When the porters wife who used to answer the house-bell, announced A gentleman and a lady, sir, I had, as I often had in those daysthe wish being father to the thoughtan immediate vision of sitters. Sitters my visitors in this case proved to be; but not in the sense I should have preferred. There was nothing at first however to indicate that they mightnt have come for a portrait. The gentleman, a man of fifty, very high and very straight, with a moustache slightly grizzled and a dark grey walking-coat admirably fitted, both of which I noted professionallyI dont mean as a barber or yet as a tailorwould have struck me as a celebrity if celebrities often were striking. It was a truth of which I had for some time been conscious that a figure with a good deal of frontage was, as one might say, almost never a public institution. A glance at the lady helped to remind me of this paradoxical law: she also looked too distinguished to be a personality. Moreover one would scarcely come across two variations together.
Neither of the pair immediately spokethey only prolonged the preliminary gaze suggesting that each wished to give the other a chance. They were visibly shy; they stood there letting me take them inwhich, as I afterwards perceived, was the most practical thing they could have done. In this way their embarrassment served their cause. I had seen people painfully reluctant to mention that they desired anything so gross as to be represented on canvas; but the scruples of my new friends appeared almost insurmountable. Yet the gentleman might have said I should like a portrait of my wife, and the lady might have said I should like a portrait of my husband. Perhaps they werent husband and wifethis naturally would make the matter more delicate. Perhaps they wished to be done togetherin which case they ought to have brought a third person to break the news.
We come from Mr. Rivet, the lady finally said with a dim smile that had the effect of a moist sponge passed over a sunk piece of painting, as well as of a vague allusion to vanished beauty. She was as tall and straight, in her degree, as her companion, and with ten years less to carry. She looked as sad as a woman could look whose face was not charged with expression; that is her tinted oval mask showed waste as an exposed surface shows friction. The hand of time had played over her freely, but to an effect of elimination. She was slim and stiff, and so well-dressed, in dark blue cloth, with lappets and pockets and buttons, that it was clear she employed the same tailor as her husband. The couple had an indefinable air of prosperous thriftthey evidently got a good deal of luxury for their money. If I was to be one of their luxuries, it would behoove me to consider my terms.
Ah, Claude Rivet recommended me? I echoed; and I added that it was very kind of him, though I could reflect that, as he only painted landscape, this wasnt a sacrifice.
The lady looked very hard at the gentleman, and the gentleman looked round the room. Then, staring at the door a moment and stroking his moustache, he rested his pleasant eyes on me with the remark: He said you were the right one.
I try to be, when people want to sit.
Yes, we should like to, said the lady anxiously.
Do you mean together?
My visitors exchanged a glance. If you could do anything with me I suppose it would be double, the gentleman stammered.
Oh, yes, theres naturally a higher charge for two figures than for one.
We should like to make it pay, the husband confessed.
Thats very good of you, I returned, appreciating so unwonted a sympathyfor I supposed he meant pay the artist.
A sense of strangeness seemed to dawn on the lady. We mean for the illustrationsMr. Rivet said you might put one in.
Put inan illustration? I was equally confused.
Sketch her off, you know, said the gentleman, colouring.
It was only then that I understood the service Claude Rivet had rendered me; he had told them how I worked in black and white, for magazines, for storybooks, for sketches of contemporary life, and consequently had copious employment for models. These things were true, but it was not less trueI may confess it now; whether because the aspiration was to lead to everything or to nothing I leave the reader to guessthat I couldnt get the honours, to say nothing of the emoluments, of a great painter of portraits out of my head. My illustrations were my pot-boilers; I looked to a different branch of artfar and away the most interesting it had always seemed to meto perpetuate my fame. There was no shame in looking to it also to make my fortune; but that fortune was by so much further from being made from the moment my visitors wished to be done for something. I was disappointed; for in the pictorial sense I had immediately seen them. I had seized their typeI had already settled what I would do with it. Something that wouldnt absolutely have pleased them, I afterwards reflected.
Ah, youreyourea? I began as soon as I had mastered my surprise. I couldnt bring out the dingy word models: it seemed so little to fit the case.
We havent had much practice, said the lady.
Weve got to do something, and weve thought that an artist in your line might perhaps make something of us, her husband threw off. He further mentioned that they didnt know many artists and that they had gone first, on the off chancehe painted views of course, but sometimes put in figures; perhaps I rememberedto Mr. Rivet, whom they had met a few years before at a place in Norfolk where he was sketching.
We used to sketch a little ourselves, the lady hinted.
Its very awkward, but we absolutely must do something, her husband went on.
Of course were not so very young, she admitted with a wan smile.
With the remark that I might as well know something more about them the husband had handed me a card extracted from a neat new pocketbooktheir appurtenances were all of the freshestand inscribed with the words Major Monarch. Impressive as these words were they didnt carry my knowledge much further; but my visitor presently added: Ive left the army and weve had the misfortune to lose our money. In fact our means are dreadfully small.
Its awfully tryinga regular strain, said Mrs. Monarch.
They evidently wished to be discreetto take care not to swagger because they were gentlefolk. I felt them willing to recognise this as something of a drawback, at the same time that I guessed at an underlying sensetheir consolation in adversitythat they had their points. They certainly had; but these advantages struck me as preponderantly social; such, for instance, as would help to make a drawing-room look well. However, a drawing-room was always, or ought to be, a picture.
In consequence of his wifes allusion to their age Major Monarch observed: Naturally its more for the figure that we thought of going in. We can still hold ourselves up. On the instant I saw the figure was indeed their strong point. His naturally didnt sound vain, but it lighted up the question. She has the best one, he continued, nodding at his wife with a pleasant after-dinner absence of circumlocution. I could only reply, as if we were in fact sitting over our wine, that this didnt prevent his own from being very good; which led him in turn to make answer: We thought that if you ever have to do people like us we might be something like it. She particularlyfor a lady in a book, you know.
I was so amused by them that, to get more of it, I did my best to take their point of view; and though it was an embarrassment to find myself appraising physically, as if they were animals on hire or useful blacks, a pair whom I should have expected to meet only in one of the relations in which criticism is tacit, I looked at Mrs. Monarch judicially enough to be able to exclaim after a moment with conviction: Oh, yes, a lady in a book! She was singularly like a bad illustration.
Well stand up, if you like, said the Major; and he raised himself before me with a really grand air.
I could take his measure at a glancehe was six feet two and a perfect gentleman. It would have paid any club in process of formation and in want of a stamp to engage him at a salary to stand in the principal window. What struck me at once was that in coming to me they had rather missed their vocation; they could surely have been turned to better account for advertising purposes. I couldnt of course see the thing in detail, but I could see them make somebodys fortuneI dont mean their own. There was something in them for a waistcoat-maker, an hotel-keeper or a soap-vendor. I could imagine We always use it pinned on their bosoms with the greatest effect; I had a vision of the brilliancy with which they would launch a table dhôte.
Mrs. Monarch sat still, not from pride but from shyness, and presently her husband said to her: Get up, my dear, and show how smart you are. She obeyed, but she had no need to get up show it. She walked to the end of the studio and then came back blushing, her fluttered eyes on the partner of her appeal. I was reminded of an incident I had accidentally had a glimpse of in Parisbeing with a friend there, a dramatist about to produce a play, when an actress came to him to ask to be entrusted with a part. She went through her paces before him, walked up and down as Mrs. Monarch was doing. Mrs. Monarch did it quite as well, but I abstained from applauding. It was very odd to see such people apply for such poor pay. She looked as if she had ten thousand a year. Her husband had used the word that described her: she was in the London current jargon essentially and typically smart. Her figure was, in the same order of ideas, conspicuously and irreproachably good. For a woman of her age her waist was surprisingly small; her elbow moreover had the orthodox crook. She held her head at the conventional angle, but why did she come to me? She ought to have tried on jackets at a big shop. I feared my visitors were not only destitute but artisticwhich would be a great complication. When she sat down again I thanked her, observing that what a draughtsman most valued in his model was the faculty of keeping quiet.
Oh, she can keep quiet, said Major Monarch. Then he added jocosely: Ive always kept her quiet.
Im not a nasty fidget, am I? It was going to wring tears from me, I felt, the way she hid her head, ostrich-like, in the other broad bosom.
The owner of this expanse addressed his answer to me. Perhaps it isnt out of place to mentionbecause we ought to be quite businesslike, oughtnt we?that when I married her she was known as the Beautiful Statue.
Oh dear! said Mrs. Monarch ruefully.
Of course I should want a certain amount of expression, I rejoined.
Of course!and I had never heard such unanimity.
And then I suppose you know that youll get awfully tired.
Oh, we never get tired! they eagerly cried.
Have you had any kind of practice?
They hesitatedthey looked at each other. Weve been photographed immensely, said Mrs. Monarch.
She means the fellows have asked us themselves, added the Major.
I seebecause youre so good-looking.
I dont know what they thought, but they were always after us.
We always got our photographs for nothing, smiled Mrs. Monarch.
We might have brought some, my dear, her husband remarked.
Im not sure we have any left. Weve given quantities away, she explained to me.
With our autographs and that sort of thing, said the Major.
Are they to be got in the shops? I inquired as a harmless pleasantry.
Oh, yes, hersthey used to be.
Not now, said Mrs. Monarch with her eyes on the floor.
II
I could fancy the sort of thing they put on the presentation copies of their photographs, and I was sure they wrote a beautiful hand. It was odd how quickly I was sure of everything that concerned them. If they were now so poor as to have to earn shillings and pence they could never have had much of a margin. Their good looks had been their capital, and they had good-naturedly made the most of the career that this resource marked out for them. It was in their faces, the blankness, the deep intellectual repose of the twenty years of country-house visiting that had given them pleasant intonations. I could see the sunny drawing-rooms, sprinkled with periodicals she didnt read, in which Mrs. Monarch had continuously sat; I could see the wet shrubberies in which she had walked, equipped to admiration for either exercise. I could see the rich covers the Major had helped to shoot and the wonderful garments in which, late at night, he repaired to the smoking-room to talk about them. I could imagine their leggings and waterproofs, their knowing tweeds and rugs, their rolls of sticks and cases of tackle and neat umbrellas; and I could evoke the exact appearance of their servants and the compact variety of their luggage on platforms of country stations.
They gave small tips, but they were liked; they didnt do anything themselves, but they were welcome. They looked so well everywhere; they gratified the general relish for stature, complexion and form. They knew it without fatuity or vulgarity, and they respected themselves in consequence. They werent superficial; they were thorough and kept themselves upit had been their line. People with such a taste for activity had to have some line. I could feel how even in a dull house they could have been counted on for the joy of life. At present something had happened it didnt matter what, their little income had grown less, it had grown leastand they had to do something for pocket-money. Their friends could like them, I made out, without liking to support them. There was something about them that represented credittheir clothes, their manners, their type; but if credit is a large empty pocket in which an occasional chink reverberates, the chink at least must be audible. What they wanted of me was help to make it so. Fortunately they had no children I soon divined that. They would also perhaps wish our relations to be kept secret: this was why it was for the figurethe reproduction of the face would betray them.
I liked themI felt, quite as their friends must have donethey were so simple; and I had no objection to them if they would suit. But somehow with all their perfections I didnt easily believe in them. After all they were amateurs, and the ruling passion of my life was the detestation of the amateur. Combined with this was another perversityan innate preference for the represented subject over the real one: the defect of the real one was so apt to be a lack of representation. I liked things that appeared; then one was sure. Whether they were or not was a subordinate and almost always a profitless question. There were other considerations, the first of which was that I already had two or three recruits in use, notably a young person with big feet, in alpaca, from Kilburn, who for a couple of years had come to me regularly for my illustrations and with whom I was stillperhaps ignoblysatisfied. I frankly explained to my visitors how the case stood, but they had taken more precautions than I supposed. They had reasoned out their opportunity, for Claude Rivet had told them of the projected édition de luxe of one of the writers of our daythe rarest of the novelistswho, long neglected by the multitudinous vulgar and dearly prized by the attentive (need I mention Philip Vincent?), had had the happy fortune of seeing, late in life, the dawn and then the full light of a higher criticism; an estimate in which on the part of the public there was something really of expiation. The edition preparing, planned by a publisher of taste, was practically an act of high reparation; the woodcuts with which it was to be enriched were the homage of English art to one of the most independent representatives of English letters, Major and Mrs. Monarch confessed to me they had hoped I might be able to work them into my branch of the enterprise. They knew I was to do the first of the books, Rutland Ramsay, but I had to make clear to them that my participation in the rest of the affairthis first book was to be a testmust depend on the satisfaction I should give. If this should be limited my employers would drop me with scarce common forms. It was therefore a crisis for me, and naturally I was making special preparations, looking about for new people, should they be necessary, and securing the best types. I admitted however that I should like to settle down to two or three good models who would do for everything.
Should we have oftenaput on special clothes? Mrs. Monarch timidly demanded.
Dear, yesthats half the business.
And should we be expected to supply our own costumes?
Oh, no; Ive got a lot of things. A painters models put onor put off anything he likes.
And you meanathe same?
The same?
Mrs. Monarch looked at her husband again.
Oh, she was just wondering, he explained, if the costumes are in general use. I had to confess that they were, and I mentioned further that some of themI had a lot of genuine greasy last-century thingshad served their time, a hundred years ago, on living world-stained men and women; on figures not perhaps so far removed, in that vanished world, from their type, the Monarchs, quoi! of a breeched and bewigged age. Well put on anything that fits, said the Major.
Oh, I arrange thatthey fit in the pictures.
Im afraid I should do better for the modern books. Id come as you like, said Mrs. Monarch.
She has got a lot of clothes at home: they might do for contemporary life, her husband continued.
Oh, I can fancy scenes in which youd be quite natural. And indeed I could see the slipshod rearrangements of stale propertiesthe stories I tried to produce pictures for without the exasperation of reading them whose sandy tacts the good lady might help to people. But I had to return to the fact that for this sort of workthe daily mechanical grindI was already equipped: the people I was working with were fully adequate.
We only thought we might be more like some characters, said Mrs. Monarch mildly, getting up.
Her husband also rose; he stood looking at me with a dim wistfulness that was touching in so fine a man. Wouldnt it be rather a pull sometimes to haveato have? He hung fire; he wanted me to help him by phrasing what he meant. But I couldntI didnt know. So he brought it out awkwardly: The real thing; a gentleman, you know, or a lady. I was quite ready to give a general assentI admitted that there was a great deal in that. This encouraged Major Monarch to say, following up his appeal with an unacted gulp: Its awfully hardweve tried everything. The gulp was communicative; it proved too much for his wife. Before I knew it Mrs. Monarch had dropped again upon a divan and burst into tears. Her husband sat down beside her, holding one of her hands; whereupon she quickly dried her eyes with the other, while I felt embarrassed as she looked up at me. There isnt a confounded job I havent applied forwaited forprayed for. You can fancy wed be pretty bad first. Secretaryships and that sort of thing? You might as well ask for a peerage. Id be anythingIm strong; a messenger or a coal-heaver. Id put on a gold-laced cap and open carriage-doors in front of the haberdashers; Id hang about a station to carry portmanteaus; Id be a postman. But they wont look at you; there are thousands as good as yourself already on the ground. Gentlemen, poor beggars, whove drunk their wine, whove kept their hunters!
I was as reassuring as I know how to be, and my visitors were presently on their feet again while, for the experiment, we agreed on an hour. We were discussing it when the door opened and Miss Churm came in with a wet umbrella. Miss Churm had to take the omnibus to Maida Vale and then walk half a mile. She looked a trifle blowsy and slightly splashed. I scarcely ever saw her come in without thinking afresh how odd it was that, being so little in herself, she should yet be so much in others. She was a meagre little Miss Churm, but was such an ample heroine of romance. She was only a freckled cockney, but she could represent everything, from a fine lady to a shepherdess; she had the faculty as she might have had a fine voice or long hair. She couldnt spell and she loved beer, but she had two or three points, and practice, and a knack, and mother-wit, and a whimsical sensibility, and a love of the theatre, and seven sisters, and not an ounce of respect, especially for the h. The first thing my visitors saw was that her umbrella was wet, and in their spotless perfection they visibly winced at it. The rain had come on since their arrival.
Im all in a soak; there was a mess of people in the bus. I wish you lived near a stytion, said Miss Churm. I requested her to get ready as quickly as possible, and she passed into the room in which she always changed her dress. But before going out she asked me what she was to get into this time.
Its the Russian princess, dont you know? I answered; the one with the golden eyes, in black velvet, for the long thing in the Cheapside.
Golden eyes? I say! cried Miss Churm, while my companions watched her with intensity as she withdrew. She always arranged herself, when she was late, before I could turn round; and I kept my visitors a little on purpose, so that they might get an idea, from seeing her, what would be expected of themselves. I mentioned that she was quite my notion of an excellent modelshe was really very clever.
Do you think she looks like a Russian princess? Major Monarch asked with lurking alarm.
When I make her, yes.
Oh, if you have to make her! he reasoned, not without point.
Thats the most you can ask. There are so many who are not makable.
Well, now, heres a ladyand with a persuasive smile he passed his arm into his wifes whos already made!
Oh, Im not a Russian princess, Mrs. Monarch protested a little coldly. I could see she had known some and didnt like them. There at once was a complication of a kind I never had to fear with Miss Churm.
This young lady came back in black velvetthe gown was rather rusty and very low on her lean shouldersand with a Japanese fan in her red hands. I reminded her that in the scene I was doing she had to look over someones head. I forget whose it is; but it doesnt matter. Just look over a head.
Id rather look over a stove, said Miss Churm; and she took her station near the fire. She fell into position, settled herself into a tall attitude, gave a certain backward inclination to her head and a certain forward droop to her fan, and looked, at least to my prejudiced sense, distinguished and charming, foreign and dangerous. We left her looking so while I went downstairs with Major and Mrs. Monarch.
I believe I could come about as near it as that, said Mrs. Monarch.
Oh, you think shes shabby, but you must allow for the alchemy of art.
However, they went off with an evident increase of comfort founded on their demonstrable advantage in being the real thing. I could fancy them shuddering over Miss Churm. She was very droll about them when I went back, for I told her what they wanted.
Well, if she can sit Ill tyke to bookkeeping, said my model.
Shes very ladylike, I replied as an innocent form of aggravation.
So much the worse for you. That means she cant turn round.
Shell do for the fashionable novels.
Oh, yes, shell do for them! my model humorously declared. Aint they bad enough without her? I had often sociably denounced them to Miss Churm.
III
It was for the elucidation of a mystery in one of these works that I first tried Mrs. Monarch. Her husband came with her, to be useful if necessaryit was sufficiently clear that as a general thing he would prefer to come with her. At first I wondered if this were for proprietys sakeif he were going to be jealous and meddling. The idea was too tiresome, and if it had been confirmed it would speedily have brought our acquaintance to a close. But I soon saw there was nothing in it and that if he accompanied Mrs. Monarch it wasin addition to the chance of being wantedsimply because he had nothing else to do. When they were separate his occupation was gone, and they never had been separate. I judged rightly that in their awkward situation their close union was their main comfort and that this union had no weak spot. It was a real marriage, an encouragement to the hesitating, a nut for pessimists to crack. Their address was humbleI remember afterwards thinking it had been the only thing about them that was really professionaland I could fancy the lamentable lodgings in which the Major would have been left alone. He could sit there more or less grimly with his wifehe couldnt sit there anyhow without her.
He had too much tact to try and make himself agreeable when he couldnt be useful; so when I was too absorbed in my work to talk he simply sat and waited. But I liked to hear him talkit made my work, when not interrupting it, less mechanical, less special. To listen to him was to combine the excitement of going out with the economy of staying at home. There was only one hindrancethat I seemed not to know any of the people this brilliant couple had known. I think he wondered extremely, during the term of our intercourse, whom the deuce I did know. He hadnt a stray sixpence of an idea to fumble for, so we didnt spin it very fine; we confined ourselves to questions of leather and even of liquor saddlers and breeches-makers and how to get excellent claret cheapand matters like good trains and the habits of small game. His lore on these last subjects was astonishinghe managed to interweave the station-master with the ornithologist. When he couldnt talk about greater things he could talk cheerfully about small, and since I couldnt accompany him into reminiscences of the fashionable world he could lower the conversation without a visible effort to my level.
So earnest a desire to please was touching in a man who could so easily have knocked one down. He looked after the fire and had an opinion on the draught of the stove without my asking him, and I could see that he thought many of my arrangements not half knowing. I remember telling him that if I were only rich Id offer him a salary to come and teach me how to live. Sometimes he gave a random sigh of which the essence might have been: Give me even such a bare old barrack as this, and Id do something with it! When I wanted to use him he came alone; which was an illustration of the superior courage of women. His wife could bear her solitary second floor, and she was in general more discreet; showing by various small reserves that she was alive to the propriety of keeping our relations markedly professionalnot letting them slide into sociability. She wished it to remain clear that she and the Major were employed, not cultivated, and if she approved of me as a superior, who could be kept in his place, she never thought me quite good enough for an equal.
She sat with great intensity, giving the whole of her mind to it, and was capable of remaining for an hour almost as motionless as before a photographers lens. I could see she had been photographed often, but somehow the very habit that made her good for that purpose unfitted her for mine. At first I was extremely pleased with her ladylike air, and it was a satisfaction, on coming to follow her lines, to see how good they were and how far they could lead the pencil. But after a little skirmishing I began to find her too insurmountably stiff; do what I would with it my drawing looked like a photograph or a copy of a photograph. Her figure had no variety of expressionshe herself had no sense of variety. You may say that this was my business and was only a question of placing her. Yet I placed her in every conceivable position and she managed to obliterate their differences. She was always a lady certainly, and into the bargain was always the same lady. She was the real thing, but always the same thing. There were moments when I rather writhed under the serenity of her confidence that she was the real thing. All her dealings with me and all her husbands were an implication that this was lucky for me. Meanwhile I found myself trying to invent types that approached her own, instead of making her own transform itselfin the clever way that was not impossible for instance to poor Miss Churm. Arrange as I would and take the precautions I would, she always came out, in my pictures, too talllanding me in the dilemma of having represented a fascinating woman as seven feet high, which (out of respect perhaps to my own very much scantier inches) was far from my idea of such a personage.
The case was worse with the Majornothing I could do would keep him down, so that he became useful only for representation of brawny giants. I adored variety and range, I cherished human accidents, the illustrative note; I wanted to characterise closely, and the thing in the world I most hated was the danger of being ridden by a type. I had quarrelled with some of my friends about it; I had parted company with them for maintaining that one had to be, and that if the type was beautiful witness Raphael and Leonardothe servitude was only a gain. I was neither Leonardo nor RaphaelI might only be a presumptuous young modern searcher; but I held that everything was to be sacrificed sooner than character. When they claimed that the obsessional form could easily be character I retorted, perhaps superficially, Whose? It couldnt be everybodysit might end in being nobodys.
After I had drawn Mrs. Monarch a dozen times I felt surer even than before that the value of such a model as Miss Churm resided precisely in the fact that she had no positive stamp, combined of course with the other fact that what she did have was a curious and inexplicable talent for imitation. Her usual appearance was like a curtain which she could draw up at request for a capital performance. This performance was simply suggestive; but it was a word to the wiseit was vivid and pretty. Sometimes even I thought it, she was plain herself, too insipidly pretty; I made it a reproach to her that the figures drawn from her were monotonously (bêtement, as we used to say) graceful. Nothing made her more angry: it was so much her pride to feel she could sit for characters that had nothing in common with each other. She would accuse me at such moments of taking away her reputytion.
It suffered a certain shrinkage, this queer quantity, from the repeated visits of my new friends. Miss Churm was greatly in demand, never in want of employment, so I had no scruple in putting her off occasionally, to try them more at my ease. It was certainly amusing at first to do the real thingit was amusing to do Major Monarchs trousers. They were the real thing, even if he did come out colossal. It was amusing to do his wifes back hairit was so mathematically neatand the particular smart tension of her tight stays. She lent herself especially to positions in which the face was somewhat averted or blurred; she abounded in ladylike back views and profils perdus. When she stood erect she took naturally one of the attitudes in which court painters represent queens and princesses; so that I found myself wondering whether, to draw out this accomplishment, I couldnt get the editor of the Cheapside to publish a really royal romance, A Tale of Buckingham Palace. Sometimes, however, the real thing and the make-believe came into contact; by which I mean that Miss Churm, keeping an appointment or coming to make one on days when I had much work in hand, encountered her invidious rivals. The encounter was not on their part, for they noticed her no more than if she had been the housemaid; not from intentional loftiness, but simply because as yet, professionally, they didnt know how to fraternise, as I could imagine they would have likedor at least that the Major would. They couldnt talk about the omnibusthey always walked; and they didnt know what else to tryshe wasnt interested in good trains or cheap claret. Besides, they must have feltin the airthat she was amused at them, secretly derisive of their ever knowing how. She wasnt a person to conceal the limits of her faith if she had had a chance to show them. On the other hand Mrs. Monarch didnt think her tidy; for why else did she take pains to say to meit was going out of the way, for Mrs. Monarchthat she didnt like dirty women?
One day when my young lady happened to be present with my other sittersshe even dropped in, when it was convenient, for a chatI asked her to be so good as to lend a hand in getting tea, a service with which she was familiar and which was one of a class that, living as I did in my small way, with slender domestic resources, I often appealed to my models to render. They liked to lay hands on my property, to break the sitting, and sometimes the chinait made them feel Bohemian. The next time I saw Miss Churm after this incident she surprised me greatly by making a scene about itshe accused me of having wished to humiliate her. She hadnt resented the outrage at the time, but had seemed obliging and amused, enjoying the comedy of asking Mrs. Monarch, who sat vague and silent, whether she would have cream and sugar, and putting an exaggerated simper into the question. She had tried intonationsas if she too wished to pass for the real thingtill I was afraid my other visitors would take offence.
Oh, they were determined not to do this, and their touching patience was the measure of their great need. They would sit by the hour, uncomplaining, till I was ready to use them; they would come back on the chance of being wanted and would walk away cheerfully if it failed. I used to go to the door with them to see in what magnificent order they retreated. I tried to find other employment for themI introduced them to several artists. But they didnt take, for reasons I could appreciate, and I became rather anxiously aware that after such disappointments they fell back upon me with a heavier weight. They did me the honour to think me most their form. They werent romantic enough for the painters, and in those days there were few serious workers in black-and-white. Besides, they had an eye to the great job I had mentioned to themthey had secretly set their hearts on supplying the right essence for my pictorial vindication of our fine novelist. They knew that for this undertaking I should want no costume effects, none of the frippery of past agesthat it was a case in which everything would be contemporary and satirical and presumably genteel. If I could work them into it their future would be assured, for the labour would of course be long and the occupation steady.
One day Mrs. Monarch came without her husbandshe explained his absence by his having had to go to the City. While she sat there in her usual relaxed majesty there came at the door a knock which I immediately recognized as the subdued appeal of a model out of work. It was followed by the entrance of a young man whom I at once saw to be a foreigner and who proved in fact an Italian acquainted with no English word but my name, which he uttered in a way that made it seem to include all others. I hadnt then visited his country, nor was I proficient in his tongue; but as he was not so meanly constitutedwhat Italian is?as to depend only on that member for expression he conveyed to me, in familiar but graceful mimicry, that he was in search of exactly the employment in which the lady before me was engaged. I was not struck with him at first, and while I continued to draw I dropped few signs of interest or encouragement. He stood his ground, howevernot importunately, but with a dumb dog-like fidelity in his eyes that amounted to innocent impudence, the manner of a devoted servanthe might have been in the house for yearsunjustly suspected. Suddenly it struck me that this very attitude and expression made a picture; whereupon I told him to sit down and wait till I should be free. There was another picture in the way he obeyed me, and I observed as I worked that there were others still in the way he looked wonderingly, with his head thrown back, about a high studio. He might have been crossing himself in Saint Peters. Before I finished I said to myself, The fellows a bankrupt orange-monger, but a treasure.
When Mrs. Monarch withdrew he passed across the room like a flash to open the door for her, standing there with the rapt, pure gaze of the young Dante spellbound by the young Beatrice. As I never insisted, in such situations, on the blankness of the British domestic, I reflected that he had the making of a servantand I needed one, but couldnt pay him to be only thatas well as of a model; in short I resolved to adopt my bright adventurer if he would agree to officiate in the double capacity. He jumped at my offer, and in the event my rashnessfor I had really known nothing about himwasnt brought home to me. He proved a sympathetic though a desultory ministrant, and had in a wonderful degree the sentiment de la pose. It was uncultivated, instinctive, a part of the happy instinct that had guided him to my door and helped him to spell out my name on the card nailed to it. He had had no other introduction to me than a guess, from the shape of my high north window, seen outside, that my place was a studio and that as a studio it would contain an artist. He had wandered to England in search of fortune, like other itinerants, and had embarked, with a partner and a small green handcart, on the sale of penny ices. The ices had melted away and the partner had dissolved in their train. My young man wore tight yellow trousers with reddish stripes and his name was Oronte. He was sallow but fair, and when I put him into some old clothes of my own he looked like an Englishman. He was as good as Miss Churm, who could look, when requested, like an Italian.
IV
I thought Mrs. Monarchs face slightly convulsed when, on her coming back with her husband, she found Oronte installed. It was strange to have to recognize in a scrap of a lazzarone a competitor to her magnificent Major. It was she who scented danger first, for the Major was anecdotically unconscious. But Oronte gave us tea, with a hundred eager confusionshe had never been concerned in so queer a processand I think she thought better of me for having at last an establishment. They saw a couple of drawings that I had made of the establishment, and Mrs. Monarch hinted that it never would have struck her he had sat for them. Now the drawings you make from us, they look exactly like us, she reminded me, smiling in triumph; and I recognized that this was indeed just their defect. When I drew the Monarchs I couldnt anyhow get away from themget into the character I wanted to represent; and I hadnt the least desire my model should be discoverable in my picture. Miss Churm never was, and Mrs. Monarch thought I hid her, very properly, because she was vulgar; whereas if she was lost it was only as the dead who go to heaven are lostin the gain of an angel the more.
By this time I had got a certain start with Rutland Ramsay, the first novel in the great projected series; that is, I had produced a dozen drawings, several with the help of the Major and his wife, and I had sent them in for approval. My understanding with the publishers, as I have already hinted, had been that I was to be left to do my work, in this particular case, as I liked, with the whole book committed to me; but my connexion with the rest of the series was only contingent. There were moments when, frankly, it was a comfort to have the real thing under ones hand; for there were characters in Rutland Ramsay that were very much like it. There were people presumably as erect as the Major and women of as good a fashion as Mrs. Monarch. There was a great deal of country-house lifetreated, it is true, in a fine fanciful ironical generalized wayand there was a considerable implication of knickerbockers and kilts. There were certain things I had to settle at the outset; such things for instance as the exact appearance of the hero and the particular bloom and figure of the heroine. The author of course gave me a lead, but there was a margin for interpretation. I took the Monarchs into my confidence, I told them frankly what I was about, I mentioned my embarrassments and alternatives. Oh, take him! Mrs. Monarch murmured sweetly, looking at her husband; and What could you want better than my wife? the Major inquired with the comfortable candour that now prevailed between us.
I wasnt obliged to answer these remarksI was only obliged to place my sitters. I wasnt easy in mind, and I postponed a little timidly perhaps the solving of my question. The book was a large canvas, the other figures were numerous, and I worked off at first some of the episodes in which the hero and the heroine were not concerned. When once I had set them up I should have to stick to themI couldnt make my young man seven feet high in one place and five feet nine in another. I inclined on the whole to the latter measurement, though the Major more than once reminded me that he looked about as young as any one. It was indeed quite possible to arrange him, for the figure, so that it would have been difficult to detect his age. After the spontaneous Oronte had been with me a month, and after I had given him to understand several times over that his native exuberance would presently constitute an insurmountable barrier to our further intercourse, I waked to a sense of his heroic capacity. He was only five feet seven, but the remaining inches were latent. I tried him almost secretly at first, for I was really rather afraid of the judgment my other models would pass on such a choice. If they regarded Miss Churm as little better than a snare what would they think of the representation of a person so little the real thing as an Italian street-vendor of a protagonist formed by a public school?
If I went a little in fear of them it wasnt because they bullied me, because they had got an oppressive foothold, but because in their really pathetic decorum and mysteriously permanent newness they counted on me so intensely. I was therefore very glad when Jack Hawley came home: he was always of such good counsel. He painted badly himself, but there was no one like him for putting his finger on the place. He had been absent from England for a year; he had been somewhereI dont remember whereto get a fresh eye. I was in a good deal of dread of any such organ, but we were old friends; he had been away for months and a sense of emptiness was creeping into my life. I hadnt dodged a missile for a year.
He came back with a fresh eye, but with the same old black velvet blouse, and the first evening he spent in my studio we smoked cigarettes till the small hours. He had done no work himself, he had only got the eye; so the field was clear for the production of my little things. He wanted to see what I had produced for the Cheapside, but he was disappointed in the exhibition. That at least seemed the meaning of two or three comprehensive groans which, as he lounged on my big divan, his leg folded under him, looking at my latest drawings, issued from his lips with the smoke of the cigarette.
Whats the matter with you? I asked.
Whats the matter with you?
Nothing save that Im mystified.
You are indeed. Youre quite off the hinge. Whats the meaning of this new fad? And he tossed me, with visible irreverence, a drawing in which I happened to have depicted both my elegant models. I asked if he didnt think it good, and he replied that it struck him as execrable, given the sort of thing I had always represented myself to him as wishing to arrive at; but I let that passI was so anxious to see exactly what he meant. The two figures in the picture looked colossal, but I supposed this was not what he meant, inasmuch as, for aught he knew to the contrary, I might have been trying for some such effect. I maintained that I was working exactly in the same way as when he last had done me the honour to tell me I might do something some day. Well, theres a screw loose somewhere, he answered; wait a bit and Ill discover it. I depended upon him to do so; where else was the fresh eye? But he produced at last nothing more luminous than I dont knowI dont like your types. This was lame for a critic who had never consented to discuss with me anything but the question of execution, the direction of strokes and the mystery of values.
In the drawings youve been looking at I think my types are very handsome.
Oh, they wont do!
Ive been working with new models.
I see you have. They wont do.
Are you very sure of that?
Absolutelytheyre stupid.
You mean I amfor I ought to get round that.
You cantwith such people. Who are they?
I told him, so far as was necessary, and he concluded heartlessly: Ce sont des gens quil faut mettre à la porte.
Youve never seen them; theyre awfully good I flew to their defense.
Not seen them? Why, all this recent work of yours drops to pieces with them. Its all I want to see of them.
No one else has said anything against itthe Cheapside people are pleased.
Every one else is an ass, and the Cheapside people the biggest asses of all. Come, dont pretend at this time of day to have pretty illusions about the public, especially about publishers and editors. Its not for such animals you workits for those who know, coloro che sanno; so keep straight for me if you cant keep straight for yourself. There was a certain sort of thing you used to try forand a very good thing it was. But this twaddle isnt in it. When I talked with Hawley later about Rutland Ramsay and its possible successors he declared that I must get back into my boat again or I should go to the bottom. His voice in short was the voice of warning.
I noted the warning, but I didnt turn my friends out of doors. They bored me a good deal; but the very fact that they bored me admonished me not to sacrifice themif there was anything to be done with them simply to irritation. As I look back at this phase they seem to me to have pervaded my life not a little. I have a vision of them as most of the time in my studio, seated against the wall on an old velvet bench to be out of the way, and resembling the while a pair of patient courtiers in a royal ante-chamber. Im convinced that during the coldest weeks of the winter they held their ground because it saved them fire. Their newness was losing its gloss, and it was impossible not to feel them objects of charity. Whenever Miss Churm arrived they went away, and after I was fairly launched in Rutland Ramsay Miss Churm arrived pretty often. They managed to express to me tacitly that they supposed I wanted her for the low life of the book, and I let them suppose it, since they had attempted to study the workit was lying about the studiowithout discovering that it dealt only with the highest circles. They had dipped into the most brilliant of our novelists without deciphering many passages. I still took an hour from them, now and again, in spite of Jack Hawleys warning: it would be time enough to dismiss them, if dismissal should be necessary, when the rigour of the season was over. Hawley had made their acquaintancehe had met them at my firesideand thought them a ridiculous pair. Learning that he was a painter they tried to approach him, to show him too that they were the real thing; but he looked at them, across the big room, as if they were miles away; they were a compendium of everything he most objected to in the social system of his country. Such people as that, all convention and patent-leather, with ejaculations that stopped conversation, had no business in a studio. A studio was a place to learn to see, and how could you see through a pair of feather-beds?
The main inconvenience I suffered at their hands was that at first I was shy of letting it break upon them that my artful little servant had begun to sit for me for Rutland Ramsay. They knew I had been odd enough they were prepared by this time to allow oddity to artiststo pick a foreign vagabond out of the streets when I might have had a person with whiskers and credentials; but it was some time before they learned how high I rated his accomplishments. They found him in an attitude more than once, but they never doubted I was doing him as an organ-grinder. There were several things they never guessed, and one of them was that for a striking scene in the novel, in which a footman briefly figured, it occurred to me to make use of Major Monarch as the menial. I kept putting this off, I didnt like to ask him to don the liverybesides the difficulty of finding a livery to fit him. At last, one day late in the winter, when I was at work on the despised Oronte, who caught ones idea on the wing, and was in the glow of feeling myself go very straight, they came in, the Major and his wife, with their society laugh about nothing (there was less and less to laugh at); came in like country-callersthey always reminded me of thatwho have walked across the park after church and are presently persuaded to stay to luncheon. Luncheon was over, but they could stay to teaI knew they wanted it. The fit was on me, however, and I couldnt let my ardour cool and my work wait, with the fading daylight, while my model prepared it. So I asked Mrs. Monarch if she would mind laying it outa request which for an instant brought all the blood to her face. Her eyes were on her husbands for a second, and some mute telegraphy passed between them. Their folly was over the next instant; his cheerful shrewdness put an end to it. So far from pitying their wounded pride, I must add, I was moved to give it as complete a lesson as I could. They bustled about together and got out the cups and saucers and made the kettle boil. I know they felt as if they were waiting on my servant, and when the tea was prepared, I said: Hell have a cup, pleasehes tired. Mrs. Monarch brought him one where he stood, and he took it from her as if he had been a gentleman at a party squeezing a crush-hat with an elbow.
Then it came over me that she had made a great effort for memade it with a kind of noblenessand that I owed her a compensation. Each time I saw her after this I wondered what the compensation could be. I couldnt go on doing the wrong thing to oblige them. Oh, it was the wrong thing, the stamp of the work for which they satHawley was not the only person to say it now. I sent in a large number of the drawings I had made for Rutland Ramsay, and I received a warning that was more to the point than Hawleys. The artistic adviser of the house for which I was working was of opinion that many of my illustrations were not what had been looked for. Most of these illustrations were the subjects in which the Monarchs had figured. Without going into the question of what had been looked for, I had to face the fact that at this rate I shouldnt get the other books to do. I hurled myself in despair on Miss ChurmI put her through all her paces. I not only adopted Oronte publicly as my hero, but one morning when the Major looked in to see if I didnt require him to finish a Cheapside figure for which he had begun to sit the week before, I told him I had changed my mindId do the drawing from my man. At this my visitor turned pale and stood looking at me. Is he your idea of an English gentleman? he asked.
I was disappointed, I was nervous, I wanted to get on with my work; so I replied with irritation: Oh my dear MajorI cant be ruined for you!
It was a horrid speech, but he stood another momentafter which, without a word, he quitted the studio. I drew a long breath, for I said to myself that I shouldnt see him again. I hadnt told him definitely that I was in danger of having my work rejected, but I was vexed at his not having felt the catastrophe in the air, read with me the moral of our fruitless collaboration, the lesson that in the deceptive atmosphere of art even the highest respectability may fail of being plastic.
I didnt owe my friends money, but I did see them again. They reappeared together three days later, and, given all the other facts, there was something tragic in that one. It was a clear proof they could find nothing else in life to do. They had threshed the matter out in a dismal conferencethey had digested the bad news that they were not in for the series. If they werent useful to me even for the Cheapside, their function seemed difficult to determine, and I could only judge at first that they had come, forgivingly, decorously, to take a last leave. This made me rejoice in secret that I had little leisure for a scene; I had placed both my other models in position together and I was pegging away at a drawing from which I hoped to derive glory. It had been suggested by the passage in which Rutland Ramsay, drawing up a chair to Artemisias piano-stool, says extraordinary things to her while she ostensibly fingers out a difficult piece of music. I had done Miss Churm at the piano beforeit was an attitude in which she knew how to take on an absolutely poetic grace. I wished the two figures to compose together with intensity, and my little Italian had entered perfectly into my conception. The pair were vividly before me, the piano had been pulled out; it was a charming show of blended youth and murmured love, which I had only to catch and keep. My visitors stood and looked at it, and I was friendly to them over my shoulder.
They made no response, but I was used to silent company and went on with my work, only a little disconcertedeven though exhilarated by the sense that this was at least the ideal thingat not having got rid of them after all. Presently I heard Mrs. Monarchs sweet voice beside or rather above me: I wish her hair were a little better done. I looked up and she was staring with a strange fixedness at Miss Churm, whose back was turned to her. Do you mind my just touching it? she went ona question which made me spring up for an instant as with the instinctive fear that she might do the young lady a harm. But she quieted me with a glance I shall never forgetI confess I should like to have been able to paint thatand went for a moment to my model. She spoke to her softly, laying a hand on her shoulder and bending over her; and as the girl, understanding, gratefully assented, she disposed her rough curls, with a few quick passes, in such a way as to make Miss Churms head twice as charming. It was one of the most heroic personal services Ive ever seen rendered. Then Mrs. Monarch turned away with a low sigh and, looking about her as if for something to do, stooped to the floor with a noble humility and picked up a dirty rag that had dropped out of my paint-box.
The Major meanwhile had also been looking for something to do, and, wandering to the other end of the studio, saw before him my breakfast-things neglected, unremoved. I say, cant I be useful here? he called out to me with an irrepressible quaver. I assented with a laugh that I fear was awkward, and for the next ten minutes, while I worked, I heard the light clatter of china and the tinkle of spoons and glass. Mrs. Monarch assisted her husbandthey washed up my crockery, they put it away. They wandered off into my little scullery, and I afterwards found that they had cleaned my knives and that my slender stock of plates had an unprecedented surface. When it came over me, the latent eloquence of what they were doing, I confess that my drawing was blurred for a momentthe picture swam. They had accepted their failure, but they couldnt accept their fate. They had bowed their heads in bewilderment to the perverse and cruel law in virtue of which the real thing could be so much less precious than the unreal; but they didnt want to starve. If my servants were my models, then my models might be my servants. They would reverse the partsthe others would sit for the ladies and gentlemen and they would do the work. They would still be in the studioit was an intense dump appeal to me not to turn them out. Take us on, they wanted to say well do anything.
My pencil dropped from my hand; my sitting was spoiled and I got rid of my sitters, who were also evidently rather mystified and awestruck. Then, alone with the Major and his wife I had a most uncomfortable moment. He put their prayer into a single sentence: I say, you knowjust let us do for you, cant you? I couldntit was dreadful to see them emptying my slops; but I pretended I could, to oblige them, for about a week. Then I gave them a sum of money to go away, and I never saw them again. I obtained the remaining books, but my friend Hawley repeats that Major and Mrs. Monarch did me a permanent harm, got me into false ways. If it be true Im content to have paid the pricefor the memory.