Уилки Коллинз - A Rogue's Life

Before I got to the shop, I met Mr. Batterbury taking his walking exercise. He stopped, shook hands with me affectionately, and asked where I was going. A wonderful idea struck me. Instead of answering his question, I asked after Lady Malkinshaw.

“Don’t be alarmed,” said Mr. Batterbury; “her ladyship tumbled downstairs yesterday morning.”

“My dear sir, allow me to congratulate you!”

“Most fortunately,” continued Mr. Batterbury, with a strong emphasis on the words, and a fixed stare at me; “most fortunately, the servant had been careless enough to leave a large bundle of clothes for the wash at the foot of the stairs, while she went to answer the door. Falling headlong from the landing, her ladyship pitched (pardon me the expression)—pitched into the very middle of the bundle. She was a little shaken at the time, but is reported to be going on charmingly this morning. Most fortunate, was it not? Seen the papers? Awful news from Demerara—the yellow fever—”

“I wish I was at Demerara,” I said, in a hollow voice.

“You! Why?” exclaimed Mr. Batterbury, aghast.

“I am homeless, friendless, penniless,” I went on, getting more hollow at every word. “All my intellectual instincts tell me that I could retrieve my position and live respectably in the world, if I might only try my hand at portrait-painting—the thing of all others that I am naturally fittest for. But I have nobody to start me; no sitter to give me a first chance; nothing in my pocket but three-and-sixpence; and nothing in my mind but a doubt whether I shall struggle on a little longer, or end it immediately in the Thames. Don’t let me detain you from your walk, my dear sir. I’m afraid Lady Malkinshaw will outlive me, after all!”

“Stop!” cried Mr. Batterbury; his mahogany face actually getting white with alarm. “Stop! Don’t talk in that dreadfully unprincipled manner—don’t, I implore, I insist! You have plenty of friends—you have me, and your sister. Take to portrait-painting—think of your family, and take to portrait-painting!”

“Where am I to get a sitter?’ I inquired, with a gloomy shake of the head.

“Me,” said Mr. Batterbury, with an effort. “I’ll be your first sitter. As a beginner, and especially to a member of the family, I suppose your terms will be moderate. Small beginnings—you know the proverb?” Here he stopped; and a miserly leer puckered up his mahogany cheeks.

“I’ll do you, life-size, down to your waistcoat, for fifty pounds,” said I.

Mr. Batterbury winced, and looked about him to the right and left, as if he wanted to run away. He had five thousand a year, but he contrived to took, at that moment, as if his utmost income was five hundred. I walked on a few steps.

“Surely those terms are rather high to begin with?” he said, walking after me. “I should have thought five-and-thirty, or perhaps forty—”

“A gentleman, sir, cannot condescend to bargain,” said I, with mournful dignity. “Farewell!” I waved my hand, and crossed over the way.

“Don’t do that!” cried Mr. Batterbury. “I accept. Give me your address. I’ll come tomorrow. Will it include the frame! There! there! it doesn’t include the frame, of course. Where are you going now? To the colorman? He doesn’t live in the Strand, I hope—or near one of the bridges. Think of Annabella, think of the family, think of the fifty pounds—an income, a year’s income to a prudent man. Pray, pray be careful, and compose your mind: promise me, my dear, dear fellow—promise me, on your word of honor, to compose your mind!”

I left him still harping on that string, and suffering, I believe, the only serious attack of mental distress that had ever affected him in the whole course of his life.

Behold me, then, now starting afresh in the world, in the character of a portrait-painter; with the payment of my remuneration from my first sitter depending whimsically on the life of my grandmother. If you care to know how Lady Malkinshaw’s health got on, and how I succeeded in my new profession, you have only to follow the further course of these confessions, in the next chapter.

I GAVE my orders to the colorman, and settled matters with my friend the artist that day.

The next morning, before the hour at which I expected my sitter, having just now as much interest in the life of Lady Malkinshaw as Mr. Batterbury had in her death, I went to make kind inquiries after her ladyship’s health. The answer was most reassuring. Lady Malkinshaw had no present intention of permitting me to survive her. She was, at that very moment, meritoriously and heartily engaged in eating her breakfast. My prospects being now of the best possible kind, I felt encouraged to write once more to my father, telling him of my fresh start in life, and proposing a renewal of our acquaintance. I regret to say that he was so rude as not to answer my letter.

Mr. Batterbury was punctual to the moment. He gave a gasp of relief when he beheld me, full of life, with my palette on my thumb, gazing fondly on my new canvas.

“That’s right!” he said. “I like to see you with your mind composed. Annabella would have come with me; but she has a little headache this morning. She sends her love and best wishes.”

I seized my chalks and began with that confidence in myself which has never forsaken me in any emergency. Being perfectly well aware of the absolute dependence of the art of portrait-painting on the art of flattery, I determined to start with making the mere outline of my likeness a compliment to my sitter.

It was much easier to resolve on doing this than really to do it. In the first place, my hand would relapse into its wicked old caricaturing habits. In the second place, my brother-in-law’s face was so inveterately and completely ugly as to set every artifice of pictorial improvement at flat defiance. When a man has a nose an inch long, with the nostrils set perpendicularly, it is impossible to flatter it—you must either change it into a fancy nose, or resignedly acquiesce in it. When a man has no perceptible eyelids, and when his eyes globularly project so far out of his head, that you expect to have to pick them up for him whenever you see him lean forward, how are mortal fingers and bushes to diffuse the right complimentary expression over them? You must either do them the most hideous and complete justice, or give them up altogether. The late Sir Thomas Lawrence, P.R.A., was undoubtedly the most artful and uncompromising flatterer that ever smoothed out all the natural characteristic blemishes from a sitter’s face; but even that accomplished parasite would have found Mr. Batterbury too much for him, and would have been driven, for the first time in his practice of art, to the uncustomary and uncourtly resource of absolutely painting a genuine likeness.

As for me, I put my trust in Lady Malkinshaw’s power of living, and portrayed the face of Mr. Batterbury in all its native horror. At the same time, I sensibly guarded against even the most improbable accidents, by making him pay me the fifty pounds as we went on, by installments. We had ten sittings. Each one of them began with a message from Mr. Batterbury, giving me Annabella’s love and apologies for not being able to come and see me. Each one of them ended with an argument between Mr. Batterbury and me relative to the transfer of five pounds from his pocket to mine. I came off victorious on every occasion—being backed by the noble behavior of Lady Malkinshaw, who abstained from tumbling down, and who ate and drank, and slept and grew lusty, for three weeks together. Venerable woman! She put fifty pounds into my pocket. I shall think of her with gratitude and respect to the end of my days.

One morning, while I was sitting before my completed portrait, inwardly shuddering over the ugliness of it, a suffocating smell of musk was wafted into the studio; it was followed by a sound of rustling garments; and that again was succeeded by the personal appearance of my affectionate sister, with her husband at her heels. Annabella had got to the end of her stock of apologies, and had come to see me.