Philip could not get the unhappy event out of his head. What troubled him
most was the uselessness of Fanny's effort. No one could have worked
harder than she, nor with more sincerity; she believed in herself with all
her heart; but it was plain that self-confidence meant very little, all
his friends had it, Miguel Ajuria among the rest; and Philip was shocked
by the contrast between the Spaniard's heroic endeavour and the triviality
of the thing he attempted. The unhappiness of Philip's life at school had
called up in him the power of self-analysis; and this vice, as subtle as
drug-taking, had taken possession of him so that he had now a peculiar
keenness in the dissection of his feelings. He could not help seeing that
art affected him differently from others. A fine picture gave Lawson an
immediate thrill. His appreciation was instinctive. Even Flanagan felt
certain things which Philip was obliged to think out. His own appreciation
was intellectual. He could not help thinking that if he had in him the
artistic temperament (he hated the phrase, but could discover no other) he
would feel beauty in the emotional, unreasoning way in which they did. He
began to wonder whether he had anything more than a superficial cleverness
of the hand which enabled him to copy objects with accuracy. That was
nothing. He had learned to despise technical dexterity. The important
thing was to feel in terms of paint. Lawson painted in a certain way
because it was his nature to, and through the imitativeness of a student
sensitive to every influence, there pierced individuality. Philip looked
at his own portrait of Ruth Chalice, and now that three months had passed
he realised that it was no more than a servile copy of Lawson. He felt
himself barren. He painted with the brain, and he could not help knowing
that the only painting worth anything was done with the heart.
He had very little money, barely sixteen hundred pounds, and it would be
necessary for him to practise the severest economy. He could not count on
earning anything for ten years. The history of painting was full of
artists who had earned nothing at all. He must resign himself to penury;
and it was worth while if he produced work which was immortal; but he had
a terrible fear that he would never be more than second-rate. Was it worth
while for that to give up one's youth, and the gaiety of life, and the
manifold chances of being? He knew the existence of foreign painters in
Paris enough to see that the lives they led were narrowly provincial. He
knew some who had dragged along for twenty years in the pursuit of a fame
which always escaped them till they sunk into sordidness and alcoholism.
Fanny's suicide had aroused memories, and Philip heard ghastly stories of
the way in which one person or another had escaped from despair. He
remembered the scornful advice which the master had given poor Fanny: it
would have been well for her if she had taken it and given up an attempt
which was hopeless.
Philip finished his portrait of Miguel Ajuria and made up his mind to send
it to the Salon. Flanagan was sending two pictures, and he thought he
could paint as well as Flanagan. He had worked so hard on the portrait
that he could not help feeling it must have merit. It was true that when
he looked at it he felt that there was something wrong, though he could
not tell what; but when he was away from it his spirits went up and he was
not dissatisfied. He sent it to the Salon and it was refused. He did not
mind much, since he had done all he could to persuade himself that there
was little chance that it would be taken, till Flanagan a few days later
rushed in to tell Lawson and Philip that one of his pictures was accepted.
With a blank face Philip offered his congratulations, and Flanagan was so
busy congratulating himself that he did not catch the note of irony which
Philip could not prevent from coming into his voice. Lawson,
quicker-witted, observed it and looked at Philip curiously. His own
picture was all right, he knew that a day or two before, and he was
vaguely resentful of Philip's attitude. But he was surprised at the sudden
question which Philip put him as soon as the American was gone.
"If you were in my place would you chuck the whole thing?"
"What do you mean?"
"I wonder if it's worth while being a second-rate painter. You see, in
other things, if you're a doctor or if you're in business, it doesn't
matter so much if you're mediocre. You make a living and you get along.
But what is the good of turning out second-rate pictures?"
Lawson was fond of Philip and, as soon as he thought he was seriously
distressed by the refusal of his picture, he set himself to console him.
It was notorious that the Salon had refused pictures which were afterwards
famous; it was the first time Philip had sent, and he must expect a
rebuff; Flanagan's success was explicable, his picture was showy and
superficial: it was just the sort of thing a languid jury would see merit
in. Philip grew impatient; it was humiliating that Lawson should think him
capable of being seriously disturbed by so trivial a calamity and would
not realise that his dejection was due to a deep-seated distrust of his
powers.
Of late Clutton had withdrawn himself somewhat from the group who took
their meals at Gravier's, and lived very much by himself. Flanagan said he
was in love with a girl, but Clutton's austere countenance did not suggest
passion; and Philip thought it more probable that he separated himself
from his friends so that he might grow clear with the new ideas which were
in him. But that evening, when the others had left the restaurant to go to
a play and Philip was sitting alone, Clutton came in and ordered dinner.
They began to talk, and finding Clutton more loquacious and less sardonic
than usual, Philip determined to take advantage of his good humour.
"I say I wish you'd come and look at my picture," he said. "I'd like to
know what you think of it."
"No, I won't do that."
"Why not?" asked Philip, reddening.
The request was one which they all made of one another, and no one ever
thought of refusing. Clutton shrugged his shoulders.
"People ask you for criticism, but they only want praise. Besides, what's
the good of criticism? What does it matter if your picture is good or
bad?"
"It matters to me."
"No. The only reason that one paints is that one can't help it. It's a
function like any of the other functions of the body, only comparatively
few people have got it. One paints for oneself: otherwise one would commit
suicide. Just think of it, you spend God knows how long trying to get
something on to canvas, putting the sweat of your soul into it, and what
is the result? Ten to one it will be refused at the Salon; if it's
accepted, people glance at it for ten seconds as they pass; if you're
lucky some ignorant fool will buy it and put it on his walls and look at
it as little as he looks at his dining-room table. Criticism has nothing
to do with the artist. It judges objectively, but the objective doesn't
concern the artist."
Clutton put his hands over his eyes so that he might concentrate his mind
on what he wanted to say.
"The artist gets a peculiar sensation from something he sees, and is
impelled to express it and, he doesn't know why, he can only express his
feeling by lines and colours. It's like a musician; he'll read a line or
two, and a certain combination of notes presents itself to him: he doesn't
know why such and such words call forth in him such and such notes; they
just do. And I'll tell you another reason why criticism is meaningless: a
great painter forces the world to see nature as he sees it; but in the
next generation another painter sees the world in another way, and then
the public judges him not by himself but by his predecessor. So the
Barbizon people taught our fathers to look at trees in a certain manner,
and when Monet came along and painted differently, people said: But trees
aren't like that. It never struck them that trees are exactly how a
painter chooses to see them. We paint from within outwards--if we force
our vision on the world it calls us great painters; if we don't it ignores
us; but we are the same. We don't attach any meaning to greatness or to
smallness. What happens to our work afterwards is unimportant; we have got
all we could out of it while we were doing it."
There was a pause while Clutton with voracious appetite devoured the food
that was set before him. Philip, smoking a cheap cigar, observed him
closely. The ruggedness of the head, which looked as though it were carved
from a stone refractory to the sculptor's chisel, the rough mane of dark
hair, the great nose, and the massive bones of the jaw, suggested a man of
strength; and yet Philip wondered whether perhaps the mask concealed a
strange weakness. Clutton's refusal to show his work might be sheer
vanity: he could not bear the thought of anyone's criticism, and he would
not expose himself to the chance of a refusal from the Salon; he wanted to
be received as a master and would not risk comparisons with other work
which might force him to diminish his own opinion of himself. During the
eighteen months Philip had known him Clutton had grown more harsh and
bitter; though he would not come out into the open and compete with his
fellows, he was indignant with the facile success of those who did. He had
no patience with Lawson, and the pair were no longer on the intimate terms
upon which they had been when Philip first knew them.
"Lawson's all right," he said contemptuously, "he'll go back to England,
become a fashionable portrait painter, earn ten thousand a year and be an
A. R. A. before he's forty. Portraits done by hand for the nobility and
gentry!"
Philip, too, looked into the future, and he saw Clutton in twenty years,
bitter, lonely, savage, and unknown; still in Paris, for the life there
had got into his bones, ruling a small cenacle with a savage tongue, at
war with himself and the world, producing little in his increasing passion
for a perfection he could not reach; and perhaps sinking at last into
drunkenness. Of late Philip had been captivated by an idea that since one
had only one life it was important to make a success of it, but he did not
count success by the acquiring of money or the achieving of fame; he did
not quite know yet what he meant by it, perhaps variety of experience and
the making the most of his abilities. It was plain anyway that the life
which Clutton seemed destined to was failure. Its only justification would
be the painting of imperishable masterpieces. He recollected Cronshaw's
whimsical metaphor of the Persian carpet; he had thought of it often; but
Cronshaw with his faun-like humour had refused to make his meaning clear:
he repeated that it had none unless one discovered it for oneself. It was
this desire to make a success of life which was at the bottom of Philip's
uncertainty about continuing his artistic career. But Clutton began to
talk again.
"D'you remember my telling you about that chap I met in Brittany? I saw
him the other day here. He's just off to Tahiti. He was broke to the
world. He was a brasseur d'affaires, a stockbroker I suppose you call it
in English; and he had a wife and family, and he was earning a large
income. He chucked it all to become a painter. He just went off and
settled down in Brittany and began to paint. He hadn't got any money and
did the next best thing to starving."
"And what about his wife and family?" asked Philip.
"Oh, he dropped them. He left them to starve on their own account."
"It sounds a pretty low-down thing to do."
"Oh, my dear fellow, if you want to be a gentleman you must give up being
an artist. They've got nothing to do with one another. You hear of men
painting pot-boilers to keep an aged mother--well, it shows they're
excellent sons, but it's no excuse for bad work. They're only tradesmen.
An artist would let his mother go to the workhouse. There's a writer I
know over here who told me that his wife died in childbirth. He was in
love with her and he was mad with grief, but as he sat at the bedside
watching her die he found himself making mental notes of how she looked
and what she said and the things he was feeling. Gentlemanly, wasn't it?"
"But is your friend a good painter?" asked Philip.
"No, not yet, he paints just like Pissarro. He hasn't found himself, but
he's got a sense of colour and a sense of decoration. But that isn't the
question. it's the feeling, and that he's got. He's behaved like a perfect
cad to his wife and children, he's always behaving like a perfect cad; the
way he treats the people who've helped him--and sometimes he's been saved
from starvation merely by the kindness of his friends--is simply beastly.
He just happens to be a great artist."
Philip pondered over the man who was willing to sacrifice everything,
comfort, home, money, love, honour, duty, for the sake of getting on to
canvas with paint the emotion which the world gave him. it was
magnificent, and yet his courage failed him.
Thinking of Cronshaw recalled to him the fact that he had not seen him for
a week, and so, when Clutton left him, he wandered along to the cafe in
which he was certain to find the writer. During the first few months of
his stay in Paris Philip had accepted as gospel all that Cronshaw said,
but Philip had a practical outlook and he grew impatient with the theories
which resulted in no action. Cronshaw's slim bundle of poetry did not seem
a substantial result for a life which was sordid. Philip could not wrench
out of his nature the instincts of the middle-class from which he came;
and the penury, the hack work which Cronshaw did to keep body and soul
together, the monotony of existence between the slovenly attic and the
cafe table, jarred with his respectability. Cronshaw was astute enough to
know that the young man disapproved of him, and he attacked his
philistinism with an irony which was sometimes playful but often very
keen.
"You're a tradesman," he told Philip, "you want to invest life in consols
so that it shall bring you in a safe three per cent. I'm a spendthrift, I
run through my capital. I shall spend my last penny with my last
heartbeat."
The metaphor irritated Philip, because it assumed for the speaker a
romantic attitude and cast a slur upon the position which Philip
instinctively felt had more to say for it than he could think of at the
moment.
But this evening Philip, undecided, wanted to talk about himself.
Fortunately it was late already and Cronshaw's pile of saucers on the
table, each indicating a drink, suggested that he was prepared to take an
independent view of things in general.
"I wonder if you'd give me some advice," said Philip suddenly.
"You won't take it, will you?"
Philip shrugged his shoulders impatiently.
"I don't believe I shall ever do much good as a painter. I don't see any
use in being second-rate. I'm thinking of chucking it."
"Why shouldn't you?"
Philip hesitated for an instant.
"I suppose I like the life."
A change came over Cronshaw's placid, round face. The corners of the mouth
were suddenly depressed, the eyes sunk dully in their orbits; he seemed to
become strangely bowed and old.
"This?" he cried, looking round the cafe in which they sat. His voice
really trembled a little.
"If you can get out of it, do while there's time."
Philip stared at him with astonishment, but the sight of emotion always
made him feel shy, and he dropped his eyes. He knew that he was looking
upon the tragedy of failure. There was silence. Philip thought that
Cronshaw was looking upon his own life; and perhaps he considered his
youth with its bright hopes and the disappointments which wore out the
radiancy; the wretched monotony of pleasure, and the black future.
Philip's eyes rested on the little pile of saucers, and he knew that
Cronshaw's were on them too.
Read next: CHAPTER LI
Read previous: CHAPTER XLIX
Table of content of Of Human Bondage
GO TO TOP OF SCREEN
Post your reviewYour review will be placed after the table of content of this book
