complain too much; you offered far below my normal price, and I said at the time you might have to wait for it to be finished. Many a client has waited longer, as you know.
Here it is; what do you think? No; don’t answer. I don’t care what you think. It is incomplete. Not as a picture; it is more than finished, not another brushstroke needed. But as a portrait it is rather limited. I almost burned it a few years back, but I’ve always been reluctant to go for that sort of grand and wasteful gesture.
An autocritique, then. It is a portrait of a friend, and that is its fatal weakness, one which I have finally solved not by reworking it or burning it, but by continuing it into this new one. Do you know that I remember every moment of painting it? Even looking at it now fills me with a strange melancholy. It was—what?—1906, July 10, a Saturday, one of the most glorious days in God’s creation. You’d suggested painting it in Hampshire, as you were spending the summer there, and I was more eager than I thought to get out of London. So I took the train from Waterloo at eight in the morning, with all my bags and easels tucked around me. God was in His heaven that day. My exhibition at the Carfax gallery was a success, not least because of your review of it; the money and commissions were beginning to come in handsomely, the house in Holland Park was slowly moving from being a dream to something that might shortly turn into solid reality. I had travelled far from Glasgow, and was nearing what I thought was my destination.
We had made it, you and I. You first, of course, with your wealthy wife, the books and articles, your place advising those American bankers, your trusteeships of museums, all the rest of it. But I, with my gruff Scottish manners convincing sitters they had an authentic artist on their hands, was on my way too.
So what could be more comfortable than to spend a week with my old friend, basking in mutual self- congratulation? Life cannot get much better than that morning. There was nothing that was not perfect, from the cup of tea I drank in bed before I left home, to the glass of cold wine that awaited me at your house with the view over the downs to the sea. Even the train was all but empty; I had the compartment to myself, and sat smoking my pipe in a dreamy content.
But. The worm of discomfort was there. Will it last? What if it doesn’t? I wasn’t thinking of any of that, of course, but it was in me, nurturing itself and waiting for its chance. The various elements that would bring me here were already forming around me and in me. What was I, after all? A painter, on the cusp of becoming successful, with two careers which I juggled incessantly. The portraitist and the other. The commanding figure with the long brushes, photographed for fashionable magazines, and the man who would spend his time sketching old dockers, poor refugees, tired shop girls, young men getting drunk in pubs and collapsing in the mud outside. Dreaming of the hopeless and the ill and the dead. They were increasingly my obsession, although I never showed them in public. They were dark pictures, unsellable. But that was not the reason I hid them. They were not very good and I knew it. It wasn’t misplaced self-doubt, either. There was still too much of the magazine illustrator about me. I painted with passion and energy, and the results were mediocre, condescending, and full of contempt for the subjects. And not the sort of thing anyone would want in their drawing room.
So I painted my society portraits, and went to more and more fashionable parties and knew more and more interesting people, and dreamed of Holland Park. How tempting, how glittering it all was! And how easy this success is, as well. All you have to do is give people what they want, reflect themselves back into their own eyes, and they will fall over to crush money into your outstretched hand. I was becoming a businessman, and began thinking like one. I wanted particular commissions because of the exposure they would give me, the contacts I would make, not because they were interesting people with complex personalities or difficult faces.
I came to your house and began to paint you in your study. This picture, the critic as a young man, which I am now complementing with the critic in comfortable middle age. It intimidated me, that place. Those books, those precious objects of such variety. The Chinese porcelain, the wall hangings, the sculptures. The careless profusion of learning, the effortless ease of position. It was as natural to you as breathing, and you used it to bend others to your will. Don’t pretend you didn’t. And that had its effect on the portrait I painted as well. You imposed yourself on me; it was in every brush stroke. I painted not what I saw but how you wished to be seen.
Did you notice how I became more ill-humoured as the days wore on? You could scarcely have failed to. I behaved abominably, even by my own fairly tolerant standards. I played the artist, but badly, and without humour or grace. I was not like Augustus John, who can charm a woman as he seduces her daughter, amuse a man as he steals from his drinks cabinet. Nor did I want to; the more I stayed, the more I wanted to offend. And succeeded brilliantly, I think. Even I was surprised at my rudeness, my sneering remarks, because they were not normal for me. I am a well-mannered, polite little Scottish boy at heart, wanting to be well thought of by his betters. Did I really stay in bed until noon every day? Reduce your maid to tears with my ill-natured complaints? Say your daughter had better be clever because she’d never be pretty? I’m sure they were not all improvements I added on to the memory later. I was hoping you would throw me out, tell me you never wished to see me again. That you would let me free of your grasp.
But you do not let go of people so easily. You saw all too clearly what I was doing, better than I did. A look of long-suffering pain in your eyes, a smile of indulgence. A suggestion that perhaps I should spend the afternoon on my own. That was all I got in response. Because you knew I would not leave without your permission, just as you will not leave now without mine.
In truth, I should thank you, though. That trip to Hampshire brought my worries to the surface, set me on the road to France and the embrace of God in his most Catholic variety. Because I realised, as I unpacked my paints and brushes, and got myself ready, that I was doing your bidding. You don’t remember the moment, I am sure. I chose the position I wanted, and in my mind’s eye I knew how I wanted you to sit. A stark portrait, it would be, head and shoulders, with nothing else to attract the eye. A bit Titian-like, I thought, the background so dark that it would be almost black, just a faint hint of a bookcase.
And what did I begin painting? The sunlight. I wanted to please you. No bad thing in a portraitist, of course, but the skill lies in making your own vision pleasing. I tried, many times over, to force myself into painting what I had imagined as I travelled down, but every time, the desire to please overwhelmed my instincts. And then I realised the truth: I was merely a hired hand, no different from the fat old woman you employed as a cook or the skinny little consumptive who served as your maid. They, at least, were under no illusions about their position, whereas I had persuaded myself that all these society women and gentlemen farmers who were fast becoming my stock in trade were something other than my masters. That I was their superior and your equal.
Not that I minded the clients so much; with them the relations were clear. They wanted a portrait making themselves looking grander, more respectable, more human than they were, and were prepared to pay for it. I obliged; and as I was able to turn flattery into art—decent art as well; I never became a hack—they were happy to pay more than usual. That was why I was a success, and in truth I am not ashamed of it. I did much good work; the problem was that it was not the work I wanted to do.
No; the problem was not my clients, who at least gave something in return for my subjection. They paid well and when the relationship came to an end—the money paid, the portrait hung—their power over me ended as well. The problem was you, who gave nothing and whose power never ended. The critic is a demanding god, who must be constantly appeased. You make your offering, then have to make it again, and again.
I lost my contentment during that trip to Hampshire. The sun had gone on the journey back to London; I felt every lurch of the train, the other people in the compartment irritated me. One stupid woman kept on trying to strike up a conversation, and I was extremely rude to her. I scowled at the ticket collector for no reason. Well, a very good reason, in fact.
THIS MORNING, I want to go for a walk. No; nothing subtle. It’s not as if I want to get the colour into those pale aesthetic cheeks of yours, or make some point about bodily exercise and spiritual insight, so I can translate it into a portrait in some masterful way. I merely feel like a walk, and I am prepared to have your company. I walk fairly often, I’ll have you know. There is something always a little unsatisfactory about it, mind. It is too enjoyable to walk here, except in deepest winter. One does not suffer; there is no sense of triumph in the experience. I remember once going for a long walk along Ardnamurchan shortly after I came back from Paris. I went up to Scotland, just me and my sketch pad, to draw anything and everything that took my fancy. I went back to see if I could live in my homeland again; I really wanted to, but knew the moment I got off the train it would be impossible. Do you know there is no Scotsman who lives in England who does not feel slightly guilty? Not about living in England, but about not wanting to go back. I have discovered that coming to France does not have the same effect.
Anyway, for three weeks I tramped over the land of my forefathers. It was in my etching days, when all the
