Conversations in Ebury Street, Chapter 7

London: William Heineman, 1 January 1924, pages 109-117, 2,537 words

Conversations in Ebury Street is a nonlinear volume of nineteen chapters. Chapters 7-11 are essays in art criticism; chapter 19 is worldbuilding; the rest are essays in literary criticism. The chapters appear separately in the Aesthetics and Worlds pillars of George Moore Interactive. All are included in the ebook of Conversations in Ebury Street in the GMi Shop.

VII

It was at that moment that the door opened, and Mabel seemed to appear with the delightful surtout that, alas, I did not bring back last year from Paris, the mirror a little dim and worn in places, but the rich gilding of the chased frame in fine condition. But seeing it in my thoughts laden with heavy, cut-glass decanters and thick, stumpy glasses, I began to lament that the promptings of an unessential economy had prevented me from purchasing it, and then to ask why I had wished to possess it­ — to prove to my guests that I was a man of taste? If so, all my pictures were acquired for the same end, or -­– But why seek to peer into our hearts, for we shall never apprehend our instincts; enough it is to know that our instincts are our own and that our reason was picked up at random. Steer, the most instinctive of us, is instigated by a love of beautiful things, so pure that he would collect Chelsea figures and Greek coins though he knew of a certainty that no eyes but his own would see them; and whilst listening to my present guests I came to thinking that brief portraits of the men among whom my life has been passed would be appreciated by the readers of Conversations in Ebury Street — portraits of Steer, Tonks, M'Coll, Harrison and Sickert. But how may these be presented? I asked myself, certain that nothing is more interesting in literature than a portrait. But I must see them as portraits. Can I? Steer, for instance, whom I had the wit to pick out as the only painter in London who could fill the blank that Manet's death had made in my life.

Mr. Freeman and Mr. De La Mare carried on an animated conversation, to which I gave a semblance of attention, till they reminded me that if they were to catch their train... etc.; and having seen them off I returned, seeing Steer in my thoughts, fat and sleek, in his armchair, his hands crossed piously over his belly's slope, his cat curled in an armchair on the other side of the fireplace, both carefully screened from the danger of draughts. The improved cat likes a quiet existence; his home guarantees absence of change; he never breaks or soils; he likes to be fed, to sleep; and when he awakes he cleanses himself and walks out alone. Never did two different animals partake more closely of the same nature. All the same, there are differences. The cat, it is true, is without friends, but he recognises those who frequent 109, Cheyne Walk. He will bask occasionally on Tonks's knees, but he soon wearies of strange knees and leaves the room with dignity; and Steer, like his cat, is only familiar with those he has known for twenty or thirty years, ladies excepted. Sir William Eden fidgeted him, and Sir William's presents of game embarrassed him.

Steer's annual outing, from June to the middle of October (he is a landscape painter), begins to torment him at the beginning of May, and if I were to go to spend a May evening with him it would be needless to ask for the reason of his dejected mien. The answer I would get would be the same as I got the year before: I think that people go mad about this time of year; here is a letter from a woman inviting me to dinner! But, Steer, you never go away till June. You need not begin to pack for the next three or four weeks, and your servants are old friends. But many arrangements have to be made, he answers, and falls back into meditations, his eyes fixed on his cat, who, happily, is unaware of the impending change.

Once Steer is settled in the county he has chosen for his summer occupation, every hour is devoted to his work. When he is not painting he is considering if the boats in the foreground might not be taken out with advantage. Do they attract the eye? Are they necessary to fill a blank in the composition? He goes away with one or two painters, whose great honour it is to accompany him; once they were Brown and Coles. Brown paints but little nowadays, and Coles — I have forgotten what has happened to him. Their places have been secured by others. The three meet at dinner and the evenings are sometimes wearisome to Steer, for he must talk to his friends and his mind is away among his tones. But though his friends may weary him, he would not encourage me to come down to break the monotony of his evenings, for his thoughts are fixed on the next morning. If the weather be fine he will go in search of a motive; if it rains he will work In a barn, transferring a water­ colour on a canvas, with modifications, of course. So a rainy day is welcome, for Steer dreads getting wet even as his cat, and he dreads draughts; draughts prevail even in sheltered nooks, and draughts are like wild beasts, always on the watch for whom they may devour. The four or five months in which it is possible to paint landscapes in England are the prime of Steer's life, and woe to him who would seek to disturb it! In an ill-advised moment Tonks once wrote to him insisting that it was his duty to come to town to judge a painting competition at the Slade. And for a long time Tonks never spoke of Steer's arrival in London without quoting Homer:

Achilles' wrath, to Greece the direful spring

Of woes unnumber'd, heav'nly goddess, sing.

And from these observations, made during a period of some thirty or more years and carefully noted, a real man should begin to emerge. Indeed the reader should have begun to see and to appreciate, but in Nature there are always discrepancies, which the writer must remove lest they jar. But I will be daring; nothing shall be excluded, and on my reader I must rely to harmonise what I am about to say with what I have already said. None would guess that this rather fat, lazy man was once fond of dancing, and that his life was illuminated by a love story. We pitied his suffering when the lady married. Tonks and Brown, Harrison and M’Coll, urged him to hasten after the fugitive, and overtake her before it was too late. I think that we should have all liked to have seen Steer married. He was so happy unmarried that it was only natural we should wish to put his fortitude to the test. There is only one thing that a man cares to do always — his own words, and I discover in them the whole man, body and soul.

We all strive towards oneness, but only Steer has attained it, and his followers are almost as numerous as St. Paul's. We find among them a Timothy, an Apollos, an Aquila, a Priscilla, a Lydia, a Eunice. Brown and Coles and Tonks and Grey and Wheatley have worshipped as fondly as their predecessors did, shall we say in A,D. 57? Coles, like Barnabas, disappeared suddenly. I discover likenesses to Peter in Brown, and were I to give thought to it, I should discover a modem Titus, Gaius, Erastus, and many others. But a portrait should not be overladen with detail; suffice it to say here that the places of Brown and Coles have been taken by Ronald Grey and Wheatley, and these bring an abundance of love and admiration somewhat disquieting to the master, whose genius it is to continue to paint for himself, encouraged by a quiet sympathy such as he gets from his cat, who never bounds about him or bursts into praise at his approach. If it were given to him to choose, he would prefer a more quiet applause than he receives. Ici le document me fait défaut absolument, as my friend Goncourt used to say. Steer rarely writes letters and seldom expresses hard opinions, but in the recesses of his mind I cannot help thinking that if not a thought, at least a feeling is in process of incubation that perhaps Ronald Grey's appreciations lack contrast, the humblest sketch being hailed in almost the same words as the masterpiece that has taken months to achieve. Wheatley bounds and barks somewhat, and perhaps Steer has felt that Wheatley would do well to notice the dignity of the cat, how he approaches his master, how he prowls about him and retires to the armchair, having fully expressed himself in a single purr; and Steer thinks, I am convinced, that purring is preferable to any other mode of expression.

For a complete portrait of Steer I shall have to tell of his shrewdness in securing a house perfectly suited to his needs and in harmony with himself; and this he has done so well that every reader will feel that he might have guessed from what has gone before that Steer would be certain to find a house that overlooked an admirable reach of river, and that his painting would be accomplished in a drawing-room rather than in a vast, empty studio with nothing but easels and a lay figure in it — in a word, a room in which a cat would not be able to endure his life. Nor need I tell the reader that there are many beautiful pieces of furniture in Steer's house and some choice pictures, collections of coins, Chelsea china, Japanese prints, brass Persian salvers, beautifully engraved. The brass trays, or salvers, he brought home not long ago from some obscure rag­ and-bone shop. Tonks and I admired them, envy burning in our hearts that we had not done so much, and shame stiffing us, for we both knew we might have passed them over without perceiving their rarity. We sigh and regret that we have not spent as much time as Steer in hunting up rag-and-bone shops within a radius of many miles. Steer is acquainted with them all and with many odd corners where wine and cigars can be purchased at trifling cost.

But to show Steer in all his shrewdness would be to stray from essential into subordinate lines of portraiture, and the reader will perhaps perceive Steer more clearly if I leave details which, though they are true, might be easily true of any other man, and tell of his devotion to his old servant, now about eighty-five or six, whom he remembers as having bathed him in his childhood. His portrait of the old lady, as he calls her, represents many months of labour and anxiety. I think I have heard him say that she sat for the portrait some fifty or sixty times, and when we came to admire, the picture was looked upon by all as a miracle, by Grey, Tonks, and some others whose names have fallen out of my memory. And the awe occasioned by the picture did not pass away quickly; the disciples and followers left 109 overcome, whereas we, Tonks and myself, being old friends, waited for the return of the master. I was among the most perfervid admirers of the portrait, yet critical, for when we stood alone in front of it I summoned enough courage to ask Tonks if the blue vase on the shelf did not seem a trifle out of tone. His face led me to expect a reproof, and I judged myself to have escaped lightly when he said in an awed voice: It will go down, and begged me not to mention my suspicion of out of tone to Steer when he returned from his front door. Of course not! I replied, and if I tell the story now it is for the sake of chronicling how Steer reviews his work day by day, straining away after perfection even as I do, for the next time he showed me the portrait the blue vase did not jar the harmony of the picture. I cannot tell at what moment I was proudest of my friend — when I noticed that he had lowered the tone of the blue vase, or when I learnt incidentally that he had spent the summer painting in a county that did not suit him because of a train service that would bring him to London in a couple of hours if a telegram should summon him to the old lady's bedside. But what help could you bring? I may have asked, and if I did, he did not answer: I should not like her to go away without my bidding her good-bye. Steer would not have answered so tritely. I know the thought that was in his mind better than the words which he could not find or did not dare to speak; but since I must interpret his emotive dumbness, I will say: We have lived together so long in life that it would be a pity to be separated when the passing comes. So did I understand him one night whilst bidding him good-bye at the comer of Vale Avenue, and my pride in my friend's nobility made short the way to Ebury Street. In Sloane Square I stopped to ask myself if I would leave a book I was writing to sit by a dying woman, giving to her the only gift that I could of value, a touch of the hand, the sound of my voice, and she eighty-six years old? I pursued my way through Eaton Square downcast and yet pleased to find a self in me, an ultimate self, I said, and this is why I can do nothing if disinclined, being wholly and irreparably given to art. We cannot repudiate ourselves; even the saints failed to regret their past sins, and they did well, for without sin there is no repentance and we are as the beasts of the field.

My pen has tricked me into theological subtleties altogether out of keeping with my sitter, who is as free from abstract thinking as his cat is. He never rages against the Academy, as Brown does, nor does he look on it as the original of all the evil that art is heir to. He is too lazy to consider whether the Academy is altogether reprobate; it would be fatiguing and do no good, and so his thoughts return with serenity to the rag­ and-bone shops, and when the tempter whispers around the doorposts of Cheyne Walk he turns a deaf ear, feeling among other things that he could not manage any further acquaintances, and that for him to join the Academy would be to leave his friends in the lurch. It cannot be that the thought has not dawned upon him that he is too big a man for an Academy; he can have hardly missed it, but it is not brooded; it comes and goes like a dream.

Here endeth the first portrait.