Iain Pears - The Portrait

But you do not let go of people so easily. You saw all too clearly what I was doing, better than I did. A look of long-suffering pain in your eyes, a smile of indulgence. A suggestion that perhaps I should spend the afternoon on my own. That was all I got in response. Because you knew I would not leave without your permission, just as you will not leave now without mine.

In truth, I should thank you, though. That trip to Hampshire brought my worries to the surface, set me on the road to France and the embrace of God in his most Catholic variety. Because I realised, as I unpacked my paints and brushes, and got myself ready, that I was doing your bidding. You don’t remember the moment, I am sure. I chose the position I wanted, and in my mind’s eye I knew how I wanted you to sit. A stark portrait, it would be, head and shoulders, with nothing else to attract the eye. A bit Titian-like, I thought, the background so dark that it would be almost black, just a faint hint of a bookcase.

And what did I begin painting? The sunlight. I wanted to please you. No bad thing in a portraitist, of course, but the skill lies in making your own vision pleasing. I tried, many times over, to force myself into painting what I had imagined as I travelled down, but every time, the desire to please overwhelmed my instincts. And then I realised the truth: I was merely a hired hand, no different from the fat old woman you employed as a cook or the skinny little consumptive who served as your maid. They, at least, were under no illusions about their position, whereas I had persuaded myself that all these society women and gentlemen farmers who were fast becoming my stock in trade were something other than my masters. That I was their superior and your equal.

Not that I minded the clients so much; with them the relations were clear. They wanted a portrait making themselves looking grander, more respectable, more human than they were, and were prepared to pay for it. I obliged; and as I was able to turn flattery into art—decent art as well; I never became a hack—they were happy to pay more than usual. That was why I was a success, and in truth I am not ashamed of it. I did much good work; the problem was that it was not the work I wanted to do.

No; the problem was not my clients, who at least gave something in return for my subjection. They paid well and when the relationship came to an end—the money paid, the portrait hung—their power over me ended as well. The problem was you, who gave nothing and whose power never ended. The critic is a demanding god, who must be constantly appeased. You make your offering, then have to make it again, and again.

I lost my contentment during that trip to Hampshire. The sun had gone on the journey back to London; I felt every lurch of the train, the other people in the compartment irritated me. One stupid woman kept on trying to strike up a conversation, and I was extremely rude to her. I scowled at the ticket collector for no reason. Well, a very good reason, in fact.

THIS MORNING, I want to go for a walk. No; nothing subtle. It’s not as if I want to get the colour into those pale aesthetic cheeks of yours, or make some point about bodily exercise and spiritual insight, so I can translate it into a portrait in some masterful way. I merely feel like a walk, and I am prepared to have your company. I walk fairly often, I’ll have you know. There is something always a little unsatisfactory about it, mind. It is too enjoyable to walk here, except in deepest winter. One does not suffer; there is no sense of triumph in the experience. I remember once going for a long walk along Ardnamurchan shortly after I came back from Paris. I went up to Scotland, just me and my sketch pad, to draw anything and everything that took my fancy. I went back to see if I could live in my homeland again; I really wanted to, but knew the moment I got off the train it would be impossible. Do you know there is no Scotsman who lives in England who does not feel slightly guilty? Not about living in England, but about not wanting to go back. I have discovered that coming to France does not have the same effect.

Anyway, for three weeks I tramped over the land of my forefathers. It was in my etching days, when all the world wanted to be the Scottish Whistler, or the Irish Whistler, or the Tunbridge Wells Whistler. Any place at all, as long as critics like you made a comparison to Whistler. The whole country, I believe, was awash with earnest young men of middling talent, clutching little sheets of metal in their hands, hunting for that perfect aspect, that moment in the doorway, so they could capture it and transmute it into copper, then gold, then fame.

It eluded me, of course; there is something about the Highlands that cannot be fixed down. Not by me, in any case. Look at the Highlands and you see suffering—if you can see at all. It is a ruined landscape, denuded of trees and people. There animals and men and forests have perished, and the weather reflects it. It is melancholy even when the sun shines. But not for everyone. You have to be tuned to the resonances to see the sadness, pick up the despair in the purple of the heather, the anguish in the wind as it whips up the waves on a loch surface. And if you are not, all you see is a landscape, and all you imagine is men in kilts with a bottle of whisky in one hand and a set of bagpipes in the other.

No one has ever picked up that misery in line; David Cameron picks up the spiritual side, but misses the human dimension. I tried; I came close, indeed, but not close enough and I didn’t want them to be misunderstood. Can you imagine how it would have felt to have made pictures out of the landscape of human suffering and had them seen as pretty views of Highland scenes? That is what would have happened; I know, because I showed you some of my sketches once. You misunderstood them entirely because your eyes are forever turned towards the continent. The transcendental in your own backyard is of no interest to you. But you have never been to Scotland, never stood at the head of a glen with that wind nearly knocking you down, hearing it echo all around you, and listening to the generations who once lived there.

They talk, you know, the dead. Not in words, of course; I am not losing my sanity. They talk in the wind and the rain, in the way the light falls on ruined buildings and dilapidated stone walls. But you have to listen and want to hear what they have to say. And you do not; you are a creature of the present. The modern. Well, right enough. Savages and wild men they were. And now, it seems, rich savages, living off the fat of the land in America and Canada. Best thing that ever happened to them, leaving Scotland. What would that Carnegie have been, had he stayed in Scotland, eh? A poor weaver, all that boundless energy going into setting up illicit stills and drinking himself paralytic on a Friday night.

I can’t hear the dead of this island. Not that they are not talking away; they are. Sometimes, late at night, I hear a sort of chattering in the wind as it rattles round the rooftops; occasionally a conversation almost starts up in the light shining through the puddles after a summer rain. But it never really gets going. We are on neighbourly terms, them and I; we nod to each other, smile occasionally as we pass, but have no desire to take our acquaintanceship further. I am a stranger here, after all, and they do not wish to burden me with their stories. And if they did, what could I say? I would listen politely, but could do little more.

So, eventually, I will have to leave. I will have to go back to Scotland, because if we do not have those conversations we wither a little every day. Oh, to be more portable! How convenient it must be to be Jewish, and carry your ancestors around with you, not needing lumps of dirty soil to strike up a conversation. They are reviled for it, but they are the fortunate ones, not us, who must pine away if we so much as move one country to the left or right.