For hours the rain had beaten against his windows, and at last, now that
a lull had declared itself, Wyndham dragged himself to the door, and
looked out into the gray afternoon. His eye took in the familiar vista,
but, as it rested on the great bow-windowed house at the corner where
the road branched into two, he turned away with a shudder. For years the
sight of that house had irritated him: its ugly brick bulk had been
symbolic of all Suburbia, of everything in life to which he was
instinctively hostile as an artist and a gentleman.
But presently he laughed: it had struck him as comic that he should have
preserved in its freshness his full youthful contempt for all this
Philistine universe!--he, a half-starved devil of an artist, down in the
mouth, with a solitary half-crown in his pocket, speculating with bitter
humiliation whether his hard-worked sister had yet a little to spare for
him, after all the life-blood which, leech-like, he had sucked out of
her! Nay, more, he was conscious that his distaste for this surrounding
wilderness of affluent homes, in the midst of which he had so long
dwelt as an isolated superior intelligence, had grown more marked in
direct proportion as he had become poorer and poorer.
The prosperous figure of the owner of the bow-windowed house rose before
him. Immersed in his own existence, Wyndham had deigned to notice very
few indeed of his neighbours. But old Mr. Robinson was one of the few,
not only because of the regularity with which he passed the studio every
day at six o'clock as he came home from business, but also because he
invariably bore something in a plaited rush-bag that had a skewer thrust
through it, suggesting visits to Leadenhall Market, and purchases of
game or salmon for the good wife according to season. But Mr. Robinson's
mild aspect, benevolent white beard, and gentle amble had never
impressed Wyndham with much of a sense of human fellowship. He might
concede that the old man was "a decent sort, no doubt, in his own way";
but they were creatures belonging to different planets.
Still amused at his own disdain, though the corners of his mouth were
set a trifle grimly, Wyndham turned back into the studio with the idea
of making himself presentable and going to see his sister--since it now
seemed possible to get across town without the prospect of an absolute
drenching. Happily his wardrobe had substantial resources: in the old
days he had kept it well replenished, and his simple life of late here
in the studio had made small demands on it. Thus he could still go out
faultlessly clad and shod. Nobody need suspect his poverty, he flattered
himself, if he ever chose to dip into his own world again. Only he did
not choose; there was always so much questioning to face. "We've seen
nothing of yours in the last two or three Academies--when are you going
to give us another masterpiece?" "Still on the big picture? How is it
getting along?" However genially thrown out, such usual interrogation
annoyed him beyond measure. It was so long since anything had been
"getting along." On all sides he was regarded as a doomed man, and
suspected it: suspecting it, he was morbidly sensitive. His life was
unnatural and not worth the living. Months and months had been wasted in
apathy. Each day he dreamt of a new lease of energy and courage to begin
on the morrow; but, after making his bed and clearing away his breakfast
and purchasing his food for the day, he would find himself dejected and
incapable of a single stroke.
And yet he could not wholly realise the change that had come over the
scene. He rubbed his eyes sometimes, as if expecting to awake from an
unhappy dream. Was not the flourish of early trumpets still in his ears?
The dazzle of admiration still on his retina? The gush of extensive and
important family connections still tickling his self-esteem? The
sweeter approval of a superior art-clique still flattering his deeper
vanity?
He had been born with a silver spoon; his childhood and youth had been
ideally happy. From the playing-fields of Eton he had passed to the
quadrangles of Oxford. A distinguished student of his college?--not in
the ordinary grooves; yet favourably known as an intellect with
enthusiasms. Phidias was more of an inspiration to him than Aristotle;
Titian more actual than Todhunter. Ruskin, Pater, Turner, had stirred
him; left his mind subdued to their colours. From boyhood had been his
the swift skill with pencil that ran as easily to grace as to mockery.
And, left early arbiter of his own existence, with gold enough for
freedom, he had made for the one career that called to him.
Genius cannot prove itself at a stroke: it has its adventurings to make.
Seldom it realises at the outset that it is adventuring in the dark,
therein to grope as best it may to self-discovery. Even this first stage
may be long deferred; yet, however sure of himself at last, the artist
has still to tread the unending road with the great light of
self-realisation ever in the distance. There are the years of strenuous
search, of faithful labour; of bitterest failure on failure to bring the
deep, mysterious impulses to bloom and fruition. But there is yet
another, if independent, adventuring. The great light that crowns the
artist's journey shines only in his own spirit. The world sees and knows
nothing of it. He has none the less to find his way into that other
light--the lurid, mocking limelight of the world's acceptance; to seek a
place beside or beneath the charlatan. This is the bitterest stage of
all--- to stand shivering in marketplaces that are knee-deep with dung
and offal; to be upholding precious things to the vision of swine. What
wonder if in the course of so harsh a journeying, as he lives and
breathes in his own universe of striving, his precise moral relation to
things external grows dim, intangible; and, if money one day give out,
he clutches at any crust for sustenance.
Wyndham began his journeyings. His advantages were many and obvious; his
disadvantages subtle and unseen. There was the danger that facile talent
and social prestige might bring him an early delusive success; a
failure, rightly seen, however tricked out with glamour.
His beginnings, indeed, were pleasant: it was great fun throwing himself
into this new queer Bohemian world of art. He worked hard as a student,
the sheer interest of his labours lightening them astonishingly. And,
after some preliminary swayings in varying directions, he at last "found
himself," as he supposed; developing a dexterous imitative craft, and
joining an advanced crowd with Whistler and Sargent for his deities.
Wherever he pursued his studies--in London, or Paris, or Italy--there he
was remarkably popular. Everybody said: "Wyndham belongs to very good
people. They're swells--tip-top!" And indeed he had obviously the stamp
of being "the real thing," and even the elect of Bohemia were flattered
and fascinated by personal association with him.
When ultimately he set up his studio here in Hampstead, he had his
policy definitely before him. With the means and the leisure to aim at a
high career, he would make no concessions to popularity or the market.
He had chosen the locality deliberately. It was London, and within reach
of the world; but not so near the world as to endanger his labours. The
little tide of fashion that rolled up to his door was not a tribute to
fame, but merely the fuss and interest of his non-Bohemian circle
pleased for a time with the novelty of having a studio and a genius
connected with them.
So in the early years he worked enthusiastically, and was able to win
some footing in the galleries. But, in the eyes of his numerous family
connections, he was seriously launched; especially when a couple of his
pictures at last attracted buyers, and he moreover found himself earning
guineas from the patronage of friendly editors whose humbler commissions
he carried out in the same spirit of the dignified, ambitious worker.
Then the financial crash came, leaving brother and sister entirely
dependent on their labours. Both met the crisis with commendable
philosophy. Mary, who had long before taken up educational work as an
amateur, was soon able to establish herself as a professional, and had
taught ever since at a high school in Kensington; picturesquely settling
herself in a tiny flat in an artisan's building, and living as a homely
worker. The dignity and serene simplicity of her life had of late
furnished the one ideal thing for Wyndham's contemplation.
Wyndham himself had stood up straight and felt very strong; had
reassured his fussy, frightened folk that he could rely on his
profession. He felt in himself an endless ardour for achievement, a
confidence of triumph in the contest with men. Nay, more, he would gain
his bread without descending from his high standpoint! The task was
fully as difficult as he had anticipated; but at any rate he contrived
to live for a couple of years. Then, somewhat to his surprise, the
Academy began to return his pictures; and somehow, to his greater
surprise, everything else went against him at the same time. He could
not even get "illustrating" to do. Those who had acclaimed him before
because he was a "swell" were now turning against him apparently for the
same reason. Your aristocrats were never to be taken seriously; they
were necessarily amateurs! It was all so unanimous, so settled and
persistent, that it had almost the air of a conspiracy. Wyndham saw well
enough that everybody had tired of his work, that he had had his hour
and his vogue; his career lay like a squib that had blazed itself out.
All bangs and fizzings, and then a blackened bit of casing, silent,
extinguished! Yet he had the discernment to recognise that the
dying-down had been really inevitable; that his present relative poverty
had little or nothing to do with it. He had been dexterous on the
surface, but the sameness of his note--without even the saving grace of
convention--had destroyed him commercially.
Well, he believed in himself, and he refused to accept this erasure. On
the contrary, he would launch out more daringly than ever. An end to
facile imitation of other people's styles! He must express his own
deeper self. The strict Whistlerian creed was much too narrow. Art was
not merely a bare abstract aesthetics: humanity counted for something
after all. Was woman's loveliness something really apart from woman
herself? True that art meant beauty--in the largest sense, of course;
but why should not humanity and beauty fuse together?
So, scraping together all he could command in the way of money, he set
himself to work out a large dramatic idea, suggested by the sight of a
May-day demonstration. The canvas was gigantic, and he strove to depict
a mob of strikers straggling out of the Park after their great meeting,
with elements of fashion caught in this _melee_ of labour. The pictorial
irony had greatly interested him, and he felt that this painting on the
grand scale was being sincerely born out of his own emotion, that it
would trumpet out a warning to the age.
The beginnings were full of promise, and he decided to stake everything
on it. But for so realistic a representation of Hyde Park Corner he
needed to make a great many sketches on the spot. So, through the
friendly offices of an amiable acquaintance, he obtained access to a
convenient window in Grosvenor Place, and made free use of the
privilege. The master of the house, a nobleman of the old school, who at
first sight seemed stately as the portraits in his own dining-room,
proved on acquaintance to be singularly bluff and genial, sometimes
almost slap-dash. He had made Wyndham welcome and at his ease, bidding
him come and go as he pleased, and "never to mind a bit about turning
the room into a studio." And this charming nobleman had likewise a
charming daughter, who sometimes came for a minute or two to talk to
Wyndham and interest herself in the sketches. Lady Betty was a brilliant
figure of a girl; had travelled a good deal and knew the world. She was
sunny and friendly, yet naturally on a pedestal. She was clear-headed
and capable; in the home supreme mistress. Wyndham was the subject of
many graceful little attentions. If he came in the morning she saw that
his glass of sherry and biscuit was never neglected; in the afternoon
she presided over tea in the drawing-room and expected him to appear
there.
Of course poor Wyndham never dared tell himself that he was in love with
her. A girl like that must naturally be reserved for a great match, as
regards both position and fortune. He could not think of her save as
presiding over a plurality of palaces or voyaging in a magnificent
yacht. Palaces and yachts were not the rewards of painters, so Wyndham
kept his mind sternly fixed on the purpose for which he was there. Even
so, the intervals between his appearances grew wider and wider. And
when, after some couple of years of toil, discipline, searching, it had
come home to him that in this terrible picture he had undertaken a task
beyond his strength and experience, he found himself too shamefaced to
"abuse" further the courtesy that had been extended to him. The
consciousness, too, of his growing poverty was becoming acuter and
acuter. Already he was drawing back into his shell, and, once he had
ceased going to Grosvenor Place for the sake of his work, he had not the
heart to continue his visits as an ordinary acquaintance. More than a
year afterwards he read of Lady Betty's engagement in the papers--it
was the very match one would naturally look for. Yet the news "shattered
him to bits"--absurdly enough, he told himself, since he had known her
at best irregularly, and not in the ordinary course of social intimacy.
He was really half-surprised at receiving an invitation to the wedding.
He could not prevail on himself to go; but, remembering she had once
admired one of his Academy pictures, he sent her a photograph of it on a
miniature silver easel as a trifling wedding gift. She wrote back a
gracious acknowledgment, which had since remained one of his treasures.
Meanwhile he had been struggling on with the picture, determined to
conquer. But its difficulties and problems were endless. After all his
toil it stood on his easel in a terribly unfinished condition, though he
had stinted his own body to lavish his money on it. At last, gulping
down the humiliation, he was forced to accept of Mary's little store of
savings to pay his rent and his models. It was his first step of the
kind, and he paid the full proverbial cost of it. But he had still the
hope of returning the loan a thousandfold. Was not his success to redeem
her life as well as his?
Certainly Mary believed in him and the picture, and looked forward to
its scoring a great triumph. The whole heart and hope of the sister
centred on that vast canvas. She sometimes ran across town to see it,
though--poor child!--Hyde Park Corner always looked the same to her at
every stage of its long creation. But the picture was Wyndham's
backbone; it was his stock-in-trade before his world. He was more and
more of a recluse now, refusing all invitations, discouraging his
friends from coming to interrupt him--as he put it. Certainly Wyndham
would rather have died than confess to failure after all the magnificent
trumpeting. Even as it was, the time came soon enough when the big
picture no longer served to protect his dignity. He imagined
half-pitying glances and ironic smiles, and so eventually he found
himself avoiding everybody without exception.
It was only on Lady Betty's wedding day, after more than three years of
futile striving, that he had the resolution to remove the great canvas
from the easel and stand it with its face to the wall.
He was tired now, but he must make an effort to emancipate himself from
Mary's exchequer. Till then he could not hold his head up. So he painted
some smaller and pleasanter pictures, but again he could do nothing with
them. The Academy sent them back, the minor galleries sent them back,
the Salon sent them back the following year. The dealers offered less
than the cost of the frames. Meantime he had ceased to count up the
five-pound notes Mary had starved herself to keep for him. He knew he
was a coward and dared not. He had reached that stage of moral
confusion which Nietzsche registers as in the natural history of the
artist-type, and which may not be eyed too harshly from the point of
vantage of ordered and organised existence in this outer universe. One
idea stood clear beyond all others; grew into his mind; grew till it
became his mind. He must cling to his studio, hold desperately to this
atmosphere of paint and canvasses.
He was getting on in years now--past thirty-three. It was like the
striking of a pitiless clock, this adding of swift year after year to
his unsuccessful life. His hand began to fail him. The necessity of now
doing his own house-work; of bothering with coals and cinders, preparing
his makeshift monotonous meals, pouring oil into lamps, and boiling
kettles, and washing plates and teacups, had begun by encroaching on his
time and energies, and ended by absorbing them altogether. The care of
ministering to his own primary needs had at last superseded art as his
profession. Even so, the cobwebs multiplied and the dust lay thick.
Months now slipped by, he scarcely knew how; he was astonished to
realise how time might elude one, how a colourless day might be trifled
away without appearing to hold the possibility of even a morsel of
achievement. Yet he still grasped the hope that something would
"arrive"--an unexpected magazine commission, a request from a dealer.
Ideas for a new start would teem in his head as he lay tossing on the
narrow iron bed up in the gallery at the end of the studio. Why not do
some pretty little things--to fetch ten guineas apiece, say--Cupids
playing amid wreathed flowers with pale Doric structures in the
background? If Mary could manage just another few pounds for him, he
would have time to turn out a number of such decorative trifles. Such
things were in constant demand and were a sure source of livelihood. He
had stood out long enough, much longer indeed than he had had the right.
He had consistently worked on a basis of high endeavour, but now he must
withdraw his dignity and enter on the pot-boiler phase. Better that than
this abominable leech-like existence. Continued misfortune had befogged
his wits, and this last year certainly he had been half mad.
So be it! He must wake up now, and no longer lose his days in this
stupid pottering about!
Every dog had his day, and his own turn would come in time. He was an
artist. He felt it in his bones and blood. Art was his life and destiny.
He had blundered in attempting too big a feat too early in his career,
but he did not intend that that should wreck his existence. No, no! he
would never throw up the sponge. He would rather die than admit defeat,
with all those who knew him looking on at the game.