XLIII
On Tuesdays and Fridays masters spent the morning at Amitrano’s, criticising the work done. In France the painter earns little unless he paints portraits and is patronised by rich Americans; and men of reputation are glad to increase their incomes by spending two or three hours once a week at one of the numerous studios where art is taught. Tuesday was the day upon which Michel Rollin came to Amitrano’s. He was an elderly man, with a white beard and a florid complexion, who had painted a number of decorations for the State, but these were an object of derision to the students he instructed: he was a disciple of Ingres, impervious to the progress of art and angrily impatient with that tas de farceurs whose names were Manet, Degas, Monet, and Sisley; but he was an excellent teacher, helpful, polite, and encouraging. Foinet, on the other hand, who visited the studio on Fridays, was a difficult man to get on with. He was a small, shrivelled person, with bad teeth and a bilious air, an untidy gray beard, and savage eyes; his voice was high and his tone sarcastic. He had had pictures bought by the Luxembourg, and at twenty-five looked forward to a great career; but his talent was due to youth rather than to personality, and for twenty years he had done nothing but repeat the landscape which had brought him his early success. When he was reproached with monotony, he answered:
“Corot only painted one thing. Why shouldn’t I?”
He was envious of everyone else’s success, and had a peculiar, personal loathing of the impressionists; for he looked upon his own failure as due to the mad fashion which had attracted the public, sale bete, to their works. The genial disdain of Michel Rollin, who called them impostors, was answered by him with vituperation, of which crapule and canaille were the least violent items; he amused himself with abuse of their private lives, and with sardonic humour, with blasphemous and obscene detail, attacked the legitimacy of their births and the purity of their conjugal relations: he used an Oriental imagery and an Oriental emphasis to accentuate his ribald scorn. Nor did he conceal his contempt for the students whose work he examined. By them he was hated and feared; the women by his brutal sarcasm he reduced often to tears, which again aroused his ridicule; and he remained at the studio, notwithstanding the protests of those who suffered too bitterly from his attacks, because there could be no doubt that he was one of the best masters in Paris. Sometimes the old model who kept the school ventured to remonstrate with him, but his expostulations quickly gave way before the violent insolence of the painter to abject apologies.
It was Foinet with whom Philip first came in contact. He was already in the studio when Philip arrived. He went round from easel to easel, with Mrs. Otter, the massiere, by his side to interpret his remarks for the benefit of those who could not understand French. Fanny Price, sitting next to Philip, was working feverishly. Her face was sallow with nervousness, and every now and then she stopped to wipe her hands on her blouse; for they were hot with anxiety. Suddenly she turned to Philip with an anxious look, which she tried to hide by a sullen frown.
“D’you think it’s good?” she asked, nodding at her drawing.
Philip got up and looked at it. He was astounded; he felt she must have no eye at all; the thing was hopelessly out of drawing.
“I wish I could draw half as well myself,” he answered.
“You can’t expect to, you’ve only just come. It’s a bit too much to expect that you should draw as well as I do. I’ve been here two years.”
Fanny Price puzzled Philip. Her conceit was stupendous. Philip had already discovered that everyone in the studio cordially disliked her; and it was no wonder, for she seemed to go out of her way to wound people.
“I complained to Mrs. Otter about Foinet,” she said now. “The last two weeks he hasn’t looked at my drawings. He spends about half an hour on Mrs. Otter because she’s the massiere. After all I pay as much as anybody else, and I suppose my money’s as good as theirs. I don’t see why I shouldn’t get as much attention as anybody else.”
She took up her charcoal again, but in a moment put it down with a groan.
“I can’t do any more now. I’m so frightfully nervous.”
She looked at Foinet, who was coming towards them with Mrs. Otter. Mrs. Otter, meek, mediocre, and self-satisfied, wore an air of importance. Foinet sat down at the easel of an untidy little Englishwoman called Ruth Chalice. She had the fine black eyes, languid but passionate, the thin face, ascetic but sensual, the skin like old ivory, which under the influence of Burne-Jones were cultivated at that time by young ladies in Chelsea. Foinet seemed in a pleasant mood; he did not say much to her, but with quick, determined strokes of her charcoal pointed out her errors. Miss Chalice beamed with pleasure when he rose. He came to Clutton, and by this time Philip was nervous too but Mrs. Otter had promised to make things easy for him. Foinet stood for a moment in front of Clutton’s work, biting his thumb silently, then absent-mindedly spat out upon the canvas the little piece of skin which he had bitten off.
“That’s a fine line,” he said at last, indicating with his thumb what pleased him. “You’re beginning to learn to draw.”
Clutton did not answer, but looked at the master with his usual air of sardonic indifference to the world’s opinion.
“I’m beginning to think you have at least a trace of talent.”
Mrs. Otter, who did not like Clutton, pursed her lips. She did not see anything out of the way in his work. Foinet sat down and went into technical details. Mrs. Otter grew rather tired of standing. Clutton did not say anything, but nodded now and then, and Foinet felt with satisfaction that he grasped what he said and the reasons of it; most of them listened to him, but it was clear they never understood. Then Foinet got up and came to Philip.
“He only arrived two days ago,” Mrs. Otter hurried to explain. “He’s a beginner. He’s never studied before.”
“Ca se voit,” the master said. “One sees that.”
He passed on, and Mrs. Otter murmured to him:
“This is the young lady I told you about.”
He looked at her as though she were some repulsive animal, and his voice grew more rasping.
“It appears that you do not think I pay enough attention to you. You have been complaining to the massiere. Well, show me this work to which you wish me to give attention.”
Fanny Price coloured. The blood under her unhealthy skin seemed to be of a strange purple. Without answering she pointed to the drawing on which she had been at work since the beginning of the week. Foinet sat down.
“Well, what do you wish me to say to you? Do you wish me to tell you it is good? It isn’t. Do you wish me to tell you it is well drawn? It isn’t. Do you wish me to say it has merit? It hasn’t. Do you wish me to show you what is wrong with it? It is all wrong. Do you wish me to tell you what to do with it? Tear it up. Are you satisfied now?”
Miss Price became very white. She was furious because he had said all this before Mrs. Otter. Though she had been in France so long and could understand French well enough, she could hardly speak two words.
“He’s got no right to treat me like that. My money’s as good as anyone else’s. I pay him to teach me. That’s not teaching me.”
“What does she say? What does she say?” asked Foinet.
Mrs. Otter hesitated to translate, and Miss Price repeated in execrable French.
“Je vous paye pour m’apprendre.”
His eyes flashed with rage, he raised his voice and shook his fist.
“Mais, nom de Dieu, I can’t teach you. I could more easily teach a camel.” He turned to Mrs. Otter. “Ask her, does she do this for amusement, or does she expect to earn money by it?”
“I’m going to earn my living as an artist,” Miss Price answered.
“Then it is my duty to tell you that you are wasting your time. It would not matter that you have no talent, talent does not run about the streets in these days, but you have not the beginning of an aptitude. How long have you been here? A child of five after two lessons would draw better than you do. I only say one thing to you, give up this hopeless attempt. You’re more likely to earn your living as a bonne a tout faire than as a painter. Look.”
He seized a piece of charcoal, and it broke as he applied it to the paper. He cursed, and with the stump drew great firm lines. He drew rapidly and spoke at the same time, spitting out the words with venom.
“Look, those arms are not the same length. That knee, it’s grotesque. I tell you a child of five. You see, she’s not standing on her legs. That foot!”
With each word the angry pencil made a mark, and in a moment the drawing upon which Fanny Price had spent so much time and eager trouble was unrecognisable, a confusion of lines and smudges. At last he flung down the charcoal and stood up.
“Take my advice, Mademoiselle, try dressmaking.” He looked at his watch. “It’s twelve. A la semaine prochaine, messieurs.”
Miss Price gathered up her things slowly. Philip waited behind after the others to say to her something consolatory. He could think of nothing but:
“I say, I’m awfully sorry. What a beast that man is!”
She turned on him savagely.
“Is that what you’re waiting about for? When I want your sympathy I’ll ask for it. Please get out of my way.”
She walked past him, out of the studio, and Philip, with a shrug of the shoulders, limped along to Gravier’s for luncheon.
“It served her right,” said Lawson, when Philip told him what had happened. “Ill-tempered slut.”
Lawson was very sensitive to criticism and, in order to avoid it, never went to the studio when Foinet was coming.
“I don’t want other people’s opinion of my work,” he said. “I know myself if it’s good or bad.”
“You mean you don’t want other people’s bad opinion of your work,” answered Clutton dryly.
In the afternoon Philip thought he would go to the Luxembourg to see the pictures, and walking through the garden he saw Fanny Price sitting in her accustomed seat. He was sore at the rudeness with which she had met his well-meant attempt to say something pleasant, and passed as though he had not caught sight of her. But she got up at once and came towards him.
“Are you trying to cut me?” she said.
“No, of course not. I thought perhaps you didn’t want to be spoken to.”
“Where are you going?”
“I wanted to have a look at the Manet, I’ve heard so much about it.”
“Would you like me to come with you? I know the Luxembourg rather well. I could show you one or two good things.”
He understood that, unable to bring herself to apologise directly, she made this offer as amends.
“It’s awfully kind of you. I should like it very much.”
“You needn’t say yes if you’d rather go alone,” she said suspiciously.
“I wouldn’t.”
They walked towards the gallery. Caillebotte’s collection had lately been placed on view, and the student for the first time had the opportunity to examine at his ease the works of the impressionists. Till then it had been possible to see them only at Durand-Ruel’s shop in the Rue Lafitte (and the dealer, unlike his fellows in England, who adopt towards the painter an attitude of superiority, was always pleased to show the shabbiest student whatever he wanted to see), or at his private house, to which it was not difficult to get a card of admission on Tuesdays, and where you might see pictures of world-wide reputation. Miss Price led Philip straight up to Manet’s Olympia. He looked at it in astonished silence.
“Do you like it?” asked Miss Price.
“I don’t know,” he answered helplessly.
“You can take it from me that it’s the best thing in the gallery except perhaps Whistler’s portrait of his mother.”
She gave him a certain time to contemplate the masterpiece and then took him to a picture representing a railway-station.
“Look, here’s a Monet,” she said. “It’s the Gare St. Lazare.”
“But the railway lines aren’t parallel,” said Philip.
“What does that matter?” she asked, with a haughty air.
Philip felt ashamed of himself. Fanny Price had picked up the glib chatter of the studios and had no difficulty in impressing Philip with the extent of her knowledge. She proceeded to explain the pictures to him, superciliously but not without insight, and showed him what the painters had attempted and what he must look for. She talked with much gesticulation of the thumb, and Philip, to whom all she said was new, listened with profound but bewildered interest. Till now he had worshipped Watts and Burne-Jones. The pretty colour of the first, the affected drawing of the second, had entirely satisfied his aesthetic sensibilities. Their vague idealism, the suspicion of a philosophical idea which underlay the titles they gave their pictures, accorded very well with the functions of art as from his diligent perusal of Ruskin he understood it; but here was something quite different: here was no moral appeal; and the contemplation of these works could help no one to lead a purer and a higher life. He was puzzled.
At last he said: “You know, I’m simply dead. I don’t think I can absorb anything more profitably. Let’s go and sit down on one of the benches.”
“It’s better not to take too much art at a time,” Miss Price answered.
When they got outside he thanked her warmly for the trouble she had taken.
“Oh, that’s all right,” she said, a little ungraciously. “I do it because I enjoy it. We’ll go to the Louvre tomorrow if you like, and then I’ll take you to Durand-Ruel’s.”
“You’re really awfully good to me.”
“You don’t think me such a beast as the most of them do.”
“I don’t,” he smiled.
“They think they’ll drive me away from the studio; but they won’t; I shall stay there just exactly as long as it suits me. All that this morning, it was Lucy Otter’s doing, I know it was. She always has hated me. She thought after that I’d take myself off. I daresay she’d like me to go. She’s afraid I know too much about her.”
Miss Price told him a long, involved story, which made out that Mrs. Otter, a humdrum and respectable little person, had scabrous intrigues. Then she talked of Ruth Chalice, the girl whom Foinet had praised that morning.
“She’s been with every one of the fellows at the studio. She’s nothing better than a street-walker. And she’s dirty. She hasn’t had a bath for a month. I know it for a fact.”
Philip listened uncomfortably. He had heard already that various rumours were in circulation about Miss Chalice; but it was ridiculous to suppose that Mrs. Otter, living with her mother, was anything but rigidly virtuous. The woman walking by his side with her malignant lying positively horrified him.
“I don’t care what they say. I shall go on just the same. I know I’ve got it in me. I feel I’m an artist. I’d sooner kill myself than give it up. Oh, I shan’t be the first they’ve all laughed at in the schools and then he’s turned out the only genius of the lot. Art’s the only thing I care for, I’m willing to give my whole life to it. It’s only a question of sticking to it and pegging away.”
She found discreditable motives for everyone who would not take her at her own estimate of herself. She detested Clutton. She told Philip that his friend had no talent really; it was just flashy and superficial; he couldn’t compose a figure to save his life. And Lawson:
“Little beast, with his red hair and his freckles. He’s so afraid of Foinet that he won’t let him see his work. After all, I don’t funk it, do I? I don’t care what Foinet says to me, I know I’m a real artist.”
They reached the street in which she lived, and with a sigh of relief Philip left her.
XLIV
But notwithstanding when Miss Price on the following Sunday offered to take him to the Louvre Philip accepted. She showed him Mona Lisa. He looked at it with a slight feeling of disappointment, but he had read till he knew by heart the jewelled words with which Walter Pater has added beauty to the most famous picture in the world; and these now he repeated to Miss Price.
“That’s all literature,” she said, a little contemptuously. “You must get away from that.”
She showed him the Rembrandts, and she said many appropriate things about them. She stood in front of the Disciples at Emmaus.
“When you feel the beauty of that,” she said, “you’ll know something about painting.”
She showed him the Odalisque and La Source of Ingres. Fanny Price was a peremptory guide, she would not let him look at the things he wished, and attempted to force his admiration for all she admired. She was desperately in earnest with her study of art, and when Philip, passing in the Long Gallery a window that looked out on the Tuileries, gay, sunny, and urbane, like a picture by Raffaelli, exclaimed:
“I say, how jolly! Do let’s stop here a minute.”
She said, indifferently: “Yes, it’s all right. But we’ve come here to look at pictures.”
The autumn air, blithe and vivacious, elated Philip; and when towards mid-day they stood in the great court-yard of the Louvre, he felt inclined to cry like Flanagan: To hell with art.
“I say, do let’s go to one of those restaurants in the Boul’ Mich’ and have a snack together, shall we?” he suggested.
Miss Price gave him a suspicious look.
“I’ve got my lunch waiting for me at home,” she answered.
“That doesn’t matter. You can eat it tomorrow. Do let me stand you a lunch.”
“I don’t know why you want to.”
“It would give me pleasure,” he replied, smiling.
They crossed the river, and at the corner of the Boulevard St. Michel there was a restaurant.
“Let’s go in there.”
“No, I won’t go there, it looks too expensive.”
She walked on firmly, and Philip was obliged to follow. A few steps brought them to a smaller restaurant, where a dozen people were already lunching on the pavement under an awning; on the window was announced in large white letters: Dejeuner 1.25, vin compris.
“We couldn’t have anything cheaper than this, and it looks quite all right.”
They sat down at a vacant table and waited for the omelette which was the first article on the bill of fare. Philip gazed with delight upon the passers-by. His heart went out to them. He was tired but very happy.
“I say, look at that man in the blouse. Isn’t he ripping!”
He glanced at Miss Price, and to his astonishment saw that she was looking down at her plate, regardless of the passing spectacle, and two heavy tears were rolling down her cheeks.
“What on earth’s the matter?” he exclaimed.
“If you say anything to me I shall get up and go at once,” she answered.
He was entirely puzzled, but fortunately at that moment the omelette came. He divided it in two and they began to eat. Philip did his best to talk of indifferent things, and it seemed as though Miss Price were making an effort on her side to be agreeable; but the luncheon was not altogether a success. Philip was squeamish, and the way in which Miss Price ate took his appetite away. She ate noisily, greedily, a little like a wild beast in a menagerie, and after she had finished each course rubbed the plate with pieces of bread till it was white and shining, as if she did not wish to lose a single drop of gravy. They had Camembert cheese, and it disgusted Philip to see that she ate rind and all of the portion that was given her. She could not have eaten more ravenously if she were starving.
Miss Price was unaccountable, and having parted from her on one day with friendliness he could never tell whether on the next she would not be sulky and uncivil; but he learned a good deal from her: though she could not draw well herself, she knew all that could be taught, and her constant suggestions helped his progress. Mrs. Otter was useful to him too, and sometimes Miss Chalice criticised his work; he learned from the glib loquacity of Lawson and from the example of Clutton. But Fanny Price hated him to take suggestions from anyone but herself, and when he asked her help after someone else had been talking to him she would refuse with brutal rudeness. The other fellows, Lawson, Clutton, Flanagan, chaffed him about her.
“You be careful, my lad,” they said, “she’s in love with you.”
“Oh, what nonsense,” he laughed.
The thought that Miss Price could be in love with anyone was preposterous. It made him shudder when he thought of her uncomeliness, the bedraggled hair and the dirty hands, the brown dress she always wore, stained and ragged at the hem: he supposed she was hard up, they were all hard up, but she might at least be clean; and it was surely possible with a needle and thread to make her skirt tidy.
Philip began to sort his impressions of the people he was thrown in contact with. He was not so ingenuous as in those days which now seemed so long ago at Heidelberg, and, beginning to take a more deliberate interest in humanity, he was inclined to examine and to criticise. He found it difficult to know Clutton any better after seeing him every day for three months than on the first day of their acquaintance. The general impression at the studio was that he was able; it was supposed that he would do great things, and he shared the general opinion; but what exactly he was going to do neither he nor anybody else quite knew. He had worked at several studios before Amitrano’s, at Julian’s, the Beaux Arts, and MacPherson’s, and was remaining longer at Amitrano’s than anywhere because he found himself more left alone. He was not fond of showing his work, and unlike most of the young men who were studying art neither sought nor gave advice. It was said that in the little studio in the Rue Campagne Premiere, which served him for work-room and bed-room, he had wonderful pictures which would make his reputation if only he could be induced to exhibit them. He could not afford a model but painted still life, and Lawson constantly talked of a plate of apples which he declared was a masterpiece. He was fastidious, and, aiming at something he did not quite fully grasp, was constantly dissatisfied with his work as a whole: perhaps a part would please him, the forearm or the leg and foot of a figure, a glass or a cup in a still-life; and he would cut this out and keep it, destroying the rest of the canvas; so that when people invited themselves to see his work he could truthfully answer that he had not a single picture to show. In Brittany he had come across a painter whom nobody else had heard of, a queer fellow who had been a stockbroker and taken up painting at middle-age, and he was greatly influenced by his work. He was turning his back on the impressionists and working out for himself painfully an individual way not only of painting but of seeing. Philip felt in him something strangely original.
At Gravier’s where they ate, and in the evening at the Versailles or at the Closerie des Lilas Clutton was inclined to taciturnity. He sat quietly, with a sardonic expression on his gaunt face, and spoke only when the opportunity occurred to throw in a witticism. He liked a butt and was most cheerful when someone was there on whom he could exercise his sarcasm. He seldom talked of anything but painting, and then only with the one or two persons whom he thought worth while. Philip wondered whether there was in him really anything: his reticence, the haggard look of him, the pungent humour, seemed to suggest personality, but might be no more than an effective mask which covered nothing.
With Lawson on the other hand Philip soon grew intimate. He had a variety of interests which made him an agreeable companion. He read more than most of the students and though his income was small, loved to buy books. He lent them willingly; and Philip became acquainted with Flaubert and Balzac, with Verlaine, Heredia, and Villiers de l’Isle Adam. They went to plays together and sometimes to the gallery of the Opera Comique. There was the Odeon quite near them, and Philip soon shared his friend’s passion for the tragedians of Louis XIV and the sonorous Alexandrine. In the Rue Taitbout were the Concerts Rouge, where for seventy-five centimes they could hear excellent music and get into the bargain something which it was quite possible to drink: the seats were uncomfortable, the place was crowded, the air thick with caporal horrible to breathe, but in their young enthusiasm they were indifferent. Sometimes they went to the Bal Bullier. On these occasions Flanagan accompanied them. His excitability and his roisterous enthusiasm made them laugh. He was an excellent dancer, and before they had been ten minutes in the room he was prancing round with some little shop-girl whose acquaintance he had just made.
The desire of all of them was to have a mistress. It was part of the paraphernalia of the art-student in Paris. It gave consideration in the eyes of one’s fellows. It was something to boast about. But the difficulty was that they had scarcely enough money to keep themselves, and though they argued that French-women were so clever it cost no more to keep two then one, they found it difficult to meet young women who were willing to take that view of the circumstances. They had to content themselves for the most part with envying and abusing the ladies who received protection from painters of more settled respectability than their own. It was extraordinary how difficult these things were in Paris. Lawson would become acquainted with some young thing and make an appointment; for twenty-four hours he would be all in a flutter and describe the charmer at length to everyone he met; but she never by any chance turned up at the time fixed. He would come to Gravier’s very late, ill-tempered, and exclaim:
“Confound it, another rabbit! I don’t know why it is they don’t like me. I suppose it’s because I don’t speak French well, or my red hair. It’s too sickening to have spent over a year in Paris without getting hold of anyone.”
“You don’t go the right way to work,” said Flanagan.
He had a long and enviable list of triumphs to narrate, and though they took leave not to believe all he said, evidence forced them to acknowledge that he did not altogether lie. But he sought no permanent arrangement. He only had two years in Paris: he had persuaded his people to let him come and study art instead of going to college; but at the end of that period he was to return to Seattle and go into his father’s business. He had made up his mind to get as much fun as possible into the time, and demanded variety rather than duration in his love affairs.
“I don’t know how you get hold of them,” said Lawson furiously.
“There’s no difficulty about that, sonny,” answered Flanagan. “You just go right in. The difficulty is to get rid of them. That’s where you want tact.”
Philip was too much occupied with his work, the books he was reading, the plays he saw, the conversation he listened to, to trouble himself with the desire for female society. He thought there would be plenty of time for that when he could speak French more glibly.
It was more than a year now since he had seen Miss Wilkinson, and during his first weeks in Paris he had been too busy to answer a letter she had written to him just before he left Blackstable. When another came, knowing it would be full of reproaches and not being just then in the mood for them, he put it aside, intending to open it later; but he forgot and did not run across it till a month afterwards, when he was turning out a drawer to find some socks that had no holes in them. He looked at the unopened letter with dismay. He was afraid that Miss Wilkinson had suffered a good deal, and it made him feel a brute; but she had probably got over the suffering by now, at all events the worst of it. It suggested itself to him that women were often very emphatic in their expressions. These did not mean so much as when men used them. He had quite made up his mind that nothing would induce him ever to see her again. He had not written for so long that it seemed hardly worth while to write now. He made up his mind not to read the letter.
“I daresay she won’t write again,” he said to himself. “She can’t help seeing the thing’s over. After all, she was old enough to be my mother; she ought to have known better.”
For an hour or two he felt a little uncomfortable. His attitude was obviously the right one, but he could not help a feeling of dissatisfaction with the whole business. Miss Wilkinson, however, did not write again; nor did she, as he absurdly feared, suddenly appear in Paris to make him ridiculous before his friends. In a little while he clean forgot her.
Meanwhile he definitely forsook his old gods. The amazement with which at first he had looked upon the works of the impressionists, changed to admiration; and presently he found himself talking as emphatically as the rest on the merits of Manet, Monet, and Degas. He bought a photograph of a drawing by Ingres of the Odalisque and a photograph of the Olympia. They were pinned side by side over his washing-stand so that he could contemplate their beauty while he shaved. He knew now quite positively that there had been no painting of landscape before Monet; and he felt a real thrill when he stood in front of Rembrandt’s Disciples at Emmaus or Velasquez’ Lady with the Flea-bitten Nose. That was not her real name, but by that she was distinguished at Gravier’s to emphasise the picture’s beauty notwithstanding the somewhat revolting peculiarity of the sitter’s appearance. With Ruskin, Burne-Jones, and Watts, he had put aside his bowler hat and the neat blue tie with white spots which he had worn on coming to Paris; and now disported himself in a soft, broad-brimmed hat, a flowing black cravat, and a cape of romantic cut. He walked along the Boulevard du Montparnasse as though he had known it all his life, and by virtuous perseverance he had learnt to drink absinthe without distaste. He was letting his hair grow, and it was only because Nature is unkind and has no regard for the immortal longings of youth that he did not attempt a beard.
XLV
Philip soon realised that the spirit which informed his friends was Cronshaw’s. It was from him that Lawson got his paradoxes; and even Clutton, who strained after individuality, expressed himself in the terms he had insensibly acquired from the older man. It was his ideas that they bandied about at table, and on his authority they formed their judgments. They made up for the respect with which unconsciously they treated him by laughing at his foibles and lamenting his vices.
“Of course, poor old Cronshaw will never do any good,” they said. “He’s quite hopeless.”
They prided themselves on being alone in appreciating his genius; and though, with the contempt of youth for the follies of middle-age, they patronised him among themselves, they did not fail to look upon it as a feather in their caps if he had chosen a time when only one was there to be particularly wonderful. Cronshaw never came to Gravier’s. For the last four years he had lived in squalid conditions with a woman whom only Lawson had once seen, in a tiny apartment on the sixth floor of one of the most dilapidated houses on the Quai des Grands Augustins: Lawson described with gusto the filth, the untidiness, the litter.
“And the stink nearly blew your head off.”
“Not at dinner, Lawson,” expostulated one of the others.
But he would not deny himself the pleasure of giving picturesque details of the odours which met his nostril. With a fierce delight in his own realism he described the woman who had opened the door for him. She was dark, small, and fat, quite young, with black hair that seemed always on the point of coming down. She wore a slatternly blouse and no corsets. With her red cheeks, large sensual mouth, and shining, lewd eyes, she reminded you of the Bohemienne in the Louvre by Franz Hals. She had a flaunting vulgarity which amused and yet horrified. A scrubby, unwashed baby was playing on the floor. It was known that the slut deceived Cronshaw with the most worthless ragamuffins of the Quarter, and it was a mystery to the ingenuous youths who absorbed his wisdom over a cafe table that Cronshaw with his keen intellect and his passion for beauty could ally himself to such a creature. But he seemed to revel in the coarseness of her language and would often report some phrase which reeked of the gutter. He referred to her ironically as la fille de mon concierge. Cronshaw was very poor. He earned a bare subsistence by writing on the exhibitions of pictures for one or two English papers, and he did a certain amount of translating. He had been on the staff of an English paper in Paris, but had been dismissed for drunkenness; he still however did odd jobs for it, describing sales at the Hotel Drouot or the revues at music-halls. The life of Paris had got into his bones, and he would not change it, notwithstanding its squalor, drudgery, and hardship, for any other in the world. He remained there all through the year, even in summer when everyone he knew was away, and felt himself only at ease within a mile of the Boulevard St. Michel. But the curious thing was that he had never learnt to speak French passably, and he kept in his shabby clothes bought at La Belle Jardiniere an ineradicably English appearance.
He was a man who would have made a success of life a century and a half ago when conversation was a passport to good company and inebriety no bar.
“I ought to have lived in the eighteen hundreds,” he said himself. “What I want is a patron. I should have published my poems by subscription and dedicated them to a nobleman. I long to compose rhymed couplets upon the poodle of a countess. My soul yearns for the love of chamber-maids and the conversation of bishops.”
He quoted the romantic Rolla,
“Je suis venu trop tard dans un monde trop vieux.”
He liked new faces, and he took a fancy to Philip, who seemed to achieve the difficult feat of talking just enough to suggest conversation and not too much to prevent monologue. Philip was captivated. He did not realise that little that Cronshaw said was new. His personality in conversation had a curious power. He had a beautiful and a sonorous voice, and a manner of putting things which was irresistible to youth. All he said seemed to excite thought, and often on the way home Lawson and Philip would walk to and from one another’s hotels, discussing some point which a chance word of Cronshaw had suggested. It was disconcerting to Philip, who had a youthful eagerness for results, that Cronshaw’s poetry hardly came up to expectation. It had never been published in a volume, but most of it had appeared in periodicals; and after a good deal of persuasion Cronshaw brought down a bundle of pages torn out of The Yellow Book, The Saturday Review, and other journals, on each of which was a poem. Philip was taken aback to find that most of them reminded him either of Henley or of Swinburne. It needed the splendour of Cronshaw’s delivery to make them personal. He expressed his disappointment to Lawson, who carelessly repeated his words; and next time Philip went to the Closerie des Lilas the poet turned to him with his sleek smile:
“I hear you don’t think much of my verses.”
Philip was embarrassed.
“I don’t know about that,” he answered. “I enjoyed reading them very much.”
“Do not attempt to spare my feelings,” returned Cronshaw, with a wave of his fat hand. “I do not attach any exaggerated importance to my poetical works. Life is there to be lived rather than to be written about. My aim is to search out the manifold experience that it offers, wringing from each moment what of emotion it presents. I look upon my writing as a graceful accomplishment which does not absorb but rather adds pleasure to existence. And as for posterity damn posterity.”
Philip smiled, for it leaped to one’s eyes that the artist in life had produced no more than a wretched daub. Cronshaw looked at him meditatively and filled his glass. He sent the waiter for a packet of cigarettes.
“You are amused because I talk in this fashion and you know that I am poor and live in an attic with a vulgar trollop who deceives me with hair-dressers and garcons de cafe; I translate wretched books for the British public, and write articles upon contemptible pictures which deserve not even to be abused. But pray tell me what is the meaning of life?”
“I say, that’s rather a difficult question. Won’t you give the answer yourself?”
“No, because it’s worthless unless you yourself discover it. But what do you suppose you are in the world for?”
Philip had never asked himself, and he thought for a moment before replying.
“Oh, I don’t know: I suppose to do one’s duty, and make the best possible use of one’s faculties, and avoid hurting other people.”
“In short, to do unto others as you would they should do unto you?”
“I suppose so.”
“Christianity.”
“No, it isn’t,” said Philip indignantly. “It has nothing to do with Christianity. It’s just abstract morality.”
“But there’s no such thing as abstract morality.”
“In that case, supposing under the influence of liquor you left your purse behind when you leave here and I picked it up, why do you imagine that I should return it to you? It’s not the fear of the police.”
“It’s the dread of hell if you sin and the hope of Heaven if you are virtuous.”
“But I believe in neither.”
“That may be. Neither did Kant when he devised the Categorical Imperative. You have thrown aside a creed, but you have preserved the ethic which was based upon it. To all intents you are a Christian still, and if there is a God in Heaven you will undoubtedly receive your reward. The Almighty can hardly be such a fool as the churches make out. If you keep His laws I don’t think He can care a packet of pins whether you believe in Him or not.”
“But if I left my purse behind you would certainly return it to me,” said Philip.
“Not from motives of abstract morality, but only from fear of the police.”
“It’s a thousand to one that the police would never find out.”
“My ancestors have lived in a civilised state so long that the fear of the police has eaten into my bones. The daughter of my concierge would not hesitate for a moment. You answer that she belongs to the criminal classes; not at all, she is merely devoid of vulgar prejudice.”
“But then that does away with honour and virtue and goodness and decency and everything,” said Philip.
“Have you ever committed a sin?”
“I don’t know, I suppose so,” answered Philip.
“You speak with the lips of a dissenting minister. I have never committed a sin.”
Cronshaw in his shabby great-coat, with the collar turned up, and his hat well down on his head, with his red fat face and his little gleaming eyes, looked extraordinarily comic; but Philip was too much in earnest to laugh.
“Have you never done anything you regret?”
“How can I regret when what I did was inevitable?” asked Cronshaw in return.
“But that’s fatalism.”
“The illusion which man has that his will is free is so deeply rooted that I am ready to accept it. I act as though I were a free agent. But when an action is performed it is clear that all the forces of the universe from all eternity conspired to cause it, and nothing I could do could have prevented it. It was inevitable. If it was good I can claim no merit; if it was bad I can accept no censure.”
“My brain reels,” said Philip.
“Have some whiskey,” returned Cronshaw, passing over the bottle. “There’s nothing like it for clearing the head. You must expect to be thick-witted if you insist upon drinking beer.”
Philip shook his head, and Cronshaw proceeded:
“You’re not a bad fellow, but you won’t drink. Sobriety disturbs conversation. But when I speak of good and bad…” Philip saw he was taking up the thread of his discourse, “I speak conventionally. I attach no meaning to those words. I refuse to make a hierarchy of human actions and ascribe worthiness to some and ill-repute to others. The terms vice and virtue have no signification for me. I do not confer praise or blame: I accept. I am the measure of all things. I am the centre of the world.”
“But there are one or two other people in the world,” objected Philip.
“I speak only for myself. I know them only as they limit my activities. Round each of them too the world turns, and each one for himself is the centre of the universe. My right over them extends only as far as my power. What I can do is the only limit of what I may do. Because we are gregarious we live in society, and society holds together by means of force, force of arms (that is the policeman) and force of public opinion (that is Mrs. Grundy). You have society on one hand and the individual on the other: each is an organism striving for self-preservation. It is might against might. I stand alone, bound to accept society and not unwilling, since in return for the taxes I pay it protects me, a weakling, against the tyranny of another stronger than I am; but I submit to its laws because I must; I do not acknowledge their justice: I do not know justice, I only know power. And when I have paid for the policeman who protects me and, if I live in a country where conscription is in force, served in the army which guards my house and land from the invader, I am quits with society: for the rest I counter its might with my wiliness. It makes laws for its self-preservation, and if I break them it imprisons or kills me: it has the might to do so and therefore the right. If I break the laws I will accept the vengeance of the state, but I will not regard it as punishment nor shall I feel myself convicted of wrong-doing. Society tempts me to its service by honours and riches and the good opinion of my fellows; but I am indifferent to their good opinion, I despise honours and I can do very well without riches.”
“But if everyone thought like you things would go to pieces at once.”
“I have nothing to do with others, I am only concerned with myself. I take advantage of the fact that the majority of mankind are led by certain rewards to do things which directly or indirectly tend to my convenience.”
“It seems to me an awfully selfish way of looking at things,” said Philip.
“But are you under the impression that men ever do anything except for selfish reasons?”
“Yes.”
“It is impossible that they should. You will find as you grow older that the first thing needful to make the world a tolerable place to live in is to recognise the inevitable selfishness of humanity. You demand unselfishness from others, which is a preposterous claim that they should sacrifice their desires to yours. Why should they? When you are reconciled to the fact that each is for himself in the world you will ask less from your fellows. They will not disappoint you, and you will look upon them more charitably. Men seek but one thing in life their pleasure.”
“No, no, no!” cried Philip.
Cronshaw chuckled.
“You rear like a frightened colt, because I use a word to which your Christianity ascribes a deprecatory meaning. You have a hierarchy of values; pleasure is at the bottom of the ladder, and you speak with a little thrill of self-satisfaction, of duty, charity, and truthfulness. You think pleasure is only of the senses; the wretched slaves who manufactured your morality despised a satisfaction which they had small means of enjoying. You would not be so frightened if I had spoken of happiness instead of pleasure: it sounds less shocking, and your mind wanders from the sty of Epicurus to his garden. But I will speak of pleasure, for I see that men aim at that, and I do not know that they aim at happiness. It is pleasure that lurks in the practice of every one of your virtues. Man performs actions because they are good for him, and when they are good for other people as well they are thought virtuous: if he finds pleasure in giving alms he is charitable; if he finds pleasure in helping others he is benevolent; if he finds pleasure in working for society he is public-spirited; but it is for your private pleasure that you give twopence to a beggar as much as it is for my private pleasure that I drink another whiskey and soda. I, less of a humbug than you, neither applaud myself for my pleasure nor demand your admiration.”
“But have you never known people do things they didn’t want to instead of things they did?”
“No. You put your question foolishly. What you mean is that people accept an immediate pain rather than an immediate pleasure. The objection is as foolish as your manner of putting it. It is clear that men accept an immediate pain rather than an immediate pleasure, but only because they expect a greater pleasure in the future. Often the pleasure is illusory, but their error in calculation is no refutation of the rule. You are puzzled because you cannot get over the idea that pleasures are only of the senses; but, child, a man who dies for his country dies because he likes it as surely as a man eats pickled cabbage because he likes it. It is a law of creation. If it were possible for men to prefer pain to pleasure the human race would have long since become extinct.”
“But if all that is true,” cried Philip, “what is the use of anything? If you take away duty and goodness and beauty why are we brought into the world?”
“Here comes the gorgeous East to suggest an answer,” smiled Cronshaw.
He pointed to two persons who at that moment opened the door of the cafe, and, with a blast of cold air, entered. They were Levantines, itinerant vendors of cheap rugs, and each bore on his arm a bundle. It was Sunday evening, and the cafe was very full. They passed among the tables, and in that atmosphere heavy and discoloured with tobacco smoke, rank with humanity, they seemed to bring an air of mystery. They were clad in European, shabby clothes, their thin great-coats were threadbare, but each wore a tarbouch. Their faces were gray with cold. One was of middle age, with a black beard, but the other was a youth of eighteen, with a face deeply scarred by smallpox and with one eye only. They passed by Cronshaw and Philip.
“Allah is great, and Mahomet is his prophet,” said Cronshaw impressively.
The elder advanced with a cringing smile, like a mongrel used to blows. With a sidelong glance at the door and a quick surreptitious movement he showed a pornographic picture.
“Are you Masr-ed-Deen, the merchant of Alexandria, or is it from far Bagdad that you bring your goods, O, my uncle; and yonder one-eyed youth, do I see in him one of the three kings of whom Scheherazade told stories to her lord?”
The pedlar’s smile grew more ingratiating, though he understood no word of what Cronshaw said, and like a conjurer he produced a sandalwood box.
“Nay, show us the priceless web of Eastern looms,” quoth Cronshaw. “For I would point a moral and adorn a tale.”
The Levantine unfolded a table-cloth, red and yellow, vulgar, hideous, and grotesque.
“Thirty-five francs,” he said.
“O, my uncle, this cloth knew not the weavers of Samarkand, and those colours were never made in the vats of Bokhara.”
“Twenty-five francs,” smiled the pedlar obsequiously.
“Ultima Thule was the place of its manufacture, even Birmingham the place of my birth.”
“Fifteen francs,” cringed the bearded man.
“Get thee gone, fellow,” said Cronshaw. “May wild asses defile the grave of thy maternal grandmother.”
Imperturbably, but smiling no more, the Levantine passed with his wares to another table. Cronshaw turned to Philip.
“Have you ever been to the Cluny, the museum? There you will see Persian carpets of the most exquisite hue and of a pattern the beautiful intricacy of which delights and amazes the eye. In them you will see the mystery and the sensual beauty of the East, the roses of Hafiz and the wine-cup of Omar; but presently you will see more. You were asking just now what was the meaning of life. Go and look at those Persian carpets, and one of these days the answer will come to you.”
“You are cryptic,” said Philip.
“I am drunk,” answered Cronshaw.