Читать книгу General Bramble (WWI Centenary Series) - Andre Maurois - Страница 11

CHAPTER I.

PORTRAITS

“As to what the picture represents, that depends upon who looks at it.”—Whistler.

The French Mission in its profound wisdom had sent as liaison officer to the Scottish Division a captain of Dragoons whose name was Beltara.

“Are you any relation to the painter, sir?” Aurelle, the interpreter, asked him.

“What did you say?” said the dragoon. “Say that again, will you? You are in the army, aren’t you? You are a soldier, for a little time at any rate? and you claim to know that such people as painters exist? You actually admit the existence of that God-forsaken species?”

And he related how he had visited the French War Office after he had been wounded, and how an old colonel had made friends with him and had tried to find him a congenial job.

“What’s your profession in civilian life, capitaine?” the old man had asked as he filled in a form.

“I am a painter, sir.”

“A painter?” the colonel exclaimed, dumbfounded. “A painter? Why, damn it all!”

And after thinking it over for a minute he added, with the kindly wink of an accomplice in crime, “Well, let’s put down nil, eh? It won’t look quite so silly.”

Captain Beltara and Aurelle soon became inseparable companions. They had the same tastes and different professions, which is the ideal recipe for friendship. Aurelle admired the sketches in which the painter recorded the flexible lines of the Flemish landscape; Beltara was a kindly critic of the young man’s rather feeble verses.

“You would perhaps be a poet,” he said to him, “if you were not burdened with a certain degree of culture. An artist must be an idiot. The only perfect ones are the sculptors; then come the landscape painters; then painters in general; after them the writers. The critics are not at all stupid; and the really intelligent men never do anything.”

“Why shouldn’t intelligence have an art of its own, as sensibility has?”

“No, my friend, no. Art is a game; intelligence is a profession. Look at me, for instance; now that I no longer touch my brushes, I sometimes actually catch myself thinking; it’s quite alarming.”

“You ought to paint some portraits here, mon capitaine. Aren’t you tempted? These sunburnt British complexions——”

“Of course, my boy, it is tempting; but I haven’t got my things with me. Besides, would they consent to sit?”

“Of course they would, for as long as you like. To-morrow I’ll bring round young Dundas, the aide-de-camp. He’s got nothing to do; he’ll be delighted.”

Next day Beltara made a three-crayon sketch of Lieutenant Dundas. The young aide-de-camp turned out quite a good sitter; all he asked was to be allowed to do something, which meant shouting his hunting cries, cracking his favourite whip and talking to his dog.

“Ah,” said Aurelle, at the end of the sitting, “I like that immensely—really. It’s so lightly touched—it’s a mere nothing, and yet the whole of England is there.”

And, waving his hands with the ritual gestures of the infatuated picture-lover, he praised the artlessness of the clear, wide eyes, the delightful freshness of the complexion, and the charming candour of the smile.

But the Cherub planted himself in front of his portrait, struck the classical pose of the golfer, and, poising his arms and hitting at an imaginary ball, pronounced judgment on the work of art with perfect frankness.

“My God,” he said, “what an awful thing! How the deuce did you see, old man, that my breeches were laced at the side?”

“What on earth can that matter?” asked Aurelle, annoyed.

“Matter! Would you like to be painted with your nose behind your ear? My God! It’s about as much like me as it is like Lloyd George.”

“Likeness is quite a secondary quality,” said Aurelle condescendingly. “The interesting thing is not the individual; it is the type, the synthesis of a whole race or class.”

“In the days when I was starving in my native South,” said the painter, “I used to paint portraits of tradesmen’s wives for a fiver. When I had done, the family assembled for a private view. ‘Well,’ said the husband, ‘it’s not so bad; but what about the likeness, eh? You put it in afterwards, I suppose?’ ‘The likeness?’ I indignantly replied. ‘The likeness? My dear sir, I am a painter of ideals; I don’t paint your wife as she is, I paint her as she ought to be. Your wife? Why, you see her every day—she cannot interest you. But my painting—ah, you never saw anything like my painting!’ And the tradesman was convinced, and went about repeating in every café on the Cannebière, ‘Beltara, mon bon, is the painter of ideals; he does not paint my wife as she is, he paints her as she ought to be.’”

“Well,” interrupted young Lieutenant Dundas, “if you can make my breeches lace in front, I should be most grateful. I look like a damned fool as it is now!”

The following week Beltara, who had managed to get hold of some paints, made excellent studies in oil of Colonel Parker and Major Knight. The major, who was stout, found his corporation somewhat exaggerated.

“Yes,” said the painter, “but with the varnish, you know——”

And with an expressive movement of his hands he made as if to restore the figure to more normal dimensions.

The colonel, who was lean, wanted to be padded out.

“Yes,” said Beltara, “but with the varnish, you know——”

And his hands, moving back again, gave promise of astonishing expansions.

Having regained a taste for his profession, he tried his hand at some of the finest types in the Division. His portraits met with various verdicts; each model thought his own rotten and the others excellent.

The Divisional Squadron Commander found his boots badly polished. The C.R.E. commented severely on the important mistakes in the order of his ribbons; the Legion of Honour being a foreign order should not have preceded the Bath, and the Japanese Rising Sun ought to have followed the Italian Order for Valour.

The only unqualified praise came from the sergeant-major who acted as chief clerk to General Bramble. He was a much-beribboned old warrior with a head like a faun and three red hairs on top of it. He had the respectful familiarity of the underling who knows he is indispensable, and he used to come in at all times of the day and criticize the captain’s work.

“That’s fine, sir,” he would say, “that’s fine.”

After some time he asked Aurelle whether the captain would consent “to take his photo.” The request was accepted, for the old N.C.O.’s beacon-like countenance tempted the painter, and he made a kindly caricature.

“Well, sir,” the old soldier said to him, “I’ve seen lots of photographer chaps the likes of you—I’ve seen lots at fairs in Scotland—but I’ve never seen one as gives you a portrait so quick.”

He soon told General Bramble of the painter’s prowess; and as he exercised a respectful but all-powerful authority over the general, he persuaded him to come and give the French liaison officer a sitting.

The general proved an admirable model of discipline. Beltara, who was very anxious to be successful in this attempt, demanded several sittings. The general arrived punctually, took up his pose with charming deliberation, and when the painter had done, said “Thank you,” with a smile, and went away without saying another word.

“Look here,” Beltara said to Aurelle, “does this bore him or not? He hasn’t come one single time to look at what I have done. I can’t understand it.”

“He’ll look at it when you’ve finished,” Aurelle replied. “I’m sure he’s delighted, and he’ll let you see it when the time comes.”

As a matter of fact after the last sitting, when the painter had said “Thank you, sir, I think I could only spoil it now,” the general slowly descended from the platform, took a few solemn steps round the easel, and stared at his portrait for some minutes.

“Humph!” he said at length, and left the room.

Dr. O’Grady, who was a man of real artistic culture, seemed somehow to understand that keeping decorations in their correct order is not the only criterion of the beauty of a portrait. The grateful Beltara proposed to make a sketch of him, and during the sitting was pleased to find himself in agreement with the doctor upon many things.

“The main point,” said the painter, “is to see simply—outlines, general masses. The thing is not to copy nature with childish minuteness.”

“No, of course not,” replied the doctor. “Besides, it can’t be done.”

“Of course it can’t, because nature is so endlessly full of details which can never all be considered. The thing is to suggest their presence.”

“Quite so,” said the doctor.

But when he came to gaze upon the face he loved so well, and saw it transformed into outlines and general masses, he seemed a little surprised.

“Well, of course,” he said, “it is excellent—oh, it’s very, very good—but don’t you think you have made me a little too old? I have no lines at the corner of my mouth, and my hair is not quite so thin.”

He appealed to the aide-de-camp who was just then passing by.

“Dundas, is this like me?”

“Certainly, Doc; but it’s ten years younger.”

The doctor’s smile darkened, and he began rather insistently to praise the Old Masters.

“Modern painting,” he proclaimed, “is too brutal.”

“Good heavens,” said Aurelle, “a great artist cannot paint with a powder-puff; you must be able to feel that the fellow with the pencil was not a eunuch.”

“Really,” he went on, when the doctor had left in rather a bad temper, “he’s as ridiculous as the others. I think his portrait is very vigorous, and not in the least a skit, whatever he may say.”

“Just sit down there a minute, old man,” said the painter. “I shall be jolly glad to work from an intelligent model for once. They all want to look like tailors’ fashion-plates. Now, I can’t change my style; I don’t paint in beauty paste, I render what I see—it’s like Diderot’s old story about the amateur who asked a floral painter to portray a lion. ‘With pleasure,’ said the artist, ‘but you may expect a lion that will be as like a rose as I can make him.’”

The conversation lasted a long time; it was friendly and technical. Aurelle praised Beltara’s painting; Beltara expressed his joy at having found so penetrating and artistic a critic in the midst of so many Philistines.

“I prefer your opinion to a painter’s; it’s certainly sincerer. Would you mind turning your profile a bit more towards me? Some months before the war I had two friends in my studio to whom I wished to show a little picture I intended for the Salon. ‘Yes,’ said the younger of them, ‘it’s all right, but there ought to be a light spot in that corner; your lights are not well balanced.’ ‘Shut up, you fool,’ the other whispered to him, ‘that’ll make it really good!’ Come on, old man, come and look; I think that sketch can be left as it is.”

Aurelle walked up to the painter, and, cocking his head on one side, looked at the drawing.

“It’s charming,” he said at last with some reluctance. “It’s charming. There are some delightful touches—all that still life on the table, it might be a Chardin—and I like the background very much indeed.”

“Well, old man, I’m glad you like it. Take it back with you when you go on leave and give it to your wife.”

“Er—” sighed Aurelle, “thank you, mon capitaine; it’s really very kind of you. Only—you’ll think me no end of a fool—you see, if it is to be for my wife, I’d like you to touch up the profile just a little. Of course you understand.”

And Beltara, who was a decent fellow, adorned his friend’s face with the Grecian nose and the small mouth which the gods had denied him.