by George Moore
As if she guessed that he had not been lucky with painting, she spoke to him of friends, theatres, operas, and so hearty was her interest in the passing show, that he began to wonder if she really cared for painting at all, or took any real interest in art, or was she tired of him? Her abrupt departure, too, caused him further uneasiness, but he conducted her to her carriage and bade her good-bye, letting her go without making an appointment for the next day. When he was going to see her again he did not know, and it did not much matter; he was done for. It was in this mood that he returned to the studio, and pulled out his canvas to look at it in the fading light, but not in any hope that he might be mistaken regarding its value. He wished to know the worst — that was all: and while he sat thinking of his rocks, Lucy was on her way to Mr. Carver, a plan having begun in her mind that some means must be discovered to distract Lewis’s thoughts from his picture. He must think of other pictures, and the only way to win his thoughts from Daphnis and Chloe was a commission from Mr. Carver, his first patron, to paint a set of decorative panels, sea nymphs and Tritons blowing conch shells, a thing to hang above the fireplace of a long Venetian dining-room. He would be able to paint these pictures without any difficulty, and as soon as he had finished this, Mr. Carver would ask him to paint a family group, or separate portraits of himself, his wife, and his sons and daughters. Lewis’s own original talent could be won back in time, she had no doubt, and she lay back in the brougham looking forward to the interview with Mr. Carver.
The time was late and the Bond Street shop would be closed; but he lived in a street close by, in Saville Row; she would go there and interview him, and a few minutes afterwards the brougham stopped, and she was shown up to the drawing-room, which seemed to her to differ very little from the shop in Bond Street, so filled was it with rare china, ormolu clocks, and eighteenth-century French pictures. She remembered having seen one of the clocks in the Bond Street shop, Mr. Carver having drawn her attention to it. He had urged her to buy it; she had liked the clock, and did not know why she hadn’t bought it. She might buy it still, it seemed, for the first words he spoke on entering the room were: “I’m glad to see you looking at that clock, Mrs. Bentham; I like it so much myself that I had it brought up from the shop, and got a good talking to for doing so, for my wife says that once a thing comes up from the shop it never goes back again. ‘But as soon as my fancy wears off—’ I said. ‘That will never be,’ Mrs. Carver replied tartly.”
“You have many beautiful things here,” Lucy remarked at the first pause.
“Yes; this room is my taste, Mrs. Bentham — the shop is public taste. I’d like you to have another look at the clock.”
“Yes, but that must be for another day, Mr. Carver. I have come to talk to you about something different, and I must apologise for coming here and not waiting till to-morrow morning; but you see, to-morrow morning I shall be very busy. I am going down to Claremont House.”
“Ah, yes; I remember Claremont House. I hope you’re satisfied with Mr. Seymour’s decorations?”
“Quite satisfied.”
“Won’t you sit down, Mrs. Bentham? The chairs are worth sitting on — Louis XVI.”
“But are you sure, Mr. Carver, that you can spare me ten minutes? I feel that I’m intruding upon—”
“Not in the least, Mrs. Bentham. At your service, at your complete service.”
“Well, Mr. Carver, you have just said that you remember introducing me to Mr. Seymour and my giving him an order to decorate the ballroom at Claremont House; I shall always be grateful to you for your choice: Mr. Seymour’s decorations are a great success; everybody who has seen them admires them. And what is more important, they were the means whereby he acquired an artistic education. He said he didn’t think he could invest the money he had earned more profitably than by going to Paris to study drawing in the French schools. His intentions were excellent, but I’m afraid things have not turned out as he expected.”
“Paris is a very dangerous place for a young man, and I hope that Mr. Seymour has not — So far as I know, his conduct has always been above reproach.” Mr. Carver’s face assumed a puzzled expression and Lucy continued:
“No, his misfortune cannot be attributed to a dancing-girl or to a grisette — at least, not so far as I know.” Mr. Carver held up his hand: how could she know anything of such matters! “You would never guess,” she continued, “he has very nearly lost all his talent; but it can be regained, I think and hope.”
“Lost all his talent?”
“Yes. You see, Mr. Carver, the education that is measured out at the Beaux-Arts is not suitable to every talent; it seems to me to be a sort of grinding-stone very apt to take the edge off a talent. Not of all talents, of course.”
“Ah, now I’m beginning to understand you, Mrs. Bentham: after a long course of study Mr. Seymour has come back — how shall we put it? — a little tired.”
“He has taken a studio in the Vale — you know the Vale, King’s Road, Chelsea.”
Mr. Carver bowed, and Lucy continued: “He was at first embarrassed to find a subject for a picture. He’d like to exhibit in the Royal Academy, and his talent being of the classical turn, he sought for a classical subject, and found one in a story called Daphnis and Chloe.”
“A most charming story, Mrs. Bentham; I know it well.”
“He has been redrawing the two figures for the last two months, recomposing the group, painting and scraping out what he painted, and beginning again.”
“And you think, Mrs. Bentham, that it would be well that he should put aside that canvas, and start upon something else — something lighter, easier?”
“You have interpreted my meaning exactly, Mr. Carver, and I’ve come to ask you to commission him to paint two overdoors; you know the style of things — sea nymphs and Tritons blowing conch shells, Mr. Carver; nymphs tressing their hair.”
“To complete his decorations at Claremont House?”
“The decorations at Claremont House are completed; no, that isn’t my intention. My intention was to ask you to commission him to paint these two overdoors.”
An almost imperceptible change came into Mr. Carver’s face, and noticing it she added: “And my intention in giving this commission is to encourage Mr. Seymour, who is suffering from a fit of depression. It would, therefore, be well if you did not mention my name, but allowed Mr. Seymour to think that the commission came from you. My obligation to you will still further increase if you will take charge of the pictures for me.”
“Or sell them,” Mr. Carver interjected, “if a purchaser should come along. Every time a painter sells a picture he enlarges his custom.”
“I think it would be well for you to sell the pictures, if you can find a purchaser; you will naturally exercise your own discretion and judgment in this matter.”
“You can count upon me, Mrs. Bentham, to nurture his talent; a talent must be nurtured, and so fine a talent as Mr. Seymour’s requires a good deal of nurturing. It shall be our mutual pleasure to bring it to maturity. His foster-parents,” he added, without a suspicion that his tone was a little too familiar. “One possessed,” he said, “of the Venetian secret for decoration, born again in a northern climate, come down through the ages from Pompeii, transmitted through Botticelli onward to Venice, and away again through France, to reappear in the Vale; “ and Mrs. Bentham listened to his eulogies with so evident a pleasure that he continued them till, remembering suddenly that his dinner hour was approaching, he said: “You can count upon me, Mrs. Bentham, to carry this thing through; and when the two overdoors have been executed I would advise, if I may be permitted to offer a word of advice—”
“Pray do, Mr. Carver.”
“Well, since you are so kind, Mrs. Bentham, I would suggest that I continue from time to time to give Mr. Seymour little commissions, and these pictures can be put away until the time when Mr. Seymour becomes recognised at the Academy, and then the little exhibition of his early work might do well, and might repay b
oth of us.”
“You think, then, that Mr. Seymour has a real talent, one that will come to fruition?”
“Should I have recommended him to decorate your ballroom if I had not faith in his talent?” And still talking of his belief in Lewis Seymour’s genius, Mr. Carver conducted Mrs. Bentham to the front door, and she drove away in her brougham with a feeling of warm pleasure about her heart.
CHAP. XXVI.
AS HE SAT pondering on the wreck of his picture, a knock at the front door reverberated through the house, and he began to ask himself who the visitor might be, for the knock sounded like one, and any were welcome, for he was weary of himself and art. His picture he must turn to the wall: it must not be seen, for no explanation would conceal the fact that he had failed.... “Who can have come to see me at this hour, and before the breakfast things have been taken away?” A man’s voice reached him — Carver’s! and the voice called to mind the rotund figure, the portentous nose, the rich brown beard with golden hair in it; and Lewis waited nervously, but glad on the whole to meet the architect of his fortunes again, “Such as they are,” he said to himself as he handed the great Jew a chair, who steering himself into it, began in a deep voice, in which there was, however, a note of falsetto, to tell Lewis that he had alighted on as pretty a perch as he had seen for a long day.
“On a lease of twenty-one years, I hope,” he said, “for the owner of this property will sooner or later begin to think that the ten acres might be developed, and, from the little I’ve been able to gather in a first look round, these might, with judicious handling, be made to produce twice as much as the present rental.”
“You’re looking ahead. Where shall I be in twenty years hence?” Lewis answered.
And Carver repeated: “Twenty-one years pass more quickly than anybody would believe to be possible.” Lewis listened vaguely to Mr. Carver’s apprehensions; and his indifference becoming apparent to Mr. Carver, he broke off the conversation with: “You are painting some beautiful pictures here! Nymphs, of course. Lucky fellows you artists are, with your paint-pots, your easels, and your models. Quite Georgian,” he said, looking round the room. “I like the colour — apple green.” And rising to his feet he walked to and fro. Lewis heard him muttering to himself:— “Patting their bottoms”; and feeling the words to impugn his sincerity as an artist, he answered somewhat hotly. Carver laughed, and, producing a cigar case, fell to telling some racy stories, to which Lewis listened with grace, for he had begun to suspect that Carver had come to see him on a matter of business. “Much pleasanter here than the Bond Street shop. And to think that it all came out of my shop! A very pretty piece of carving, too, you are,” he added, staring at Lewis, his large red lips showing through his brown moustache. “And it was a lucky day for me, too, that old Jacobs took the panel to you: Mrs. Bentham tells me she is delighted with your decorations. I’m going down to see them next week. She has invited me — does that astonish you?”
“Why should it astonish me that Mrs. Bentham should like to show you my decorations?” Carver had never seemed to him so rude or so vulgar before; but he had come to see him on a matter of business, so there was nothing for it but patience, and not wishing to appear too solicitous, he began to talk to Mr. Carver about the decorations, telling him the difficulties he had to overcome and how he had overcome them. “I wish you’d put me on to another ballroom—”
“I dare say, I dare say, but Mrs. Benthams are not going every day.”
“The money she paid me,” Lewis continued, “was all invested in education: two years in the studio in the Passage des Panoramas, the evening classes at Les Beaux-Arts; Evon’s class”; and he related that the right of entry to Evon’s was decided by competitive examination. He had passed in twenty-fifth; “over the heads of much older men,” he said. “If you could get me some more decorations to do, I’d be able to show you what I can do.”
It did not seem to Lewis that Carver showed sufficient astonishment; and, afraid that he might ask to see some of his new work, Lewis complained of a certain staleness. Eight hours, sometimes ten hours a day, he said, had improved his handicraft in a certain direction, but the great profit he had derived from his sojourn in France was the knowledge that he had obtained of the decorative art of the eighteenth century. The schools of Boucher and Fragonard, he affirmed, could not be studied outside of the Louvre. “The money I received — two hundred and fifty pounds — for the decorations” (he had received four hundred, but thought it would be as well to dock a hundred pounds; it was not likely that Lucy had mentioned the sum of money she had paid him) “carried me over the two years I spent in Paris.”
“And for it to carry you over two years in Paris, you must have lived very frugally indeed!” Mr. Carver interjected solemnly.
A little embarrassed by Mr. Carver’s solemnity, which seemed to him somewhat portentous, Lewis threw himself on Carver’s generosity.
“You’ve helped me so far; perhaps you will help me to the end,” he said. “For my position in London is not secure. If, for instance, you could get me some portraits to do.”
“That will come later,” Mr. Carver answered. “What I have to do first is to ask you to do me a favour.”
“A favour?” Lewis answered. “How can I do you a favour?”
“Well, in this way. Of course, the prices you ask now are very different from those which you were willing to take two years ago; and a customer of mine has been talking to me about some overdoors; and the moment she began to tell me the kind of overdoors she wanted, I began to think of you. But, I said to myself, he’ll be wanting very big prices indeed; and then it occurred to me that perhaps, after all, you might not have forgotten that one good turn deserves another. It was I that gave you a start, and you might be willing, I said to myself, to oblige me. Now, what do you say to two hundred pounds apiece for the overdoors? You’ll be doing me a favour, Mr. Seymour.”
Lewis strove to keep calm. The overdoors would not take more than three weeks, a month at the most, and two overdoors would help him to forget the unfortunate “Daphnis and Chloe.”
“Of course, Mr. Carver, I shall be only too pleased to undertake any work you choose to bring me. You mentioned two hundred pounds apiece for the overdoors. A very fair price this seems to me; too much, in fact, considering how much I owe you already. If you like—”
“Oh, I couldn’t think of underpaying you. It isn’t to be thought of, Mr. Seymour; not to be thought of. If you will do me the overdoors at two hundred pounds apiece, I shall be very grateful to you. Now let us talk of other things. I’d like to see your house. Apple green, with yellow window-frames. Beautiful! You’ve some very nice things about in the way of furniture, and will remember when you want some French clocks that there is a shop in Bond Street where these articles are to be found. Not another word more! All this house wants is a little more furniture. What do you say to a nice Aubusson carpet for your studio? They are very cheap at present. I could get you one for twenty pounds, and a beauty.”
Lewis agreed that an Aubusson carpet under apple-green walls, particularly if there was a little green in the carpet, would be a charming addition to the already charming appearance of his house.
He took Mr. Carver over each room, and then they walked into the garden.
“Under your own vine and fig trees,” Mr. Carver said. “A wonderful place this Vale is, and I’m not sure that you aren’t right to leave it in its tangled aspects. A woman would like flowers”; and talking of Mrs. Carver and his daughters, they bent their steps in the direction of the King’s Road.
“You’ll start the overdoors as soon as you can; my customers—”
“Immediately I return to the house I shall make a sketch, Mr. Carver.”
Mr. Carver waved his hand, and Lewis returned wondering at his good fortune. Carver had given him the dimensions, and with a sheet of paper in front of him, the afternoon passed away agreeably amid dreams of nymphs and Cupids, arrows, masks, and Kitty’s delightful little bo
dy. It supplied a hint enough for one nymph; her baby brother gave him all that he required for a Cupid; and ideas coming abundantly and freely, he lay down in his bed regretting that Carver had not ordered many more overdoors.
He arose from his bed eager, and the day passed in pleasant contentment; and at the end of the week he sat down to write to Lucy all about his good fortune and his pleasure in painting overdoors. Mr. Carver was summoned at the end of three weeks to admire. He placed his hands on Lewis’s shoulders: “Admirable!” he said. “The genius of Boucher and Fragonard has descended upon you; or perhaps I should have said, the genius of Fragonard and Boucher has risen up within you.”
“What you say is very kind, Mr. Carver, and I’m sure I’m very pleased that you like these decorations, but I’d not have you think that my talent is limited to overdoors and such-like. It is true that I had a misfortune with a picture, when you came to me with the order for these overdoors, and was feeling very miserable about it. But while doing the overdoors, new ideas have come to me, and I think I shall be able to bring a fresh eye to the picture.”
“But it is only three weeks or a month since you have put it aside. Wouldn’t it be better to leave it by for a much longer period?”
“It would, indeed, Mr. Carver,” Lewis answered, “but I must do something. If you had any more overdoors—”
