The Ballet of Dr Caligari

by Reggie Oliver

  Marda stared at the Doctor. Some people, though evidently not the doctor, might have seen disgust, even fear in her eyes. After a pause, though, she nodded her consent.

  ‘Thank you, doctor,’ she said. ‘I’d like that.’

  LOVE AND DEATH

  There was something fascinating in this son of Love and Death.

  The Picture of Dorian Gray Chapter III

  ‘Mr Isaacs, I want you to find Love and Death for me.’

  I reminded Sir Joseph that I was not a detective.

  ‘I know that, but you were close to the man who painted it, and you are an artist yourself. Besides, I trust you. You will be well paid for your pains. Would I be correct in thinking that you might be in need of funds just at present?’

  He passed a quick appraising glance over my frayed cuffs and threadbare suit. In other men that look might have constituted an insult, but Sir Joseph Behrens was that treasurable rarity, a rich man with a heart and a conscience. He did not despise my poverty, nor did he pity it, he merely noted it as a friend might do. Sir Joseph, moreover, is a man of taste: he has been known to buy my paintings; more to the point, he had bought Love and Death for five thousand pounds and he wanted the painting back.

  When, some minutes later, I was shown out of Sir Joseph’s town house in Upper Brook Street, I knew the comforting sensations of one who has twenty gold sovereigns in his pocket, but I was also a prey to apprehension. How could I of all people unravel a mystery that had been baffling the police for months?

  Love and Death had been the sensation of the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition of 1885 and Sir Joseph had bought it at the Private View. Shortly after the close of the Exhibition both it and its creator, the artist Basil Hallward disappeared. Now all that remains of the painting, as far as the public is concerned, is a rather muddy reproduction of it in the Royal Academy catalogue. Like many others I saw it at the exhibition and remember it well.

  They say that George Frederick Watts painted his much lauded version of the same subject shortly afterwards to compete with Hallward’s masterpiece, to eclipse it if possible, but it is nothing like. Indeed, the two images are in some ways diametrical opposites, and, even though the Watts still exists to be seen, it is to my mind at least, a pale, paltry thing by comparison with Hallward’s Love and Death.

  In the Watts painting Death is a towering figure, looming over Love who cowers in his shadow. In Hallward’s work, as seen at the Royal Academy, Love is a naked man in the muscular pride of his youth. He stands in the foreground in the midst of a wild landscape beyond which the sun sets in glory, but he is chained by the left wrist to another figure, shrouded and of indeterminate sex who crouches on the ground to Love’s right and slightly behind him. Love casts a glance at the cowled figure of Death, and the expression on his face is—or should I say was?—one of the marvels of this work. It is agonised and yet somehow accepting, such an expression as you might have seen on the crucified Christ by one of the masters of the Mannerist period, except that Love is beardless and his hair a riot of bronze curls.

  I, Martin Isaacs, had been a pupil of Basil Hallward in my young days and used to mix colours in his studio for a while, and sometimes paint in the backgrounds for his portraits. After I had left to fend for myself we had stayed friends, though in later years he became more reclusive. However he still retained his position as one of the most fashionable portrait painters of his day. His other work, mostly landscape and ‘genre’ scenes, sold well, but I noticed that a certain dullness had entered into his canvases. They remained as accomplished as ever, but they generally lacked that spark of something which is to be found in his earlier work. You might call it ‘genius’, but I hesitate to employ that overused term by which critics pretend to explain the inexplicable.

  Basil once admitted to me that his art had lost its way, but when I pressed him for a reason for it he was silent. In anyone else, I would have said that a woman was at the bottom of it all, but Basil always gave the impression of being immune to strong emotional attachments, dedicated only to his art. In society he was faultlessly urbane, and his reputation was spotless, but there was something impenetrable about him, even to those, like myself, who were privileged to call ourselves his friends.

  One night a little over a year before his sudden and mysterious vanishing I was working late at my Chelsea studio. Whenever I can I prefer not to paint by artificial light, but I had for once a lucrative commission for a series of panels, depicting mythological subjects, to decorate a room of a well-known writer who lived in Tite Street. I was being well-paid for my work which would be much noticed and praised, but I had an exacting deadline to fulfil.

  As I was executing a delicate series of ripples on the water in a panel depicting Echo and Narcissus I heard a knocking on my door. Few people called on me this late; few people in all conscience called on me at all as I have something of Basil Hallward’s dedicated reticence in my nature. Putting down palette, brushes and mahl stick I went to the door. It was Basil. He wore a Homburg hat and a heavy greatcoat with an Astrakhan collar, and looked for all the world like a prosperous theatrical impresario. His face was flushed and he seemed to be in a state of high excitement.

  ‘My dear Martin,’ he said, ‘you must come with me at once. I have a cab waiting outside.’

  ‘But Basil,’ I said, noting that he wore evening clothes under his greatcoat, ‘I will have to change. I can’t accompany you like this,’ and I indicated my paint-stained smock.

  ‘Just take off your smock and put on an overcoat, Martin. We are not going anywhere respectable.’

  I had become used to Basil’s peremptory ways. In society he was all suavity, but with his closest friends—as close as any could be—he tended to be brusque. It was a kind of compliment to be so treated. When I had joined him in the cab he tapped on the roof with his stick and commanded the driver to take us to the Shoreditch Empire.

  ‘As you may know, I have a taste for low theatrical experiences.’ he said. ‘Some time ago a former friend introduced me to them.’ Then he was silent. I knew better than to pierce the veil of his self-absorption with any further enquiry, but recalled that some years back he had caused a sensation with a series of paintings portraying the life of music halls and other such haunts. One in particular, entitled The Juliet of a Night had excited a denunciation from the pulpit by no less a figure than the Dean of St Paul’s. Basil, with his usual mixture of impudence and canny discretion, had merely withdrawn the painting from exhibition without apology, sold it privately to a patron of his work, and moved on to a series of canvases depicting fashionable young ladies listening to sermons in fashionable churches. Whether there was any satirical intent in this move no-one knew, and Basil Hallward was characteristically tight-lipped on the subject.

  As the cab clattered eastwards, our surroundings became dingier and more oppressive, the gas lighting less frequent. At length we drew up in front of that palace of pleasure known as the Shoreditch Empire. It has since been rebuilt by Matcham in his inimitable style, but in those days it was a wild, noisy place, full of hissing gas jets and bevelled mirrors, smelling of sweat, stale beer and orange peel.

  An obsequious usher who evidently knew Basil showed us to what he was pleased to call a ‘box’ on the prompt side of the stage and some six feet above its level. It contained two rickety gilded fauteuils and had a heavy damask curtain which could be drawn across the front of the box to create an illusion of privacy. Basil dismissed the attendant with a sovereign and a request for champagne.

  I could not understand why Basil had dragged me there. The orchestra was vile, the audience (if that is the right word for the rabble in attendance) was raucous, malodorous and half drunk, and the turns were as witless and vulgar as any in London. As we arrived a statuesque woman of magnificent embonpoint in a sequinned gown was bawling out a number whose refrain was: ‘And he gets me behind with the rent!’ This was echoed by the congregation with loud cheers at each interminable repetition. When the cha
mpagne arrived it was corked, so Basil sent it back, but the replacement bottle was scarcely an improvement.

  The large lady was succeeded by a pair of painfully thin adagio dancers whose woeful act was almost immediately greeted with a chorus of whistles and catcalls from the pit. They were not so much given ‘the bird’, as a whole flock of them. The Chairman mounted the stage and hurried the dancers from the scene before announcing that ‘all the way from Italy, at Enormous Expense—’ here, Basil gripped my arm—‘the mighty Roman Hercules, Signor Torrigiano, will demonstrate for your especial delight and edification his astonishing feats of strength.’

  There was a flourish from the orchestra and the curtain parted to reveal a backcloth intended, I presumed, to depict classical antiquity. On the stage were displayed a number of pieces of equipment which usually accompany a ‘strong man’ act. Then, onto the scene stepped ‘the Roman Hercules’ himself.

  ‘Is this what we came to see?’ I asked. Basil merely nodded, his eyes fixed on the stage. I could sense excitement and tension in every muscle of his body.

  Torrigiano was indeed a fine specimen. He was, at a guess, in his mid-twenties and at the very peak of his physical prowess. His musculature was well toned but not excessive and he moved about the stage with a natural cat-like grace. He was tall and well proportioned while the features of his face, though they did not bespeak, I thought, high intelligence, were ruggedly handsome and topped by a mass of highly oiled bronze curls. He wore a loincloth over which was draped a leopard skin suspended from one shoulder.

  The act he performed was little different from the ones I had seen at circuses in my childhood, but Torrigiano’s physical perfection and the fluidity of his movements gave the ‘turn’ some distinction. I was mildly impressed but did not share Basil’s rapture. The audience was mainly quiet until the performer’s final tour de force which was to hold up above his head a long pole at either end of which were balanced two children—girl twins, I suspected—of about four. They wore white tights and spangled tunics. Their hair was curled and the same bronze colour as Torrigiano’s. With their big dark eyes, delicate features and golden complexion they looked like Raphael angels. The audience greeted this finale with considerable enthusiasm, and Basil was one with them, a look of childish delight on his face. Torrigiano bowed gracefully to the ovation, holding each child by the hand on either side of him and, as he lifted his head, I saw him cast a glance in our direction. It was an apprehensive, almost a furtive look. When he saw Basil’s vigorous applause and flushed face, he seemed relieved.

  He left the stage and was replaced by a comic with a red-nose and huge painted eyebrows who darted about the stage singing in a scratchy voice:

  ‘My hat’s a brown ’un, A brown ’un, A brown ’un,

  My hat’s a brown ’un—And don’t I look a toff!’

  During these inane proceedings Basil turned to me with shining eyes.

  ‘Well, what do you think?’

  ‘Of Young Hercules, you mean?’

  ‘But of course! Who else?’ The absurd song about the brown hat seemed to be wildly popular with the public below. Basil cast a look of furious scorn upon them and turned back to me.

  ‘A fine looking fellow certainly,’ I said.

  ‘But more than that. There is a spiritual quality, don’t you think? Something rough-hewn, utterly unaffected, but deep. He will bring my painting back to life. Martin, you don’t know how tired I am of these simpering society women with their weak chins and witless attitudes. And as for the men. . . ! I feel I have found true beauty again! He must pose for me!’

  ‘Have you asked him?’

  ‘Not yet! Not yet!’

  ‘He seemed to know you.’

  ‘I have been coming here every night since Thursday. Yesterday he was off but I was assured he would be here tonight. We must go back stage now.’

  ‘Do you really need me to be with you while you ask him to model for you?’

  ‘Martin, I am right, am I not? This fellow has something remarkable. We could make beautiful art from him, could we not?’

  ‘We?’

  ‘I mean I, but you could use him well too, couldn’t you? I will lend him to you. Come, there is no time to waste!’

  We hurried from the box while the song about the brown hat was still delighting the house. Basil took me to a pass door which led back stage and we descended a flight of rickety stairs. Below us was a seething mêlée of stage hands and artists. A troupe of performing dogs was being assembled in the wings to follow the comedian of the brown hat.

  Several people looked up at Basil as we descended, as he was evidently a ‘swell’ and a man of consequence. The Chairman, a large sweating man with a heavy moustache, and a watch chain substantial enough to choke a bull mastiff, approached us and asked if he could be of assistance.

  ‘I would be obliged to you if I could make the acquaintance of Signor Torrigiano.’

  ‘Certainly, sir. With pleasure, sir. And might I trouble you for your name?’

  ‘I am Basil Hallward.’ The Chairman looked blank. ‘The artist.’

  ‘An artiste? Indeed, sir? In what capacity? And where might I have seen you on the halls?’

  ‘I am a painter!’

  ‘Ah, yes, sir. Indeed, sir. This way, sir.’ Evidently the borders of Basil’s fame did not extend as far as Shoreditch.

  He led us out of the stage area to a wooden corridor where, leaning against one of the doors was a woman. The two Raphael angels, now clad in spotless white pinafores were clinging to her skirts. She was large, though not fat, jet-haired, handsome but heavy-featured. She eyed us with suspicion.

  ‘A gentleman to see your husband, my dear,’ said the Chairman.

  ‘He change,’ said the woman. She almost spat the words out at the Chairman, whom she clearly despised.

  ‘This is Mr Hallward, the artist. A painter, my dear.’

  The woman transferred her haughty glance to Basil, and began to look him up and down.

  ‘Why he wish to see my Franco?’

  Basil smiled, inclined his head and, indicating the children, said: ‘Your daughters, madam?’

  In response the woman merely drew the two girls closer in to her skirts. Just then the door opened and Franco Torrigiano emerged. He wore nothing but trousers held up by braces and a singlet and he was drying his hair with a cloth.

  It was this vision of him that impressed me more than his rather stilted incarnation as Hercules. He was like some superb animal, serenely unconscious of his beauty: innocent even. He looked at us with mild curiosity and made Basil a little bow. His wife approached him and, in a harsh whisper, addressed him rapidly in their native tongue. Torrigiano listened, his head cocked to one side serenely taking in her agitated diatribe. Then, laying one hand on her shoulder and the other on the head of one of his daughters he seemed to stem the tide of her discourse. Having done so he beckoned to Basil.

  ‘Signor, we talk?’

  Basil nodded and the pair of them walked up the corridor away from us while we remained behind. His wife looked at me and said: ‘You a painter also?’

  I nodded, surprised at her perspicacity. She seemed to divine my thoughts, for she gave a little contemptuous nod in the direction of my right hand on which I noticed there were still traces of the chrome yellow I had been using. For a moment her teeth were bared in a mocking smile and she almost laughed. Then one of her daughters asked her a question in Italian and she busied herself with her offspring. It was as if I no longer existed.

  When Basil and Torrigiano returned from their tête-a-tête they shook hands formally and Basil, with the curtest possible nod to the Chairman and a little gesture to me that I should follow, took his leave. When we were in the cab going west I asked if he and the Italian had come to an agreement.

  ‘He will come to me in the mornings to model for me, and has named his price,’ said Basil. He gave a short laugh. ‘He clearly knows his own value—or rather that witch of a wife does.’ After that h
e wrapped himself in silence till we were safely back in Chelsea.

  I heard nothing from Basil for almost a fortnight. Finally, one afternoon, I decided to call on him. Knowing his moods, I was quite prepared to be told by his servant Latimer that he was ‘not at home’; however when I arrived I was shown into his studio almost immediately. Basil greeted me warmly and expressed surprise that I had not called on him sooner. I had rarely seen him so animated; he seemed twenty years younger. I was reminded of the Basil I first knew when I came to his studio as an eager young acolyte.

  Around the walls of his studio were displayed a multitude of drawings, some charcoal, some in sanguine chalk, and a few vivid oil sketches on canvas. They all depicted the same subject, and one that I recognised immediately: Franco Torrigiano ‘the Roman Hercules’. Every one of his sketches pulsated with life. They looked as if they had been dashed off in an exultant frenzy, but their precision and perfect accuracy of proportion were astonishing. The sanguine drawings, mostly of Torrigiano’s head, were sensitive and delicate without being in any way effete; the charcoal sketches of his torso and lower body were powerful without crudity, and in his oil studies he had shown the man entire: golden and godlike in form, but also utterly human. They were a wonder to behold.

  My pleasure at seeing him so rejuvenated, so restored to his true artistic self was slightly mitigated by the fact that he had another visitor. Reclining on the divan of Persian saddle bags in the corner of the studio and wreathed in the smoke of the Balkan cigarettes that he habitually smoked was a long lean man with a saturnine expression, his dark hair and beard just beginning to be flecked with grey. I had met him once or twice before at Basil’s studio and at one of his exhibitions. I doubt, however, that he knew me by name, but I knew his: it was Lord Henry Wotton.