The Underside

by H. R. F. Keating

  Again Elizabeth looked uneasy.

  ‘I know very little of literature,’ she said. ‘But it seems to me plain that a writer cannot be truly great if his manner of living leaves anything to be desired.’

  Into Godfrey’s mind there flashed the vision—unbidden, unwanted—of just what the life of one promising young painter had left to be desired the night before. And the vision was uncomfortably precise.

  ‘It is a difficult subject,’ he said at last, and decidedly lamely.

  ‘Well, I am altogether inexperienced in such matters. So let us leave them to a better time. And in the meanwhile tell me instead just what Torquato Tasso—was that it?—was doing leaving the city of Ferrara.’

  Godfrey, storing away this confirmation of the blessed inexperience of this moment-by-moment more admirable girl, addressed himself with considerable enthusiasm to explaining to her about the poet Tasso. He expanded on the troubles that had beset him in sixteenth-century Italy and what the great Goethe had seen his life as signifying. He entered headlong on the feelings that had caused him himself, after his years of study in Germany, to choose this particular incident to embody in paint.

  ‘You see, Goethe—you must forgive me for so frequently mentioning his name, but he is a poet of supreme beauty and a supreme quester for truth—you see, Goethe wrote of Tasso as a man who could not come to terms with the world that surrounded him but who, by his poetry, was able to find a better way. I try to show the moment of Tasso’s leaving Ferrara as the moment of his decision. I have sought to convey all that that meant, the seeing of the world around one for what it is, mean, sordid, dulled and muddied, and the decision, at whatever cost, to take the higher brighter path.’

  He came to a tumultuous full stop.

  ‘But—But you ought to see the picture,’ he burst out again, feeling the importance of this girl, this unknown quantity at every instant becoming more and better known, understanding this, his deepest belief. ‘You must see the picture—if I may suggest it. The picture is what conveys it all. What I hope conveys it.’

  ‘Mr Mann,’ Elizabeth said, looking at him full, with the light pouring from her grey eyes, ‘I will see your picture. I shall see it at the earliest opportunity.’

  The words were sweet. But there was something in her tone, something unmistakable, which robbed him of his fullest triumph. There was a note of doubt.

  ‘I fear I have spoken too wildly,’ he said, hoping that this and nothing more had been the cause of her hesitancy.

  ‘No,’ she answered. ‘No, it is better to speak wildly and to bring the truth to light, whatever it is, than to be circumspect and hide it. That I believe.’

  ‘And I.’

  He hoped by the fervour he put into the two short words to win what he felt he had not succeeded in gaining so far, this clear-sighted creature’s whole approval.

  But he was to be left in doubt at that moment as to how far he had done so.

  ‘Elizabeth.’

  It was Lady Augusta.

  Elizabeth was quick to turn and answer her, quicker than Godfrey altogether liked.

  ‘My child, you must not talk to Mr Mann all morning. Indeed, I wonder whether you should be let talk to Mr Mann at all.’

  ‘Oh, I do not think he will too much influence me.’

  Were the words a jest? They did not quite sound as if they altogether had been. But it was too late to find out now.

  ‘Lady Augusta,’ Godfrey said, resigning himself, ‘I am to blame for having kept Miss Hills to myself for far too long. And I have prolonged my visit past the courteous.’

  He bowed over the pink shining beringed hand. Lady Augusta gave him a smile that said that nonsense was nonsense, and he turned to leave.

  But, just as he had reached the door, Elizabeth came sweeping across to him.

  ‘Mr Mann,’ she said, in a voice that had a quiet intensity to it which quickened him as if, poring over an old document, he had made a discovery of blazoning importance.

  ‘Mr Mann, I would not like you to leave under a misapprehension over my attitude to your picture. I say this only because I know you attach the greatest importance to it, and I do you the justice of being equally serious.’

  ‘Miss Hills—’ he began.

  But she cut him short.

  ‘No, you would make a mistake even more mistaken. Mr Mann, I must tell you: I cannot sympathise with such a work as you have described. It seems to me folly—’

  She checked herself. But her determination broke through and she went on, her grey eyes shining with redoubled fervency.

  ‘No, I will say it. It is folly. It seems to me folly, the greatest, to refuse to accept the world around you and not to try to change it where it needs changing. It seems to me wrong, wrong, to seek to soar away instead on a pale hunt for an ideal Beauty.’

  Godfrey raised a hand in protest.

  ‘No, let me say it. Mr Mann, if that is all your paint-brush attempts, then to me a scrubbing-brush is infinitely preferable.’

  Chapter Four

  So, Godfrey thought, standing feeling a little dazed out in the sunshine of Brook Street, so I have had the rebuke I rashly asked for. And it stings.

  For a moment, one moment, he was tempted to hail the first passing hansom and have himself driven as fast as the horse would go down to the East End, to one of those sleazy neighbourhoods that he had begun visiting, fearfully delighted, when he had first returned from Germany. There he could slip down some narrow passage and plunge deep into what lay behind. But he called himself angrily to order.

  No, that was no way to conduct his life. To fly like a whipped child to the secret comfort of the sweets bottle. No, if Elizabeth Hills had proved to be other than he had thought her—or as, to tell the truth, he had imagined her—then he must accept it.

  Because, he found, hurt him though she might, he still valued her good opinion. The clear light of those grey eyes, and too the seriousness of mien that the restrained colours of her quiet clothes expressed, made him feel with every fibre of his mind that here was someone before whom he wished to stand untarnished. Oh, how the simple stripes of her dress bodice just now had caught the light in the swell of her full bosom.

  Abruptly into his head there obtruded, sharp and clear, the positive sight, it seemed, of Lisa’s small but eager breasts. He forced it away.

  Taking a deep breath, he found he had come to a decision. He would not, as he had intended, leave London and visit Paris, from where a friend had written describing in glowing terms the work of a painter new to him, one Gustave Moreau. No, he would stay in London for the rest of the summer, and, hot and unpleasant though it would be, he would work. He would embark on his picture for next year’s Academy which so far he had barely even let simmer in the recesses of his mind. He would bring it forward, he would think, he would read, he would spend time in the British Museum among the casts. He would do whatever was necessary to bring fully into focus a subject that would grip and hold him.

  But what subject? Would it still be the companion piece to ‘Torquato Tasso’ that he had vaguely contemplated? That stood for what he believed, and he should state his beliefs. If Elizabeth scorned his faith, he ought to be able to prove to her with his paint-brush that that was worth more than her scrubbing-brush.

  He felt a dull colour mount up at the renewed thought of that jibe.

  Or would he find another subject? Perhaps ‘The Apotheosis of the Kitchen-maid’ with scrubbing-brush triumphantly raised? That would be what would please Miss Elizabeth Hills.

  That afternoon he set himself a practice task. He chose the dullest subject he could find in the British Museum, the Labours of Hercules from the Greek vases, and he drew as hard as he knew how. When he got back to his studio, fagged but with a feeling of satisfaction, there was a letter that had come in the late delivery. The writing on the envelope was strange to him, flowing and forthright. He opened it and looked at the signature at the end of the note inside. ‘Elizabeth Hills.’


  Quickly he read.

  Dear Mr Mann, I went to the Academy before luncheon to see your picture, though I am sure my Aunt thought me unduly hurried, if not worse. But I felt it was no more than I owed you after what I had said. Let me tell you at once that I found the picture extraordinarily striking. It outshone, to my eye, everything else in the Exhibition. And, having said that, let me add at once also that I cannot alter my view. Indeed, I saw the painting for what it was the more clearly, I think, from having heard your eloquent defence this morning. So there is a subject on which we must differ. But I ought not to have said what I did. No, I ought to have said it, but I ought not to have expressed myself so strongly. I can only plead that I too have my beliefs, that if I spoke of a scrubbing-brush it was because truly that common domestic article stands for much in my eyes. The world that I see around me, or that I saw in New York, for I have as yet seen little of the real world here, stands badly in need of scrubbing-brushes. There is truly too much dirt everywhere, and there are people dying because of it. So will you excuse the outburst of too passionate a faith? I hope you will, and that we shall be able to meet on terms of friendship. On Friday my Aunt takes me in the afternoon to the Park and we will be there until the Four-in-Hand Club drive. She tells me that this will show me in one the pride, the wealth and the blood of Old England. I would, I suspect, be less likely to vent my impudent American views if you were there.

  And there was a postscript.

  Perhaps I should not have written. I am putting it in the post before I change my mind.

  The sun was shining. Godfrey, once more dressed with immense care, stood in the Park watching the carriages go by. He was early, he knew. The Four-in-Hand Club parade of coaches did not start until five o’clock. Lady Augusta would hardly be there two whole hours before. But he had been unable to prevent himself finishing his luncheon in no time, dressing afterwards with great speed despite all his care and then setting out much too soon.

  But the Park was wonderfully pleasant. He wandered to and fro looking up at the sky. Scarcely a cloud, and those there were all puffy white. The great boughs of the huge trees were dark with their full summer foliage, stretching from one to the other, touching but monumentally still. Across on the far side of the wooden-railed ride in the sunlight the grass looked greener than would have seemed possible in all the dust. The people strolling there equally looked finer perhaps than they really were, with all the light-coloured crinolines swaying and dancing as their wearers walked, the straight-backed men beside them in greys and blacks making a delightful contrast.

  He turned to look once more at the line of bowling carriages and beautifully turned-out riders. Was the Bosworths’ barouche coming towards him? Would he see Elizabeth before she saw him? She would be looking out for him, if she had been sincere in what she had written in her letter—her somewhat unconventional letter at this moment reposing in his inside pocket— and, whatever faults he might hold against her, if he held any, lack of sincerity was certainly not one of them.

  Onwards the carriages rolled, broughams and big high barouches, victorias and open landaus, with dancing among them a scattering of bright phaetons and tiny superbly elegant traps, their drivers often feminine and of that altogether dazzling smartness that announced the kept woman. From the height of the vehicles their occupants, a whole rainbow of bright colours in bonnets, shawls, dresses and opened parasols, looked down at the loungers on the rails. A light haze of reddish dust rose at the feet of the groomed and shining horses. Standing up above it like towers on the backs of the larger carriages were the liveried footmen, rigid as carved figures, and in front were the coachmen, almost as still, enormous of shoulder, proud every one as Lucifer, directing hard self-contained glances from side to side.

  Behind Godfrey, as a particularly dashing little trap passed drawn by two milk-white ponies with harness of white leather glinting with silver and cushions covered in leopard skin, its solitary female occupant, tall and erect, her long whip held upright as a lance, two portly gentlemen broke into speech.

  ‘Excuse me, sir, can you tell me who that lady is?’

  ‘Why, yes, sir. She is Mrs Gilmore. She is kept by Lord Fitzwalter. The talk is he’s married her, but you can’t believe what such women say.’

  ‘No, sir, no. But, tell me, was she ever gay? I don’t recollect seeing her about town.’

  ‘I think not, sir. I think not.’

  Godfrey moved away. There were things he did not wish to think about.

  At last he saw Lady Augusta’s barouche. It was in a solid line of other vehicles, none as stately and well turned-out, and it was proceeding at a very slow pace. And long before he felt it appropriate to raise his hat he was aware that Elizabeth had seen him. What quite it was that betrayed this he could scarcely say. Perhaps it was a slight stiffening of her back or an extra rigidity of her head under its light grey bonnet. But he knew it clearly as if it had been spelt out on a page.

  Lady Augusta, on the other hand, did not recognise him until the carriage was almost level with where he stood. Then, with a complicated gesture of her brilliant violet parasol that threatened some harm to the hats of the occupants of a neighbouring brougham, she indicated that they were going to halt by the Serpentine where the band would be playing. Godfrey walked after them, never quite losing sight of the two tall Bosworth footmen standing up behind.

  Down by the Serpentine within sound of the band’s thumpy military marches Lady Augusta had remained in the carriage while Elizabeth had got down and was standing beside the heavily-sprung vehicle. Godfrey paid his respects to Lady Augusta and then spoke quietly.

  ‘Miss Hills, I am extremely indebted to you for your letter.’

  ‘I ought not to have sent it. Aunt Augusta would be shocked.’

  Godfrey smiled a little.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ he said.

  ‘No, perhaps you are right,’ Elizabeth answered, with a look of quick perception. ‘You know, she is not my aunt, although I call her so, and I had not met her until a month ago. But I have begun to suspect she is not as easily shocked as she lets be believed.’

  ‘I am glad we can agree on some subject,’ Godfrey said.

  ‘Ah no, Mr Mann, we can agree about most things, I’m sure. It seems to me we have more than a little in common, you and I. We are both rebels, you know.’

  ‘Yes, I know indeed. And let me say that I admire your rebellion, especially as it is so much harder for a woman to defy the conventions.’

  ‘You’re kind. But how am I defying the conventions now? By writing to a gentleman I have met only once? If that’s as far as I go in the rebellion way, Aunt Augusta has nothing to fear.’

  ‘You sound bitter. And on such a sunny day.’

  Elizabeth looked down at the tips of her boots protruding from the circle of her wide grey skirt, again no hooped and extravagant crinoline.

  ‘Well, I am bitter, and the sunshine and all this …’

  She gestured at the band, the onlookers round it, colourful and animated, the sparkling lake with the rowing-boats gently gliding here and there and the polished carriages, stationary or moving.

  ‘All this makes me, I am afraid, more bitter. The world is not like this, Mr Mann. The world is not all glitter and prettiness. London, I know, must be often dark and noisome, even on a day like this.’

  Godfrey thought of his plunges in the East End into the black hinterlands to the rows of cheerful if poor shops, the old-iron merchants, the second-hand-furniture places, the sellers of pigs’ trotters and pigs’ heads.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘London can be unpleasant. No, it can be worse than that. Dark and evil.’

  ‘And I, who could help to make it less so, yes, really help, am kept like a doll here.’

  She raised her grey eyes—how splendidly they flashed—and looked him full in the face.

  ‘Oh, I must not blame Aunt Augusta,’ she went on. ‘She’s been kindness in itself. And I really had no claim on her. But she cannot co
nceive of a life other than her own, and she would like me to be a last daughter to her.’

  ‘And you,’ Godfrey asked, ‘instead of the balls and the calls, the races and the opera, and in the end the triumphant marriage, what do you see for yourself?’

  ‘Work, Mr Mann. That’s what I see. Oh, don’t mistake me, I should like to be married as much as any woman. But I should like to do what I am fitted for as well. To bring cleanliness to where there is appalling dirt, to bring light to dark places, to save lives.’

  Godfrey stood and admired her. She was magnificent. As she had spoken those uncommonly direct words her back had been straight as a soldier’s, her bosom had risen like the figurehead of a ship ploughing through seas.

  ‘And you must do what you are made for, you must,’ he answered her, carried away beyond his expectations.

  From the carriage above them came Lady Augusta’s sharp cracked voice.

  ‘Must? Must, Godfrey? What are you saying to the child? I cannot hear. Come up. Come up at once, before you encourage her into some ridiculous foolishness.’

  So they both got up into the carriage with its well-padded dark-green seats, its silk linings of a lighter green and its odour of leather and horses.

  ‘Well,’ Lady Augusta demanded, ‘and what was all that? And it is of no use to tell me that I am an interfering old woman and should not ask. I do ask. And I mean to have a reply.’

  ‘So you shall, Lady Augusta,’ Godfrey said. ‘Miss Hills was telling me that, for all your goodness to her, she feels confined in the life she is leading at present. And, with respect, I endorse that. A holiday is an excellent thing, and she should of course see as much of London as she can. But she has spent years training herself for an occupation, and it would be wrong to stifle it.’

  ‘Wrong.’

  If a lady can snort, Lady Augusta snorted.

  And then she turned and looked towards the slow line of carriages passing on the far side, their horses matched and glossy, their coachmen pillars of reliability, their paintwork and harness polished and gleaming.