IV

Is it necessary to say that I did not find a manager to produce my play?

A printer was more obtainable, and the correction of proofs amused me

for a while. I wrote another play; and when the hieing after theatrical

managers began to lose its attractiveness my thoughts reverted to

France, which always haunted me; and which now possessed me as if with

the sweet and magnetic influence of home.

How important my absence from Paris seemed to me; and how Paris rushed

into my eyes!--Paris--public ball-rooms, _cafés_, the models in the

studio and the young girls painting, and Marshall, Alice and Julien.

Marshall!--my thoughts pointed at him through the intervening streets

and the endless procession of people coming and going.

"M. Marshall, is he at home?" "M. Marshall left here some months ago."

"Do you know his address?" "I'll ask my husband." "Do you know M.

Marshall's address?" "Yes, he's gone to live in the Rue de Douai." "What

number?" "I think it is fifty--four." "Thanks." "Coachman, wake up;

drive me to the Rue de Douai."

But Marshall was not to be found at the Rue de Douai; and he had left no

address. There was nothing for it but to go to the studio; I should be

able to obtain news of him there--perhaps find him. But when I pulled

aside the curtain, the accustomed piece of slim nakedness did not greet

my eyes, only the blue apron of an old woman enveloped in a cloud of

dust. "The gentlemen are not here to-day, the studio is closed, I am

sweeping up." "Oh, and where is M. Julien?" "I cannot say, sir: perhaps

at the _café_, or perhaps he is gone to the country." This was not very

encouraging, and now, my enthusiasm thoroughly damped, I strolled along

_le Passage_, looking at the fans, the bangles and the litter of cheap

trinkets that each window was filled with. On the left at the corner of

the Boulevard was our _café_. As I came forward the waiter moved one of

the tin tables, and then I saw the fat Provençal. But just as if he had

seen me yesterday he said, "_Tiens! c'est vous; une demi-tasse?

oui...garçon, une demi-tasse_." Presently the conversation turned on

Marshall; they had not seen much of him lately. "_Il parait qu'il est

plus amoureux que jamais_," Julien replied sardonically.

V

I found my friend in large furnished apartments on the ground floor in

the Rue Duphot. The walls were stretched with blue silk, there were

large mirrors and great gilt cornices. Passing into the bedroom I found

the young god wallowing in the finest of fine linen--in a great Louis

XV. bed, and there were cupids above him. "Holloa! what, you back again,

George Moore? we thought we weren't going to see you again."

"It's nearly one o'clock; get up. What's the news?"

"To-day is the opening of the exhibition of the Impressionists. We'll

have a bit of breakfast round the corner, at Durant's, and we'll go on

there. I hear that Bedlam is nothing to it; there is a canvas there

twenty feet square and in three tints: pale yellow for the sunlight,

brown for the shadows, and all the rest is sky-blue. There is, I am

told, a lady walking in the foreground with a ring-tailed monkey, and

the tail is said to be three yards long."

We went to jeer a group of enthusiasts that willingly forfeit all

delights of the world in the hope of realising a new æstheticism; we

went insolent with patent leather shoes and bright kid gloves and armed

with all the jargon of the school. "_Cette jambe ne porte pas"; "la

nature ne se fait pas comme ça"; "on dessine par les masses; combien de

têtes?" "Sept et demi." "Si j'avais un morceau de craie je mettrais

celle-là dans un; bocal c'est un fœtus_"; in a word, all that the

journals of culture are pleased to term an artistic education. We

indulged in boisterous laughter, exaggerated in the hope of giving as

much pain as possible, and deep down in our souls we knew that we were

lying--at least I did.

In the beginning of this century the tradition of French art--the

tradition of Boucher, Fragonard, and Watteau--had been completely lost;

having produced genius, their art died. Ingres is the sublime flower of

the classic art which succeeded the art of the palace and the boudoir:

further than Ingres it was impossible to go, and his art died. Then the

Turners and Constables came to France, and they begot Troyon, and

Troyon begot Millet, Courbet, Corot, and Rousseau, and these in turn

begot Degas, Pissarro, Madame Morizot and Guillaumin. Degas is a pupil

of Ingres, but he applies the marvellous acuteness of drawing he learned

from his master to delineating the humblest aspects of modern life.

Degas draws not by the masses, but by the character;--his subjects are

shop-girls, ballet-girls, and washerwomen, but the qualities that endow

them with immortality are precisely those which eternalise the virgins

and saints of Leonardo da Vinci in the minds of men. You see the fat,

vulgar woman in the long cloak trying on a hat in front of the

pier-glass. So marvellously well are the lines of her face observed and

rendered that you can tell exactly what her position in life is; you

know what the furniture of her rooms is like; you know what she would

say to you if she were to speak. She is as typical of the nineteenth

century as Fragonard's ladies are of the Court of Louis XV. To the right

you see a picture of two shop-girls with bonnets in their hands. So

accurately are the habitual movements of the heads and the hands

observed that you at once realise the years of bonnet-showing and

servile words that these women have lived through. We have seen Degas do

this before--it is a welcome repetition of a familiar note, but it is

not until we turn to the set of nude figures that we find the great

artist revealing any new phase of his talent. The first, in an attitude

which suggests the kneeling Venus, washes her thighs in a tin bath. The

second, a back view, full of the malformations of forty years, of

children, of hard work, stands gripping her flanks with both hands. The

naked woman has become impossible in modern art; it required Degas'

genius to infuse new life into the worn-out theme. Cynicism was the

great means of eloquence of the middle ages, and with cynicism Degas has

rendered the nude again an artistic possibility. What Mr. Horsley or the

British matron would say it is difficult to guess. Perhaps the

hideousness depicted by M. Degas would frighten them more than the

sensuality which they condemn in Sir Frederick Leighton. But, be this as

it may, it is certain that the great, fat, short-legged creature, who in

her humble and touching ugliness passes a chemise over her lumpy

shoulders, is a triumph of art. Ugliness is trivial, the monstrous is

terrible; Velasquez knew this when he painted his dwarfs.

Pissarro exhibited a group of girls gathering apples in a garden--sad

greys and violets beautifully harmonised. The figures seem to move as in

a dream: we are on the thither side of life, in a world of quiet colour

and happy aspiration. Those apples will never fall from the branches,

those baskets that the stooping girls are filling will never be filled:

that garden is the garden of the peace that life has not for giving, but

which the painter has set in an eternal dream of violet and grey.

Madame Morizot exhibited a series of delicate fancies. Here are two

young girls, the sweet atmosphere folds them as with a veil, they are

all summer, their dreams are limitless, their days are fading, and their

ideas follow the flight of the white butterflies through the standard

roses. Take note, too, of the stand of fans; what delicious fancies are

there--willows, balconies, gardens, and terraces.

Then, contrasting with these distant tendernesses, there was the

vigorous painting of Guillaumin. There life is rendered in violent and

colourful brutality. The ladies fishing in the park, with the violet of

the skies and the green of the trees descending upon them, is a _chef

d'œuvre._ Nature seems to be closing about them like a tomb; and that

hillside,--sunset flooding the skies with yellow and the earth with blue

shadow,--is another piece of painting that will one day find a place in

one of the public galleries; and the same can be said of the portrait of

the woman on a background of chintz flowers.

We could but utter coarse gibes and exclaim, "What could have induced

him to paint such things? surely he must have seen that it was absurd. I

wonder if the Impressionists are in earnest or if it is only _une blague

qu'on nous fait_?" Then we stood and screamed at Monet, that most

exquisite painter of blonde light. We stood before the "Turkeys," and

seriously we wondered if "it was serious work,"--that _chef d'œuvre_!

the high grass that the turkeys are gobbling is flooded with sunlight so

swift and intense that for a moment the illusion is complete. "Just look

at the house! why, the turkeys couldn't walk in at the door. The

perspective is all wrong." Then followed other remarks of an educational

kind; and when we came to those piercingly personal visions of railway

stations by the same painter,--those rapid sensations of steel and

vapour,--our laughter knew no bounds. "I say, Marshall, just look at

this wheel; he dipped his brush into cadmium yellow and whisked it

round, that's all." Nor had we any more understanding for Renoir's rich

sensualities of tone; nor did the mastery with which he achieves an

absence of shadow appeal to us. You see colour and light in his pictures

as you do in nature, and the child's criticism of a portrait--"Why is

one side of the face black?" is answered. There was a half-length nude

figure of a girl. How the round fresh breasts palpitate in the light!

such a glorious glow of whiteness was attained never before. But we saw

nothing except that the eyes were out of drawing.

For art was not for us then as it is now,--a mere emotion, right or

wrong only in proportion to its intensity; we believed then in the

grammar of art, perspective, anatomy, and _la jambe qui porte_; and we

found all this in Julien's studio.

A year passed; a year of art and dissipation--one part art, two parts

dissipation. We mounted and descended at pleasure the rounds of

society's ladder. One evening we would spend at Constant's, Rue de la

Gaieté, in the company of thieves and housebreakers; on the following

evening we were dining with a duchess or a princess in the Champs

Elysées. And we prided ourselves vastly on our versatility in using with

equal facility the language of the "fence's" parlour, and that of the

literary _salon_; on being able to appear as much at home in one as in

the other. Delighted at our prowess, we often whispered, "The princess,

I swear, would not believe her eyes if she saw us now;" and then in

terrible slang we shouted a benediction on some "crib" that was going to

be broken into that evening. And we thought there was something very

thrilling in leaving the Rue de la Gaieté, returning home to dress, and

presenting our spotless selves to the _élite_. And we succeeded very

well, as indeed all young men do who waltz perfectly and avoid making

love to the wrong woman.

But the excitement of climbing up and down the social ladder did not

stave off our craving for art; and about this time there came a very

decisive event in our lives. Marshall's last and really _grande passion_

had come to a violent termination, and monetary difficulties forced him

to turn his thoughts to painting on china as a means of livelihood. And

as this young man always sought extremes he went to Belleville, donned

a blouse, ate garlic with his food, and settled down to live there as a

workman. I had been to see him, and had found him building a wall. And

with sorrow I related his state that evening to Julien in the Café

Veron. He said, after a pause:--

"Since you profess so much friendship for him, why do you not do him a

service that cannot be forgotten since the result will always continue?

why don't you save him from the life you describe? If you are not

actually rich you are at least in easy circumstances, and can afford to

give him a _pension_ of three hundred francs a month. I will give him

the use of my studio, which means, as you know, models and teaching;

Marshall has plenty of talent, all he wants is a year's education: in a

year or a year-and-a-half, certainly at the end of two years, he will

begin to make money."

It is rather a shock to one who is at all concerned with his own genius

to be asked to act as foster-mother to another's. Then three hundred

francs meant a great deal, plainly it meant deprivation of those

superfluities which are so intensely necessary to the delicate and

refined. Julien watched me. This large crafty Southerner knew what was

passing in me; he knew I was realising all the manifold

inconveniences--the duty of looking after Marshall's wants for two

years, and to make the pill easier he said:--

"If three hundred francs a month are too heavy for your purse, you might

take an apartment and ask Marshall to come and live with you. You told

me the other day you were tired of hotel life. It would be an advantage

to you to live with him. You want to do something yourself; and the fact

of his being obliged to attend the studio (for I should advise you to

have a strict agreement with him regarding the work he is to do) would

be an extra inducement to you to work hard."

I always decide at once, reflection does not help me, and a moment after

I said, "Very well, Julien, I will."

And next day I went with the news to Belleville. Marshall protested he

had no real talent. I protested he had. The agreement was drawn up and

signed. He was to work in the studio eight hours a day; he was to draw

until such time as M. Lefebvre set him to paint; and in proof of his

industry he was to bring me at the end of each week a study from life

and a composition, the subject of which the master gave at the

beginning of each week, and in return I was to take an apartment near

the studio, give him an abode, food, _blanchissage_, etc. Once the

matter was decided, Marshall manifested prodigious energy, and three

days after he told me he had found an apartment in Le Passage des

Panoramas which would suit us perfectly. The plunge had to be taken. I

paid my hotel bill, and sent my taciturn valet to beef, beer and a wife.

It was unpleasant to have a window opening not to the sky, but to an

unclean prospect of glass roofing; nor was it agreeable to get up at

seven in the morning; and ten hours of work daily are trying to the

resolution even of the best intentioned. But we had sworn to forego all

pleasures for the sake of art--_table d'hôtes_ in the Rue Maubeuge,

French and foreign duchesses in the Champs Elysées, thieves in the Rue

de la Gaieté.

I was entering therefore on a duel with Marshall for supremacy in an art

for which, as has already been said, I possessed no qualifications. It

will readily be understood how a mind like mine, so intensely alive to

all impulses, and so unsupported by any moral convictions, would suffer

in so keen a contest waged under such unequal and cruel conditions. It

was in truth a year of great passion and great despair. Defeat is bitter

when it comes swiftly and conclusively, but when defeat falls by inches

like the pendulum in the pit, the agony is a little beyond verbal

expression. I remember the first day of my martyrdom. The clocks were

striking eight; we chose our places, got into position. After the first

hour, I compared my drawing with Marshall's. He had, it is true, caught

the movement of the figure better than I, but the character and the

quality of his work was miserable. That of mine was not. I have said I

possessed no artistic facility, but I did not say faculty; my drawing

was never common; it was individual in feeling, it was refined. I

possessed all the rarer qualities, but not that primary power without

which all is valueless;--I mean the talent of the boy who can knock off

a clever caricature of his school-master or make a _lifelike_ sketch of

his favourite horse on the barn door with a piece of chalk.

The following week Marshall made a great deal of progress; I thought the

model did not suit me, and hoped for better luck next time. That time

never came, and at the end of the first month I was left toiling

hopelessly in the distance. Marshall's mind, though shallow, was

bright, and he understood with strange ease all that was told him, and

was able to put into immediate practice the methods of work inculcated

by the professors. In fact, he showed himself singularly capable of

education; little could be drawn out, but a great deal could be put in

(using the word in its modern, not in its original sense). He showed

himself intensely anxious to learn and to accept all that was said: the

ideas and feelings of others ran into him like water into a bottle whose

neck is suddenly stooped below the surface of the stream. He was an

ideal pupil. It was Marshall here, it was Marshall there, and soon the

studio was little but an agitation in praise of him, and his work, and

anxious speculation arose as to the medals he would obtain. I continued

the struggle for nine months. I was in the studio at eight in the

morning, I measured my drawing, I plumbed it throughout, I sketched in,

having regard to _la jambe qui porte_, I modelled _par les masses_.

During breakfast I considered how I should work during the afternoon, at

night I lay awake thinking of what I might do to obtain a better result.

But my efforts availed me nothing, it was like one who, falling,

stretches his arms for help and grasps the yielding air. How terrible

are the languors and yearnings of impotence! how wearing! what an aching

void they leave in the heart! And all this I suffered until the burden

of unachieved desire grew intolerable.

I laid down my charcoal and said, "I will never draw or paint again."

That vow I have kept.

Surrender brought relief, but my life seemed at an end. I looked upon a

blank space of years desolate as a grey and sailless sea. "What shall I

do?" I asked myself, and my heart was weary and hopeless. Literature? my

heart did not answer the question at once. I was too broken and overcome

by the shock of failure; failure precise and stern, admitting of no

equivocation. I strove to read: but it was impossible to sit at home

almost within earshot of the studio, and with all the memories of defeat

still ringing their knells in my heart. Marshall's success clamoured

loudly from without; every day, almost every hour of the day, I heard of

the medals which he would carry off, of what Lefebvre thought of his

drawing this week, of Boulanger's opinion of his talent. I do not wish

to excuse my conduct, but I cannot help saying that Marshall showed me

neither consideration nor pity, he did not even seem to understand that

I was suffering, that my nerves had been terribly shaken, and he

flaunted his superiority relentlessly in my face--his good looks, his

talents, his popularity. I did not know then how little these studio

successes really meant.

Vanity? no, it was not his vanity that maddened me; to me vanity is

rarely displeasing, sometimes it is singularly attractive; but by a

certain insistence and aggressiveness in the details of life he allowed

me to feel that I was only a means for the moment, a serviceable thing

enough, but one that would be very soon discarded and passed over. This

was intolerable. I packed up my portmanteau and left, after having kept

my promise for only ten months. By so doing I involved my friend in

grave and cruel difficulties; by this action I imperilled his future

prospects. It was a dastardly action, but his presence had grown

unbearable; yes, unbearable in the fullest acceptation of the word, and

in ridding myself of him I felt as if a world of misery were being

lifted from me.