In the drawings youve been looking at I think my types are very handsome.
Oh, they wont do!
Ive had a couple of new models.
I see you have. They wont do.
Are you very sure of that?
Absolutelytheyre stupid.
You mean I amfor I ought to get round that.
You cantwith such people. Who are they?
I told him, as far as was necessary, and he declared, heartlessly: Ce sont des gens quil faut mettre à la porte.
Youve never seen them; theyre awfully good, I compassionately objected.
Not seen them? Why, all this recent work of yours drops to pieces with them. Its all I want to see of them.
No one else has said anything against itthe Cheapside people are pleased.
Everyone else is an ass, and the Cheapside people the biggest asses of all. Come, dont pretend, at this time of day, to have pretty illusions about the public, especially about publishers and editors. Its not for such animals you workits for those who know, coloro che sanno; so keep straight for me if you cant keep straight for yourself. Theres a certain sort of thing you tried for from the firstand a very good thing it is. But this twaddle isnt in it. When I talked with Hawley later about Rutland Ramsay and its possible successors he declared that I must get back into my boat again or I would go to the bottom. His voice in short was the voice of warning.
I noted the warning, but I didnt turn my friends out of doors. They bored me a good deal; but the very fact that they bored me admonished me not to sacrifice themif there was anything to be done with themsimply to irritation. As I look back at this phase they seem to me to have pervaded my life not a little. I have a vision of them as most of the time in my studio, seated, against the wall, on an old velvet bench to be out of the way, and looking like a pair of patient courtiers in a royal ante-chamber. I am convinced that during the coldest weeks of the winter they held their ground because it saved them fire. Their newness was losing its gloss, and it was impossible not to feel that they were objects of charity. Whenever Miss Churm arrived they went away, and after I was fairly launched in Rutland Ramsay Miss Churm arrived pretty often. They managed to express to me tacitly that they supposed I wanted her for the low life of the book, and I let them suppose it, since they had attempted to study the workit was lying about the studiowithout discovering that it dealt only with the highest circles. They had dipped into the most brilliant of our novelists without deciphering many passages. I still took an hour from them, now and again, in spite of Jack Hawleys warning: it would be time enough to dismiss them, if dismissal should be necessary, when the rigour of the season was over. Hawley had made their acquaintancehe had met them at my firesideand thought them a ridiculous pair. Learning that he was a painter they tried to approach him, to show him too that they were the real thing; but he looked at them, across the big room, as if they were miles away: they were a compendium of everything that he most objected to in the social system of his country. Such people as that, all convention and patent-leather, with ejaculations that stopped conversation, had no business in a studio. A studio was a place to learn to see, and how could you see through a pair of feather beds?
The main inconvenience I suffered at their hands was that, at first, I was shy of letting them discover how my artful little servant had begun to sit to me for Rutland Ramsay. They knew that I had been odd enough (they were prepared by this time to allow oddity to artists,) to pick a foreign vagabond out of the streets, when I might have had a person with whiskers and credentials; but it was some time before they learned how high I rated his accomplishments. They found him in an attitude more than once, but they never doubted I was doing him as an organ-grinder. There were several things they never guessed, and one of them was that for a striking scene in the novel, in which a footman briefly figured, it occurred to me to make use of Major Monarch as the menial. I kept putting this off, I didnt like to ask him to don the liverybesides the difficulty of finding a livery to fit him. At last, one day late in the winter, when I was at work on the despised Oronte (he caught ones idea in an instant), and was in the glow of feeling that I was going very straight, they came in, the Major and his wife, with their society laugh about nothing (there was less and less to laugh at), like country-callersthey always reminded me of thatwho have walked across the park after church and are presently persuaded to stay to luncheon. Luncheon was over, but they could stay to teaI knew they wanted it. The fit was on me, however, and I couldnt let my ardour cool and my work wait, with the fading daylight, while my model prepared it. So I asked Mrs. Monarch if she would mind laying it outa request which, for an instant, brought all the blood to her face. Her eyes were on her husbands for a second, and some mute telegraphy passed between them. Their folly was over the next instant; his cheerful shrewdness put an end to it. So far from pitying their wounded pride, I must add, I was moved to give it as complete a lesson as I could. They bustled about together and got out the cups and saucers and made the kettle boil. I know they felt as if they were waiting on my servant, and when the tea was prepared I said: Hell have a cup, pleasehes tired. Mrs. Monarch brought him one where he stood, and he took it from her as if he had been a gentleman at a party, squeezing a crush-hat with an elbow.
Then it came over me that she had made a great effort for memade it with a kind of noblenessand that I owed her a compensation. Each time I saw her after this I wondered what the compensation could be. I couldnt go on doing the wrong thing to oblige them. Oh, it was the wrong thing, the stamp of the work for which they satHawley was not the only person to say it now. I sent in a large number of the drawings I had made for Rutland Ramsay, and I received a warning that was more to the point than Hawleys. The artistic adviser of the house for which I was working was of opinion that many of my illustrations were not what had been looked for. Most of these illustrations were the subjects in which the Monarchs had figured. Without going into the question of what had been looked for, I saw at this rate I shouldnt get the other books to do. I hurled myself in despair upon Miss Churm, I put her through all her paces. I not only adopted Oronte publicly as my hero, but one morning when the Major looked in to see if I didnt require him to finish a figure for the Cheapside, for which he had begun to sit the week before, I told him that I had changed my mindI would do the drawing from my man. At this my visitor turned pale and stood looking at me. Is he your idea of an English gentleman? he asked.
I was disappointed, I was nervous, I wanted to get on with my work; so I replied with irritation: Oh, my dear MajorI cant be ruined for you!
He stood another moment; then, without a word, he quitted the studio. I drew a long breath when he was gone, for I said to myself that I shouldnt see him again. I had not told him definitely that I was in danger of having my work rejected, but I was vexed at his not having felt the catastrophe in the air, read with me the moral of our fruitless collaboration, the lesson that, in the deceptive atmosphere of art, even the highest respectability may fail of being plastic.
I was disappointed, I was nervous, I wanted to get on with my work; so I replied with irritation: Oh, my dear MajorI cant be ruined for you!
He stood another moment; then, without a word, he quitted the studio. I drew a long breath when he was gone, for I said to myself that I shouldnt see him again. I had not told him definitely that I was in danger of having my work rejected, but I was vexed at his not having felt the catastrophe in the air, read with me the moral of our fruitless collaboration, the lesson that, in the deceptive atmosphere of art, even the highest respectability may fail of being plastic.
I didnt owe my friends money, but I did see them again. They re-appeared together, three days later, and under the circumstances there was something tragic in the fact. It was a proof to me that they could find nothing else in life to do. They had threshed the matter out in a dismal conferencethey had digested the bad news that they were not in for the series. If they were not useful to me even for the Cheapside their function seemed difficult to determine, and I could only judge at first that they had come, forgivingly, decorously, to take a last leave. This made me rejoice in secret that I had little leisure for a scene; for I had placed both my other models in position together and I was pegging away at a drawing from which I hoped to derive glory. It had been suggested by the passage in which Rutland Ramsay, drawing up a chair to Artemisias piano-stool, says extraordinary things to her while she ostensibly fingers out a difficult piece of music. I had done Miss Churm at the piano beforeit was an attitude in which she knew how to take on an absolutely poetic grace. I wished the two figures to compose together, intensely, and my little Italian had entered perfectly into my conception. The pair were vividly before me, the piano had been pulled out; it was a charming picture of blended youth and murmured love, which I had only to catch and keep. My visitors stood and looked at it, and I was friendly to them over my shoulder.
They made no response, but I was used to silent company and went on with my work, only a little disconcerted (even though exhilarated by the sense that this was at least the ideal thing), at not having got rid of them after all. Presently I heard Mrs. Monarchs sweet voice beside, or rather above me: I wish her hair was a little better done. I looked up and she was staring with a strange fixedness at Miss Churm, whose back was turned to her. Do you mind my just touching it? she went ona question which made me spring up for an instant, as with the instinctive fear that she might do the young lady a harm. But she quieted me with a glance I shall never forgetI confess I should like to have been able to paint thatand went for a moment to my model. She spoke to her softly, laying a hand upon her shoulder and bending over her; and as the girl, understanding, gratefully assented, she disposed her rough curls, with a few quick passes, in such a way as to make Miss Churms head twice as charming. It was one of the most heroic personal services I have ever seen rendered. Then Mrs. Monarch turned away with a low sigh and, looking about her as if for something to do, stooped to the floor with a noble humility and picked up a dirty rag that had dropped out of my paint-box.
The Major meanwhile had also been looking for something to do and, wandering to the other end of the studio, saw before him my breakfast things, neglected, unremoved. I say, cant I be useful here? he called out to me with an irrepressible quaver. I assented with a laugh that I fear was awkward and for the next ten minutes, while I worked, I heard the light clatter of china and the tinkle of spoons and glass. Mrs. Monarch assisted her husbandthey washed up my crockery, they put it away. They wandered off into my little scullery, and I afterwards found that they had cleaned my knives and that my slender stock of plate had an unprecedented surface. When it came over me, the latent eloquence of what they were doing, I confess that my drawing was blurred for a momentthe picture swam. They had accepted their failure, but they couldnt accept their fate. They had bowed their heads in bewilderment to the perverse and cruel law in virtue of which the real thing could be so much less precious than the unreal; but they didnt want to starve. If my servants were my models, my models might be my servants. They would reverse the partsthe others would sit for the ladies and gentlemen, and they would do the work. They would still be in the studioit was an intense dumb appeal to me not to turn them out. Take us on, they wanted to saywell do anything.
When all this hung before me the afflatus vanishedmy pencil dropped from my hand. My sitting was spoiled and I got rid of my sitters, who were also evidently rather mystified and awestruck. Then, alone with the Major and his wife, I had a most uncomfortable moment, He put their prayer into a single sentence: I say, you knowjust let us do for you, cant you? I couldntit was dreadful to see them emptying my slops; but I pretended I could, to oblige them, for about a week. Then I gave them a sum of money to go away; and I never saw them again. I obtained the remaining books, but my friend Hawley repeats that Major and Mrs. Monarch did me a permanent harm, got me into a second-rate trick. If it be true I am content to have paid the pricefor the memory.
SIR DOMINICK FERRAND
I
There are several objections to it, but Ill take it if youll alter it, Mr. Lockets rather curt note had said; and there was no waste of words in the postscript in which he had added: If youll come in and see me, Ill show you what I mean. This communication had reached Jersey Villas by the first post, and Peter Baron had scarcely swallowed his leathery muffin before he got into motion to obey the editorial behest. He knew that such precipitation looked eager, and he had no desire to look eagerit was not in his interest; but how could he maintain a godlike calm, principled though he was in favour of it, the first time one of the great magazines had accepted, even with a cruel reservation, a specimen of his ardent young genius?
It was not till, like a child with a sea-shell at his ear, he began to be aware of the great roar of the underground, that, in his third-class carriage, the cruelty of the reservation penetrated, with the taste of acrid smoke, to his inner sense. It was really degrading to be eager in the face of having to alter. Peter Baron tried to figure to himself at that moment that he was not flying to betray the extremity of his need, but hurrying to fight for some of those passages of superior boldness which were exactly what the conductor of the Promiscuous Review would be sure to be down upon. He made believeas if to the greasy fellow-passenger oppositethat he felt indignant; but he saw that to the small round eye of this still more downtrodden brother he represented selfish success. He would have liked to linger in the conception that he had been approached by the Promiscuous; but whatever might be thought in the office of that periodical of some of his flights of fancy, there was no want of vividness in his occasional suspicion that he passed there for a familiar bore. The only thing that was clearly flattering was the fact that the Promiscuous rarely published fiction. He should therefore be associated with a deviation from a solemn habit, and that would more than make up to him for a phrase in one of Mr. Lockets inexorable earlier notes, a phrase which still rankled, about his showing no symptom of the faculty really creative. You dont seem able to keep a character together, this pitiless monitor had somewhere else remarked. Peter Baron, as he sat in his corner while the train stopped, considered, in the befogged gaslight, the bookstall standard of literature and asked himself whose character had fallen to pieces now. Tormenting indeed had always seemed to him such a fate as to have the creative head without the creative hand.