The Merciless Ladies (10 page)

Paul got up. ‘I'm not unaware of my debts – and I try to pay them. I'm truly sorry that Diana feels the way she does. At the moment the matter is out of my hands because the Academy has accepted it for exhibition. I understand it's to be hung on the line. But once it has been exhibited in this way she's welcome to it. I'll not sell it to her, I'll
give
it her.'

The Colonel stared through Paul with his icy eyes. ‘You could still withdraw the picture. You could say that circumstances – er – had arisen which – er – made it impossible—'

‘Colonel Marnsett, circumstances have
not
arisen. Personally I think your wife is greatly exaggerating the effect the painting will have on anyone else.
She
may see it as unflattering. Most people won't even
consider
it in that way.'

‘But the effect on her is still as upsetting … Perhaps there's another approach I could make. Suppose I were to find a purchaser who would undertake not to destroy the painting. And within reason you could name your own price.'

‘After the show I should be
most
interested.'

‘I am talking of before the show, as you very well know. Would six hundred guineas interest you?'

‘I'm sorry. At this stage the painting isn't for sale.'

Colonel Marnsett continued to prod the carpet. He was not a man lightly to be crossed.

‘I appreciate that what you're really seeking is the sensational publicity. What is that worth to you?'

‘The picture isn't for sale.'

Marnsett slowly picked up his hat, got to his feet. ‘You'll not do yourself any good at all, you know. Do you know? I am not without influence in these matters. After this, few women will risk being held up to public ridicule.'

‘That's a chance that must be taken. I'm getting tired of seeking solely to please.'

‘I've long had my own opinion of you, Stafford. It has been against my wishes that my wife has associated with you. I know your kind: the upstart with a good command of the latest artistic catchwords to justify whatever he may choose to attempt. You bring your profession into disrepute.'

‘At least', said Paul, ‘I confine myself to my own profession. I don't think this conversation is getting us anywhere, do you?'

Later that evening Paul told me what had passed. ‘They can have the thing after the show', he added. ‘But I do – for once – want the reactions of the critics and the public.

‘They've praised and blamed so much of my conventional stuff …'

‘What's objectionable about it?'

‘To Diana? I suppose the fact that she doesn't look as beautiful as she expected. The trouble is that although everyone has heard of Chagall and Picasso and Modigliani, nobody wants a portrait of themselves to look like that. Well, come to the preview and judge for yourself.'

By now Paul's exhibition at the Ludwig Galleries was just open. Downstairs was given over entirely to the historical series, and room had been found there for the rejected Mrs Fitzherbert. I confess I didn't think it one of his best works, and I believe he may have later destroyed it, for I've not been able to trace it today. Altogether, although he put some store by these, as it were, allegorical portraits I preferred his other work, which was upstairs. Among these was his portrait of Dr Marshall, back from Paris and shortly to be sent to the old man. Also, I was glad to see, that little fairy-tale fantasy he'd conjured up in ten minutes when I was there.

Three days before the opening of the Summer Show Paul received a letter from the Academy. It said that the hanging committee, after careful consideration, had been unable to find room for the portrait of Mrs Brian Marnsett after all. Pressure of space, they went on …

‘Pressure of the Colonel!' said Paul, white-faced, and chewed the end of his pen for a few minutes. Then he wrote a reply. He took a taxi at once to Burlington House and brought the picture away, together with that of Lady Blakeley, and bore them straight round to King Street, where some of his other pictures were rearranged to make room for them. Then he telephoned the
Morning Post
, which had just given him a very good criticism of his own exhibition. The next day there was a paragraph in the paper headed:

ARTIST WITHDRAWS PICTURE AS PROTEST

‘Last night, Mr Paul Stafford, well-known portrait painter, announced his intention of withdrawing his portrait of Lady Blakeley from the Royal Academy Exhibition, which opens to the public on Tuesday next, as a protest against the rejection of one of the pictures he submitted. In an exclusive interview given to our representative he states that originally two of his pictures were accepted and that only at the last moment was one of these arbitrarily returned to him. He described such treatment as without precedent and said that the present committee should be superseded by one abreast of modern ideas.

‘The rejected picture is now on view at the Ludwig Galleries. It is a portrait of a well-known society lady, and our art critic, John Grey, suggests that it shows the influence of early Byzantine art.

‘An official of the Royal Academy, interviewed later, declined to comment on the matter except to state that such an occurrence was not without precedent, and that the decision of the hanging committee must be accepted as final.'

That evening Paul had two other callers from the Press and while he was disposing of one, the telephone-bell rang. I picked up the receiver.

‘Mr Stafford?'

‘Mr Stafford is engaged at the moment.'

‘Oh, is that Mr Grant? I thought I recognized your voice. This is Ludwig speaking.'

I had recognized
his
voice too. ‘I don't suppose Paul will be more than ten minutes. Shall I get him to ring you back?'

‘Well … I wonder if you'd help me by putting a little matter to Mr Stafford? That you are his good friend I know. I am feeling a trifle uneasy – more than a trifle uneasy, I might say, about this portrait of Mrs Marnsett. From an artistic point of view it is beautiful, yes. But I do feel it would be better hung upstairs.'

‘I don't understand.'

‘I was not here when Mr Stafford came in yesterday, but he insisted, Mr Abrahams says, insisted it should be hung with his historical paintings.'

‘Is there anything wrong with that?' I asked, knowing now what he meant.

‘Well, Mr Grant, every one of his historical studies is of a lady of light virtue. They comprise a series. To break up that series and insert one modern portrait …'

‘Ye-es.'

‘I gather – well, we all know, don't we? – that the painting has given some offence to the sitter. It seems a pity to make matters worse.'

‘I'll speak to Mr Stafford about it as soon as I can and ring you back in half an hour.'

‘Thank you. I'd be obliged.'

When I told Paul he stared at me and then laughed. ‘Well, that's where Diana belongs, isn't it? And downstairs is the best light. She's where you can see in through the window.'

‘Ludwig obviously thinks you're on delicate ground.'

‘Let's stay on delicate ground. Fitzherbert was upright and decent and God-fearing. La Vallierè would never have treated a man as callously as Diana treated Leo.'

‘I suppose Ludwig feels that Marnsett is a man of influence and doesn't want to be involved in anything which will give him a grudge against his galleries.'

Paul got up and bit at his fingers.‘I'll ring him back now. But the exhibition is mine and he agreed to hold it. That painting's a good one and deserves the best position. That's all that should matter to him. Diana has only herself to blame for pulling strings.'

III

In reading the reviews of the Academy Exhibition for that year it's perfectly clear that most of the critics had taken the trouble, either before or after, to visit the Ludwig Galleries, four minutes' walk away, and examine Paul's rejected portrait for themselves. Certainly most of them in one way or another referred to it. Alfred Young, who had so long been Paul's severest critic, was among those who said bluntly that the hanging committee had made a mistake.

‘Portraiture [he wrote] follows conventional lines … Apart from these there is little to remark, and one misses the vigorous if facile work of Stafford. In rejecting his portrait of the Hon. Mrs Brian Marnsett they have done art in this country a notable disservice. This picture would never be a popular one with the public – some might consider it distasteful – but we feel that its honesty and strength and originality put it above everything which is at present showing at Burlington House. For Stafford himself it is a complete break with tradition, and will tend to encourage those who long ago saw in him the beginning of a new movement in portraiture and who of late years have reluctantly felt that prophecy to be misplaced.'

During the week I was at last able to snatch half an hour and take a look at the cause of all the trouble.

It's difficult, seeing a reproduction of it today, to appreciate the rather shocking impact it had when first shown. Art has moved far in fifty years. Not that the informed public was unaware of the brilliant and bizarre work which had been emerging from France and other parts of Europe for more than a quarter of a century – as Paul pointed out. Names like Braque, Picabia, Léger Picasso were becoming known. But by and large they were still not accepted. It wasn't so many years since the first Post-Impressionist exhibition had opened in London and been greeted with derisive laughter.

Nor, of course, was there a lack of unorthodox and unflattering portraits in history. Goya had even guyed the royal family on whom he depended for his patronage. But he was one of the ‘classics'. As of the mid-Nineteen-Twenties, in England, this sort of thing was not expected of a fashionable portrait painter exhibiting at the Royal Academy.

The picture was a half-length of Diana sitting beside a table on which was a spray of carnations. There was no true perspective, the figure being fitted into a background of sharply defined areas of colour, almost like stained glass. Although quite out of proportion, the face was marvellously recognizable. All that old gift of caricature had come out – the hairline, eton-cropped, was hard as a convict's, the plucked eyebrows described precisely the same downward arc as the sulky mouth; and lines on the pure dusky skin were where no lines yet existed but where, the viewer instantly saw, they were
going
to exist.

‘It's not a picture', I said to Paul, ‘that will gain you many commissions.'

‘Old John Grey says it reminds him of Velasquez's portrait of Queen Mariana. I've never seen it but I'll pin that up for a comparison.'

We talked of other things for a few minutes, and then abruptly he came back to it. ‘ Of course I know most of our set – or her set – will think I'm tired of her and been deliberately insulting. Let 'em say so. It isn't that, I tell you. She asked me to paint her and I did just that. I was bored with the idea at first – as I've begun to get stale and bored with the whole of my present job – but
not
bored with
her
particularly. I find her hardness, her shallowness, her selfishness, intolerable at times – but no more so than I find
myself …
'

‘Why?'

‘Why what? Why do I find myself shallow? Or rather
when
. When I contrast the money I make and the way I spend it with the Depression and the way maybe one in ten of the rest of us live. Of course, I don't think of it often, and when I do I know I can do nothing to alter it. But now and then it eats into me. So …'

‘So you began to paint her.'

‘I began to
paint
her. I won't inflict the word inspiration on you – especially something which may look – destructive – to you

‘I didn't say so—'

‘But sometimes, quite unexpectedly, things fuse, reluctance becomes inclination, inclination takes flight. Some thing happens and from then on everything moves to one end. You don't think of anybody else, I'm afraid; certainly not the sitter; and when it's finished you're
released
from the driving force; then you take the responsibility – get the praise or the blame, anything else that's going. Of course … of course I know Diana particularly well: if something of that comes out, an understanding of her tricks and conceits and her discontent – then I'm to blame for that. But I assure you, it came from too deep inside me to be called deliberate, and it's as much a criticism of myself as it is of her.'

He stopped for a bit then and ran a hand over his face, as if apologetic for having talked at more length than usual.

‘Anyway', he said. ‘My show closes next Saturday. She can have it then to do what she likes with. Or I'll give it to old Marnsett as a parting gift.'

This good intention never came off. The forces to arrest it were already in motion. On the Thursday Messrs Berriman, Smith & Berriman of Chancery Lane, acting on behalf of their client, the Hon. Mrs Brian Marnsett, issued a writ for libel against Mr Paul Stafford and claimed damages.

On a wet Friday afternoon in May I found myself sitting with Paul in the dingy offices of Messrs Jade & Freeman at an address mistakenly called New Square, EC4. Paul had asked me to go with him. The two gentlemen we were consulting were Mr Freeman and Mr Kidstone.

Freeman, the senior partner, was a wizened, grey-haired man with a high frail voice and a fastidious expression as if a lifetime of acquaintance with the secrets of his fellow men had left him nauseated. Kidstone was blond and dapper and fat and in the middle thirties. He was a member of the Hanover Club and Paul had taken the writ to him.

‘Well', said Mr Freeman. ‘It's a very interesting case. Unique in the history of the law, I should think. Though there have been a few not dissimilar precedents. What surprises me is that the Ludwig Galleries is not jointly cited. I can't see Berriman issuing a writ without including the owner of the premises on which the alleged libel was published.'