The story which Philip made out in one way and another was terrible.
One of the grievances of the women-students was that Fanny Price would
never share their gay meals in restaurants, and the reason was obvious:
she had been oppressed by dire poverty. He remembered the luncheon they
had eaten together when first he came to Paris and the ghoulish
appetite which had disgusted him: he realised now that she ate in that
manner because she was ravenous. The concierge told him what her food
had consisted of. A bottle of milk was left for her every day and she
brought in her own loaf of bread; she ate half the loaf and drank half
the milk at mid-day when she came back from the school, and consumed
the rest in the evening. It was the same day after day. Philip thought
with anguish of what she must have endured. She had never given anyone
to understand that she was poorer than the rest, but it was clear that
her money had been coming to an end, and at last she could not afford
to come any more to the studio. The little room was almost bare of
furniture, and there were no other clothes than the shabby brown dress
she had always worn. Philip searched among her things for the address
of some friend with whom he could communicate. He found a piece of
paper on which his own name was written a score of times. It gave him a
peculiar shock. He supposed it was true that she had loved him; he
thought of the emaciated body, in the brown dress, hanging from the
nail in the ceiling; and he shuddered. But if she had cared for him why
did she not let him help her? He would so gladly have done all he
could. He felt remorseful because he had refused to see that she looked
upon him with any particular feeling, and now these words in her letter
were infinitely pathetic: I can’t bear the thought that anyone else
should touch me. She had died of starvation.
Philip found at length a letter signed: your loving brother, Albert. It
was two or three weeks old, dated from some road in Surbiton, and
refused a loan of five pounds. The writer had his wife and family to
think of, he didn’t feel justified in lending money, and his advice was
that Fanny should come back to London and try to get a situation.
Philip telegraphed to Albert Price, and in a little while an answer
came:
“Deeply distressed. Very awkward to leave my business. Is presence
essential. Price.”
Philip wired a succinct affirmative, and next morning a stranger
presented himself at the studio.
“My name’s Price,” he said, when Philip opened the door.
He was a commonish man in black with a band round his bowler hat; he
had something of Fanny’s clumsy look; he wore a stubbly moustache, and
had a cockney accent. Philip asked him to come in. He cast sidelong
glances round the studio while Philip gave him details of the accident
and told him what he had done.
“I needn’t see her, need I?” asked Albert Price. “My nerves aren’t very
strong, and it takes very little to upset me.”
He began to talk freely. He was a rubber-merchant, and he had a wife
and three children. Fanny was a governess, and he couldn’t make out why
she hadn’t stuck to that instead of coming to Paris.
“Me and Mrs. Price told her Paris was no place for a girl. And there’s
no money in art—never ’as been.”
It was plain enough that he had not been on friendly terms with his
sister, and he resented her suicide as a last injury that she had done
him. He did not like the idea that she had been forced to it by
poverty; that seemed to reflect on the family. The idea struck him that
possibly there was a more respectable reason for her act.
“I suppose she ’adn’t any trouble with a man, ’ad she? You know what I
mean, Paris and all that. She might ’ave done it so as not to disgrace
herself.”
Philip felt himself reddening and cursed his weakness. Price’s keen
little eyes seemed to suspect him of an intrigue.
“I believe your sister to have been perfectly virtuous,” he answered
acidly. “She killed herself because she was starving.”
“Well, it’s very ’ard on her family, Mr. Carey. She only ’ad to write
to me. I wouldn’t have let my sister want.”
Philip had found the brother’s address only by reading the letter in
which he refused a loan; but he shrugged his shoulders: there was no
use in recrimination. He hated the little man and wanted to have done
with him as soon as possible. Albert Price also wished to get through
the necessary business quickly so that he could get back to London.
They went to the tiny room in which poor Fanny had lived. Albert Price
looked at the pictures and the furniture.
“I don’t pretend to know much about art,” he said. “I suppose these
pictures would fetch something, would they?”
“Nothing,” said Philip.
“The furniture’s not worth ten shillings.”
Albert Price knew no French and Philip had to do everything. It seemed
that it was an interminable process to get the poor body safely hidden
away under ground: papers had to be obtained in one place and signed in
another; officials had to be seen. For three days Philip was occupied
from morning till night. At last he and Albert Price followed the
hearse to the cemetery at Montparnasse.
“I want to do the thing decent,” said Albert Price, “but there’s no use
wasting money.”
The short ceremony was infinitely dreadful in the cold gray morning.
Half a dozen people who had worked with Fanny Price at the studio came
to the funeral, Mrs. Otter because she was massiere and thought it her
duty, Ruth Chalice because she had a kind heart, Lawson, Clutton, and
Flanagan. They had all disliked her during her life. Philip, looking
across the cemetery crowded on all sides with monuments, some poor and
simple, others vulgar, pretentious, and ugly, shuddered. It was
horribly sordid. When they came out Albert Price asked Philip to lunch
with him. Philip loathed him now and he was tired; he had not been
sleeping well, for he dreamed constantly of Fanny Price in the torn
brown dress, hanging from the nail in the ceiling; but he could not
think of an excuse.
“You take me somewhere where we can get a regular slap-up lunch. All
this is the very worst thing for my nerves.”
“Lavenue’s is about the best place round here,” answered Philip.
Albert Price settled himself on a velvet seat with a sigh of relief. He
ordered a substantial luncheon and a bottle of wine.
“Well, I’m glad that’s over,” he said.
He threw out a few artful questions, and Philip discovered that he was
eager to hear about the painter’s life in Paris. He represented it to
himself as deplorable, but he was anxious for details of the orgies
which his fancy suggested to him. With sly winks and discreet
sniggering he conveyed that he knew very well that there was a great
deal more than Philip confessed. He was a man of the world, and he knew
a thing or two. He asked Philip whether he had ever been to any of
those places in Montmartre which are celebrated from Temple Bar to the
Royal Exchange. He would like to say he had been to the Moulin Rouge.
The luncheon was very good and the wine excellent. Albert Price
expanded as the processes of digestion went satisfactorily forwards.
“Let’s ’ave a little brandy,” he said when the coffee was brought, “and
blow the expense.”
He rubbed his hands.
“You know, I’ve got ’alf a mind to stay over tonight and go back
tomorrow. What d’you say to spending the evening together?”
“If you mean you want me to take you round Montmartre tonight, I’ll see
you damned,” said Philip.
“I suppose it wouldn’t be quite the thing.”
The answer was made so seriously that Philip was tickled.
“Besides it would be rotten for your nerves,” he said gravely.
Albert Price concluded that he had better go back to London by the four
o’clock train, and presently he took leave of Philip.
“Well, good-bye, old man,” he said. “I tell you what, I’ll try and come
over to Paris again one of these days and I’ll look you up. And then we
won’t ’alf go on the razzle.”
Philip was too restless to work that afternoon, so he jumped on a bus
and crossed the river to see whether there were any pictures on view at
Durand-Ruel’s. After that he strolled along the boulevard. It was cold
and wind-swept. People hurried by wrapped up in their coats, shrunk
together in an effort to keep out of the cold, and their faces were
pinched and careworn. It was icy underground in the cemetery at
Montparnasse among all those white tombstones. Philip felt lonely in
the world and strangely homesick. He wanted company. At that hour
Cronshaw would be working, and Clutton never welcomed visitors; Lawson
was painting another portrait of Ruth Chalice and would not care to be
disturbed. He made up his mind to go and see Flanagan. He found him
painting, but delighted to throw up his work and talk. The studio was
comfortable, for the American had more money than most of them, and
warm; Flanagan set about making tea. Philip looked at the two heads
that he was sending to the Salon.
“It’s awful cheek my sending anything,” said Flanagan, “but I don’t
care, I’m going to send. D’you think they’re rotten?”
“Not so rotten as I should have expected,” said Philip.
They showed in fact an astounding cleverness. The difficulties had been
avoided with skill, and there was a dash about the way in which the
paint was put on which was surprising and even attractive. Flanagan,
without knowledge or technique, painted with the loose brush of a man
who has spent a lifetime in the practice of the art.
“If one were forbidden to look at any picture for more than thirty
seconds you’d be a great master, Flanagan,” smiled Philip.
These young people were not in the habit of spoiling one another with
excessive flattery.
“We haven’t got time in America to spend more than thirty seconds in
looking at any picture,” laughed the other.
Flanagan, though he was the most scatter-brained person in the world,
had a tenderness of heart which was unexpected and charming. Whenever
anyone was ill he installed himself as sick-nurse. His gaiety was
better than any medicine. Like many of his countrymen he had not the
English dread of sentimentality which keeps so tight a hold on emotion;
and, finding nothing absurd in the show of feeling, could offer an
exuberant sympathy which was often grateful to his friends in distress.
He saw that Philip was depressed by what he had gone through and with
unaffected kindliness set himself boisterously to cheer him up. He
exaggerated the Americanisms which he knew always made the Englishmen
laugh and poured out a breathless stream of conversation, whimsical,
high-spirited, and jolly. In due course they went out to dinner and
afterwards to the Gaite Montparnasse, which was Flanagan’s favourite
place of amusement. By the end of the evening he was in his most
extravagant humour. He had drunk a good deal, but any inebriety from
which he suffered was due much more to his own vivacity than to
alcohol. He proposed that they should go to the Bal Bullier, and
Philip, feeling too tired to go to bed, willingly enough consented.
They sat down at a table on the platform at the side, raised a little
from the level of the floor so that they could watch the dancing, and
drank a bock. Presently Flanagan saw a friend and with a wild shout
leaped over the barrier on to the space where they were dancing. Philip
watched the people. Bullier was not the resort of fashion. It was
Thursday night and the place was crowded. There were a number of
students of the various faculties, but most of the men were clerks or
assistants in shops; they wore their everyday clothes, ready-made
tweeds or queer tail-coats, and their hats, for they had brought them
in with them, and when they danced there was no place to put them but
their heads. Some of the women looked like servant-girls, and some were
painted hussies, but for the most part they were shop-girls. They were
poorly-dressed in cheap imitation of the fashions on the other side of
the river. The hussies were got up to resemble the music-hall artiste
or the dancer who enjoyed notoriety at the moment; their eyes were
heavy with black and their cheeks impudently scarlet. The hall was lit
by great white lights, low down, which emphasised the shadows on the
faces; all the lines seemed to harden under it, and the colours were
most crude. It was a sordid scene. Philip leaned over the rail, staring
down, and he ceased to hear the music. They danced furiously. They
danced round the room, slowly, talking very little, with all their
attention given to the dance. The room was hot, and their faces shone
with sweat. It seemed to Philip that they had thrown off the guard
which people wear on their expression, the homage to convention, and he
saw them now as they really were. In that moment of abandon they were
strangely animal: some were foxy and some were wolf-like; and others
had the long, foolish face of sheep. Their skins were sallow from the
unhealthy life they led and the poor food they ate. Their features were
blunted by mean interests, and their little eyes were shifty and
cunning. There was nothing of nobility in their bearing, and you felt
that for all of them life was a long succession of petty concerns and
sordid thoughts. The air was heavy with the musty smell of humanity.
But they danced furiously as though impelled by some strange power
within them, and it seemed to Philip that they were driven forward by a
rage for enjoyment. They were seeking desperately to escape from a
world of horror. The desire for pleasure which Cronshaw said was the
only motive of human action urged them blindly on, and the very
vehemence of the desire seemed to rob it of all pleasure. They were
hurried on by a great wind, helplessly, they knew not why and they knew
not whither. Fate seemed to tower above them, and they danced as though
everlasting darkness were beneath their feet. Their silence was vaguely
alarming. It was as if life terrified them and robbed them of power of
speech so that the shriek which was in their hearts died at their
throats. Their eyes were haggard and grim; and notwithstanding the
beastly lust that disfigured them, and the meanness of their faces, and
the cruelty, notwithstanding the stupidness which was worst of all, the
anguish of those fixed eyes made all that crowd terrible and pathetic.
Philip loathed them, and yet his heart ached with the infinite pity
which filled him.
He took his coat from the cloak-room and went out into the bitter
coldness of the night.
L
Philip could not get the unhappy event out of his head. What troubled
him most was the uselessness of Fanny’s effort. No one could have
worked harder than she, nor with more sincerity; she believed in
herself with all her heart; but it was plain that self-confidence meant
very little, all his friends had it, Miguel Ajuria among the rest; and
Philip was shocked by the contrast between the Spaniard’s heroic
endeavour and the triviality of the thing he attempted. The unhappiness
of Philip’s life at school had called up in him the power of
self-analysis; and this vice, as subtle as drug-taking, had taken
possession of him so that he had now a peculiar keenness in the
dissection of his feelings. He could not help seeing that art affected
him differently from others. A fine picture gave Lawson an immediate
thrill. His appreciation was instinctive. Even Flanagan felt certain
things which Philip was obliged to think out. His own appreciation was
intellectual. He could not help thinking that if he had in him the
artistic temperament (he hated the phrase, but could discover no other)
he would feel beauty in the emotional, unreasoning way in which they
did. He began to wonder whether he had anything more than a superficial
cleverness of the hand which enabled him to copy objects with accuracy.
That was nothing. He had learned to despise technical dexterity. The
important thing was to feel in terms of paint. Lawson painted in a
certain way because it was his nature to, and through the imitativeness
of a student sensitive to every influence, there pierced individuality.
Philip looked at his own portrait of Ruth Chalice, and now that three
months had passed he realised that it was no more than a servile copy
of Lawson. He felt himself barren. He painted with the brain, and he
could not help knowing that the only painting worth anything was done
with the heart.
He had very little money, barely sixteen hundred pounds, and it would
be necessary for him to practise the severest economy. He could not
count on earning anything for ten years. The history of painting was
full of artists who had earned nothing at all. He must resign himself
to penury; and it was worth while if he produced work which was
immortal; but he had a terrible fear that he would never be more than
second-rate. Was it worth while for that to give up one’s youth, and
the gaiety of life, and the manifold chances of being? He knew the
existence of foreign painters in Paris enough to see that the lives
they led were narrowly provincial. He knew some who had dragged along
for twenty years in the pursuit of a fame which always escaped them
till they sunk into sordidness and alcoholism. Fanny’s suicide had
aroused memories, and Philip heard ghastly stories of the way in which
one person or another had escaped from despair. He remembered the
scornful advice which the master had given poor Fanny: it would have
been well for her if she had taken it and given up an attempt which was
hopeless.
Philip finished his portrait of Miguel Ajuria and made up his mind to
send it to the Salon. Flanagan was sending two pictures, and he thought
he could paint as well as Flanagan. He had worked so hard on the
portrait that he could not help feeling it must have merit. It was true
that when he looked at it he felt that there was something wrong,
though he could not tell what; but when he was away from it his spirits
went up and he was not dissatisfied. He sent it to the Salon and it was
refused. He did not mind much, since he had done all he could to
persuade himself that there was little chance that it would be taken,
till Flanagan a few days later rushed in to tell Lawson and Philip that
one of his pictures was accepted. With a blank face Philip offered his
congratulations, and Flanagan was so busy congratulating himself that
he did not catch the note of irony which Philip could not prevent from
coming into his voice. Lawson, quicker-witted, observed it and looked
at Philip curiously. His own picture was all right, he knew that a day
or two before, and he was vaguely resentful of Philip’s attitude. But
he was surprised at the sudden question which Philip put him as soon as
the American was gone.
“If you were in my place would you chuck the whole thing?”
“What do you mean?”
“I wonder if it’s worth while being a second-rate painter. You see, in
other things, if you’re a doctor or if you’re in business, it doesn’t
matter so much if you’re mediocre. You make a living and you get along.
But what is the good of turning out second-rate pictures?”
Lawson was fond of Philip and, as soon as he thought he was seriously
distressed by the refusal of his picture, he set himself to console
him. It was notorious that the Salon had refused pictures which were
afterwards famous; it was the first time Philip had sent, and he must
expect a rebuff; Flanagan’s success was explicable, his picture was
showy and superficial: it was just the sort of thing a languid jury
would see merit in. Philip grew impatient; it was humiliating that
Lawson should think him capable of being seriously disturbed by so
trivial a calamity and would not realise that his dejection was due to
a deep-seated distrust of his powers.
Of late Clutton had withdrawn himself somewhat from the group who took
their meals at Gravier’s, and lived very much by himself. Flanagan said
he was in love with a girl, but Clutton’s austere countenance did not
suggest passion; and Philip thought it more probable that he separated
himself from his friends so that he might grow clear with the new ideas
which were in him. But that evening, when the others had left the
restaurant to go to a play and Philip was sitting alone, Clutton came
in and ordered dinner. They began to talk, and finding Clutton more
loquacious and less sardonic than usual, Philip determined to take
advantage of his good humour.
“I say I wish you’d come and look at my picture,” he said. “I’d like to
know what you think of it.”
“No, I won’t do that.”
“Why not?” asked Philip, reddening.
The request was one which they all made of one another, and no one ever
thought of refusing. Clutton shrugged his shoulders.
“People ask you for criticism, but they only want praise. Besides,
what’s the good of criticism? What does it matter if your picture is
good or bad?”
“It matters to me.”
“No. The only reason that one paints is that one can’t help it. It’s a
function like any of the other functions of the body, only
comparatively few people have got it. One paints for oneself: otherwise
one would commit suicide. Just think of it, you spend God knows how
long trying to get something on to canvas, putting the sweat of your
soul into it, and what is the result? Ten to one it will be refused at
the Salon; if it’s accepted, people glance at it for ten seconds as
they pass; if you’re lucky some ignorant fool will buy it and put it on
his walls and look at it as little as he looks at his dining-room
table. Criticism has nothing to do with the artist. It judges
objectively, but the objective doesn’t concern the artist.”
Clutton put his hands over his eyes so that he might concentrate his
mind on what he wanted to say.
“The artist gets a peculiar sensation from something he sees, and is
impelled to express it and, he doesn’t know why, he can only express
his feeling by lines and colours. It’s like a musician; he’ll read a
line or two, and a certain combination of notes presents itself to him:
he doesn’t know why such and such words call forth in him such and such
notes; they just do. And I’ll tell you another reason why criticism is
meaningless: a great painter forces the world to see nature as he sees
it; but in the next generation another painter sees the world in
another way, and then the public judges him not by himself but by his
predecessor. So the Barbizon people taught our fathers to look at trees
in a certain manner, and when Monet came along and painted differently,
people said: But trees aren’t like that. It never struck them that
trees are exactly how a painter chooses to see them. We paint from
within outwards—if we force our vision on the world it calls us great
painters; if we don’t it ignores us; but we are the same. We don’t
attach any meaning to greatness or to smallness. What happens to our
work afterwards is unimportant; we have got all we could out of it
while we were doing it.”
There was a pause while Clutton with voracious appetite devoured the
food that was set before him. Philip, smoking a cheap cigar, observed
him closely. The ruggedness of the head, which looked as though it were
carved from a stone refractory to the sculptor’s chisel, the rough mane
of dark hair, the great nose, and the massive bones of the jaw,
suggested a man of strength; and yet Philip wondered whether perhaps
the mask concealed a strange weakness. Clutton’s refusal to show his
work might be sheer vanity: he could not bear the thought of anyone’s
criticism, and he would not expose himself to the chance of a refusal
from the Salon; he wanted to be received as a master and would not risk
comparisons with other work which might force him to diminish his own
opinion of himself. During the eighteen months Philip had known him
Clutton had grown more harsh and bitter; though he would not come out
into the open and compete with his fellows, he was indignant with the
facile success of those who did. He had no patience with Lawson, and
the pair were no longer on the intimate terms upon which they had been
when Philip first knew them.
“Lawson’s all right,” he said contemptuously, “he’ll go back to
England, become a fashionable portrait painter, earn ten thousand a
year and be an A. R. A. before he’s forty. Portraits done by hand for
the nobility and gentry!”
Philip, too, looked into the future, and he saw Clutton in twenty
years, bitter, lonely, savage, and unknown; still in Paris, for the
life there had got into his bones, ruling a small cenacle with a savage
tongue, at war with himself and the world, producing little in his
increasing passion for a perfection he could not reach; and perhaps
sinking at last into drunkenness. Of late Philip had been captivated by
an idea that since one had only one life it was important to make a
success of it, but he did not count success by the acquiring of money
or the achieving of fame; he did not quite know yet what he meant by
it, perhaps variety of experience and the making the most of his
abilities. It was plain anyway that the life which Clutton seemed
destined to was failure. Its only justification would be the painting
of imperishable masterpieces. He recollected Cronshaw’s whimsical
metaphor of the Persian carpet; he had thought of it often; but
Cronshaw with his faun-like humour had refused to make his meaning
clear: he repeated that it had none unless one discovered it for
oneself. It was this desire to make a success of life which was at the
bottom of Philip’s uncertainty about continuing his artistic career.
But Clutton began to talk again.
“D’you remember my telling you about that chap I met in Brittany? I saw
him the other day here. He’s just off to Tahiti. He was broke to the
world. He was a brasseur d’affaires, a stockbroker I suppose you call
it in English; and he had a wife and family, and he was earning a large
income. He chucked it all to become a painter. He just went off and
settled down in Brittany and began to paint. He hadn’t got any money
and did the next best thing to starving.”
“And what about his wife and family?” asked Philip.
“Oh, he dropped them. He left them to starve on their own account.”
“It sounds a pretty low-down thing to do.”
“Oh, my dear fellow, if you want to be a gentleman you must give up
being an artist. They’ve got nothing to do with one another. You hear
of men painting pot-boilers to keep an aged mother—well, it shows
they’re excellent sons, but it’s no excuse for bad work. They’re only
tradesmen. An artist would let his mother go to the workhouse. There’s
a writer I know over here who told me that his wife died in childbirth.
He was in love with her and he was mad with grief, but as he sat at the
bedside watching her die he found himself making mental notes of how
she looked and what she said and the things he was feeling.
Gentlemanly, wasn’t it?”
“But is your friend a good painter?” asked Philip.
“No, not yet, he paints just like Pissarro. He hasn’t found himself,
but he’s got a sense of colour and a sense of decoration. But that
isn’t the question. It’s the feeling, and that he’s got. He’s behaved
like a perfect cad to his wife and children, he’s always behaving like
a perfect cad; the way he treats the people who’ve helped him—and
sometimes he’s been saved from starvation merely by the kindness of his
friends—is simply beastly. He just happens to be a great artist.”
Philip pondered over the man who was willing to sacrifice everything,
comfort, home, money, love, honour, duty, for the sake of getting on to
canvas with paint the emotion which the world gave him. It was
magnificent, and yet his courage failed him.
Thinking of Cronshaw recalled to him the fact that he had not seen him
for a week, and so, when Clutton left him, he wandered along to the
cafe in which he was certain to find the writer. During the first few
months of his stay in Paris Philip had accepted as gospel all that
Cronshaw said, but Philip had a practical outlook and he grew impatient
with the theories which resulted in no action. Cronshaw’s slim bundle
of poetry did not seem a substantial result for a life which was
sordid. Philip could not wrench out of his nature the instincts of the
middle-class from which he came; and the penury, the hack work which
Cronshaw did to keep body and soul together, the monotony of existence
between the slovenly attic and the cafe table, jarred with his
respectability. Cronshaw was astute enough to know that the young man
disapproved of him, and he attacked his philistinism with an irony
which was sometimes playful but often very keen.
“You’re a tradesman,” he told Philip, “you want to invest life in
consols so that it shall bring you in a safe three per cent. I’m a
spendthrift, I run through my capital. I shall spend my last penny with
my last heartbeat.”
The metaphor irritated Philip, because it assumed for the speaker a
romantic attitude and cast a slur upon the position which Philip
instinctively felt had more to say for it than he could think of at the
moment.
But this evening Philip, undecided, wanted to talk about himself.
Fortunately it was late already and Cronshaw’s pile of saucers on the
table, each indicating a drink, suggested that he was prepared to take
an independent view of things in general.
“I wonder if you’d give me some advice,” said Philip suddenly.
“You won’t take it, will you?”
Philip shrugged his shoulders impatiently.
“I don’t believe I shall ever do much good as a painter. I don’t see
any use in being second-rate. I’m thinking of chucking it.”
“Why shouldn’t you?”
Philip hesitated for an instant.
“I suppose I like the life.”
A change came over Cronshaw’s placid, round face. The corners of the
mouth were suddenly depressed, the eyes sunk dully in their orbits; he
seemed to become strangely bowed and old.
“This?” he cried, looking round the cafe in which they sat. His voice
really trembled a little.
“If you can get out of it, do while there’s time.”
Philip stared at him with astonishment, but the sight of emotion always
made him feel shy, and he dropped his eyes. He knew that he was looking
upon the tragedy of failure. There was silence. Philip thought that
Cronshaw was looking upon his own life; and perhaps he considered his
youth with its bright hopes and the disappointments which wore out the
radiancy; the wretched monotony of pleasure, and the black future.
Philip’s eyes rested on the little pile of saucers, and he knew that
Cronshaw’s were on them too.