The Merciless Ladies

by Winston Graham

  ‘The rejected picture is now on view at the Ludwig Galleries. It is a portrait of a well-known society lady, and our art critic, John Grey, suggests that it shows the influence of early Byzantine art.

  ‘An official of the Royal Academy, interviewed later, declined to comment on the matter except to state that such an occurrence was not without precedent, and that the decision of the hanging committee must be accepted as final.’

  That evening Paul had two other callers from the Press and while he was disposing of one, the telephone-bell rang. I picked up the receiver.

  ‘Mr Stafford?’

  ‘Mr Stafford is engaged at the moment.’

  ‘Oh, is that Mr Grant? I thought I recognized your voice. This is Ludwig speaking.’

  I had recognized his voice too. ‘I don’t suppose Paul will be more than ten minutes. Shall I get him to ring you back?’

  ‘Well … I wonder if you’d help me by putting a little matter to Mr Stafford? That you are his good friend I know. I am feeling a trifle uneasy – more than a trifle uneasy, I might say, about this portrait of Mrs Marnsett. From an artistic point of view it is beautiful, yes. But I do feel it would be better hung upstairs.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘I was not here when Mr Stafford came in yesterday, but he insisted, Mr Abrahams says, insisted it should be hung with his historical paintings.’

  ‘Is there anything wrong with that?’ I asked, knowing now what he meant.

  ‘Well, Mr Grant, every one of his historical studies is of a lady of light virtue. They comprise a series. To break up that series and insert one modern portrait …’

  ‘Ye-es.’

  ‘I gather – well, we all know, don’t we? – that the painting has given some offence to the sitter. It seems a pity to make matters worse.’

  ‘I’ll speak to Mr Stafford about it as soon as I can and ring you back in half an hour.’

  ‘Thank you. I’d be obliged.’

  When I told Paul he stared at me and then laughed. ‘Well, that’s where Diana belongs, isn’t it? And downstairs is the best light. She’s where you can see in through the window.’

  ‘Ludwig obviously thinks you’re on delicate ground.’

  ‘Let’s stay on delicate ground. Fitzherbert was upright and decent and God-fearing. La Vallierè would never have treated a man as callously as Diana treated Leo.’

  ‘I suppose Ludwig feels that Marnsett is a man of influence and doesn’t want to be involved in anything which will give him a grudge against his galleries.’

  Paul got up and bit at his fingers.‘I’ll ring him back now. But the exhibition is mine and he agreed to hold it. That painting’s a good one and deserves the best position. That’s all that should matter to him. Diana has only herself to blame for pulling strings.’

  III

  In reading the reviews of the Academy Exhibition for that year it’s perfectly clear that most of the critics had taken the trouble, either before or after, to visit the Ludwig Galleries, four minutes’ walk away, and examine Paul’s rejected portrait for themselves. Certainly most of them in one way or another referred to it. Alfred Young, who had so long been Paul’s severest critic, was among those who said bluntly that the hanging committee had made a mistake.

  ‘Portraiture [he wrote] follows conventional lines … Apart from these there is little to remark, and one misses the vigorous if facile work of Stafford. In rejecting his portrait of the Hon. Mrs Brian Marnsett they have done art in this country a notable disservice. This picture would never be a popular one with the public – some might consider it distasteful – but we feel that its honesty and strength and originality put it above everything which is at present showing at Burlington House. For Stafford himself it is a complete break with tradition, and will tend to encourage those who long ago saw in him the beginning of a new movement in portraiture and who of late years have reluctantly felt that prophecy to be misplaced.’

  During the week I was at last able to snatch half an hour and take a look at the cause of all the trouble.

  It’s difficult, seeing a reproduction of it today, to appreciate the rather shocking impact it had when first shown. Art has moved far in fifty years. Not that the informed public was unaware of the brilliant and bizarre work which had been emerging from France and other parts of Europe for more than a quarter of a century – as Paul pointed out. Names like Braque, Picabia, Léger Picasso were becoming known. But by and large they were still not accepted. It wasn’t so many years since the first Post-Impressionist exhibition had opened in London and been greeted with derisive laughter.

  Nor, of course, was there a lack of unorthodox and unflattering portraits in history. Goya had even guyed the royal family on whom he depended for his patronage. But he was one of the ‘classics’. As of the mid-Nineteen-Twenties, in England, this sort of thing was not expected of a fashionable portrait painter exhibiting at the Royal Academy.

  The picture was a half-length of Diana sitting beside a table on which was a spray of carnations. There was no true perspective, the figure being fitted into a background of sharply defined areas of colour, almost like stained glass. Although quite out of proportion, the face was marvellously recognizable. All that old gift of caricature had come out – the hairline, eton-cropped, was hard as a convict’s, the plucked eyebrows described precisely the same downward arc as the sulky mouth; and lines on the pure dusky skin were where no lines yet existed but where, the viewer instantly saw, they were going to exist.

  ‘It’s not a picture’, I said to Paul, ‘that will gain you many commissions.’

  ‘Old John Grey says it reminds him of Velasquez’s portrait of Queen Mariana. I’ve never seen it but I’ll pin that up for a comparison.’

  We talked of other things for a few minutes, and then abruptly he came back to it. ‘ Of course I know most of our set – or her set – will think I’m tired of her and been deliberately insulting. Let ’em say so. It isn’t that, I tell you. She asked me to paint her and I did just that. I was bored with the idea at first – as I’ve begun to get stale and bored with the whole of my present job – but not bored with her particularly. I find her hardness, her shallowness, her selfishness, intolerable at times – but no more so than I find myself …’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why what? Why do I find myself shallow? Or rather when. When I contrast the money I make and the way I spend it with the Depression and the way maybe one in ten of the rest of us live. Of course, I don’t think of it often, and when I do I know I can do nothing to alter it. But now and then it eats into me. So …’

  ‘So you began to paint her.’

  ‘I began to paint her. I won’t inflict the word inspiration on you – especially something which may look – destructive – to you

  ‘I didn’t say so—’

  ‘But sometimes, quite unexpectedly, things fuse, reluctance becomes inclination, inclination takes flight. Some thing happens and from then on everything moves to one end. You don’t think of anybody else, I’m afraid; certainly not the sitter; and when it’s finished you’re released from the driving force; then you take the responsibility – get the praise or the blame, anything else that’s going. Of course … of course I know Diana particularly well: if something of that comes out, an understanding of her tricks and conceits and her discontent – then I’m to blame for that. But I assure you, it came from too deep inside me to be called deliberate, and it’s as much a criticism of myself as it is of her.’

  He stopped for a bit then and ran a hand over his face, as if apologetic for having talked at more length than usual.

  ‘Anyway’, he said. ‘My show closes next Saturday. She can have it then to do what she likes with. Or I’ll give it to old Marnsett as a parting gift.’

  This good intention never came off. The forces to arrest it were already in motion. On the Thursday Messrs Berriman, Smith & Berriman of Chancery Lane, acting on behalf of their client, the Hon. Mrs Brian Marnsett, issued a writ for lib
el against Mr Paul Stafford and claimed damages.

  Chapter Eight

  On a wet Friday afternoon in May I found myself sitting with Paul in the dingy offices of Messrs Jade & Freeman at an address mistakenly called New Square, EC4. Paul had asked me to go with him. The two gentlemen we were consulting were Mr Freeman and Mr Kidstone.

  Freeman, the senior partner, was a wizened, grey-haired man with a high frail voice and a fastidious expression as if a lifetime of acquaintance with the secrets of his fellow men had left him nauseated. Kidstone was blond and dapper and fat and in the middle thirties. He was a member of the Hanover Club and Paul had taken the writ to him.

  ‘Well’, said Mr Freeman. ‘It’s a very interesting case. Unique in the history of the law, I should think. Though there have been a few not dissimilar precedents. What surprises me is that the Ludwig Galleries is not jointly cited. I can’t see Berriman issuing a writ without including the owner of the premises on which the alleged libel was published.’

  ‘He must be acting on explicit instructions from the plaintiff’, said Kidstone. ‘ Though I don’t know quite what her motive can be.’

  ‘Perhaps’, said Paul, ‘ she looks on it as a private quarrel, to be settled privately.’

  ‘Settled’, said Freeman, looking up hopefully. ‘ Yes. I agree with you there. This is eminently a case not to take to court. There are too many pitfalls.’

  ‘When I spoke of its being settled’, said Paul, ‘I didn’t mean it in a legal sense. After all, if someone killed someone else in a duel, that would be called settled, wouldn’t it?’

  Mr Freeman coughed and turned over the papers in front of him. ‘There’s no doubt the writ has been skilfully and thoughtfully worded. Wouldn’t you agree, Kidstone? Of course, Mr Stafford, it’s unfortunate there should have been this initial quarrel over the painting between you and the plaintiff. It gives colour to the suggestion that malice entered into the hanging of the picture in that particular company. That would colour a jury’s view – if it ever came to a matter of a jury, which I trust it will not. Feelings may cool, Mr Stafford; in spite of what you say, feelings may cool.’

  ‘It would be for her to withdraw the charge’, said Paul. ‘I’m not able to guess whether her feelings will change in the next few weeks.’

  ‘Perhaps an adequate apology, phrased in words to be mutually agreed, might help her to – to salve present anger.’

  ‘No apology’, said Paul.

  ‘Ha – hmm. For the moment then we have to consider this little quarrel as if it will come to court … I take it from what you say that you wish us to enter a defence based on a simple plea of ‘‘no libel’’?’

  ‘I think so. As far as I understand it.’

  ‘But—’ I began.

  Paul waved me to silence.

  ‘I must tell you, Paul’, Kidstone said, ‘that if you restrict the defence in this way you’re very much limiting your chance of success. And I’m certain whatever counsel we approach will tell you the same.’

  The bad odour under Mr Freeman’s nose became more unpleasant. ‘Of course, I don’t know the full circumstances, but Mr Stafford may not be entirely wrong, Kidstone. There are special dangers to a plea of justification.’

  ‘Oh, I know. If it should go wrong, the plaintiffs damages will rocket. But how could it go wrong? Mrs Marnsett is a woman who’s hardly been noted for her observation of the conventions. If properly handled the case wouldn’t stand a chance of coming to court. The mere threat of justification would scare the daylights out of her.’

  Paul said: ‘ Tell me again what justification means.’

  ‘It means that the alleged libel is no libel because it is more or less the truth. It means a justification of the construction put upon the offending matter by the plaintiff. In this case, if reasonable proof is forthcoming that Mrs Marnsett is a woman of light virtue, the association of her name and portrait with the names and portraits of other women of light virtue constitutes no libel and that’s that.’

  ‘You mean if justification were forthcoming the case would collapse.’

  ‘Like a pack of cards. But of course Mr Freeman is right in that the proof would have to be convincing. British juries dislike attempted justification, especially against a woman, and a failure in this case would be disastrous. My point is that the mere threat of justification – if she isn’t a woman of impeccable virtue, and I gather she isn’t – would bring the case to a halt before it got off the ground.’

  ‘And if we stick to the other defence?’

  ‘Then it’s simply argued out on its merits. Is such an exhibition a libel or not? I tend to think a judge will say yes. But if we get a good KC he may be able to bring Mrs Marnsett’s character into the issue without actually attacking it. I’d say we had a fifty-fifty chance.’

  Freeman said: ‘Certainly I would advise a few preliminary inquiries into Mrs M’s character. That can do no harm and will give us a better view of the situation.’

  Paul was silent for some moments, biting his lower lip. ‘No’, he said. ‘Leave the woman’s character out of it. This is a straightforward quarrel over a painting. She’s a fool, but no libel was intended, so let the defence be based on that.’

  ‘Hm’, said Mr Freeman. ‘Hm. Hm. Hm.’

  ‘You may find chivalry expensive, Paul’, said Kidstone,

  ‘but if that’s how you want it, let’s see how it goes. In the meantime we must brief the best man we can to look after it.’

  ‘Whom do you suggest?’

  We all looked at Freeman, who rubbed the place where his hair should have been.

  ‘Sir Philip Bagshawe is the top man.’

  Paul grunted. ‘I’ve only seen him twice, but I don’t like the frontal bones of his head.’

  ‘One thing we ought to consider’, said Freeman, ‘is that if we don’t retain him the other side almost certainly will.’

  Paul stretched forward for a piece of blotting-paper and made some pencil lines on it. This he handed to the senior partner.

  ‘D’you see what I mean?’

  ‘Ha. Hm’, said the senior partner, and blinked. ‘ Well, there’s Bartlett and … whom do you suggest, Kidstone?’

  ‘There’s Raymond Hart’, said Kidstone.

  ‘Hart?’ said Paul. ‘Yes, I’ve played poker with him. Not a bad fellow.’

  ‘We’ll approach him’, said Freeman. ‘We’ve not done much with him but he’s certainly a coming man. I’ll make an approach and see what he thinks. Eh?’

  ‘What’s the normal amount of delay in a case like this?’ I asked.

  Freeman said: ‘The lists are pretty full.’

  ‘Not as bad as sometimes’, said Kidstone. ‘ I was looking yesterday. We might get on about the middle of the Michaelmas term.’

  ‘Michaelmas?’ said Paul. ‘ That’s the autumn.’

  ‘Yes. Possibly early November.’

  ‘Good God.’

  Mr Freeman smiled thinly. ‘ It will have to go on the special jury list. But, after all, it will give that much longer, won’t it, for feelings to cool?’ It was clear that he was firmly of the opinion that this case, one way or another, must never come to court.

  Kidstone saw us down the dirty, narrow, creaking, uncarpeted staircase.

  ‘The law has a funny lopsided sort of wisdom’, he said. ‘ Nothing quite works as one thinks it should, but the proper end is quite often achieved. The longer experience you have of it the more you come to see that. Will you be in the Hanover this evening, Paul?’

  II

  In silence we walked through the rain to where Paul’s grey and silver Rover waited. We climbed in, and Paul offered me a cigarette.

  ‘Well?’ he said.

  ‘Well, what d’you expect me to say? To congratulate you on your idiocy?’

  ‘Idiocy?’

  ‘Well, chivalry, as Kidstone calls it! For God’s sake, Paul! I was sitting there like a kettle on the boil, wondering what the hell you were up to!’

&nbs
p; ‘And now you’re letting off steam, eh?’

  ‘Why did you invite me and expect me to be a party to this nonsense? Of course you must justify!’

  He started the engine but did not at once drive off. ‘How?’ he said. ‘Send for Leo to talk about a passion five years cold?’

  ‘You know very well that Leo was not the only one – nor the last one.’

  ‘And what proof have I? One hears a lot – and sometimes Diana talks too much; but I haven’t kept tags on everything she’s done. It’s not been that sort of a friendship, Bill. Anyway, Diana had a shock over the affair with Leo. Old Marnsett dug in his heels, and she’s been more circumspect since.’

  ‘With you?’ I said.

  He turned his car out of the square and through the old gate. Then he had to stop while a lorry was turning.

  ‘It rakes two to make love as well as a quarrel.’

  ‘But one can usually provoke it.’

  He smiled.‘OK. True enough. Of course I was Diana’s lover in the early days. Since the break-up with Olive we’ve been – just good friends. Though twice – I have to confess twice – the friendship has led us into the bedroom.’

  ‘Well, it’s damned ridiculous!’ I said. ‘It’s ludicrous – a woman claiming that you have damaged her reputation by hanging her portrait among light women, when she knows you only have to open your mouth to prove that she is one!’

  ‘It’s not quite as easy as that, old boy. Even supposing I wanted to open my mouth, as you elegantly call it, what proof have I? We didn’t exactly alert the parlour maid! And wouldn’t the jury think me a fine fellow trying to justify without proof in that way! Great!’

  We moved off again. I frowned out of the window. ‘But – but … Kidstone says – the mere threat should be more than enough. If she were to get away with this, the thing could cost you thousands … See the name of this street we’re going through now? Carey Street. I don’t want to see you ending up here.’