They went cursorily through the house. It was not furnished at all like a tart's house, but rather like that of a great lady of fashion. The servants were certainly rather comic opera, and a prettier lot Charlie thought he had never seen. The menservants he encountered were French, bar the very staid old butler.
They came at last to a little boudoir overlooking garden and river.
'Now we'll talk,' said Maudie. 'First of all, give me that camera; I'll have the pictures developed.'
The white-clad page-boy took the machine.
'Firstly, Charlie Osmond, I know all about your skill as a photographer. Well, I'm mad on it myself, and I'm pretty good, as you shall see directly.
'Now, what I want you to do is this. I know you're not too well off-pardon my being blunt. I want you to look after my photography and find my models for me. You'll have to use a lot of tact, but you'll have a thundering good time.
'Why I want you is that I must have a gentleman; I can't have an ordinary professional photographer. I couldn't stick working with him, and Tubby wouldn't like it. My great hobby is pictures of girls, in the nude, of course, and that's why I have my own pussy shaved: they have to have it done too. They are shy at first, but soon get used to it. We have quite lively parties. But come along, you shall see the studio first before you decide.'
Maudie unlocked a curtained door.
'This room I do keep under lock and key,' she said.
It was a huge octagonal room, glass roofed, with an admirable north light. One end of the octagon was a complete small theatre with, explained Maudie, a large plant of scenery and every facility for producing all classes of stage plays.
'Wait till you see some of 'em,' Maudie went on. 'We've got some pretty wits among our members-we call it a club. It's supposed to exist for the practice of the higher photographic arts, and the exhibition of real life on the stage. It is damned real, too, I can tell you.
'Our finest bit of realism was a play which lasted, on and off, for nearly a year. It started with a courtship, rivalry, seduction-dark man, dark night, and that sort of thing, you know-of course in full view of the audience. Then he married her, and we ran through the first nine months of their life together, their lusts and their quarrels. How they both were untrue, and how she gradually became larger in condition till her belly was bang right up and she finally pupped in full view of the audience.
'Of course we were lucky in having a girl who was not only a very good actress, but happened to be like that, and was strong enough to play right through. It was Miss — ,' naming a well-known celebrity.
Charlie started.
'Yes; that's how she spent her time when the papers said she was touring in Italy. Oh, she is a brazen bitch.'
But to the photography. Bar a number of photos lying on a big table on the carpeted dais at the other end of the room, there was not much evidence of photography at all. No cameras, no pictures on the walls-these were entirely covered with what seemed to be a patchwork of little curtains.
' Voila: hey, presto!' exclaimed Maudie, pressing a button at the side of the proscenium.
The walls altered as if at the touch of a fairy's wand, and a most gorgeous vista of photographic voluptuosity met Charlie's astonished and delighted eyes. Photos of every size were there, very many of them coloured, and most beautifully coloured.
There were no paintings except a life-sized oil of Maudie herself as Diana. That had been hung on the line at the Academy. Charlie remembered it well now: it was signed by a well-known French portrait painter, in fact the greatest of them all, and the discoverer of genius in many an Englishman.
But this picture, magnificent though it was, was quite dwarfed by the variety and beauty of the photos.
First in numbers came the nudes. They were none of them of the blatantly crude, erotic, fucking, all-ends-up type, but they were-well-not the sort that Aunt Lavinia ought to see.
There were many single nudes, very nearly always the model being Maudie herself. For this she apologised.
'You see, Charlie,' she said, 'I have a paucity of models. This great idea is only its infancy yet; that's where I'm looking to you for help. Tubby's no good. If I left him to get me models he'd bring women like cart horses. Tubby has strange ideas of female beauty-why he is so infatuated with me, I can't think.
'No; I want more girl models for the single figures. It doesn't matter so much for the groups, as long as we have good principals.'
The single figures were very beautiful. There was a complete set of Maudie's life-Maudie in her bath — Maudie drying herself under the trees-Maudie in varying stages of dressing-Maudie riding, cycling, rowing, and in various gowns. The nearest approach to anything very suggestive was Maudie with only her stockings and shoes on, but every scrap of jewelery she possessed.
There were a number of pretty girl pictures, but with the same models again and again.
'We must have more flappers,' said Maudie, vehemently.
The groups, however, were of the more surpassing interest: very many depicted events in the world's history and biblical subjects were quite prevalent too. For instance, we had Susanna and the Elders. A lovely Susanna, mother naked, admiring herself in the well water, and the most lascivious-looking Elders admiring her too; in the middle distance, a charming girl and boy, quite naked, were playing prettily with each other. The scenic effects were splendid. Maudie confessed that she had the help in that line of a very well-known French actor-manager, and that an English actor-manager had put his scenic stock at her disposal.
Potiphar's wife was well treated. A naked Mrs Potiphar had just rent the garment from the fleeing Joseph, who, with one hand attempting to conceal his parts, was rushing from the room. Mrs Potiphar, who blazed with jewels, was of a pronouncedly Egyptian type, sinuous and wicked-eyed. In Joseph, Charlie had not the slightest difficulty in recognising a prominent young stock-jobber. Where had he been in London all this time, and never heard of this place and their goings-on? he wondered.
Samson and Delilah-God bless my soul-it was the famous wrestler, with very little on, and what a Delilah Maudie herself this time. In Samson Agonistes, Samson was similarly unencumbered with clothing.
In the fight between David and Goliath, the giant had been, by some ingenious photographic trick, made to look a very real giant, and his John Thomas was a thing like a quarterstaff, his balls like melons. A sweetly pretty little David stood boldly forth in the foreground, aiming the sling.
There were some pictures of the historic intimacy between David and Jonathan, which left little to the imagination.
We have missed the earlier episode of the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve were very frankly naked and unashamed in several positions, and there were the dearest possible Cain and Abel.
The scene where, after the fall (which, by the way, was realistically treated), the man and woman get themselves clothed was admirably arranged.
The strange behaviour of Lot's daughters, when they sat in turn on their poor old father's prick and got themselves in the family way, was reproduced in detail, as also was Onan's encounter with his sister-in-law, when he deliberately spilt his seed on the floor.
King David and Bathsheba on the roof, and later the same pair in bed, were fully illustrated.
Ancient Greece and Rome were imaginatively represented, especially the mythology of the former. A swan ('One of the king's from the Thames,' giggled Maudie) was on top of Leda, this time Maudie again, and Jupiter enveloped Danae in a most cunningly contrived shower of gold. The chance to show Venus anadyomene, and all the other gods, and goddesses plausibly naked, was fully utilised, but perhaps the best composition was Vulcan's revenge on the guilty lovers. Tubby figured always as a very tipsy Silenus.
In fact, everything in history of a picturesquely indelicate flavour was ruthlessly exploited.
Charlie was loud in his expressions of praise.
'This must all be very valuable,' he said.
'Tubby's papa offered me a good deal above a bit; said he wanted to present it to the Manchester Watch Committee.'
Apart from the historical groups, which, of course, included Lady Godiva, there were some very charming allegorical pictures. A humorous one was 'Fecundity', in which Tubby and a portly dame were surrounded by sons and grandsons, daughters and granddaughters, all dressed like Adam and Eve.
There were amusing modem pictures too-of life behind the scenes, river pleasure parties-and many clever
