. They're only tradesmen. An artist would let his
mother go to the workhouse. There's a writer I know over here who
told me that his wife died in childbirth. He was in love with her
and he was mad with grief, but as he sat at the bedside watching
her die he found himself making mental notes of how she looked and
what she said and the things he was feeling. Gentlemanly, wasn't
it?"

  "But is your friend a good painter?" asked
Philip.

  "No, not yet, he paints just like Pissarro. He
hasn't found himself, but he's got a sense of colour and a sense of
decoration. But that isn't the question. it's the feeling, and that
he's got. He's behaved like a perfect cad to his wife and children,
he's always behaving like a perfect cad; the way he treats the
people who've helped him – and sometimes he's been saved from
starvation merely by the kindness of his friends – is simply
beastly. He just happens to be a great artist."

  Philip pondered over the man who was willing to
sacrifice everything, comfort, home, money, love, honour, duty, for
the sake of getting on to canvas with paint the emotion which the
world gave him. it was magnificent, and yet his courage failed
him.

  Thinking of Cronshaw recalled to him the fact that
he had not seen him for a week, and so, when Clutton left him, he
wandered along to the cafe in which he was certain to find the
writer. During the first few months of his stay in Paris Philip had
accepted as gospel all that Cronshaw said, but Philip had a
practical outlook and he grew impatient with the theories which
resulted in no action. Cronshaw's slim bundle of poetry did not
seem a substantial result for a life which was sordid. Philip could
not wrench out of his nature the instincts of the middle-class from
which he came; and the penury, the hack work which Cronshaw did to
keep body and soul together, the monotony of existence between the
slovenly attic and the cafe table, jarred with his respectability.
Cronshaw was astute enough to know that the young man disapproved
of him, and he attacked his philistinism with an irony which was
sometimes playful but often very keen.

  "You're a tradesman," he told Philip, "you want to
invest life in consols so that it shall bring you in a safe three
per cent. I'm a spendthrift, I run through my capital. I shall
spend my last penny with my last heartbeat."

  The metaphor irritated Philip, because it assumed
for the speaker a romantic attitude and cast a slur upon the
position which Philip instinctively felt had more to say for it
than he could think of at the moment.

  But this evening Philip, undecided, wanted to talk
about himself. Fortunately it was late already and Cronshaw's pile
of saucers on the table, each indicating a drink, suggested that he
was prepared to take an independent view of things in general.

  "I wonder if you'd give me some advice," said Philip
suddenly.

  "You won't take it, will you?"

  Philip shrugged his shoulders impatiently.

  "I don't believe I shall ever do much good as a
painter. I don't see any use in being second-rate. I'm thinking of
chucking it."

  "Why shouldn't you?"

  Philip hesitated for an instant.

  "I suppose I like the life."

  A change came over Cronshaw's placid, round face.
The corners of the mouth were suddenly depressed, the eyes sunk
dully in their orbits; he seemed to become strangely bowed and
old.

  "This?" he cried, looking round the cafe in which
they sat. His voice really trembled a little.

  "If you can get out of it, do while there's
time."

  Philip stared at him with astonishment, but the
sight of emotion always made him feel shy, and he dropped his eyes.
He knew that he was looking upon the tragedy of failure. There was
silence. Philip thought that Cronshaw was looking upon his own
life; and perhaps he considered his youth with its bright hopes and
the disappointments which wore out the radiancy; the wretched
monotony of pleasure, and the black future. Philip's eyes rested on
the little pile of saucers, and he knew that Cronshaw's were on
them too.

  Two months passed.

  It seemed to Philip, brooding over these matters,
that in the true painters, writers, musicians, there was a power
which drove them to such complete absorption in their work as to
make it inevitable for them to subordinate life to art. Succumbing
to an influence they never realised, they were merely dupes of the
instinct that possessed them, and life slipped through their
fingers unlived. But he had a feeling that life was to be lived
rather than portrayed, and he wanted to search out the various
experiences of it and wring from each moment all the emotion that
it offered. He made up his mind at length to take a certain step
and abide by the result, and, having made up his mind, he
determined to take the step at once. Luckily enough the next
morning was one of Foinet's days, and he resolved to ask him
point-blank whether it was worth his while to go on with the study
of art. He had never forgotten the master's brutal advice to Fanny
Price. It had been sound. Philip could never get Fanny entirely out
of his head. The studio seemed strange without her, and now and
then the gesture of one of the women working there or the tone of a
voice would give him a sudden start, reminding him of her: her
presence was more noticuble?? now she was dead than it had ever
been during her life; and he often dreamed of her at night, waking
with a cry of terror. it was horrible to think of all the suffering
she must have endured.

  Philip knew that on the days Foinet came to the
studio he lunched at a little restaurant in the Rue d'Odessa, and
he hurried his own meal so that he could go and wait outside till
the painter came out. Philip walked up and down the crowded street
and at last saw Monsieur Foinet walking, with bent head, towards
him; Philip was very nervous, but he forced himself to go up to
him.

  "Pardon, monsieur, I should like to speak to you for
one moment."

  Foinet gave him a rapid glance, recognised him, but
did not smile a greeting.

  "Speak," he said.

  "I've been working here nearly two years now under
you. I wanted to ask you to tell me frankly if you think it worth
while for me to continue."

  Philip's voice was trembling a little. Foinet walked
on without looking up. Philip, watching his face, saw no trace of
expression upon it.

  "I don't understand."

  "I'm very poor. If I have no talent I would sooner
do something else."

  "Don't you know if you have talent?"

  "All my friends know they have talent, but I am
aware some of them are mistaken."

  Foinet's bitter mouth outlined the shadow of a
smile, and he asked:

  "Do you live near here?"

  Philip told him where his studio was. Foinet turned
round.

  "Let us go there? You shall show me your work."

  "Now?" cried Philip.

  "Why not?"

  Philip had nothing to say. He walked silently by the
master's side. He felt horribly sick. It had never struck him that
Foinet would wish to see his things there and then; he meant, so
that he might have time to prepare himself, to ask him if he would
mind coming at some future date or whether he might bring them to
Foinet's studio. He was trembling with anxiety. In his heart he
hoped that Foinet would look at his picture, and that rare smile
would come into his face, and he would shake Philip's hand and say:
"Pas mal. Go on, my lad. You have talent, real talent." Philip's
heart swelled at the thought. It was such a relief, such a joy! Now
he could go on with courage; and what did hardship matter,
privation, and disappointment, if he arrived at last? He had worked
very hard, it would be too cruel if all that industry were futile.
And then with a start he remembered that he had heard Fanny Price
say just that. They arrived at the house, and Philip was seized
with fear. If he had dared he would have asked Foinet to go away.
He did not want to know the truth. They went in and the concierge
handed him a letter as they passed. He glanced at the envelope and
recognised his uncle's handwriting. Foinet followed him up the
stairs. Philip could think of nothing to say; Foinet was mute, and
the silence got on his nerves. The professor sat down; and Philip
without a word placed before him the picture which the Salon had
rejected; Foinet nodded but did not speak; then Philip showed him
the two portraits he had made of Ruth Chalice, two or three
landscapes which he had painted at Moret, and a number of
sketches.