Of Human Bondage (37 page)

  "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 cafe 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 Mallarme and all those
fellows."

  The object of their search sat in the most sheltered
corner of the cafe, 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 new-comers 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. "Garcong!"

  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 tantalise
people by talking to them of things that obviously bored them;
Clutton threw in a question.

  "Have you seen Mallarme 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 whiskey," he called out. He
turned again to Philip. "I keep my own bottle of whiskey. 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 whiskey?"

  "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 whiskey,
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 whiskey 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 Mallarme. 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. Cleo 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 been 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.

  On Tuesdays and Fridays masters spent the morning at
Amitrano's, criticising the work done. In France the painter earns
little unless he paints portraits and is patronised 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 gray beard, and savage
eyes; his voice was high and his tone sarcastic. He had had
pictures bought by the 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 bete, 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 massiere, 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.