Iain Pears - The Portrait

Anyway, into this society of the great, you invited Evelyn, along with some other candidates for patronage. I expected her to be cowed, grateful, a little obviously trying to make a good impression. Giving off all those signs of someone ill at ease—perched on the edge of her chair, nervous of speech either too loud or too soft. Saying little, but listening carefully to every one else. As I did when you invited me.

Certainly she didn’t say much, but what she did say was to the point. Don’t pretend you don’t remember what she said to Sarah Bernhardt; I know full well it is ingrained in your memory. She announced in a clear voice that the great lady’s opinion on some painting was facile; that perhaps she should look more and opine less. But lèse-majesté, no? Evelyn was there to worship and admire, not to treat these people as equals, and certainly not to criticise them. I can still remember the smooth way you intervened and changed the topic of conversation, showing how capable you were even in awkward situations.

But I can also remember the look on La Bernhardt’s face: a look of boredom dissipated. Splendid woman, as vain as a peacock but knows how to tell the difference between praise and flattery. She is a professional, after all; her success depends on being able to distinguish the two. She knew she’d been caught out, that the comment was justified. She liked being assaulted by this skinny little girl who tossed her head with a sort of naïve defiance and looked you in the eye as she spoke. It spiced up the dull fare of adulation that was her normal lot. All those gasps of amazement, that delight in whatever she said, the squeaks of appreciation at her slightest utterance. Someone like Evelyn must have been like a glass of cold fresh water after an afternoon drinking undiluted treacle.

How much did it grieve you when Evelyn was invited to supper and you never were? Don’t pretend; you were furious. I know you too well to pretend otherwise. Even more so when you realised that she was not in the slightest bit gratified by the honour. She went, she ate, she had a “perfectly nice time, thank you.” She was impervious to such things, and so she was impervious to you, as well. She did not want to be around the famous. You in particular had nothing to offer her, except for your skills in society, your politician’s ability to make people do your bidding, so she stopped coming to your little gatherings. It wasn’t meant to be insulting, you know. She did not realise that she had delivered an irreparable insult, had struck at the core of your power. She rejected you even more completely than she rejected me.

A few friends, the rest enemies. That was your philosophy of life, and Evelyn showed she did not want to be your friend.

“Surely, a painting works or it doesn’t, no?” That was her response after you had laid out an early version of your theory of art, of modernity, of the artistic engagement with reality and all the rest of it. It was naïve, unsophisticated, but a damning indictment of your whole life’s work, which seeks to make things more complex and obscure, more difficult to understand. To turn a simple pleasure into a mystery. For Evelyn, there was the painting and the viewer; a direct communion. She was an artistic protestant, and had no need of intermediaries, be they critics or priests.

Her weakness was the crippling self-doubt that afflicted her every step of the way. That is the price of Protestantism and individuality. The constant worry of having to choose between good and bad fades when you cede authority to others. That is probably why I was so eager to bow to your judgement, and why I am such a happy papist. Having to make up your own mind is a terrible burden, and the inevitable cost is massive doubt.

I didn’t realise it until I had a terrible fight with her one day; you sensed it instinctively, knew where to strike when the moment came. That was well after we all drifted back to London for the new century. I started painting portraits, and desperately began seeking publicity—any publicity—to become known. Any exhibition that would accept my pictures got them in abundance. Any notice in the press was pored over and treasured. I sent picture after picture to the RA, and had most of them turned down. In my clodhopping way, I cultivated those who might be of use to me somehow. I was a desperate man; this was my last throw. Until then I had been able to persuade myself I was still young, still learning. Now I was past thirty and I knew I would not get much better, and I was not sure if Anderson’s fate awaited me. I needed all the help I could get and wasn’t too proud to ask for it. Especially as you encouraged me, and told me it was the only way to succeed.

Evelyn did none of it. When she finally came back in 1902 she contacted nobody, took lodgings in Clapham and was scarcely ever seen. I didn’t even realise she’d returned until she’d been back nearly a year. I felt quite insulted by that, and thought that she disdained all the little humiliations I put myself to because she could afford to. Her father was a barrister, I remember, and I imagined he supported her. An artistic daughter, how charming! She never mentioned that they disapproved so thoroughly that they gave her not one ha’penny; wouldn’t even talk to her. There is, after all, a difference between painting pictures and being an artist. She freely gave up everything I wanted—house, money, comfort. The only hot food she ever ate was in the cheap working men’s cafés in the area, or unless someone took her out for a free meal. Most of the little money she had she spent on canvasses and paints. But she more or less managed to keep up appearances, proper girl that she was, and was too proud to glory in her poverty or play the bohemian. It was the way it was; no choice. It took someone who knew her well to realise she had been wearing the same clothes when she arrived in Paris, or to see the exquisite stitching that had repaired a threadbare patch here, or a little hole there. We were travelling in opposite directions, she and I.

I didn’t know how she did it. I would have withered in similar circumstances. It’s all very well being wedded to your art, but someone has to notice. Someone has to approve, or appreciate, or buy. No-one is so sublimely confident that they can do without any applause, however faint and sporadic. But Evelyn rarely showed her pictures, scarcely ever sold one. I hadn’t seen anything she’d produced for years. She was entirely unknown, forgotten by most of those she knew in Paris, not taken seriously by anyone else. Most people didn’t even know she painted. It didn’t appear to have any effect on her. Indeed, she seemed to thrive on it; around that time I’d noticed a fire in her eyes, a self-confidence that almost seemed like happiness, I had never seen in Paris.

She didn’t encourage visitors; we met in cafés usually, occasionally in my studio, but after about five years I needed to get hold of her; I’d sold a picture to the Countess of Armagh, and I needed to celebrate with someone as a matter of urgency. I planned to spend some of my fee in advance, and take her for a good meal. She needed the food, and I needed the company; she was one of the few painters I knew who would be able to listen to my bragging without feeling impatient or envious. Besides, I relied on her to bring me back down to earth when the vainglory got wearisome, by asking whether the picture I’d sold was actually worth the money.

So I took a cab to Clapham—which shows how opulent I was feeling—and arrived on her doorstep. And got a shock: her lodgings were even more mean than Jacky’s. Freezing, bitterly cold. She was out when I arrived, but the landlady was an amiable woman and, as it was even colder outside than in, let me in to wait. The room—on the top floor of a building which smelt strongly of boiled vegetables and floor polish—was tiny and had scarcely any furniture in it, just a grate, a bed, a chair and a table. It was lit—when it was lit—by a remarkably ornate chandelier hanging from a vast iron hook in the middle of the ceiling. Heavens knows how it got there. That was all, apart from the pictures—dozens of them, all stacked against the wall, piles of paper on the one little desk and on the floor, boxes of paints, bottles of solvents. The usual stuff, but an awful lot of it.