Of Human Bondage W. Somerset Maugham (epub e reader txt) 📖

his works for Velasquez’ head of Philip IV in the National Gallery. Philip found that a discussion on art was raging. Lawson, whom he had met at luncheon, sat opposite to him. He was a thin youth with a freckled face and red hair. He had very bright green eyes. As Philip sat down he fixed them on him and remarked suddenly:

“Raphael was only tolerable when he painted other people’s pictures. When he painted Peruginos or Pinturichios he was charming; when he painted Raphaels he was,” with a scornful shrug, “Raphael.”

Lawson spoke so aggressively that Philip was taken aback, but he was not obliged to answer because Flanagan broke in impatiently.

“Oh, to hell with art!” he cried. “Let’s get ginny.”

“You were ginny last night, Flanagan,” said Lawson.

“Nothing to what I mean to be tonight,” he answered. “Fancy being in Pa-ris and thinking of nothing but art all the time.” He spoke with a broad Western accent. “My, it is good to be alive.” He gathered himself together and then banged his fist on the table. “To hell with art, I say.”

“You not only say it, but you say it with tiresome iteration,” said Clutton severely.

There was another American at the table. He was dressed like those fine fellows whom Philip had seen that afternoon in the Luxembourg. He had a handsome face, thin, ascetic, with dark eyes; he wore his fantastic garb with the dashing air of a buccaneer. He had a vast quantity of dark hair which fell constantly over his eyes, and his most frequent gesture was to throw back his head dramatically to get some long wisp out of the way. He began to talk of the Olympia by Manet, which then hung in the Luxembourg.

“I stood in front of it for an hour today, and I tell you it’s not a good picture.”

Lawson put down his knife and fork. His green eyes flashed fire, he gasped with rage; but he could be seen imposing calm upon himself.

“It’s very interesting to hear the mind of the untutored savage,” he said. “Will you tell us why it isn’t a good picture?”

Before the American could answer someone else broke in vehemently.

“D’you mean to say you can look at the painting of that flesh and say it’s not good?”

“I don’t say that. I think the right breast is very well painted.”

“The right breast be damned,” shouted Lawson. “The whole thing’s a miracle of painting.”

He began to describe in detail the beauties of the picture, but at this table at Gravier’s they who spoke at length spoke for their own edification. No one listened to him. The American interrupted angrily.

“You don’t mean to say you think the head’s good?”

Lawson, white with passion now, began to defend the head; but Clutton, who had been sitting in silence with a look on his face of good-humoured scorn, broke in.

“Give him the head. We don’t want the head. It doesn’t affect the picture.”

“All right, I’ll give you the head,” cried Lawson. “Take the head and be damned to you.”

“What about the black line?” cried the American, triumphantly pushing back a wisp of hair which nearly fell in his soup. “You don’t see a black line round objects in nature.”

“Oh, God, send down fire from heaven to consume the blasphemer,” said Lawson. “What has nature got to do with it? No one knows what’s in nature and what isn’t! The world sees nature through the eyes of the artist. Why, for centuries it saw horses jumping a fence with all their legs extended, and by Heaven, sir, they were extended. It saw shadows black until Monet discovered they were coloured, and by Heaven, sir, they were black. If we choose to surround objects with a black line, the world will see the black line, and there will be a black line; and if we paint grass red and cows blue, it’ll see them red and blue, and, by Heaven, they will be red and blue.”

“To hell with art,” murmured Flanagan. “I want to get ginny.”

Lawson took no notice of the interruption.

“Now look here, when Olympia was shown at the Salon, Zola⁠—amid the jeers of the Philistines and the hisses of the pompiers, the academicians, and the public, Zola said: ‘I look forward to the day when Manet’s picture will hang in the Louvre opposite the Odalisque of Ingres, and it will not be the Odalisque which will gain by comparison.’ It’ll be there. Every day I see the time grow nearer. In ten years the Olympia will be in the Louvre.”

“Never,” shouted the American, using both hands now with a sudden desperate attempt to get his hair once for all out of the way. “In ten years that picture will be dead. It’s only a fashion of the moment. No picture can live that hasn’t got something which that picture misses by a million miles.”

“And what is that?”

“Great art can’t exist without a moral element.”

“Oh God!” cried Lawson furiously. “I knew it was that. He wants morality.” He joined his hands and held them towards heaven in supplication. “Oh, Christopher Columbus, Christopher Columbus, what did you do when you discovered America?”

“Ruskin says⁠ ⁠…”

But before he could add another word, Clutton rapped with the handle of his knife imperiously on the table.

“Gentlemen,” he said in a stern voice, and his huge nose positively wrinkled with passion, “a name has been mentioned which I never thought to hear again in decent society. Freedom of speech is all very well, but we must observe the limits of common propriety. You may talk of Bouguereau if you will: there is a cheerful disgustingness in the sound which excites laughter; but let us not sully our chaste lips with the names of J. Ruskin, G. F. Watts, or E. B. Jones.”

“Who was Ruskin anyway?” asked Flanagan.

“He was one of the Great Victorians. He was a master of English style.”

“Ruskin’s style⁠—a thing of shreds and purple patches,” said Lawson. “Besides, damn the Great Victorians.