‘Have you ever read any of his work?'
‘No,' said Philip.
‘It came out in The Yellow Book.'
They looked upon him, as painters often do writers, with contempt because he was a layman, with tolerance because he practised an art, and with awe because he used a medium in which themselves felt ill at ease.
‘He's an extraordinary fellow. You'll find him a bit disappointing at first, he only comes out at his best when he's drunk.'
‘And the nuisance is,' added Clutton, ‘that it takes him a devil of a time to get drunk.'
When they arrived at the café Lawson told Philip that they would have to go in. There was hardly a bite in the autumn air, but Cronshaw had a morbid fear of draughts and even in the warmest weather sat inside.
‘He knows everyone worth knowing,' Lawson explained. ‘He knew Pater and Oscar Wilde, and he knows Mallarmé and all those fellows.'
The object of their search sat in the most sheltered corner of the café, with his coat on and the collar turned up. He wore his hat pressed well down on his forehead so that he should avoid cold air. He was a big man, stout but not obese, with a round face, a small moustache, and little, rather stupid eyes. His head did not seem quite big enough for his body. It looked like a pea uneasily poised on an egg. He was playing dominoes with a Frenchman, and greeted the newcomers with a quiet smile; he did not speak, but as if to make room for them pushed away the little pile of saucers on the table which indicated the number of drinks he had already consumed. He nodded to Philip when he was introduced to him, and went on with the game. Philip's knowledge of the language was small, but he knew enough to tell that Cronshaw, although he had lived in Paris for several years, spoke French execrably.
At last he leaned back with a smile of triumph.
‘Je vous ai battu,' he said, with an abominable accent. ‘Garçong!'
He called the waiter and turned to Philip.
‘Just out from England? See any cricket?'
Philip was a little confused at the unexpected question.
‘Cronshaw knows the averages of every first-class cricketer for the last twenty years,' said Lawson, smiling.
The Frenchman left them for friends at another table, and Cronshaw, with the lazy enunciation which was one of his peculiarities, began to discourse on the relative merits of Kent and Lancashire. He told them of the last test match he had seen and described the course of the game wicket by wicket.
‘That's the only thing I miss in Paris,' he said, as he finished the bock which the waiter had brought. ‘You don't get any cricket.'
Philip was disappointed, and Lawson, pardonably anxious to show off one of the celebrities of the Quarter, grew impatient. Cronshaw was taking his time to wake up that evening, though the saucers at his side indicated that he had at least made an honest attempt to get drunk. Clutton watched the scene with amusement. He fancied there was something of affectation in Cronshaw's minute knowledge of cricket; he liked to tantalize people by talking to them of things that obviously bored them; Clutton threw in a question.
‘Have you seen Mallarmé lately?'
Cronshaw looked at him slowly, as if he were turning the inquiry over in his mind, and before he answered rapped on the marble table with one of the saucers.
‘Bring my bottle of whisky,' he called out. He turned again to Philip. ‘I keep my own bottle of whisky. I can't afford to pay fifty centimes for every thimbleful.'
The waiter brought the bottle, and Cronshaw held it up to the light.
‘They've been drinking it. Waiter, who's been helping himself to my whisky?'
‘Mais personne, Monsieur Cronshaw.'
‘I made a mark on it last night, and look at it.'
‘Monsieur made a mark, but he kept on drinking after that. At that rate Monsieur wastes his time in making marks.'
The waiter was a jovial fellow and knew Cronshaw intimately. Cronshaw gazed at him.
‘If you give me your word of honour as a nobleman and a gentleman that nobody but I has been drinking my whisky, I'll accept your statement.'
This remark, translated literally into the crudest French, sounded very funny, and the lady at the comptoir could not help laughing.
‘Il est impayable,' she murmured.
Cronshaw, hearing her, turned a sheepish eye upon her—she was stout, matronly, and middle-aged—and solemnly kissed his hand to her. She shrugged her shoulders.
‘Fear not, madam,' he said heavily. ‘I have passed the age when I am tempted by forty-five and gratitude.'
He poured himself out some whisky and water, and slowly drank it. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
‘He talked very well.'
Lawson and Clutton knew that Cronshaw's remark was an answer to the question about Mallarmé. Cronshaw often went to the gatherings on Tuesday evenings when the poet received men of letters and painters, and discoursed with subtle oratory on any subject that was suggested to him. Cronshaw had evidently been there lately.
‘He talked very well, but he talked nonsense. He talked about art as though it were the most important thing in the world.'
‘If it isn't, what are we here for?' asked Philip.
‘What you're here for I don't know. It is no business of mine. But art is a luxury. Men attach importance only to self-preservation and the propagation of their species. It is only when these instincts are satisfied that they consent to occupy themselves with the entertainment which is provided for them by writers, painters, and poets.'
Cronshaw stopped for a moment to drink. He had pondered for twenty years the problem whether he loved liquor because it made him talk or whether he loved conversation because it made him thirsty.
Then he said: ‘I wrote a poem yesterday.'
Without being asked he began to recite it, very slowly, marking the rhythm with an extended forefinger. It was possibly a very fine poem, but at that moment a young woman came in. She had scarlet lips, and it was plain that the vivid colour of her cheeks was not due to the vulgarity of nature; she had blackened her eyelashes and eyebrows, and painted both eyelids a bold blue, which was continued to a triangle at the corner of the eyes. It was fantastic and amusing. Her dark hair was done over her ears in the fashion made popular by Mlle Cléo de Merode. Philip's eyes wandered to her, and Cronshaw having finished the recitation of his verses, smiled upon him indulgently.
‘You were not listening,' he said.
‘Oh yes, I was.'
‘I do not blame you, for you have given an apt illustration of the statement I just made. What is art beside love? I respect and applaud your indifference to fine poetry when you can contemplate the meretricious charms of this young person.'
She passed by the table at which they were sitting, and he took her arm.
‘Come and sit by my side, dear child, and let us play the divine comedy of love.'
‘Fichez-moi la paix,' she said, and pushing him on one side continued her perambulation.
‘Art,' he continued, with a wave of the hand, ‘is merely the refuge which the ingenious have invented, when they were supplied with food and women, to escape the tediousness of life.'
Cronshaw filled his glass again, and began to talk at length. He spoke with rotund delivery. He chose his words carefully. He mingled wisdom and nonsense in the most astounding manner, gravely making fun of his hearers at one moment, and at the next playfully giving them sound advice. He talked of art, and literature, and life. He was by turns devout and obscene, merry and lachrymose. He grew remarkably drunk, and then he began to recite poetry, his own and Milton's, his own and Shelley's, his own and Kit Marlowe's.
At last Lawson, exhausted, got up to go home.
‘I shall go too,' said Philip.
Clutton, the most silent of them all, remained behind listening, with a sardonic smile on his lips, to Cronshaw's maunderings. Lawson accompanied Philip to his hotel and then bade him good night. But when Philip got to bed he could not sleep. All these new ideas that had be
en flung before him carelessly seethed in his brain. He was tremendously excited. He felt in himself great powers. He had never before been so self-confident.
‘I know I shall be a great artist,' he said to himself. ‘I feel it in me.'
A thrill passed through him as another thought came, but even to himself he would not put it into words:
‘By George, I believe I've got genius.'
He was in fact very drunk, but as he had not taken more than one glass of beer, it could have been due only to a more dangerous intoxicant than alcohol.
XLIII
ON TUESDAYS and Fridays masters spent the morning at Amitrano's, criticizing the work done. In France the painter earns little unless he paints portraits and is patronized by rich Americans; and men of reputation are glad to increase their incomes by spending two or three hours once a week at one of the numerous studios where art is taught. Tuesday was the day upon which Michel Rollin came to Amitrano's. He was an elderly man, with a white beard and a florid complexion, who had painted a number of decorations for the State, but these were an object of derision to the students he instructed: he was a disciple of Ingres, impervious to the progress of art and angrily impatient with that tas de farceurs whose names were Manet, Degas, Monet, and Sisley; but he was an excellent teacher, helpful, polite, and encouraging. Foinet, on the other hand, who visited the studio on Fridays, was a difficult man to get on with. He was a small, shrivelled person, with bad teeth and a bilious air, an untidy grey beard, and savage eyes; his voice was high and his tone sarcastic. He had had pictures bought by Luxembourg, and at twenty-five looked forward to a great career; but his talent was due to youth rather than to personality, and for twenty years he had done nothing but repeat the landscape which had brought him his early success. When he was reproached with monotony, he answered:
‘Corot only painted one thing. Why shouldn't I?'
He was envious of everyone else's success, and had a peculiar, personal loathing of the impressionists; for he looked upon his own failure as due to the mad fashion which had attracted the public, sale bête, to their works. The genial disdain of Michel Rollin, who called them impostors, was answered by him with vituperation, of which crapule and canaille were the least violent items; he amused himself with abuse of their private lives and with sardonic humour, with blasphemous and obscene detail, attacked the legitimacy of their births and the purity of their conjugal relations: he used an Oriental imagery and an Oriental emphasis to accentuate his ribald scorn. Nor did he conceal his contempt for the students whose work he examined. By them he was hated and feared; the women by his brutal sarcasm he reduced often to tears, which again aroused his ridicule; and he remained at the studio, notwithstanding the protests of those who suffered too bitterly from his attacks, because there could be no doubt that he was one of the best masters in Paris. Sometimes the old model who kept the school ventured to remonstrate with him, but his expostulations quickly gave way before the violent insolence of the painter to abject apologies.
It was Foinet with whom Philip first came in contact. He was already in the studio when Philip arrived. He went round from easel to easel, with Mrs Otter, the massière, by his side to interpret his remarks for the benefit of those who could not understand French. Fanny Price, sitting next to Philip, was working feverishly. Her face was sallow with nervousness, and every now and then she stopped to wipe her hands on her blouse, for they were hot with anxiety. Suddenly she turned to Philip with an anxious look, which she tried to hide by a sullen frown.
‘D'you think it's good?' she asked, nodding at her drawing.
Philip got up and looked at it. He was astounded; he felt she must have no eye at all; the thing was hopelessly out of drawing.
‘I wish I could draw half as well myself,' he answered.
‘You can't expect to, you've only just come. It's a bit too much to expect that you should draw as well as I do. I've been here two years.'
Fanny Price puzzled Philip. Her conceit was stupendous. Philip had already discovered that everyone in the studio cordially disliked her; and it was no wonder, for she seemed to go out of her way to wound people.
‘I complained to Mrs Otter about Foinet,' she said now. ‘The last two weeks he hasn't looked at my drawing. He spends about half an hour on Mrs Otter because she's the massière. After all I pay as much as anybody else, and I suppose my money's as good as theirs. I don't see why I shouldn't get as much attention as anybody else.'
She took up her charcoal again, but in a moment put it down with a groan.
‘I can't do any more now. I'm so frightfully nervous.'
She looked at Foinet, who was coming towards them with Mrs Otter. Mrs Otter, meek, mediocre, and self-satisfied, wore an air of importance. Foinet sat down at the easel of an untidy little Englishwoman called Ruth Chalice. She had the fine black eyes, languid but passionate, the thin face, ascetic but sensual, the skin like old ivory, which under the influence of Burne-Jones were cultivated at that time by young ladies in Chelsea. Foinet seemed in a pleasant mood; he did not say much to her, but with quick, determined strokes of her charcoal pointed out her errors. Miss Chalice beamed with pleasure when he rose. He came to Clutton, and by this time Philip was nervous too, but Mrs Otter had promised to make things easy for him. Foinet stood for a moment in front of Clutton's work, biting his thumb silently, then absent-mindedly spat out upon the canvas the little piece of skin which he had bitten off.
‘That's a fine line,' he said at last, indicating with his thumb what pleased him. ‘You're beginning to learn to draw.'
Clutton did not answer, but looked at the master with his usual air of sardonic indifference to the world's opinion.
‘I'm beginning to think you have at least a trace of talent.'
Mrs Otter, who did not like Clutton, pursed her lips. She did not see anything out of the way in his work. Foinet sat down and went into technical details. Mrs Otter grew rather tired of standing. Clutton did not say anything, but nodded now and then, and Foinet felt with satisfaction that he grasped what he said and the reasons of it; most of them listened to him, but it was clear they never understood. Then Foinet got up and came to Philip.
‘He only arrived two days ago,' Mrs Otter hurried to explain. ‘He's a beginner. He's never studied before.'
‘Ça se voit,' the master said. ‘One sees that.'
He passed on, and Mrs Otter murmured to him:
‘This is the young lady I told you about.'
He looked at her as though she were some repulsive animal, and his voice grew more rasping.
‘It appears that you do not think I pay enough attention to you. You have been complaining to the massière. Well, show me this work to which you wish me to give attention.'
Fanny Price coloured. The blood under her unhealthy skin seemed to be of a strange purple. Without answering she pointed to the drawing on which she had been at work since the beginning of the week. Foinet sat down.
‘Well, what do you wish me to say to you? Do you wish me to tell you it is good? It isn't. Do you wish me to tell you it is well drawn? It isn't. Do you wish me to say it has merit? It hasn't. Do you wish me to show you what is wrong with it? It is all wrong. Do you wish me to tell you what to do with it? Tear it up. Are you satisfied now?'
Miss Price became very white. She was furious because he had said all this before Mrs Otter. Though she had been in France so long and could understand French well enough, she could hardly speak two words.
‘He's got no right to treat me like that. My money's as good as anyone else's. I pay him to teach me. That's not teaching me.'
‘What does she say? What does she say?' asked Foinet.
Mrs Otter hesitated to translate, and Miss Price repeated in execrable French:
‘Je vous paye pour m'apprendre.'
His eyes flashed with rage, he raised his voice and shook his fist.
‘Mais, nom de Dieu, I can't teach you. I could more easily teach a camel.' He turned to Mrs Otter. ‘Ask her, does
she do this for amusement, or does she expect to earn money by it?'
‘I'm going to earn my living as an artist,' Miss Price answered.
‘Then it is my duty to tell you that you are wasting your time. It would not matter that you have no talent, talent does not run about the streets in these days, but you have not the beginning of an aptitude. How long have you been here? A child of five after two lessons would draw better than you do. I only say one thing to you, give up this hopeless attempt. You're more likely to earn your living as a bonne à tout faire than as a painter. Look.'
He seized a piece of charcoal and it broke as he applied it to the paper. He cursed, and with the stump drew great firm lines. He drew rapidly and spoke at the same time, spitting out the words with venom.
‘Look, those arms are not the same length. That knee, it's grotesque. I tell you a child of five. You see, she's not standing on her legs. That foot!'
With each word the angry pencil made a mark, and in a moment the drawing upon which Fanny Price had spent so much time and eager trouble was unrecognizable, a confusion of lines and smudges. At last he flung down the charcoal and stood up.
‘Take my advice, Mademoiselle, try dressmaking.' He looked at his watch. ‘It's twelve. À la semaine prochaine, messieurs.'
Miss Price gathered up her things slowly. Philip waited behind after the others to say to her something consolatory. He could think of nothing but:
‘I say, I'm awfully sorry. What a beast that man is!'
She turned on him savagely.
‘Is that what you're waiting about for? When I want your sympathy I'll ask for it. Please get out of my way.'
Of Human Bondage Page 25