In the drawings youve been looking at I think my types are very handsome.
Oh, they wont do!
Ive had a couple of new models.
I see you have. They wont do.
Are you very sure of that?
Absolutelytheyre stupid.
You mean I amfor I ought to get round that.
You cantwith such people. Who are they?
I told him, as far as was necessary, and he declared, heartlessly: Ce sont des gens quil faut mettre à la porte.
Youve never seen them; theyre awfully good, I compassionately objected.
Not seen them? Why, all this recent work of yours drops to pieces with them. Its all I want to see of them.
No one else has said anything against itthe Cheapside people are pleased.
Everyone else is an ass, and the Cheapside people the biggest asses of all. Come, dont pretend, at this time of day, to have pretty illusions about the public, especially about publishers and editors. Its not for such animals you workits for those who know, coloro che sanno; so keep straight for me if you cant keep straight for yourself. Theres a certain sort of thing you tried for from the firstand a very good thing it is. But this twaddle isnt in it. When I talked with Hawley later about Rutland Ramsay and its possible successors he declared that I must get back into my boat again or I would go to the bottom. His voice in short was the voice of warning.
I noted the warning, but I didnt turn my friends out of doors. They bored me a good deal; but the very fact that they bored me admonished me not to sacrifice themif there was anything to be done with themsimply to irritation. As I look back at this phase they seem to me to have pervaded my life not a little. I have a vision of them as most of the time in my studio, seated, against the wall, on an old velvet bench to be out of the way, and looking like a pair of patient courtiers in a royal ante-chamber. I am convinced that during the coldest weeks of the winter they held their ground because it saved them fire. Their newness was losing its gloss, and it was impossible not to feel that they were objects of charity. Whenever Miss Churm arrived they went away, and after I was fairly launched in Rutland Ramsay Miss Churm arrived pretty often. They managed to express to me tacitly that they supposed I wanted her for the low life of the book, and I let them suppose it, since they had attempted to study the workit was lying about the studiowithout discovering that it dealt only with the highest circles. They had dipped into the most brilliant of our novelists without deciphering many passages. I still took an hour from them, now and again, in spite of Jack Hawleys warning: it would be time enough to dismiss them, if dismissal should be necessary, when the rigour of the season was over. Hawley had made their acquaintancehe had met them at my firesideand thought them a ridiculous pair. Learning that he was a painter they tried to approach him, to show him too that they were the real thing; but he looked at them, across the big room, as if they were miles away: they were a compendium of everything that he most objected to in the social system of his country. Such people as that, all convention and patent-leather, with ejaculations that stopped conversation, had no business in a studio. A studio was a place to learn to see, and how could you see through a pair of feather beds?
The main inconvenience I suffered at their hands was that, at first, I was shy of letting them discover how my artful little servant had begun to sit to me for Rutland Ramsay. They knew that I had been odd enough (they were prepared by this time to allow oddity to artists,) to pick a foreign vagabond out of the streets, when I might have had a person with whiskers and credentials; but it was some time before they learned how high I rated his accomplishments. They found him in an attitude more than once, but they never doubted I was doing him as an organ-grinder. There were several things they never guessed, and one of them was that for a striking scene in the novel, in which a footman briefly figured, it occurred to me to make use of Major Monarch as the menial. I kept putting this off, I didnt like to ask him to don the liverybesides the difficulty of finding a livery to fit him. At last, one day late in the winter, when I was at work on the despised Oronte (he caught ones idea in an instant), and was in the glow of feeling that I was going very straight, they came in, the Major and his wife, with their society laugh about nothing (there was less and less to laugh at), like country-callersthey always reminded me of thatwho have walked across the park after church and are presently persuaded to stay to luncheon. Luncheon was over, but they could stay to teaI knew they wanted it. The fit was on me, however, and I couldnt let my ardour cool and my work wait, with the fading daylight, while my model prepared it. So I asked Mrs. Monarch if she would mind laying it outa request which, for an instant, brought all the blood to her face. Her eyes were on her husbands for a second, and some mute telegraphy passed between them. Their folly was over the next instant; his cheerful shrewdness put an end to it. So far from pitying their wounded pride, I must add, I was moved to give it as complete a lesson as I could. They bustled about together and got out the cups and saucers and made the kettle boil. I know they felt as if they were waiting on my servant, and when the tea was prepared I said: Hell have a cup, pleasehes tired. Mrs. Monarch brought him one where he stood, and he took it from her as if he had been a gentleman at a party, squeezing a crush-hat with an elbow.
Then it came over me that she had made a great effort for memade it with a kind of noblenessand that I owed her a compensation. Each time I saw her after this I wondered what the compensation could be. I couldnt go on doing the wrong thing to oblige them. Oh, it was the wrong thing, the stamp of the work for which they satHawley was not the only person to say it now. I sent in a large number of the drawings I had made for Rutland Ramsay, and I received a warning that was more to the point than Hawleys. The artistic adviser of the house for which I was working was of opinion that many of my illustrations were not what had been looked for. Most of these illustrations were the subjects in which the Monarchs had figured. Without going into the question of what had been looked for, I saw at this rate I shouldnt get the other books to do. I hurled myself in despair upon Miss Churm, I put her through all her paces. I not only adopted Oronte publicly as my hero, but one morning when the Major looked in to see if I didnt require him to finish a figure for the Cheapside, for which he had begun to sit the week before, I told him that I had changed my mindI would do the drawing from my man. At this my visitor turned pale and stood looking at me. Is he your idea of an English gentleman? he asked.
I was disappointed, I was nervous, I wanted to get on with my work; so I replied with irritation: Oh, my dear MajorI cant be ruined for you!
He stood another moment; then, without a word, he quitted the studio. I drew a long breath when he was gone, for I said to myself that I shouldnt see him again. I had not told him definitely that I was in danger of having my work rejected, but I was vexed at his not having felt the catastrophe in the air, read with me the moral of our fruitless collaboration, the lesson that, in the deceptive atmosphere of art, even the highest respectability may fail of being plastic.