Iain Pears - The Portrait

Somehow or other she got me back to my lodgings and left me propped up at the door; during the whole evening we’d barely said a word to each other. She’d talked to the warehousemen while I’d slowly descended into a black, drunken depression.

“Listen, Henry MacAlpine,” she said as she left me. “You cannot take your drink very well. You really shouldn’t try; it doesn’t bring out the best in you.” Then she patted me affectionately on the shoulder and walked off.

And that was the end of the adventure. You laugh; yes. I laugh myself now, although at the time I found it anything but funny. You, no doubt, would never have allowed such a thing to happen to you. But then you don’t know anything at all about humiliation. You don’t know what it is to have your weaknesses and stupidities dragged out for public view, to be treated gently even though you deserve mockery. There I have the advantage of you; it is something we lowland Scots specialise in. We are ready to be humiliated, almost invite it, and welcome it with relief when it comes. It proves that God is watching us, that daily His judgement continues.

It didn’t matter that Evelyn was the only person ever to do that to me. Somebody existed in the world who could see through me, and stopped me from believing in my new self totally. As long as I remembered that, I knew that Henry MacAlpine, artist, was nothing more than a piece of fakery, a theatrical production designed merely to sell second-rate pictures to a foolish public.

What I mean to say here is that I had very good reason to hate Evelyn. Had I done so I could have stood before the Lord (in due course) with my hand on my heart and pleaded self-justification. Twice she wounded me in my amour propre ; she humiliated me, pitied me and rejected me, and on all occasions did it with kindness. Wars have started for less reason than that.

She never did anything of the sort to you. With you she was always distant but polite, too withdrawn and too inexperienced in the ways of the world even to deserve much attention from you.

So why was it that you hated her, and I did not? That is a mystery, is it not?

LOOKING BACK from my vantage point by the wide Atlantic, I can see that Evelyn had irritated you from the moment you first cast eyes on her at Julien’s. There was something about her determination, her resolution, that annoyed you. Already she was going her own way, carefully learning what she wanted to learn, not what everyone else was doing. She decided to have a go at lithography, even though it was the lowest of all art forms. Little better than being a grubby printer turning out stock catalogues for department stores, so you thought. You didn’t realise then that the next generation of French painters—your generation, the ones who have made your name for you—would discover it as well, and use it to good effect. Nor did she, of course; she was utterly indifferent to any such information. She merely became fascinated by the possibilities of drawing straight onto a piece of limestone, and wanted to see what could be done with it.

Being so direct, she took herself off, went to one of those printers you so despised, and sat at his feet for several months as though he had been Rubens himself. He knew things she wanted to learn, and her sense of dignity was so great she felt it no shame to go to mere artisans for instruction. And she learned, by God, better than any of us. Did you respect her the more for it? Of course not. Did I? No; I followed your lead, and forgot how much such people can know, and how much they can teach. I had been one myself, after all; the same people had taught me, too, and taught me well. And in my effort to put all my past behind me, to forget the workshop in Glasgow, I scorned her as much as you did.

Or was it the lack of gentility and decorum, to think of her with her hands covered in ink, straining to pull the heavy roller over the stone? Shouldn’t such people be in the drawing room? Should such dainty little muscles be used only for pouring tea? Shouldn’t that look of satisfaction come only from hearing a husband make some witty remark? Of course they should! The woman was an aberration, a freak, to desire such things and take pleasure in them. But she did so desire them, and the pleasure was real.

I remember once she disappeared for a few days; I think maybe I was the only one who noticed; this was a few months after my humiliation at the bouillon in Bercy. Eventually, I went round to her lodgings and persuaded the ogre who owned them to let me go up and see her. She was ill with a flu, and had a terrible bronchitic cough; I thought when I heard her she might be consumptive. But no; it was just a cough, but a bad one, poor dear, made worse by having had no attention at all for several days. She was in a mess, but too proud to ask for help. Perhaps she thought no-one liked her, and didn’t want an appeal for help ignored. Foolish of her; she was liked more than she realised. She made people nervous, of course, but there were some able to conquer such emotions. I can’t say that illness made her more attractive; with some, the onset of frailty and vulnerability makes you want to sweep them up in your arms, cosset them and protect them. Many a woman has snared a husband with a well-timed burst of fainting. Not Evelyn. Weakness made her almost repulsive; her skin turned sallow rather than pale, and she lay curled up like some sort of insect. Take away the movement and she had no natural grace; she was awkward, ungainly and uncoordinated unless she was holding a brush or pencil. It seemed the only thing that could bring her alive.

Anyway, she was crying; I thought it was just the sickness, and I’ve no doubt that did make it worse, but the real reason was that she hadn’t been able to draw or paint since she fell sick. The previous day she had become so desperate she tried to get to the desk by the little window to draw something, anything. “It’s like an addiction,” she said. “I go mad if I can’t use my hands. It’s all I have, the only thing that makes it worthwhile getting out of bed in the morning.”

Do you understand that? I do, just. I feel it sometimes but not with the intensity of her affliction. It was like breathing for her. Take it away and she began to feel stifled. Neurosis? Hysteria? I’ve no doubt. I’m sure some infection of the uterus was behind it all. Or, if that is out of favour now, some physiological imbalance in her brain. No doubt, nothing that a baby or two wouldn’t have cured. But like a man who drags himself off to some squalid opium hell for his pipe and secretly relishes the prospect as much as he is disgusted by himself, she didn’t want to be cured. She didn’t want the madness taken away from her. It was her most treasured possession. It was what she was, and it made her both magnificent and, as you say, a freak.

I remember you tried to convert her at one stage, to bring her in as your disciple. If Jesus could put up with Mary Magdalene, it was not beneath you to have a woman or two in your entourage. She should have been more flattered, I grant you. No-one has ever doubted your eye, and you have never put up with fools or the second rate. It gives the lie to your later opinions, you know. She was not to be mere ornament; that has never been your failing. It is part of your egotism that only the best should be allowed to surround you. And you tried to lure Evelyn to your side. I rest my case.

So you invited her to your soirées in Paris, to meet the people she should really know; not the printers and their assistants, but the men with power and influence. To take tea with Proust, with Oscar Wilde, with Anatole France. With salonnières and novelists and politicians, with other artists, but only those carefully selected. How did you know all these people, anyway? I never figured it out. How did you have the self-confidence to invite them and expect them to show up? You were nothing but a bumptious little Englishman with some skill at conversation. Some connections, but nothing special. Charm, I suppose; you managed to make people think you were a good investment for the future. Of course I was jealous. Why should I not be? It was so easy for you, so hard for me. It wasn’t until I realised that brooding ill-humour had its own appeal that I could stop making myself ridiculous.