_Contemporary Portraits, by Frank Harris. New York: Mitchell
Kennerley._
You have surely come across that ubiquitous individual who immortalizes
his travels abroad through innumerable “Kodaks,” to be rubbed into your
eyes on every opportune and inopportune occasion. He bores you ad
nauseam. Why? You are offered an opportunity to observe the majestic
Mont Blanc, the smoking Vesuvius, the respectable Eiffel Tower, the San
Marco, the Brandenburg Gate, the Westminster Abbey, and the rest of the
hackneyed wonders. Yet you are nauseated. Your individual has caused the
Kodak to utilize the magnificent views as backgrounds for his own
central figure; you are compelled to seek the Schlangenberg behind the
back of the complacently smiling tourist. A curious rooster strolling
over a map is harmless, until he gets an inspiration to add something of
his own.
With what impatience I have awaited Frank Harris’s _Contemporary
Portraits_! Not that the name of the “painter” appeals to me
tremendously; I am rather uneasy about the cleverists and the renegades
who of late have found refuge on the hospitable pages of Mr. Viereck’s
monthly pamphlet. But will you consider extravagant my expectation that
any portraitist would reveal exciting things about such unique sitters
as Whistler, Wilde, Verlaine, Swinburne, Maupassant, Maeterlinck, Rodin,
France, or about such remote, semi-legendary personages as Carlyle,
Renan, Burton, Browning?—The book gave me a slap in the face.
The very first chapter annoyed me. I could not make myself believe in
the veracity of Mr. Harris’s conversation with Carlyle, which took place
some time in 1877 during a stroll. Mr. Harris is not a bad fiction
writer, but as a hero of his own fiction he appears clumsy. The
interview presents a study in black and white; the black is the crude,
narrow, obstinate Scotchman, while the white is, of course, the
brilliant, witty, condescending Mr. Harris. This is the leitmotif of the
whole book. The “Portraits” are used to emphasize and accentuate the
superior features of the “painter”; the “sitters” are familiarly patted
on the shoulder, pulled by a string like marionettes, and made to talk
“nice” by whim of the ventriloquist. Defenceless dummies!
In one place Mr. Harris spontaneously exclaims—about the only time he
gives the impression of spontaneity: “What a pity St. Paul did not write
a ‘Life of Jesus!’” Frank Harris would. He would surely not miss the
opportunity of capitalizing such a “contemporary portrait.” What a pity
Mr. Harris has not met at a dinner given by Lady-and-So Mr. Socrates, or
Mr. Moses, or Mr. Adam! What a loss of a good seller.
An editor of a brave magazine, which allows its contributors the free
use of the first personal pronoun, has rebuked me for my too-subjective
animosity towards Mr. Harris’s book and for my failure to see its other,
better, side. I find my justification in Mr. Harris’s own words: “I put
these portraits forth as works of art.” In the same measure as the
artist is allowed—or rather, expected—to present that which seems to him
most intrinsic and striking in his subject, so am I, the appreciator, to
have the liberty of criticising in a work of art those features that
appear to me most salient and conspicuous. As a matter of fact I enjoyed
reading Mr. Harris’s characteristics of the persons he has met; he
doubtless has an artistic touch in his pen-and-ink portraits; his
criticisms on Mathew Arnold, John Davidson, Richard Middleton, are
interesting. But it is the leitmotif of the book that gives you a
general impression. The impression it made on me I have told in the
preceding paragraphs. The pages on Whistler, Wilde, Verlaine, Renan, and
others, are malodorous; the persons whom you admire or love appear
blurred and maimed, for in front of them spins the annoying little
figure of the portraitist, who preaches good behavior to Oscar, who is
charitable to Jimmy, who tells silly anecdotes about Paul, who
condescendingly smiles at old Renan, and journalistically interviews
Anatole France and Maeterlinck.