The art of the photographer usually arouses in me all that is splenetic,
and I had not submitted myself to him for years before Dora made such a
preposterous point of it--years in which, as I sadly explained to her,
I might have submitted to the ordeal with much more ‘pleasing’ results.
She had often insisted before, but I could never see that she made out
a particularly good case for the operation until one afternoon when
she showed me the bold counterfeit presentment of an Assistant
Adjutant-General or some such person, much flattered as to features
but singularly faithful in its reproduction of the straps and buttons
attached. To my post also there belongs a uniform and a cocked hat
sufficiently dramatic, but persons who serve the State primarily with
the intelligence are supposed to have a mind above buttons; and when
I decided that my photograph should compete with the Assistant
Adjutant-General’s, I gave him every sartorial advantage. I gathered
that the offer, cabinet size, of this gentleman had been a spontaneous
one; that certainly could not be said of mine. Most unwillingly I turned
one morning into Kauffer’s; and I can not now imagine why I did it,
for emulation of the Assistant Adjutant-General was really not motive
enough, unless it was with an instinct prepared to stumble upon matter
germane in an absurd degree to this little history.
I had the honour to be subjected to the searching analysis of Mr.
Kauffer himself. It was he who placed the chair and arranged the screw,
he who fixed the angle of my chin and gently disposed my fingers on my
knee. He gave me, I remember, a recent portrait of the Viceroy to fix
my eye upon, doubtless with the purpose of inspiring my countenance
with the devotion which would sit suitably upon one of His Excellency’s
slaves, and when it was all over he conducted me into another apartment
in order that I might see the very latest viceregal group--a domestic
one, including the Staff. The walls of the room contained what is
usually there, the enlarged photograph, the coloured photograph, the
amateur theatrical group, the group of His Excellency’s Executive
Council, the native dignitary with a diamond-tipped aigrette in the
front of his turban. The copy in oils of some old Italian landscape,
very black and yellow, also held its invariable place, and above it,
very near the ceiling, a line of canvases which, had I not been led past
them to inspect our ruler and his family, who sat transfixed on an easel
in a resplendent frame, would probably have escaped my attention. I did
proper homage to the easel, and then turned to those pictures. It was
plain enough who had painted them. Armour’s broad brush stood out all
over them. They were mostly Indian sporting subjects, the incident
a trifle elliptical, the drawing unequal, but the verve and feeling
unmistakeable, and colour to send a quiver of glorious acquiescence
through you like a pang. What astonished me was the number of them;
there must have been at least a dozen, all the same size and shape, all
hanging in a line of dazzling repetition. Here then was the explanation
of Armour’s seeming curious lack of output, and plain denial of the
supposition that he spent the whole of his time in doing the little
wooden ‘pochade’ things whose sweetness and delicacy had so feasted our
eyes elsewhere. It was part, no doubt, of his absolutely uncommercial
nature--we had experienced together passages of the keenest
embarrassment over my purchase of some of his studies--that he had not
mentioned these more serious things exposed at Kauffer’s; one had the
feeling of coming unexpectedly on treasure left upon the wayside and
forgotten.
‘Hullo!’ I said, at a standstill, ‘I see you’ve got some of Mr. Armour’s
work there.’
Mr. Kauffer, with his hands behind him, made the sound which has its
counterpart in a shrug. ‘Yass,’ he said, ‘I haf some of Mr. Armour’s
work there. This one, that one, all those remaining pictures--they are
all the work of Mr. Armour.’
‘I didn’t know that any of his things were to be seen outside his
studio,’ I observed.
‘So? They are to be seen here. There is no objection.’
‘Why should there be any objection?’ I demanded, slightly nettled.
‘People must see them before they buy them.’
‘Buy them!’ Kauffer’s tone was distinctly exasperated. ‘Who will buy
these pictures? Nobody. They are all, every one of them to REfuse.’
‘If you know Mr. Armour well enough,’ I said, ‘you should advise him
to exhibit some of his local studies and sketches here. They might sell
better.’
My words seemed unfortunately chosen. Mr. Kauffer turned an honest angry
red.
‘Do I not know Mr. Armour well enough--und better!’ he exclaimed. ‘What
this man wass doing when I in Paris find him oudt? Shtarving, mein
Gott! I see his work. I see he paint a very goot horse, very goot animal
subject. I bring him oudt on contract, five hundred rupees the monnth to
paint for me, for my firm. Sir, it is now nine monnth. I am yoost four
tousand five hundred rupees out of my pocket by this gentleman!’
To enable me to cope with this astonishing tale I asked Mr. Kauffer for
a chair, which he obligingly gave me, and begged that he also would be
seated. The files at my office were my business, and this was not, but
no matter of Imperial concern seemed at the moment half so urgently
to require probing. ‘Surely,’ I said, ‘that is an unusual piece of
enterprise for a photographic firm to employ an artist to paint on a
salary. I don’t know even a regular dealer who does it.’
Mr. Kauffer at once and frankly explained. It was unusual and entirely
out of the regular line of business. It was, in fact, one of the
exceptional forms of enterprise inspired in this country by the native
prince. We who had to treat with the native prince solely on lofty
political lines were hardly likely to remember how largely he bulked
in the humbler relations of trade; but there was more than one Calcutta
establishment, Mr. Kauffer declared, that would be obliged to put up its
shutters without this inconstant and difficult, but liberal customer.
I waited with impatience. I could not for the life of me see Armour’s
connection with the native prince, who is seldom a patron of the arts
for their own sakes.
‘Surely,’ I said, ‘you could not depend on the Indian nobility to buy
landscapes. They never do. I know of only one distinguished exception,
and he lives a thousand miles from here, in Bengal.’
‘No, not landscape,’ returned Mr. Kauffer; ‘but that Indian nobleman
will buy his portrait. We send our own man--photographic artist--to his
State, and he photograph the Chief and his arab, the Chief and his Prime
Minister, the Chief in his durbar, palace, gardens, stables--everything.
Presently the Chief goes on a big shoot. He says he will not have a
plain photograph--besides, it is difficult. He will have a painting, and
he will pay.’
‘Ah,’ I said, ‘I begin to see.’
‘You see? Then I send this Armour. Look!’ Mr. Kauffer continued with
rising excitement, baited apparently by the unfortunate canvas to which
he pointed, ‘when Armour go to make that I say you go paint ze Maharajah
of Gridigurh spearing ze wild pig. You see what he make?’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘it is a wonderfully spirited, dashing thing, and the
treatment of all that cane-brake and jungle grass is superb.’
‘Ze treatment--pardon me, sir, I overboil--do you know which is ze
Maharajah?’
‘I can’t say I do.’
‘Neider does he. Ze Maharajah refuse zat picture; he is a good fellow,
too. He says it is a portrait of ze pig.’
‘But it is so good,’ I protested, ‘of the pig.’
‘But that does not interest the Maharajah, you onderstand, no. You see
this one? Nawab of Kandore on his State elephant.’
No doubt about it,’ I said. ‘I know the Nawab well, the young scoundrel.
How dignified he looks!’
There was a note of real sorrow in Kauffer’s voice. ‘Dignified? Oh, yes;
dignified, but, you observe, also black. The Nawab will not be painted
black. At once it is on my hands.’
‘But he is black,’ I remonstrated. ‘He’s the darkest native I’ve ever
seen among the nobility.’
‘No matter for that. He will not be black. When I photograph that
Nawab--any nawab--I do not him black make. But ziss ass of Armour--ach!’
It was a fascinating subject, and I could have pursued it all along the
line of poor Armour’s rejected canvases, but the need to get away from
Kauffer with his equal claim upon my sympathy was too great. To have
cracked my solemn mask by a single smile would have been to break down
irrepressibly, and never since I set foot in India had I felt a parallel
desire to laugh and to weep. There was a pang in it which I recognize
as impossible to convey, arising from the point of contact, almost
unimaginable yet so clear before me, of the uncompromising ideals of
the atelier and the naive demands of the Oriental, with an unhappy
photographer caught between and wriggling. The situation was really
monstrous, the fatuous rejection of all that fine scheming and exquisite
manipulation, and it did not grow less so as Mr. Kauffer continued to
unfold it. Armour had not, apparently, proceeded to the scene of his
labours without instructions. In the pig-sticking delineation he had
been specially told that the Maharajah and the pig were to be in the
middle, with the rest nowhere and nothing between. Other injunctions
were as clear, and as clearly disregarded. Armour, like the Maharajahs,
had simply ‘REfuse’ to abandon his premeditated conceptions of how the
thing should be done. And here was the result, for the laughter of the
gods and anybody else that might see. I asked Kauffer unguardedly if no
sort of pressure could be brought to bear upon these chaps to make them
pay up. His face beaming with hope and intelligence, he suggested that
I should approach the Foreign Office in his behalf; but this I could not
quite see my way to. The coercion of native rulers, I explained, was a
difficult and a dangerous art, and to insist, for example, that one
of them should recognize his own complexion might be to run up a
disproportionate little bill of our own. I did, however, compound
something with Kauffer; I hope it wasn’t a felony. ‘Look here,’ I said
to Kauffer, ‘this isn’t official, you know, in any way, but how would
it do to write that scamp Kandore a formal letter regretting that the
portrait does not suit him, and asking his permission to dispose of it
to me? Of course it is yours to do as you like with already, but that is
no reason why you shouldn’t ask. I should like it, but the Porcha tiger
beat will do as well.’
Kauffer nearly fell upon my neck.
‘That Kandore will buy it to put in one bonfire first,’ he assured me,
and I sincerely hoped for his sake that it would be the case.
‘Of course it’s understood,’ I bethought me to say, ‘that I get it, if I
do get it, at Mr. Armour’s price. I’m not a Maharajah, you know, and it
isn’t a portrait of me.’
‘Of course!’ said Kauffer, ‘but I sink I sell you that Porcha; it is ze
best of ze two.’