Author: Aldous Huxley
Category: Literature
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Rodney’s conversion to ‘modern art,’ instead of ruining him, had been the source of increased profit and an enhanced notoriety. With his unfailing, intuitive knowledge of what the public wanted, he had devised a formula which combined modernity with the more appealing graces of literature and pornography. Nothing, for example, could have been less academic than his nudes. They were monstrously elongated, the paint was laid on quite flatly, there was no modelling, no realistic light and shade, the human form was reduced to a paper silhouette. The eyes were round black boot-buttons, the nipples magenta berries, the lips vermilion hearts, the hair was represented by a collection of crinkly black lines. The exasperated critics of the older school protested that a child of ten could have painted them. But the child of ten who could have painted such pictures must have been an exceedingly perverse child. In comparison, Freud’s Little Hans would have been an angel of purity. For Rodney’s nudes, however unrealistic, were luscious and voluptuous, were even positively indecent. What had distressed the public in the work of the French post-impressionists was not so much the distortion and the absence of realism as the repellant austerity, the intellectual asceticism, which rejected the appeal both of sex and of the anecdote Rodney had supplied the deficiencies. For these engagingly luscious nudities of his were never represented in the void, so to speak, but in all sorts of curious and amusing situations — taking tickets at railway stations, or riding bicycles, or sitting at cafés with negro jazz-bands in the background, drinking crème de menthe. All the people who felt that they ought to be in the movement, that it was a disgrace not to like modern art, discovered in Rodney Clegg, to their enormous delight, a modern artist whom they could really and honestly admire. His pictures sold like hot cakes.
The conversion to modernism marked the real beginning of Rodney’s success. Not that he had been unknown or painfull) poor before his conversion. A man with Rodney’s social talents, with Rodney’s instinct for popularity, could never have known real obscurity or poverty. But all things are relative, before his conversion, Rodney had been obscurer and poorer than he deserved to be — He knew no duchesses, no millionaires, then, he had no deposit at the bank — only a current account that swelled and ebbed capriciously, like a mountain stream. His conversion changed all that.
When Grace and I paid our first visit, he was already on the upward path.
‘I hope he isn’t very formidable,’ Grace said to me, as we were making our way to Hampstead to see him. She was always rather frightened by the prospect of meeting new people.
I laughed ‘It depends what you’re afraid of,’ I said ‘Of being treated with high-brow haughtiness, or losing your virtue I never heard of any woman who found him formidable in the first respect’
‘Oh, that’s all right, then,’ said Grace looking relieved. Certainly, there was nothing very formidable in Rodney’s appearance. At the age of thirty-five he had preserved (and he also cultivated with artful care) the appearance of a good-looking boy. He was small and neatly made, slim, and very agile in his movements. Under a mass of curly brown hair, which was always in a state of picturesque and studied untidiness, his face was like the face of a lively and impertinent cherub. Smooth, rounded, almost unlined, it still preserved its boyish contours (There were always pots and pots of beauty cream on his dressing-table ) His eyes were blue, bright and expressive. He had good teeth, and when he smiled two dimples appeared in his cheeks. He opened the studio door himself. Dressed in his butcher’s blue overalls, he looked charming. One’s instinct was to pat the curly head and say. ‘Isn’t he too sweet! Dressed up like that, pretending to be a workman!’ Even I felt moved to make some such gesture. To a woman, a potential mother of chubby children, the temptation must have been almost irresistible.
Rodney was very cordial ‘Dear old Dick!’ he said, and patted me on the shoulder I had not seen him for some months, he had spent the winter abroad ‘What a delight to see you!’ I believe he genuinely liked me I introduced him to Grace. He kissed her hand ‘Too charming of you to have come. And what an enchanting ring’ he added, looking down again at her hand, which he still held in his own ‘Do, please, let me look at it.’
Grace smiled and blushed with pleasure as she gave it him ‘I got it in Florence,’ she said ‘I’m so glad you like it.’
It was certainly a charming piece of old. Italian jewellery. Sadly I reflected that I had known Grace intimately for more than six months and never so much as noticed the ring, far less made any comment on it. No wonder that I had been generally unlucky in love.
We found the studio littered with specimens of Rodney’s latest artistic invention. Naked ladies in brown boots leading borzoi dogs, tenderly embracing one another in the middle of a still-life of bottles, guitars and newspapers (the old familiar modern still-life rendered acceptable to the great public and richly saleable by the introduction of the equivocal nudes), more naked ladies riding on bicycles (Rodney’s favourite subject, his patent, so to say), playing the concertina, catching yellow butterflies in large green nets Rodney brought them out one by one. From her arm-chair in front of the easel, Grace looked at them, her face wore that rapt religious expression which I had so often noticed in the concert-room ‘Lovely,’ she murmured, as canvas succeeded canvas, ‘too lovely.’
Looking at the pictures, I reflected with some amusement that, a year before, Rodney had been painting melodramatic crucifixions in the style of Tiepolo. At that time he had been an ardent Christian.
‘Art can’t live without religion,’ he used to say then ‘We must get back to religion’ And with his customary facility Rodney had got back to it. Oh, those pictures! They were really shocking in their accomplished insincerity. So emotional, so dramatic, and yet so utterly false and empty. The subjects, you felt, had been apprehended as a cinema producer might apprehend them, in terms of ‘effectiveness’ There were always great darknesses and tender serene lights, touches of vivid colour and portentous silhouettes. Very ‘stark,’ was what Rodney’s admirers used to call those pictures, I remember. They were too stark by half for my taste Rodney set up another canvas on the easel ‘I call this “The Bicycle made for Two,” he said.
It represented a negress and a blonde with a Chinese white skin, riding on a tandem bicycle against a background of gigantic pink and yellow roses. In the foreground, on the right, stood a plate of fruit, tilted forward towards the spectator, in the characteristic ‘modern’ style. A greyhound trotted along beside the bicycle.
‘Really too’ began Grace ecstatically. But finding no synonym for ‘lovely,’ the epithet which she had applied to all the other pictures, she got no further, but made one of those non-committal laudatory noises, which are so much more satisfactory than articulate speech, when you don’t know what to say to an artist about his works. She looked up at me ‘Isn’t it really?’ she asked.
‘Yes, absolutely’ I nodded my affirmation. Then, rather maliciously, ‘Tell me, Rodney,’ I said, ‘do you still paint religious pictures? I remember a most grandiose. Descent from the Cross you were busy on not so long ago.’
But my malice was disappointed Rodney was not in the least embarrassed by this reminder of the skeleton in his cupboard. He laughed.
‘Oh, that? he said ‘I painted it over. Nobody would buy. One cannot serve God and Mammon’ And he laughed again, heartily, at his own witticism.
It went into his repertory at once, that little joke. He took to introducing the subject of his religious paintings himself, in order to have an opportunity of bringing out the phrase, with a comical parody of clerical unction, at the end of his story. In the course of the next few weeks I heard him repeat it, in different assemblages, three or four times ‘God and Mammon,’ he chuckled again ‘Can’t be combined.’
‘Only goddesses and Mammon,’ I suggested, nodding in the direction of his picture. Later, I had the honour of hearing my words incorporated into Rodney’s performance. He had a wonderfully retentive memory ‘Precisely,’ he said ‘Goddesses, I’m hap
py to say, of a more popular religion. Are you a believer, Mrs Peddley?’ He smiled at her, raising his eyebrows ‘I am — fervently I’m croyant and’ (he emphasized the ‘and’ with arch significance) ‘pratiquant’ Grace laughed rather nervously, not knowing what to answer ‘Well, I suppose we all are,’ she said. She was not accustomed to this sort of gallantry.
Rodney smiled at her more impertinently than ever ‘How happy I should be,’ he said, ‘if I could make a convert of you!’ Grace repeated her nervous laugh and, to change the subject, began to talk about the pictures.
We sat there for some time, talking, drinking tea, smoking cigarettes I looked at my watch, it was half-past six I knew that Grace had a dinner-party that evening.
‘We shall have to go,’ I said to her ‘You’ll be late for your dinner’
‘Good heavens!’ cried Grace, when she heard what the time was. She jumped up ‘must fly Old Lady Wackerbath — imagine if I kept her waiting!’ She laughed, but breathlessly, and she had gone quite pale with anticipatory fright.
‘Stay, do stay,’ implored Rodney ‘Keep her waiting’
‘I daren’t’
‘But, my dear lady, you’re young,’ he insisted, ‘you have the right — I’d say the duty, if the word weren’t so coarse and masculine — to be unpunctual. At your age you must do what you like. You see, I’m assuming that you like being here,’ he added parenthetically.
She returned his smile ‘Of course.’
‘Well then, stay, do what you like, follow your caprices. After all, that’s what you’re there for’ Rodney was very strong on the Eternal Feminine.’
Grace shook her head ‘Good-bye I’ve loved it so much.’
Rodney sighed, looked sad and slowly shook his head ‘If you’d loved it as much as all that,’ he said, ‘as much as I’ve loved it, you wouldn’t be saying good-bye. But if you must’ He smiled seductively, the teeth flashed, the dimples punctually appeared. He took her hand, bent over it and tenderly kissed it ‘You must come again,’ he added ‘Soon And,’ turning to me with a laugh, and patting my shoulder, ‘without old Dick’
‘ He’s frightfully amusing, isn’t he?’ Grace said to me a minute later when we had left the studio.
‘Frightfully,’ agreed, laying a certain emphasis on the adverb.
‘And really,’ she continued, ‘most awfully nice, I thought.’
I made no comment ‘And a wonderful painter,’ she added. All at once I felt that I detested Rodney Clegg I thought of my own sterling qualities of mind and heart, and it seemed to me outrageous, it seemed to me scandalous and intolerable that people, that is to say women in general, and Grace in particular, should be impressed and taken in and charmed by this little middle-aged charlatan with the pretty boy’s face and the horribly knowing, smart, impertinent manner. It seemed to me a disgrace I was on the point of giving vent to my indignation, but it occurred to me, luckily, just in time that I should only be quite superfluously making a fool of myself if I did. Nothing is more ridiculous than a scene of jealousy, particularly when the scene is made by somebody who has no right to make it and on no grounds whatever I held my tongue. My indignation against Rodney died down, I was able to laugh at myself. But driving southward through the slums of Camden Town, I looked attentively at Grace and found her more than ordinarily charming, desirable even I would have liked to tell her so and, telling, kiss her. But I lacked the necessary impudence, I felt diffident of my capacity to carry the amorous undertaking through to a successful issue I said nothing, risked no gesture. But I decided, when the time should come for us to part, that I would kiss her hand. It was a thing I had never done before. At the last moment, however, it occurred to me that she might imagine that, in kissing her hand, I was only stupidly imitating Rodney Clegg I was afraid she might think that his example had emboldened me. We parted on the customary handshake. Four or five weeks after our visit to Rodney’s studio, I went abroad for a six months’ stay in France and Germany. In the interval, Grace and Rodney had met twice, the first time in my flat, for tea, the second at her house, where she had asked us both to lunch Rodney was brilliant on both occasions. A little too brilliant indeed — like a smile of false teeth, I thought. But Grace was dazzled. She had never met any one like this before. Her admiration delighted Rodney.
‘Intelligent woman,’ was his comment, as we left her house together after lunch. A few days later I set out for Paris ‘You must promise to write,’ said Grace in a voice full of sentiment when I came to say good-bye.
I promised, and made her promise too I did not know exactly why we should write to one another or what we should write about, but it seemed, none the less, important that we should write. Letter-writing has acquired a curious sentimental prestige which exalts it, in the realm of friendship, above mere conversation, perhaps because we are less shy at long range than face to face, because we dare to say more in written than in spoken words.
It was Grace who first kept her promise.
‘MY DEAR DICK,’ she wrote ‘Do you remember what you said about Mozart? That his music seems so gay on the surface — so gay and careless, but underneath it is sad and melancholy, almost despairing I think life is like that, really. Everything goes with such a bustle, but what’s it all for? And how sad, how sad it is! Now you mustn’t flatter yourself by imagining that I feel like this just because you happen to have gone away — though as a matter of fact I am sorry you aren’t here to talk about music and people and life and so forth. No, don’t flatter yourself, because I’ve really felt like this for years, almost forever. It’s, so to speak, the bass of my music, this feeling, it throbs along all the time, regardless of what may be happening in the treble. Jigs, minuets, mazurkas, Blue Danube waltzes, but the bass remains the same. This isn’t very good counterpoint, I know, but you see what I mean? The children have just left me, yelling Phyllis has just smashed that hideous Copenhagen rabbit Aunt Eleanor gave me for Christmas. I’m delighted, of course, but I mayn’t say so. And in any case, why must they always act such knockabouts? Sad, sad. And Lecky’s. History of European Morals, that’s sadder still. It’s a book I can never find my place in Page 100 seems exactly the same as page 200 No clue. So that — you know how conscientious I am — I always have to begin again at the beginning. It’s very discouraging I haven’t the spirit to begin again, yet again, this evening I write to you instead. But in a moment I must go and dress for dinner John’s partner is coming, surely no man has a right to be so bald. And Sir Walter Magellan, who is something at the Board of Trade and makes jokes, with Lady.
M — , who’s so affectionate. She has a way. of kissing me, suddenly and intently, like a snake striking. And she spits when she talks. Then there’s Molly Bone, who’s so nice, but why can’t she get married? And the Robsons, about whom there’s nothing to say. Nothing whatever. Nothing, nothing, nothing. That’s how I feel about it all I shall put on my old black frock and wear no jewels. Good-bye — GRACE’
Reading this letter, I regretted more than ever my lack of impudence and enterprise in the taxi, that day we had driven down from Rodney’s studio. It seemed to me, now, that the impudence would not have been resented I returned a letter of consolation, wrote again a week later, again ten days after that, and again, furiously, after another fortnight. A letter at last came back. It smelt of sandalwood and the stationery was pale yellow. In the past, Grace’s correspondence had always been odourless and white I looked and sniffed with a certain suspicion, then unfolded and read.
‘I am surprised, my good Dick,’ the letter began, that you don’t know us better. Haven’t you yet learned that we women don’t like the sound of the words. Must and Ought? We can’t abide to have our sense of duty appealed to. That was why I never answered any of your impertinent letters. They were too full of “you must write, and “you promised” What do I care what I promised? That was long ago I am a different being now I have been thousands of different beings since then — re-born with each caprice. Now, at last, I choose, out of p
ure grace and kindness, to relent. Here’s a letter. But beware of trying to bully me again, don’t ever attempt to blackmail my conscience I may be crueller next time. This is a warning ‘Were you trying, with your descriptions of diversions and entertainments, to make me envious of your Paris? If so, you haven’t succeeded. We have our pleasures here too — even in London. For example, the most exquisite masked ball a few days since. Like Longhi’s Venice or Watteau’s Cythera — and at moments, let me add, towards the end of the evening, almost like Casanova’s Venice, almost like the gallant, grivots Arcadia of Boucher. But hush! It was in Chelsea, I’ll tell you no more. You might come bursting in on the next dance, pulling a long face because the band wasn’t playing Bach and the dancers weren’t talking about the “Critique of Pure Reason” For the fact is, my poor Dick, you’re too solemn and serious in your pleasures I shall really have to take you in hand, when you come back. You must be taught to be a little lighter and more fantastic. For the truth about you is that you’re absurdly Victorian. You’re still at the Life-is-real-life-is-earnest, Low - living - and - high - thinking stage. You lack the courage of your instincts I want to see you more frivolous and sociable, yes, and more gluttonous and lecherous, my good Dick. If I were as free as you are, oh, what an Epicurean I’d be! Repent of your ways, Dick, before it’s too late and you’re irrecoverably middle-aged. No more I am being called away on urgent pleasure GRACE’ I read through this extraordinary epistle several times. If the untidy, illegible writing had not been so certainly Grace’s, I should have doubted her authorship of the letter. That sham dîx-huttième language, those neorococo sentiments — these were not hers I had never heard her use the words ‘caprice’ or ‘pleasure’ she had never generalized in that dreadfully facile way about ‘we women’ What, then, had come over the woman since last she wrote? I put the two letters together. What could have happened? Mystery. Then, suddenly, I thought of Rodney Clegg, and where there had been darkness I saw light. The light, I must confess, was extremely disagreeable to me, at any rate in its first, dawning I experienced a much more violent return of that jealousy which had overtaken me when I heard Grace expressing her admiration of Rodney’s character and talents. And with the jealousy a proportionately violent renewal of my desires. An object hitherto indifferent may suddenly be invested in our eyes with an inestimable value by the mere fact that it has passed irrevocably out of our power into the possession of some one else. The moment that I suspected Grace of having become Rodney’s mistress I began to imagine myself passionately, in love with her I tortured myself with distressing thoughts of their felicity, I cursed myself for having neglected opportunities that would never return. At one moment I even thought of rushing back to London, in the hope of snatching my now suddenly precious treasure out of Rodney’s clutches. But the journey would have been expensive, I was luckily short of money. In the end I decided to stay where I was. Time passed and my good sense returned I realized that my passion was entirely imaginary, home-made, and self-suggested I pictured to myself what would have happened if I had returned to London under its influence. Burning with artificial flames, I should have burst dramatically into Grace’s presence, only to discover, when I was actually with her, that I was not in love with her at all. Imaginary love can only flourish at a distance from its object, reality confines the fancy and puts it in its place I had imagined myself unhappy because Grace had given herself to Rodney, but the situation, I perceived, would have been infinitely more distressing if I had returned, had succeeded in capturing her for myself, and then discovered that, much as I liked and charming as I found her, I did not love her. It was deplorable, no doubt, that she should have been taken in by a charlatan like Rodney, it was a proof of bad taste on her part that she had not preferred to worship hopelessly, with an unrequited passion. Still, it was her business and in no way mine. If she felt that she could be happy with Rodney, well then, poor idiot! let her be happy. And so on. It was with reflections such as these that I solaced myself back into the indifference of a mere spectator. When Herbert turned up a few days later at my hotel, I was able to ask him, quite without agitation, for news of Grace ‘Oh, she’s just the same as usual,’ said Herbert.