XL
A few days later Mrs. Carey went to the station to see Philip off. She stood at the door of the carriage, trying to keep back her tears. Philip was restless and eager. He wanted to be gone.
“Kiss me once more,” she said.
He leaned out of the window and kissed her. The train started, and she stood on the wooden platform of the little station, waving her handkerchief till it was out of sight. Her heart was dreadfully heavy, and the few hundred yards to the vicarage seemed very, very long. It was natural enough that he should be eager to go, she thought, he was a boy and the future beckoned to him; but she she clenched her teeth so that she should not cry. She uttered a little inward prayer that God would guard him, and keep him out of temptation, and give him happiness and good fortune.
But Philip ceased to think of her a moment after he had settled down in his carriage. He thought only of the future. He had written to Mrs. Otter, the massiere to whom Hayward had given him an introduction, and had in his pocket an invitation to tea on the following day. When he arrived in Paris he had his luggage put on a cab and trundled off slowly through the gay streets, over the bridge, and along the narrow ways of the Latin Quarter. He had taken a room at the Hotel des Deux Ecoles, which was in a shabby street off the Boulevard du Montparnasse; it was convenient for Amitrano’s School at which he was going to work. A waiter took his box up five flights of stairs, and Philip was shown into a tiny room, fusty from unopened windows, the greater part of which was taken up by a large wooden bed with a canopy over it of red rep; there were heavy curtains on the windows of the same dingy material; the chest of drawers served also as a washing-stand; and there was a massive wardrobe of the style which is connected with the good King Louis Philippe. The wall-paper was discoloured with age; it was dark gray, and there could be vaguely seen on it garlands of brown leaves. To Philip the room seemed quaint and charming.
Though it was late he felt too excited to sleep and, going out, made his way into the boulevard and walked towards the light. This led him to the station; and the square in front of it, vivid with arc-lamps, noisy with the yellow trams that seemed to cross it in all directions, made him laugh aloud with joy. There were cafes all round, and by chance, thirsty and eager to get a nearer sight of the crowd, Philip installed himself at a little table outside the Cafe de Versailles. Every other table was taken, for it was a fine night; and Philip looked curiously at the people, here little family groups, there a knot of men with odd-shaped hats and beards talking loudly and gesticulating; next to him were two men who looked like painters with women who Philip hoped were not their lawful wives; behind him he heard Americans loudly arguing on art. His soul was thrilled. He sat till very late, tired out but too happy to move, and when at last he went to bed he was wide awake; he listened to the manifold noise of Paris.
Next day about tea-time he made his way to the Lion de Belfort, and in a new street that led out of the Boulevard Raspail found Mrs. Otter. She was an insignificant woman of thirty, with a provincial air and a deliberately lady-like manner; she introduced him to her mother. He discovered presently that she had been studying in Paris for three years and later that she was separated from her husband. She had in her small drawing-room one or two portraits which she had painted, and to Philip’s inexperience they seemed extremely accomplished.
“I wonder if I shall ever be able to paint as well as that,” he said to her.
“Oh, I expect so,” she replied, not without self-satisfaction. “You can’t expect to do everything all at once, of course.”
She was very kind. She gave him the address of a shop where he could get a portfolio, drawing-paper, and charcoal.
“I shall be going to Amitrano’s about nine tomorrow, and if you’ll be there then I’ll see that you get a good place and all that sort of thing.”
She asked him what he wanted to do, and Philip felt that he should not let her see how vague he was about the whole matter.
“Well, first I want to learn to draw,” he said.
“I’m so glad to hear you say that. People always want to do things in such a hurry. I never touched oils till I’d been here for two years, and look at the result.”
She gave a glance at the portrait of her mother, a sticky piece of painting that hung over the piano.
“And if I were you, I would be very careful about the people you get to know. I wouldn’t mix myself up with any foreigners. I’m very careful myself.”
Philip thanked her for the suggestion, but it seemed to him odd. He did not know that he particularly wanted to be careful.
“We live just as we would if we were in England,” said Mrs. Otter’s mother, who till then had spoken little. “When we came here we brought all our own furniture over.”
Philip looked round the room. It was filled with a massive suite, and at the window were the same sort of white lace curtains which Aunt Louisa put up at the vicarage in summer. The piano was draped in Liberty silk and so was the chimney-piece. Mrs. Otter followed his wandering eye.
“In the evening when we close the shutters one might really feel one was in England.”
“And we have our meals just as if we were at home,” added her mother. “A meat breakfast in the morning and dinner in the middle of the day.”
When he left Mrs. Otter Philip went to buy drawing materials; and next morning at the stroke of nine, trying to seem self-assured, he presented himself at the school. Mrs. Otter was already there, and she came forward with a friendly smile. He had been anxious about the reception he would have as a nouveau, for he had read a good deal of the rough joking to which a newcomer was exposed at some of the studios; but Mrs. Otter had reassured him.
“Oh, there’s nothing like that here,” she said. “You see, about half our students are ladies, and they set a tone to the place.”
The studio was large and bare, with gray walls, on which were pinned the studies that had received prizes. A model was sitting in a chair with a loose wrap thrown over her, and about a dozen men and women were standing about, some talking and others still working on their sketch. It was the first rest of the model.
“You’d better not try anything too difficult at first,” said Mrs. Otter. “Put your easel here. You’ll find that’s the easiest pose.”
Philip placed an easel where she indicated, and Mrs. Otter introduced him to a young woman who sat next to him.
“Mr. Carey Miss Price. Mr. Carey’s never studied before, you won’t mind helping him a little just at first will you?” Then she turned to the model. “La Pose.”
The model threw aside the paper she had been reading, La Petite Republique, and sulkily, throwing off her gown, got on to the stand. She stood, squarely on both feet with her hands clasped behind her head.
“It’s a stupid pose,” said Miss Price. “I can’t imagine why they chose it.”
When Philip entered, the people in the studio had looked at him curiously, and the model gave him an indifferent glance, but now they ceased to pay attention to him. Philip, with his beautiful sheet of paper in front of him, stared awkwardly at the model. He did not know how to begin. He had never seen a naked woman before. She was not young and her breasts were shrivelled. She had colourless, fair hair that fell over her forehead untidily, and her face was covered with large freckles. He glanced at Miss Price’s work. She had only been working on it two days, and it looked as though she had had trouble; her paper was in a mess from constant rubbing out, and to Philip’s eyes the figure looked strangely distorted.
“I should have thought I could do as well as that,” he said to himself.
He began on the head, thinking that he would work slowly downwards, but, he could not understand why, he found it infinitely more difficult to draw a head from the model than to draw one from his imagination. He got into difficulties. He glanced at Miss Price. She was working with vehement gravity. Her brow was wrinkled with eagerness, and there was an anxious look in her eyes. It was hot in the studio, and drops of sweat stood on her forehead. She was a girl of twenty-six, with a great deal of dull gold hair; it was handsome hair, but it was carelessly done, dragged back from her forehead and tied in a hurried knot. She had a large face, with broad, flat features and small eyes; her skin was pasty, with a singular unhealthiness of tone, and there was no colour in the cheeks. She had an unwashed air and you could not help wondering if she slept in her clothes. She was serious and silent. When the next pause came, she stepped back to look at her work.
“I don’t know why I’m having so much bother,” she said. “But I mean to get it right.” She turned to Philip. “How are you getting on?”
“Not at all,” he answered, with a rueful smile.
She looked at what he had done.
“You can’t expect to do anything that way. You must take measurements. And you must square out your paper.”
She showed him rapidly how to set about the business. Philip was impressed by her earnestness, but repelled by her want of charm. He was grateful for the hints she gave him and set to work again. Meanwhile other people had come in, mostly men, for the women always arrived first, and the studio for the time of year (it was early yet) was fairly full. Presently there came in a young man with thin, black hair, an enormous nose, and a face so long that it reminded you of a horse. He sat down next to Philip and nodded across him to Miss Price.
“You’re very late,” she said. “Are you only just up?”
“It was such a splendid day, I thought I’d lie in bed and think how beautiful it was out.”
Philip smiled, but Miss Price took the remark seriously.
“That seems a funny thing to do, I should have thought it would be more to the point to get up and enjoy it.”
“The way of the humorist is very hard,” said the young man gravely.
He did not seem inclined to work. He looked at his canvas; he was working in colour, and had sketched in the day before the model who was posing. He turned to Philip.
“Have you just come out from England?”
“Yes.”
“How did you find your way to Amitrano’s?”
“It was the only school I knew of.”
“I hope you haven’t come with the idea that you will learn anything here which will be of the smallest use to you.”
“It’s the best school in Paris,” said Miss Price. “It’s the only one where they take art seriously.”
“Should art be taken seriously?” the young man asked; and since Miss Price replied only with a scornful shrug, he added: “But the point is, all schools are bad. They are academical, obviously. Why this is less injurious than most is that the teaching is more incompetent than elsewhere. Because you learn nothing….”
“But why d’you come here then?” interrupted Philip.
“I see the better course, but do not follow it. Miss Price, who is cultured, will remember the Latin of that.”
“I wish you would leave me out of your conversation, Mr. Clutton,” said Miss Price brusquely.
“The only way to learn to paint,” he went on, imperturbable, “is to take a studio, hire a model, and just fight it out for yourself.”
“That seems a simple thing to do,” said Philip.
“It only needs money,” replied Clutton.
He began to paint, and Philip looked at him from the corner of his eye. He was long and desperately thin; his huge bones seemed to protrude from his body; his elbows were so sharp that they appeared to jut out through the arms of his shabby coat. His trousers were frayed at the bottom, and on each of his boots was a clumsy patch. Miss Price got up and went over to Philip’s easel.
“If Mr. Clutton will hold his tongue for a moment, I’ll just help you a little,” she said.
“Miss Price dislikes me because I have humour,” said Clutton, looking meditatively at his canvas, “but she detests me because I have genius.”
He spoke with solemnity, and his colossal, misshapen nose made what he said very quaint. Philip was obliged to laugh, but Miss Price grew darkly red with anger.
“You’re the only person who has ever accused you of genius.”
“Also I am the only person whose opinion is of the least value to me.”
Miss Price began to criticise what Philip had done. She talked glibly of anatomy and construction, planes and lines, and of much else which Philip did not understand. She had been at the studio a long time and knew the main points which the masters insisted upon, but though she could show what was wrong with Philip’s work she could not tell him how to put it right.
“It’s awfully kind of you to take so much trouble with me,” said Philip.
“Oh, it’s nothing,” she answered, flushing awkwardly. “People did the same for me when I first came, I’d do it for anyone.”
“Miss Price wants to indicate that she is giving you the advantage of her knowledge from a sense of duty rather than on account of any charms of your person,” said Clutton.
Miss Price gave him a furious look, and went back to her own drawing. The clock struck twelve, and the model with a cry of relief stepped down from the stand.
Miss Price gathered up her things.
“Some of us go to Gravier’s for lunch,” she said to Philip, with a look at Clutton. “I always go home myself.”
“I’ll take you to Gravier’s if you like,” said Clutton.
Philip thanked him and made ready to go. On his way out Mrs. Otter asked him how he had been getting on.
“Did Fanny Price help you?” she asked. “I put you there because I know she can do it if she likes. She’s a disagreeable, ill-natured girl, and she can’t draw herself at all, but she knows the ropes, and she can be useful to a newcomer if she cares to take the trouble.”
On the way down the street Clutton said to him:
“You’ve made an impression on Fanny Price. You’d better look out.”
Philip laughed. He had never seen anyone on whom he wished less to make an impression. They came to the cheap little restaurant at which several of the students ate, and Clutton sat down at a table at which three or four men were already seated. For a franc, they got an egg, a plate of meat, cheese, and a small bottle of wine. Coffee was extra. They sat on the pavement, and yellow trams passed up and down the boulevard with a ceaseless ringing of bells.
“By the way, what’s your name?” said Clutton, as they took their seats.
“Carey.”
“Allow me to introduce an old and trusted friend, Carey by name,” said Clutton gravely. “Mr. Flanagan, Mr. Lawson.”
They laughed and went on with their conversation. They talked of a thousand things, and they all talked at once. No one paid the smallest attention to anyone else. They talked of the places they had been to in the summer, of studios, of the various schools; they mentioned names which were unfamiliar to Philip, Monet, Manet, Renoir, Pissarro, Degas. Philip listened with all his ears, and though he felt a little out of it, his heart leaped with exultation. The time flew. When Clutton got up he said:
“I expect you’ll find me here this evening if you care to come. You’ll find this about the best place for getting dyspepsia at the lowest cost in the Quarter.”
XLI
Philip walked down the Boulevard du Montparnasse. It was not at all like the Paris he had seen in the spring during his visit to do the accounts of the Hotel St. Georges he thought already of that part of his life with a shudder but reminded him of what he thought a provincial town must be. There was an easy-going air about it, and a sunny spaciousness which invited the mind to day-dreaming. The trimness of the trees, the vivid whiteness of the houses, the breadth, were very agreeable; and he felt himself already thoroughly at home. He sauntered along, staring at the people; there seemed an elegance about the most ordinary, workmen with their broad red sashes and their wide trousers, little soldiers in dingy, charming uniforms. He came presently to the Avenue de l’Observatoire, and he gave a sigh of pleasure at the magnificent, yet so graceful, vista. He came to the gardens of the Luxembourg: children were playing, nurses with long ribbons walked slowly two by two, busy men passed through with satchels under their arms, youths strangely dressed. The scene was formal and dainty; nature was arranged and ordered, but so exquisitely, that nature unordered and unarranged seemed barbaric. Philip was enchanted. It excited him to stand on that spot of which he had read so much; it was classic ground to him; and he felt the awe and the delight which some old don might feel when for the first time he looked on the smiling plain of Sparta.
As he wandered he chanced to see Miss Price sitting by herself on a bench. He hesitated, for he did not at that moment want to see anyone, and her uncouth way seemed out of place amid the happiness he felt around him; but he had divined her sensitiveness to affront, and since she had seen him thought it would be polite to speak to her.
“What are you doing here?” she said, as he came up.
“Enjoying myself. Aren’t you?”
“Oh, I come here every day from four to five. I don’t think one does any good if one works straight through.”
“May I sit down for a minute?” he said.
“If you want to.”
“That doesn’t sound very cordial,” he laughed.
“I’m not much of a one for saying pretty things.”
Philip, a little disconcerted, was silent as he lit a cigarette.
“Did Clutton say anything about my work?” she asked suddenly.
“No, I don’t think he did,” said Philip.
“He’s no good, you know. He thinks he’s a genius, but he isn’t. He’s too lazy, for one thing. Genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains. The only thing is to peg away. If one only makes up one’s mind badly enough to do a thing one can’t help doing it.”
She spoke with a passionate strenuousness which was rather striking. She wore a sailor hat of black straw, a white blouse which was not quite clean, and a brown skirt. She had no gloves on, and her hands wanted washing. She was so unattractive that Philip wished he had not begun to talk to her. He could not make out whether she wanted him to stay or go.
“I’ll do anything I can for you,” she said all at once, without reference to anything that had gone before. “I know how hard it is.”
“Thank you very much,” said Philip, then in a moment: “Won’t you come and have tea with me somewhere?”
She looked at him quickly and flushed. When she reddened her pasty skin acquired a curiously mottled look, like strawberries and cream that had gone bad.
“No, thanks. What d’you think I want tea for? I’ve only just had lunch.”
“I thought it would pass the time,” said Philip.
“If you find it long you needn’t bother about me, you know. I don’t mind being left alone.”
At that moment two men passed, in brown velveteens, enormous trousers, and basque caps. They were young, but both wore beards.
“I say, are those art-students?” said Philip. “They might have stepped out of the Vie de Boheme.”
“They’re Americans,” said Miss Price scornfully. “Frenchmen haven’t worn things like that for thirty years, but the Americans from the Far West buy those clothes and have themselves photographed the day after they arrive in Paris. That’s about as near to art as they ever get. But it doesn’t matter to them, they’ve all got money.”
Philip liked the daring picturesqueness of the Americans’ costume; he thought it showed the romantic spirit. Miss Price asked him the time.
“I must be getting along to the studio,” she said. “Are you going to the sketch classes?”
Philip did not know anything about them, and she told him that from five to six every evening a model sat, from whom anyone who liked could go and draw at the cost of fifty centimes. They had a different model every day, and it was very good practice.
“I don’t suppose you’re good enough yet for that. You’d better wait a bit.”
“I don’t see why I shouldn’t try. I haven’t got anything else to do.”
They got up and walked to the studio. Philip could not tell from her manner whether Miss Price wished him to walk with her or preferred to walk alone. He remained from sheer embarrassment, not knowing how to leave her; but she would not talk; she answered his questions in an ungracious manner.
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.
XLII
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.
“Have you ever read any of his work?”
“No,” said Philip.
“It came out in The Yellow Book.”
They looked upon him, as painters often do writers, with contempt because he was a layman, with tolerance because he practised an art, and with awe because he used a medium in which themselves felt ill-at-ease.
“He’s an extraordinary fellow. You’ll find him a bit disappointing at first, he only comes out at his best when he’s drunk.”
“And the nuisance is,” added Clutton, “that it takes him a devil of a time to get drunk.”
When they arrived at the cafe Lawson told Philip that they would have to go in. There was hardly a bite in the autumn air, but Cronshaw had a morbid fear of draughts and even in the warmest weather sat inside.
“He knows everyone worth knowing,” Lawson explained. “He knew Pater and Oscar Wilde, and he knows Mallarme and all those fellows.”
The object of their search sat in the most sheltered corner of the cafe, with his coat on and the collar turned up. He wore his hat pressed well down on his forehead so that he should avoid cold air. He was a big man, stout but not obese, with a round face, a small moustache, and little, rather stupid eyes. His head did not seem quite big enough for his body. It looked like a pea uneasily poised on an egg. He was playing dominoes with a Frenchman, and greeted the new-comers with a quiet smile; he did not speak, but as if to make room for them pushed away the little pile of saucers on the table which indicated the number of drinks he had already consumed. He nodded to Philip when he was introduced to him, and went on with the game. Philip’s knowledge of the language was small, but he knew enough to tell that Cronshaw, although he had lived in Paris for several years, spoke French execrably.
At last he leaned back with a smile of triumph.
“Je vous ai battu,” he said, with an abominable accent. “Garcong!”
He called the waiter and turned to Philip.
“Just out from England? See any cricket?”
Philip was a little confused at the unexpected question.
“Cronshaw knows the averages of every first-class cricketer for the last twenty years,” said Lawson, smiling.
The Frenchman left them for friends at another table, and Cronshaw, with the lazy enunciation which was one of his peculiarities, began to discourse on the relative merits of Kent and Lancashire. He told them of the last test match he had seen and described the course of the game wicket by wicket.
“That’s the only thing I miss in Paris,” he said, as he finished the bock which the waiter had brought. “You don’t get any cricket.”
Philip was disappointed, and Lawson, pardonably anxious to show off one of the celebrities of the Quarter, grew impatient. Cronshaw was taking his time to wake up that evening, though the saucers at his side indicated that he had at least made an honest attempt to get drunk. Clutton watched the scene with amusement. He fancied there was something of affectation in Cronshaw’s minute knowledge of cricket; he liked to tantalise people by talking to them of things that obviously bored them; Clutton threw in a question.
“Have you seen Mallarme lately?”
Cronshaw looked at him slowly, as if he were turning the inquiry over in his mind, and before he answered rapped on the marble table with one of the saucers.
“Bring my bottle of whiskey,” he called out. He turned again to Philip. “I keep my own bottle of whiskey. I can’t afford to pay fifty centimes for every thimbleful.”
The waiter brought the bottle, and Cronshaw held it up to the light.
“They’ve been drinking it. Waiter, who’s been helping himself to my whiskey?”
“Mais personne, Monsieur Cronshaw.”
“I made a mark on it last night, and look at it.”
“Monsieur made a mark, but he kept on drinking after that. At that rate Monsieur wastes his time in making marks.”
The waiter was a jovial fellow and knew Cronshaw intimately. Cronshaw gazed at him.
“If you give me your word of honour as a nobleman and a gentleman that nobody but I has been drinking my whiskey, I’ll accept your statement.”
This remark, translated literally into the crudest French, sounded very funny, and the lady at the comptoir could not help laughing.
“Il est impayable,” she murmured.
Cronshaw, hearing her, turned a sheepish eye upon her; she was stout, matronly, and middle-aged; and solemnly kissed his hand to her. She shrugged her shoulders.
“Fear not, madam,” he said heavily. “I have passed the age when I am tempted by forty-five and gratitude.”
He poured himself out some whiskey and water, and slowly drank it. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“He talked very well.”
Lawson and Clutton knew that Cronshaw’s remark was an answer to the question about Mallarme. Cronshaw often went to the gatherings on Tuesday evenings when the poet received men of letters and painters, and discoursed with subtle oratory on any subject that was suggested to him. Cronshaw had evidently been there lately.
“He talked very well, but he talked nonsense. He talked about art as though it were the most important thing in the world.”
“If it isn’t, what are we here for?” asked Philip.
“What you’re here for I don’t know. It is no business of mine. But art is a luxury. Men attach importance only to self-preservation and the propagation of their species. It is only when these instincts are satisfied that they consent to occupy themselves with the entertainment which is provided for them by writers, painters, and poets.”
Cronshaw stopped for a moment to drink. He had pondered for twenty years the problem whether he loved liquor because it made him talk or whether he loved conversation because it made him thirsty.
Then he said: “I wrote a poem yesterday.”
Without being asked he began to recite it, very slowly, marking the rhythm with an extended forefinger. It was possibly a very fine poem, but at that moment a young woman came in. She had scarlet lips, and it was plain that the vivid colour of her cheeks was not due to the vulgarity of nature; she had blackened her eyelashes and eyebrows, and painted both eyelids a bold blue, which was continued to a triangle at the corner of the eyes. It was fantastic and amusing. Her dark hair was done over her ears in the fashion made popular by Mlle. Cleo de Merode. Philip’s eyes wandered to her, and Cronshaw, having finished the recitation of his verses, smiled upon him indulgently.
“You were not listening,” he said.
“Oh yes, I was.”
“I do not blame you, for you have given an apt illustration of the statement I just made. What is art beside love? I respect and applaud your indifference to fine poetry when you can contemplate the meretricious charms of this young person.”
She passed by the table at which they were sitting, and he took her arm.
“Come and sit by my side, dear child, and let us play the divine comedy of love.”
“Fichez-moi la paix,” she said, and pushing him on one side continued her perambulation.
“Art,” he continued, with a wave of the hand, “is merely the refuge which the ingenious have invented, when they were supplied with food and women, to escape the tediousness of life.”
Cronshaw filled his glass again, and began to talk at length. He spoke with rotund delivery. He chose his words carefully. He mingled wisdom and nonsense in the most astounding manner, gravely making fun of his hearers at one moment, and at the next playfully giving them sound advice. He talked of art, and literature, and life. He was by turns devout and obscene, merry and lachrymose. He grew remarkably drunk, and then he began to recite poetry, his own and Milton’s, his own and Shelley’s, his own and Kit Marlowe’s.
At last Lawson, exhausted, got up to go home.
“I shall go too,” said Philip.
Clutton, the most silent of them all, remained behind listening, with a sardonic smile on his lips, to Cronshaw’s maunderings. Lawson accompanied Philip to his hotel and then bade him good-night. But when Philip got to bed he could not sleep. All these new ideas that had been flung before him carelessly seethed in his brain. He was tremendously excited. He felt in himself great powers. He had never before been so self-confident.
“I know I shall be a great artist,” he said to himself. “I feel it in me.”
A thrill passed through him as another thought came, but even to himself he would not put it into words:
“By George, I believe I’ve got genius.”
He was in fact very drunk, but as he had not taken more than one glass of beer, it could have been due only to a more dangerous intoxicant than alcohol.