Moods and Memories, VI

Dana, 1 September 1904, pages 134-139, 2,715 words

Octave Barrès liked his friends to come to his studio, and a few of us who believed in his talent used to drop in during the afternoon, and little by little I got to know every picture, every sketch; but one never knows everything that a painter has done, and one day as I came I saw a full-length portrait that I had never seen before on the easel.

“It was in the back room turned to the wall,” he said, “I took it out thinking that the Russian prince who ordered the Pegasus decoration might buy it,” and he turned away not liking to hear my praise of it; for it neither pleases a painter to hear his early works praised nor abused. "I painted it before I knew how to paint,” and standing before me, his palette in his hand, he expounded his new aestheticism: that up to the beginning of the nineteenth century all painting had been done first in monochrome and then glazed, and that what we know as solid painting had been invented by Greuze. He told how one day in the Louvre he had perceived something in Delacroix, something not wholly satisfactory; this something had, however, set him thinking. But it was Rubens who had revealed the secret! It was Rubens who had taught him how to paint! He admitted that there was danger in retracing one’s steps, in beginning one’s education over again; but what help was there for it, since painting was not taught in the schools.

I had heard all he had to say before, and could not change my belief that every man must live in the ideas of his time, be they good or bad. It is easy to say that we must only adopt Rubens’ method and jealously guard against any infringement on our personality; but in art our personality is determined by the methods we employ, and Octave’s portrait interested me more than the Pegasus decoration, or the three pink Venuses holding a basket of flowers above their heads. The portrait was crude and violent, but so was the man that had painted it; it had been painted when he was a disciple of Manet’s, and the methods of Manet were in agreement with my friend’s temperament. We are all impressionists to-day, we are eager to note down what we feel and see, and the carefully prepared rhetorical manner of Rubens was as incompatible with Octave’s temperament as the manner of John Milton is with mine. There was a thought of Goya in the background, in the contrast between the grey and the black, and there was something of Manet’s simplification in the face, but these echoes were faint, nor did they matter, for they were of our time. In looking at his model he had seen and felt something; he had noted this harshly, crudely, but he noted it; and to do this is after all the main thing, His sitter had inspired him. The word inspired offended him; I withdrew it; I said that he had been fortunate in his model, and he admitted that: to see that thin olive-complexioned girl with fine delicate features and blue-black hair lying close about her head like feathers — she wore her hair as a blackbird wears his wing — compelled one to paint; and after admiring the face I admired the black silk dress he had painted her in, a black silk dress covered with black lace. She wore grey pearls in her ears, and pearls upon her neck. I was interested in the quality of the painting, so different from Octave’s present painting, but I was more interested in the woman herself. The picture revealed to me something in human nature that I had never seen before, something that I had never thought of. The soul in this picture was so intense that I forgot the painting, and began to think of her. She was unlike anyone I had ever met in Octave Barrè’s studio; a studio beloved of women; the women one met there seemed to be of all sorts, but in truth they were all of a sort. They began to arrive about four o'clock in the afternoon, and they stayed on until they were sent away. He allowed them to play the piano and sing to him; he allowed them, as he would phrase it, to grouiller about the place, and they talked of the painters they had sat to, of their gowns, and they showed us their shoes and their garters. He heeded them hardly at all, walking to and fro thinking of his painting, of his archaic painting. I often wondered if his appearance counted for anything in his renunciation of modern methods, and certainly his appearance was a link of association; he did not look like a modern man, but like a sixteenth century baron; his beard and his broken nose and his hierarchial air contributed to the resemblance; the jersey he wore reminded one of a cuirass, a coat of mail. Even in his choice of a dwelling-place he seemed instinctively to avoid the modern; he had found a studio in a street, the name of which no one had ever heard before; it was found with difficulty; and the studio, too, it was hidden behind great crumbling walls, in the middle of a plot of ground in which someone was growing cabbages. Octave was always, as he would phrase it, "dans une dèche épouvantable,” but he managed to keep a thoroughbred horse in the stable at the end of the garden, and this horse was ordered as soon as the light failed. He would say, “Mes amis et mes amies, je regrette, mais mon cheval m’attend.” And the women liked to see him mount, and many thought, I am sure, that he looked like a Centaur as he rode away.

But who was this refined girl? this — a painting tells things that cannot be translated into words — this olive-skinned girl that might have sat to Raphael for a Virgin? So different from Octave’s usual women, they were of the Montmartre kin; but this woman might be a Spanish princess. Remembering that Octave had said he had taken out the portrait hoping that the Russian who had ordered the Pegasus might buy it, the thought struck me that she might be the Russian prince’s mistress. His mistress! Oh, what fabulous fortune! What might her history be? I burned to hear it, and wearied of Octave’s seemingly endless chatter about his method of painting; I had heard all he was saying many times before, but I listened to it all again, and to propitiate him I regretted that the picture was not painted in his present manner, ‘*for there are good things in the picture,” I said, "and the model — you seem to have been lucky with your model.”

“Yes, she was nice to paint from, but it was difficult to get her to sit. A concierge’s daughter — you wouldn’t think it, would you?” My astonishment amused him, and he began to laugh. "You don’t know her?” he said, "That is Marie Pellegrin,” and when I asked him where he had met her he told me, at Alphonsine’s; but I did not know where Alphonsine’s was.

“I’m going to dine there to-night. I’m going to meet her; she’s going back to Russia with the Prince; she has been staying in the Quartier Bréda on her holiday. Sacre nom! Half-past five, and I haven’t washed my brushes yet!”

In answer to my question, what he meant by going to the Quartier Bréda for a holiday, he said:

“l’ll tell you all about that in the carriage.”

But no sooner had we got into the carriage than he remembered that he must leave word for a woman who had promised to sit to him, and swearing that a message would not delay us for more than a few minutes he directed the coachman. We were shown into a drawing-room, and the lady ran out of her bedroom, wrapping herself as she ran in a peignoir, and the sitting was discussed in the middle of a polished parquet floor. We at last returned to the carriage, but we were hardly seated when he remembered another appointment. He scribbled notes in the lodges of the concierges, and between whiles told me all he knew of the story of Marie Pellegrin. This delicate woman that I had felt could not be of the Montmarte kin was the daughter of a concierge, on the Boulevard Extérieur. She had run away from home at fifteen, had danced at the Elysée Montmartre.

Sa jupe avait des trous,

Elle aimait des voyous,

Ils ont des yeux si doux.

But one day a Russian prince had caught sight of her, and had built her a palace in the Champs Elysées; but the Russian prince and his palace bored her.

The stopping of the carriage interrupted Octave’s narrative. “Here we are,” he said, and he seized a bell hanging on a jangling wire, and the green door in the crumbling wall opened, and I saw an undersized woman. [ saw Alphonsine; and her portrait, a life-sized caricature drawn by Octave, faced me from the whitewashed wall of the hen-coop. He had drawn her two cats purring about her legs, and had written under it, ‘Ils viennent après le mou.” I think there was one tree in her garden; a tent had been stretched from wall to wall, and a seedy-looking waiter was laying the tables, placing bottles of wine in front of each knife and fork, and bread in long sticks at regular intervals. He was constantly disturbed by the ringing of the bell, and had to run to the door to admit the company. Here and there I recognised faces that I had already seen in the studio, Clementine, who last year was studying the part of Elsa and this year was singing, "La femme de feu, la cui, la cui, la cuisinière,” in a café chantant; and Margaret Byron who had just retreated from Russia, a disastrous campaign hers was said to have been. The greater number were hors concours. Alphonsine’s was to the aged courtesan what Chelsea hospital is to the aged soldier. It was a sort of human garden full of the sound and colour of October.

I scrutinized the crowd. How could any one of these women interest the woman whose portrait I had seen in Barrès studio? That one, for instance, whom I saw every morning in the Rue des Martyres going marketing, a basket on her arm. Search as I would I could not find a friend for Marie among the women nor a lover among the men, — neither of those two stout middle-aged men with large whiskers, who had probably once been stockbrokers, nor the withered journalist whom I heard speaking to Octave about a duel he had fought recently; nor the little sandy Scotchman whose French was not understood by the women and whose English was nearly unintelligible to me; nor the man who looked like a head-waiter — AIphonsine’s lover; he had been a waiter, and he told you with the air of Napoleon describing Waterloo that he had “created” a certain fashionable café on the Boulevard. I could not attribute any one of these men to Marie; and Octave spoke of her with indifference; she had interested him to paint, and now he hoped she would get the Russian to buy her picture.

“But she’s not here,” I said.

“She’ll be here presently,” Octave answered, and he went on talking to Clementine, a fair pretty woman whom one saw every night at the Rat Mort. And it was just when the soup plates were being taken away I saw a young woman dressed in black crossing the garden. It was she, Marie Pellegrin.

She wore a dress similar to the one she wore in her portrait, a black silk covered with lace, and her black hair was swathed about her shapely little head. She was her portrait and something more. Her smile was her own, a sad little smile that seemed to come out of a depth of her being, and her voice was a little musical voice, irresponsible as a bird’s, and during dinner I noticed how she broke into speech abruptly as a bird breaks into song, and she stopped as abruptly. I never saw a woman so like herself, and sometimes her beauty brought a little mist into my eyes, and I lost sight of her or very nearly, and I went on eating mechanically. Dinner seemed to end suddenly, and before I knew that it was over we were getting up from table.

As we went towards the house where coffee was being served Marie asked me if I played cards, but I excused myself, saying that I would prefer to sit and look at her; and just then a thin woman with red hair, who had arrived at the same time as Marie and who had sat next her at dinner, was introduced to me, and I was told that she was Marie’s intimate friend, and that the two lived together whenever Marie returned to Montmartre. She was known as La Glue, her real name was Victorine, she had sat for Manet’s picture of Olympe, but that was years ago. The face was thinner, but I recognised the red hair and the brown eyes, small eyes set closely, reminding one of des petits verres de cognac. Her sketch book was being passed round, and as it came into my hands I noticed that she did not wear stays and was dressed in old grey woollen. She lit cigarette after cigarette and leaned over Marie with her arm about her shoulder, advising her what cards to play. The game was baccarat, and in a little while I saw that Marie was losing a great deal of money, and a little later I saw La Glue trying to persuade her away from the card table.

“One more deal.” That deal lost her the last louis she had placed on the table. "Someone will have to pay my cab,” she said.

We were going to the Elysée Montmartre, and Alphonsine lent her a couple of louis, pour passer sa soirée, and we all went away in carriages, the little horses straining up the steep streets; the plumes of the women’s hats floating over the carriage hoods. Marie was in one of the front carriages, and was waiting for us on the high steps leading from the street to the bal.

“It’s my last night,” she said, “the last night I shall see the Elysée for many a month.”

“You'll soon be back again?”

“You see I have been offered five hundred thousand francs to go to Russia for three years. Fancy three years without seeing the Elysée,” and she looked round as an angel might look upon Paradise out of which she is about to be driven. "The trees are beautiful,” she said, "they’re like a fairy tale,” and that is exactly what they were like, rising into the summer darkness, unnaturally green above the electric lights. In the middle of a circle of white globes the orchestra played upon an estrade, and everyone whirled his partner as if she were a top. "I always sit over there under the trees in the angle,” she said; and she was about to invite me to come to sit with her, when her attention was distracted from me; the people had drawn together into groups, and I heard the people whispering, "That’s Marie Pellegrin.” Seeing her coming, her waiter with much ostentation began to draw aside tables and chairs, and in a few minutes she was sitting under her tree, she and La Glue together, their friends about them, Marie distributing absinthe, brandy and cigarettes. A little procession suddenly formed under the trees and came towards her, and Marie was presented with a great basket of flowers, and all her company with bouquets; and a little cheer went up from different parts of the bal, "Vive Marie Pellegrin, la reine de I’Elysée.

 GEORGE MOORE.

(To be continued.)