The World as I Found It

by Bruce Duffy

  Analyzing Certain Signs

  IN FACT, Ottoline was on the thinnest of ice, having said good-bye only hours before Russell arrived to that most special of her young friends, the painter Henry Lamb.

  Several times Ottoline had offhandedly mentioned Lamb’s name to Russell, but she did so more from caution than candor, figuring that by treating Lamb casually, Russell would be less suspicious if ever his name popped up. And actually she told Russell the same story about Lamb that she told both Philip and Lamb about Russell — that he was a wounded bird in need of tending.

  Highly principled and methodical, if somewhat bland, Philip was not dense or blind, just very tolerant. Much as Ottoline craved the company of blazing men, Philip knew as well as she did that she did not want a blazing man for a husband. He also recognized that these so-called wounded birds were the price of keeping Ottoline.

  In its restrained way, it was very tender and intimate, the unspoken way she and Philip both knew this, though it was a different, mostly unconscious kind of knowing. For Philip it was not a matter of what he knew but of what he emphatically did not want to know in the way of wounded birds or other fictions. As for Ottoline, she knew, in a way, that he knew, yet she was never quite sure, which was chafing, sometimes anguishing; she did not on any account want to hurt him. Feeling the high gratitude of guilt, a sensation not unlike biting one’s tongue, Ottoline frequently told herself how very fortunate she was in having someone as loving and considerate as Philip to come back to. Distraught — yet for all that faintly titillated — she would say to Russell, I know he knows now. Then, the next week unsure again, she would say as if it had just struck her, You know, I’m not sure he does know. And then the next time he saw her she would say in confoundment, What does he think? He must know. How could he possibly not know?

  Around and around she would go, grinding these worry beads, grinding them not only for the thrill and the guilt but to prove to herself that she was a woman of established, even notorious, desirability, even as she fretted that in two or three years more she would be a little less desirable, and then less desirable after that.

  Philip, for his part, went along, never quite sure that his wife was doing anything more than her easy, not-entirely-plausible stories suggested. Besides, if these adventures were only flirtations, he did not want to wound her vanity by showing them to be only innocent nothings. And it was agreeable to know, wasn’t it, that others found one’s wife desirable?

  In any event, it was out of the question that Philip Morrell would ever make a scene: cuckolds and asses make scenes, not gentlemen. It was treacherous and difficult for him, this foggy art of not knowing, but with his very considerable powers of self-control and subordination to principle, Philip was able to carry it off with panache — so much so that Ottoline sometimes wondered if he wasn’t almost grateful for the intimacy she conferred on him with her white lies. Russell wasn’t the only one versed in neat distinctions. If she lied, Ottoline reasoned, this was because she cared enough not to inflict pain. Her fibs, then, were not really lies, but rather obverse truths — truths that in her mind gradually assumed a certain moral plausibility, like the whitest of kindnesses.

  Before coming to Studland, it had never crossed Russell’s mind that he faced any rival but Philip. Why, he would have found the idea physically and emotionally inconceivable. It was all Ottoline could do to handle him. Like a drunk, he blithely assumed that she, too, was drunk. Passionately he believed they were destined, not realizing that he was suffering from the powerful illusion that his love was reciprocated in kind and intensity.

  No, until that weekend, Russell had never thought twice about Henry Lamb. But then against his will certain realizations were progressively forced on him. The first inkling came just after he arrived, when Ottoline brought him down to his quarters in the old caretaker’s cottage, now a guest house.

  Russell was in a bad mood then, and not without cause, considering that he had just discovered that two of their three days would be filled with interlopers, and some obnoxious ones at that. Arriving in the station fly, he saw her guests bivouacked on slat chairs below the big stone and stucco house, in that trellised garden whose concentric flowerbeds rolled in marcel waves toward the sea. God, the gall of them! They were asking about him, turning up their hat brims to get a better look as they impertinently pressed Ottoline: O? Now, O, who is this?

  Approaching with a mea culpa smile, Ottoline was a sylph in lavender and red silk, with her long red hair bound in a scarf like a Gypsy. And then he was trapped, forced to play the smiling guest, getting names straight and shaking hands until they escaped, ostensibly for a tour of the house. Upstairs, as he was getting into a rant, she suddenly pulled him into the library, kissing him wildly and telling him how she wanted him — wanted him two days hence, once the others had left. Then came the recriminations, and then the sex bartering — the pound of flesh, as she called it.

  Finally, she took him down to the guest cottage, which she said he would have all to himself. She implied she was doing him a great honor, putting him here, away from the others. This, he thought, was only his due, yet in spite of himself he was flattered and vaguely mollified. But then this too was dashed when, stepping under the low lintel, he smelled the odor of a gamy man, then saw painted on the wall across the little cottage room an image that he took at first for the Blessed Virgin. It took him a moment to place who it was in that blue cloak, with those placid, whorish eyes and lewd red lips.

  Good God, he said, turning around. It’s you! Who painted this?

  That? asked Ottoline offhandedly, as if he had noticed some knick-knack in the corner. Henry painted that.

  Henry?

  The painter Henry Lamb. You’ve heard me speak of him.

  Like a curtain, her silk skirt swept across the floor as she moved around the room, opening windows. She felt his eyes on her back but pretended not to notice as she chirpily continued. Henry wintered here last year. He needed a place to work and we needed someone to watch over the place, so —

  And Philip, asked Russell suddenly. Philip saw this?

  Ottoline looked at him curiously. He saw it, yes. Didn’t get it. The joke, she added, as if to compliment Russell for the fact that he had.

  But Russell did not get it, or want to. Making a mouth, he said, It seems a work of anger if you ask me. It mocks you. You don’t find it mocking?

  Mocking? asked Ottoline, raising her eyes. No, I find it rather amusing.

  Do you? He eyed her with a look of incomprehension. As if to taunt him, Ottoline continued moving around, straightening.

  Bowing his fingers by his sides, he was snappish. Quit — Will you kindly quit that and look at me?

  Yes? she asked — a forbearing yes.

  Stuffing his rage back like a jack-in-the-box, he resumed: It’s mocking and cruel — like a slap. Like some vicious caricature in Figaro. There’s certainly nothing to be gotten in it — don’t be deluded on that account. Even the draftsmanship is slapdash and cynical.

  Oh, stop, she replied, attempting a smile. I find it very … Lambian. Very much the naughty boy and punster. It’s not a finished, considered work. Henry was bored, that’s all. He probably couldn’t stand the bare wall.

  Russell was so patronizing. She could see his contempt; it was smeared all over his face. He wanted her to see it, too. He wanted to break her of her obstinance and stupidity. His rival, he saw, was not just Lamb, or Lamb’s stench, but this ugly, defacing portrait. In a flash of anger, he said, Well, I think it ought to be painted over! Blotted out! And why not? Do you think that because an artist did it it’s somehow sacred? I needn’t be a critic to see it’s muck. It has not the mark of the Lamb, it has the smell of the goat!

  Oh! she shot back. How witty!

  His eyes got squinty. I’m not trying to be witty, I’m trying to make you see! I’ll tell you what it says. It says — he hesitated — it says, There, you bitch!

  Ottoline jumped as if a gun had gone off. O
h! Don’t you dare use that horrid word around me!

  Don’t blame the word, blame the work. It’s the work that profanes you. I won’t have you mocked! I’ll paint it out!

  You won’t paint anything! Moving toward him then, she was like a wave, with that propulsive power, flushed and smelling of the sun. Before her he was amazed and aroused as she beat him back, saying, You’ll not come here, to my home, and dictate terms to me. There’s a spare room up at the house if this isn’t satisfactory. There’s also an inn nearby and a train tomorrow if that isn’t to your liking …

  Don’t be angry just because I won’t have you mocked, he said sullenly.

  I’ll be the judge of what mocks me. Ottoline shook her head. You don’t know how patronizing you are, do you? For you, it’s a given that I’m a blind idiot, accepting anything.

  That’s not true. He felt his jaw trembling. It’s just you’re too close to it.

  Not knowing what else to do, he opened his bag and started unpacking. It was the wrong thing to do. To her, the sight of his folded clothes was like a glimpse of stained bedding.

  I should leave, she said suddenly.

  He smiled a coaxing smile. Don’t be silly. Look at you. You’ll allow this on the wall, yet you want to flee in dread of possibly seeing my undergarments.

  I have guests.

  They’ll get along. Then, compulsively, knowing her answer even as he opened his mouth, he thought to ask — But no, he told himself, leave it be. The look on his face was that of a small animal furiously digging. Pausing then, telling himself not to be a fool, he had the sensation of raising a hammer while knowing full well that he would squash his thumb. And yet in spite of himself he raised that hammer, feeling a bit squeamish but faintly exhilarated as he brought it squarely down, suggesting, You know, we could … Just once — briskly. We might both be better for it.

  Her head rocked back. Folding her hands over her lips, she said with delighted sarcasm, You’re priceless! You won’t have me mocked, but then you’re ready to have do in broad daylight with some of the worst tongues in England about. You ought to take up painting.

  Yes, mock me!

  Not mocking. Just pointing out your own contradictions—since you so love to point out mine. Now, she said chidingly, put your things away and come up to the house. She stopped at the doorway. You will be coming, won’t you?

  He was bent with deep care over the suitcase. Without looking up, he replied, In a few minutes.

  Good, she said, pleased to have won this round. Good.

  * * *

  Ottoline’s need to nurse wounded birds was not the only thing about her that Russell and others failed to fully understand. Equally misunderstood was Ottoline’s need to surround herself with lions, literary and otherwise.

  Already some were calling her a huntress. Russell was not yet famous, but in Ottoline’s lair were famous and accomplished men such as Henry James, the art critic Roger Fry and the painter Augustus John—magnets who helped attract younger talents such as Lytton Strachey and Henry Lamb. Along with these came many a Sunday painter and poetaster—the inevitable dross that any search produces—and these Ottoline, no sentimentalist in such things, usually cut from her list after a visit or two.

  In any case, Ottoline’s vocation as a patron was not as sudden or opportunistic as it seemed to others. Beneath these pursuits there was a charitable impulse that had been a distinct part of her character since girlhood.

  Her father, a general, had died suddenly when Ottoline was six, forcing the family to live for a year under drastically reduced circumstances. But after this period of relative privation, the family’s fortunes suddenly reversed when her father’s cousin, the fifth duke of Portland, died, his estates and title passing to Ottoline’s twenty-one-year-old half brother, Arthur.

  Ottoline never forgot Arthur’s orgy with that sudden money. Still in a lather from another frenzied day of buying and fittings, Arthur took her into Cremer’s toy shop in London and ordered her to buy anything—anything and as much as she wanted. A spooky, skinny, religious girl, she knew even then that this was not a gesture of generosity. Instead of feeling grateful or excited, she felt panicky and oddly destitute, paralyzed to think of all the poor waifs she would see without even shoes or a penny pie. Arthur had a temper, and he was immediately incensed that the girl did not want to take part in this potlatch of his new wealth. Do you see nothing? he asked in disbelief, as if she were a traitor to her class. Look here! Dolls and doll houses … stuffed horses and small carriages. Arthur turned with disgust to their mother. What is wrong with her? Will she have nothing?

  She was no happier when her mother, just made a peeress by Arthur’s importuning of Disraeli, took her to live on her stepson’s vast estate in the Midlands. Welbeck Abbey was a tribute to the mania of her uncle, the duke, who was known throughout the region as the “Burrower” or “Hedgehog.” Beneath the stone piers and projections of the misshapen stone manor house were the catacombs and warrens that had taken two hundred navvies twenty years of excavation and blasting to complete. Through a tunnel that coiled like a bowel, there was a cavernous underground ballroom whose rotting pink walls resembled the lining of an enormous stomach, this followed by a charming grotto chapel where the water dripped darkly, it was said, like Christ’s blood.

  The morbidly religious girl didn’t have to imagine what hell was like, living over ground bored through like a foul cheese. For Arthur, though, the duke’s rat runs were a distinct social asset. Once Prince Edward and his court toured Arthur’s hellhole, Welbeck was on the map of fashion, with London’s chief nabobs and sycophants flocking to tour its dungeons and attend Arthur’s underground masques, where he would appear as Mephistopheles in black tights, pointy slippers and a cocked hat with one greasy black feather. Ottoline hid in her room and prayed, wishing she were Florence Nightingale and reading The Imitation of Christ. She hated Arthur’s life. Hated the endless, stupid guests. Hated the bloated, daylong eating and constant dressing. Hated the men trooping out to blast Arthur’s now imported partridges, and hated the ladies chattering and eating crystallized violets before joining their ladies’ maids to dress for yet another stultifying dinner.

  Ottoline could no more pick a sweetmeat from Arthur’s gaping table than she could pick a paltry doll. Shy, gawky, hypersensitive about her as yet unfocused appearance, she grew steadily more pious, with a mother confessor and a thirst to help the poor, who on Arthur’s lands were as plentiful as once the native partridges had been.

  Arthur found her a frump and a nuisance and wished she would marry.

  Instead of enjoying herself and finding herself a good match, Arthur said, all she did was waste her time praying, distributing food parcels and teaching footmen how to read. Unable to stand her chronic gloominess, Arthur finally packed her off to Italy with two chaperones. With its warmth, light and beauty, Italy marked the slow demise of her old life. Italy also marked her first affair. Ottoline became so bold that her chaperones, fearing for their reputations, fled, saying that they would pray for her.

  She married in 1902, at the age of twenty-nine, and she changed as people do, in certain ways fundamentally, in other ways not at all. In her there was still much of Florence Nightingale. Art was her Crimea, and she was still the libidinal nurse, ministering to these penniless young scribblers and painters who manned the barricades against boors like Arthur.

  Art was her creed, and people were her palette. In her mind, then, Ottoline was not a camp follower but, say, an artist of life. Skillfully arranging these colors and textures, the dull with the vibrant and the rough with the smooth, she hoped to create a salon that would rival that of Madame de Staël or George Sand. But still there were the critics, not the least of them being those whose careers she had most advanced, calling her an opportunist and adventuress. It made her furious! Was this mere self-promotion? she would ask herself. After all, who but a fool would be so generous toward artists who, as a class, were almost invariably ungrateful, self-c
entered and two-faced? Why, this was saint’s work she was doing. But where, for God’s sake, were the saints?

  * * *

  Russell complied with Ottoline’s wishes. After putting away his clothes, he walked, grumbling, up to the house, where he heard the strum of a guitar and saw the party still gathered in the garden. I’m not prepared for this, he thought. With that, he slipped into the empty house to compose himself with a browse among the books he’d seen downstairs.

  Furnished in a mode of calculated deshabille, the house was pure Ottoline, very inviting and eccentric. There was a wing where Ottoline and the family slept, and there was a paneled guest’s gallery lined with bookshelves and furnished with a tumble of doggy-smelling chairs with arms rubbed smooth and cushions molded, like distinctive hats, by a succession of rumps. Meandering about this room, Russell wasn’t looking for anything particular when he stopped before a wall hung with a sort of rogue’s gallery of drawings and caricatures done by Studland’s artists and habitués. Russell wasn’t consciously looking for Lamb’s work; somehow, Lamb’s etched pencil portrait found him. He immediately recognized the style as Lamb’s, and he knew from the subject’s smug look that it was a self-portrait. Russell’s stare was like a knife driven into the wall. And then he jumped—Lytton Strachey was standing right behind him. Spooky Lytton, so fond of looming. His large nostrils flared with the scent of prey as in a deep, strangely inflected voice he intoned:

  Heavenly Henry … God hate him for being so gorgeous.

  Lytton smiled. As usual, he was standing just a little too close, peering into Russell’s face through circlets of horn rim that were much too small for his tall Chinese lantern of a head. Russell could hear the air whistling through his nose, could see his equine jaw working. Such a gaping, thoroughly homely man with this cadaverous skin and livid, patchy red beard. And now Russell felt Lytton stuff words in his mouth as he said with a sigh, God gives some the looks and some the brains, eh, Bertie?