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.