It is quite impossible to say whether this thing really happened. It
depends entirely on the word of R. M. Harringay, who is an artist.
Following his version of the affair, the narrative deposes that
Harringay went into his studio about ten o’clock to see what he could
make of the head that he had been working at the day before. The
head in question was that of an Italian organ-grinder, and Harringay
thought--but was not quite sure--that the title would be the ‘Vigil.’
So far he is frank, and his narrative bears the stamp of truth. He
had seen the man expectant for pennies, and with a promptness that
suggested genius, had had him in at once.
‘Kneel. Look up at that bracket,’ said Harringay. ‘As if you expected
pennies.’
‘Don’t _grin_!’ said Harringay. ‘I don’t want to paint your gums. Look
as though you were unhappy.’
Now, after a night’s rest, the picture proved decidedly unsatisfactory.
‘It’s good work,’ said Harringay. ‘That little bit in the neck.... But.’
He walked about the studio and looked at the thing from this point and
from that. Then he said a wicked word. In the original the word is
given.
‘Painting,’ he says he said. ‘Just a painting of an organ-grinder--a
mere portrait. If it was a live organ-grinder I wouldn’t mind. But
somehow I never make things alive. I wonder if my imagination is
wrong.’ This, too, has a truthful air. His imagination _is_ wrong.
‘That creative touch! To take canvas and pigment and make a man--as
Adam was made of red ochre! But this thing! If you met it walking about
the streets you would know it was only a studio production. The little
boys would tell it to “Garnome and git frimed.” Some little touch....
Well--it won’t do as it is.’
He went to the blinds and began to pull them down. They were made of
blue holland with the rollers at the bottom of the window, so that you
pull them down to get more light. He gathered his palette, brushes,
and mahl stick from his table. Then he turned to the picture and put a
speck of brown in the corner of the mouth; and shifted his attention
thence to the pupil of the eye. Then he decided that the chin was a
trifle too impassive for a vigil.
Presently he put down his impedimenta, and lighting a pipe surveyed the
progress of his work. ‘I’m hanged if the thing isn’t sneering at me,’
said Harringay, and he still believes it sneered.
The animation of the figure had certainly increased, but scarcely in
the direction he wished. There was no mistake about the sneer. ‘Vigil
of the Unbeliever,’ said Harringay. ‘Rather subtle and clever that! But
the left eyebrow isn’t cynical enough.’
He went and dabbed at the eyebrow, and added a little to the lobe of
the ear to suggest materialism. Further consideration ensued. ‘Vigil’s
off, I’m afraid,’ said Harringay. ‘Why not Mephistopheles? But that’s
a bit _too_ common. “A Friend of the Doge,”--not so seedy. The armour
won’t do, though. Too Camelot. How about a scarlet robe and call him
“One of the Sacred College”? Humour in that, and an appreciation of
Middle Italian History.’
‘There’s always Benvenuto Cellini,’ said Harringay; ‘with a clever
suggestion of a gold cup in one corner. But that would scarcely suit
the complexion.’
He describes himself as babbling in this way in order to keep down an
unaccountably unpleasant sensation of fear. The thing was certainly
acquiring anything but a pleasing expression. Yet it was as certainly
becoming far more of a living thing than it had been--if a sinister
one--far more alive than anything he had ever painted before. ‘Call it
“Portrait of a Gentleman,’” said Harringay--‘A Certain Gentleman.’
‘Won’t do,’ said Harringay, still keeping up his courage. ‘Kind of
thing they call Bad Taste. That sneer will have to come out. That gone,
and a little more fire in the eye--never noticed how warm his eye was
before--and he might do for--? What price Passionate Pilgrim? But that
devilish face won’t do--_this_ side of the Channel.
‘Some little inaccuracy does it,’ he said; ‘eyebrows probably too
oblique,’--therewith pulling the blind lower to get a better light, and
resuming palette and brushes.
The face on the canvas seemed animated by a spirit of its own.
Where the expression of diablerie came in he found impossible to
discover--Experiment was necessary. The eyebrows--it could scarcely be
the eyebrows? But he altered them. No, that was no better; in fact, if
anything, a trifle more satanic. The corner of the mouth? Pah! more
than ever a leer--and now, retouched, it was ominously grim. The eye,
then? Catastrophe! he had filled his brush with vermilion instead of
brown, and yet he had felt sure it was brown! The eye seemed now to
have rolled in its socket, and was glaring at him an eye of fire. In
a flash of passion, possibly with something of the courage of panic,
he struck the brush full of bright red athwart the picture; and then a
very curious thing, a very strange thing indeed, occurred--if it _did_
occur.
_The diabolified Italian before him shut both his eyes, pursed his
mouth, and wiped the colour off his face with his hand._
Then the _red eye_ opened again, with a sound like the opening of lips,
and the face smiled. ‘That was rather hasty of you,’ said the picture.
Harringay states that, now that the worst had happened, his
self-possession returned. He had a saving persuasion that devils were
reasonable creatures.
‘Why do you keep moving about then,’ he said, ‘making faces and all
that--sneering and squinting, while I am painting you?’
‘I don’t,’ said the picture.
‘You _do_,’ said Harringay.
‘It’s yourself,’ said the picture.
‘It’s _not_ myself,’ said Harringay.
‘It _is_ yourself,’ said the picture. ‘No! don’t go hitting me with
paint again, because it’s true. You have been trying to fluke an
expression on my face all the morning. Really, you haven’t an idea what
your picture ought to look like.’
‘I have,’ said Harringay.
‘You have _not_,’ said the picture: ‘You _never_ have with your
pictures. You always start with the vaguest presentiment of what
you are going to do; it is to be something beautiful--you are sure
of that--and devout, perhaps, or tragic; but beyond that it is all
experiment and chance. My dear fellow! you don’t think you can paint a
picture like that?’
Now it must be remembered that for what follows we have only
Harringay’s word.
‘I shall paint a picture exactly as I like,’ said Harringay calmly.
This seemed to disconcert the picture a little. ‘You can’t paint a
picture without an inspiration,’ it remarked.
‘But I _had_ an inspiration--for this.’
‘Inspiration!’ sneered the sardonic figure; ‘a fancy that came from
your seeing an organ-grinder looking up at a window! Vigil! Ha, ha! You
just started painting on the chance of something coming--that’s what
you did. And when I saw you at it I came. I want a talk with you!’
‘Art, with you,’ said the picture--‘it’s a poor business. You potter. I
don’t know how it is, but you don’t seem able to throw your soul into
it. You know too much. It hampers you. In the midst of your enthusiasms
you ask yourself whether something like this has not been done before.
And ...’
‘Look here,’ said Harringay, who had expected something better than
criticism from the devil. ‘Are you going to talk studio to me?’ He
filled his number twelve hoghair with red paint.
‘The true artist,’ said the picture, ‘is always an ignorant man. An
artist who theorises about his work is no longer artist but critic.
Wagner ... I say!--What’s that red paint for?’
‘I’m going to paint you out,’ said Harringay. ‘I don’t want to hear all
that Tommy Rot. If you think just because I’m an artist by trade I’m
going to talk studio to you, you make a precious mistake.’
‘One minute,’ said the picture, evidently alarmed. ‘I want to make
you an offer--a genuine offer. It’s right what I’m saying. You lack
inspirations. Well. No doubt you’ve heard of the Cathedral of Cologne,
and the Devil’s Bridge, and----’
‘Rubbish,’ said Harringay. ‘Do you think I want to go to perdition
simply for the pleasure of painting a good picture, and getting it
slated. Take that.’
His blood was up. His danger only nerved him to action, so he says.
So he planted a dab of vermilion in his creature’s mouth. The Italian
spluttered and tried to wipe it off--evidently horribly surprised. And
then--according to Harringay--there began a very remarkable struggle,
Harringay splashing away with the red paint, and the picture wriggling
about and wiping it off as fast as he put it on. ‘_Two_ masterpieces,’
said the demon. ‘Two indubitable masterpieces for a Chelsea artist’s
soul. It’s a bargain?’ Harringay replied with the paint brush.
For a few minutes nothing could be heard but the brush going and the
spluttering and ejaculations of the Italian. A lot of the strokes
he caught on his arm and hand, though Harringay got over his guard
often enough. Presently the paint on the palette gave out and the
two antagonists stood breathless, regarding each other. The picture
was so smeared with red that it looked as if it had been rolling
about a slaughterhouse, and it was painfully out of breath and very
uncomfortable with the wet paint trickling down its neck. Still, the
first round was in its favour on the whole. ‘Think,’ it said, sticking
pluckily to its point, ‘two supreme masterpieces--in different styles.
Each equivalent to the Cathedral....’
‘_I_ know,’ said Harringay, and rushed out of the studio and along the
passage towards his wife’s boudoir.
In another minute he was back with a large tin of enamel--Hedge
Sparrow’s Egg Tint, it was, and a brush. At the sight of that
the artistic devil with the red eye began to scream. ‘_Three_
masterpieces--culminating masterpieces.’
Harringay delivered cut two across the demon, and followed with
a thrust in the eye. There was an indistinct rumbling. ‘_Four_
masterpieces,’ and a spitting sound.
But Harringay had the upper hand now and meant to keep it. With rapid,
bold strokes he continued to paint over the writhing canvas, until at
last it was a uniform field of shining Hedge Sparrow tint. Once the
mouth reappeared and got as far as ‘Five master--’ before he filled it
with enamel; and near the end the red eye opened and glared at him
indignantly. But at last nothing remained save a gleaming panel of
drying enamel. For a little while a faint stirring beneath the surface
puckered it slightly here and there, but presently even that died away
and the thing was perfectly still.
Then Harringay--according to Harringay’s account--lit his pipe and sat
down and stared at the enamelled canvas, and tried to make out clearly
what had happened. Then he walked round behind it, to see if the back
of it was at all remarkable. Then it was he began to regret he had not
photographed the Devil before he painted him out.
This is Harringays’ story--not mine. He supports it by a small canvas
(24 by 20) enamelled a pale green, and by violent asseverations. It is
also true that he never has produced a masterpiece, and in the opinion
of his intimate friends probably never will.