The Portrait

I’ve only left a few times since, to go to the morgue in Quiberon to study my corpses or to pick up some paints and canvasses. You think I am in exile, I see myself as being in refuge. Not the first Scot to be so, either. I have an illustrious forebear. If you want, go back to the church, and look at the statue. Saint Gildas. Another man of the Clyde, although a bit before my time. I must say he had escaped my attention before I came here, but Father Charles told me all about him. Gildas fled the tumult and beastliness of England and took sanctuary on this island so he would not have to submit to the opinion of others who considered him a heretic. Thus the version of the story I was told.

A perceptive man, our priest. He says little, but sees much. You still haven’t been to visit him, I note.

The islanders welcome me in their fashion, but think I’m a bit crazy as well. No-one else has chosen to live here for 1500 years, and no English—they think of me as English despite everything, which is a big disadvantage —since the smugglers were defeated half a century ago. No-one stays unless they have to, or if they can think of anywhere better to go. They don’t even have any people spending the summer; nobody in their right mind would come to Houat, to this island with no running water, where it is devilish hard to get fuel for your fire or food for your plate. But here I stay, and here I would have stayed forever, had I not summoned you here and had your presence not reminded me of the advice I gave to Evelyn—that a painting unseen might as well not exist. I am thinking—no, I have decided—to go back, to re-enter the fray; but on my terms only.

What was that again? I summoned you? How dare I presume? You wrote to me, did you not, proposing the commission for a portrait? Your attempt to begin my reintroduction into the world of English art, the only one that matters to folk like us, poor though it be. To lure me back and help me take up the reins once more. No, no, my dear friend! We are trying to look below the surface now. It was I who summoned you; I who knew you would come, would have to come to see me. I lured you here. I needed to see if you would come.

I have written few letters in the past couple of years; my bank has received most of them, and they have not been so important. My demands on its services are small these days. One was important, though; the short note I wrote to your protegé Duncan a few months back. That I laboured long over, once I knew what I must do, because I knew you would read it. That was the letter which brought you here; to which you had to respond, if all was as I thought.

One sentence only, in fact, made you pack your bags and take the train to Paris, then out to Quiberon, the fishing boat over to the island, and walk across it until you arrived at my door. One short sentence made the difference. “I hope you and William are still friends; many have drowned in his displeasure.”

You read things, words and pictures, with an intensity greater than any man I have known. You seize on the little detail—a colour contrast, the shape of an ear lobe, the crook of a finger, one malformed sentence, a curious use of words, and tease it until it gives up its secrets. But what secret did my letter conceal? It tantalised, that clumsy sentence, but remained mute.

It was no slip of the pen, my friend, not a piece of babbling from someone losing touch with reality, a poor joke made by someone forgetting even the basics of English grammar. I wanted to see if you would come. It was the final test, every word considered and laboured over. Besides, I needed you here, if I was ever to break through the block which has stopped me painting anything truly satisfying.

* * *

I THINK it’s time to tell you what made me leave England. You’ll love it; it will appeal to your egotism. You did. It began at half past nine on a Tuesday morning, May 10, 1910. I was sitting having my breakfast, and cursing the weather, as it was dull and cloudy and I wanted brightness for a picture I was working on. At the very least I knew I would be doing nothing at least until lunchtime; maybe not even then. So I decided to read the Morning Chronicle and take my time over my scrambled eggs and coffee that my landlady had just brought me. I started, as I always did, with the notices and advertisements, then worked my way through the news, foreign and domestic, then, for a final pleasure, turned to the reviews.

I had been looking forward to it; Evelyn’s show had opened a couple of days before, and I knew there would be something. At worst, only a little mention; at best, something more fulsome. I didn’t know who’d be doing it; the Chronicle is always cagey about that, for some reason. It was the sort of show some young lad would be given to review, not important enough to justify paying some figure of influence. She was scarcely known, after all.

The reviews for your show had run the previous week and were dreadful, the letters from outraged colonels and academicians had followed. Your show was a perfect disaster critically, and a fine success in every other respect. In a matter of days, everybody in the country who cared for such things now knew the names of Gauguin, Seurat, Degas, and all the others.

I thought this boded well for Evelyn; she was likely to benefit from not being part of your group. Besides, I thought the critics would have exhausted their stock of vitriol on you, and would find it agreeable to say something nice for once. But no; they were having too good a time hurling abuse at the French, and most journals had passed her by to give over more space to you. Only the Chronicle ran a review, an anonymous one as occasionally they did. Better than nothing; any review at all was a good start. And the moment I started reading, I knew that you had written it. You have a style with words as distinct as any artist’s with paint. The way you cluster adjectives, the rhythm of the sentences, the complexity of your subclauses, each one diving into another so that the meaning is almost lost as your thought races on—no-one writes like you. I’m sure I wasn’t the only person who recognised it, although I could see why you didn’t want your authorship generally known. You liked to think of yourself as a gentleman, after all.

We are back to my hobby horse again. The surface and the instant impression. Meet you, and one imagines you to be the perfect gentleman. Meet Evelyn for the first time, run off a sketch of her, rely on the artist’s intuitive judgement and instant assessment and what do you get? A skinny little thing, who looks as though her lip might start trembling at any moment. Those slightly sloped shoulders; the sign of someone turning in on herself and afraid of reality. And sex, and femininity? Forget all that. A professional spinster, who would shudder should any man even think of touching her. A fearful timorous creature, easily broken. Inconsiderable, and not to be taken seriously. Some people stand alone because they are strong and disdain the world; others do so out of fear, desperate to belong and be accepted but not knowing how to do so, afraid of being spurned. One look and it was clear Evelyn was in the second category.

Thus the dubious insight of the modern artist. But look at her as Raphael might, that lover of women. Or Rembrandt, who saw people’s souls with his godlike gaze, or Vermeer, who could paint depths and levels of calm and show the turmoil within total placidity, and you see something different again. Then you see the brittleness, the force of will which impelled her to sacrifice everything for the single goal of being a painter. Not to make a living, not to be a success; those are low things, not worth the candle. But to follow her own instincts until she was content with what she produced. She wanted my biscuit tin, to get to that point which I have approached only once in my life. But her standards were higher than mine; she was one of those souls who can never be content in this life.

You can’t understand any of that; don’t even pretend you can. For you art is politics, and Evelyn would not bend to your will. Why is it that you have had so much trouble with women when you find men so easy to control? Do women have to be bullied in different ways? Is another style required, one which is beyond your skill? Your wife. Evelyn. Jacky. You failed with all of them. Did they perceive something we did not? Did they see a weakness known only to yourself?

Let me look at you. Do you know, I think I must have hit on it. You are truly angry at last. Was it the slip in mentioning Jacky, perhaps? After days of provocation, you have finally opened up to me. A new emotional register on your face, which I must take into account.

Come, come! Don’t be cross! I am only doing my job, you know. You have had it always too easy. No portraitist has ever pushed you this far; that’s why all the pictures of you I have seen are so terrible. Oh, fine for public presentation, I have no doubt. They would look good in the dining hall of your Cambridge College, or on the walls of the Athenaeum. But they present the public face, not the inner man. They have the personality and insight of an encomium. What was it Oliver Cromwell said to Walker? “I desire that you paint me warts and all.” Those other portraitists not only left out the warts, they didn’t even notice they were there. Nor did I first time round. But not this time, and I am determined the next will be even better.

No; that’s it for the day. I am tired, and you have been punished enough, I think. It is time we parted; I have my duties to perform.

Which ones? Oh, good heavens, there are so many of them on this island. I must make sure the tide is