Complete Works of Wilkie Collins (248 page)

I had heard it darkly whispered that he was something of a vagabond. But the term is so loosely applied, and it seems so difficult, after all, to define what a vagabond is, or to strike the right moral balance between the vagabond work which is boldly published, and the vagabond work which is reserved for private circulation only, that I did not feel justified in holding aloof from my former friend. Accordingly, I renewed our acquaintance, and told him my present difficulty. He was a sharp man, and he showed me a way out of it directly.

“You have a good eye for a likeness,” he said; “and you have made it keep you hitherto. Very well. Make it keep you still. You can’t profitably caricature people’s faces any longer — never mind! go to the other extreme, and flatter them now. Turn portrait-painter. You shall have the use of this study three days in the week, for ten shillings a week — sleeping on the hearth-rug included, if you like. Get your paints, rouse up your friends, set to work at once. Drawing is of no consequence; painting is of no consequence; perspective is of no consequence; ideas are of no consequence. Everything is of no consequence, except catching a likeness and flattering your sitter — and that you know you can do.”

I felt that I could; and left him for the nearest colourman’s.

Before I got to the shop, I met Mr. Batterbury taking his walking exercise. He stopped, shook hands with me affectionately, and asked where I was going. A wonderful idea struck me. Instead of answering his question, I asked after Lady Malkinshaw.

“Don’t be alarmed,” said Mr. Batterbury; “her ladyship tumbled downstairs yesterday morning.”

“My dear sir, allow me to congratulate you!”

“Most fortunately,” continued Mr. Batterbury, with a strong emphasis on the words, and a fixed stare at me; “most fortunately, the servant had been careless enough to leave a large bundle of clothes for the wash at the foot of the stairs, while she went to answer the door. Falling headlong from the landing, her ladyship pitched (pardon me the expression) — pitched into the very middle of the bundle. She was a little shaken at the time, but is reported to be going on charmingly this morning. Most fortunate, was it not? Seen the papers? Awful news from Demerara — the yellow fever — ”

“I wish I was at Demerara,” I said, in a hollow voice.

“You! Why?” exclaimed Mr. Batterbury, aghast.

“I am homeless, friendless, penniless,” I went on, getting more hollow at every word. “All my intellectual instincts tell me that I could retrieve my position and live respectably in the world, if I might only try my hand at portrait-painting — the thing of all others that I am naturally fittest for. But I have nobody to start me; no sitter to give me a first chance; nothing in my pocket but three-and-sixpence; and nothing in my mind but a doubt whether I shall struggle on a little longer, or end it immediately in the Thames. Don’t let me detain you from your walk, my dear sir. I’m afraid Lady Malkinshaw will outlive me, after all!”

“Stop!” cried Mr. Batterbury; his mahogany face actually getting white with alarm. “Stop! Don’t talk in that dreadfully unprincipled manner — don’t, I implore, I insist! You have plenty of friends — you have me, and your sister. Take to portrait-painting — think of your family, and take to portrait-painting!”

“Where am I to get a sitter?’ I inquired, with a gloomy shake of the head.

“Me,” said Mr. Batterbury, with an effort. “I’ll be your first sitter. As a beginner, and especially to a member of the family, I suppose your terms will be moderate. Small beginnings — you know the proverb?” Here he stopped; and a miserly leer puckered up his mahogany cheeks.

“I’ll do you, life-size, down to your waistcoat, for fifty pounds,” said I.

Mr. Batterbury winced, and looked about him to the right and left, as if he wanted to run away. He had five thousand a year, but he contrived to took, at that moment, as if his utmost income was five hundred. I walked on a few steps.

“Surely those terms are rather high to begin with?” he said, walking after me. “I should have thought five-and-thirty, or perhaps forty — ”

“A gentleman, sir, cannot condescend to bargain,” said I, with mournful dignity. “Farewell!” I waved my hand, and crossed over the way.

“Don’t do that!” cried Mr. Batterbury. “I accept. Give me your address. I’ll come tomorrow. Will it include the frame! There! there! it doesn’t include the frame, of course. Where are you going now? To the colourman? He doesn’t live in the Strand, I hope — or near one of the bridges. Think of Annabella, think of the family, think of the fifty pounds — an income, a year’s income to a prudent man. Pray, pray be careful, and compose your mind: promise me, my dear, dear fellow — promise me, on your word of honour, to compose your mind!”

I left him still harping on that string, and suffering, I believe, the only serious attack of mental distress that had ever affected him in the whole course of his life.

Behold me, then, now starting afresh in the world, in the character of a portrait-painter; with the payment of my remuneration from my first sitter depending whimsically on the life of my grandmother. If you care to know how Lady Malkinshaw’s health got on, and how I succeeded in my new profession, you have only to follow the further course of these confessions, in the next chapter.

CHAPTER IV.

I GAVE my orders to the colourman, and settled matters with my friend the artist that day.

The next morning, before the hour at which I expected my sitter, having just now as much interest in the life of Lady Malkinshaw as Mr. Batterbury had in her death, I went to make kind inquiries after her ladyship’s health. The answer was most reassuring. Lady Malkinshaw had no present intention of permitting me to survive her. She was, at that very moment, meritoriously and heartily engaged in eating her breakfast. My prospects being now of the best possible kind, I felt encouraged to write once more to my father, telling him of my fresh start in life, and proposing a renewal of our acquaintance. I regret to say that he was so rude as not to answer my letter.

Mr. Batterbury was punctual to the moment. He gave a gasp of relief when he beheld me, full of life, with my palette on my thumb, gazing fondly on my new canvas.

“That’s right!” he said. “I like to see you with your mind composed. Annabella would have come with me; but she has a little headache this morning. She sends her love and best wishes.”

I seized my chalks and began with that confidence in myself which has never forsaken me in any emergency. Being perfectly well aware of the absolute dependence of the art of portrait-painting on the art of flattery, I determined to start with making the mere outline of my likeness a compliment to my sitter.

It was much easier to resolve on doing this than really to do it. In the first place, my hand would relapse into its wicked old caricaturing habits. In the second place, my brother-in-law’s face was so inveterately and completely ugly as to set every artifice of pictorial improvement at flat defiance. When a man has a nose an inch long, with the nostrils set perpendicularly, it is impossible to flatter it — you must either change it into a fancy nose, or resignedly acquiesce in it. When a man has no perceptible eyelids, and when his eyes globularly project so far out of his head, that you expect to have to pick them up for him whenever you see him lean forward, how are mortal fingers and bushes to diffuse the right complimentary expression over them? You must either do them the most hideous and complete justice, or give them up altogether. The late Sir Thomas Lawrence, P.R.A., was undoubtedly the most artful and uncompromising flatterer that ever smoothed out all the natural characteristic blemishes from a sitter’s face; but even that accomplished parasite would have found Mr. Batterbury too much for him, and would have been driven, for the first time in his practice of art, to the uncustomary and uncourtly resource of absolutely painting a genuine likeness.

As for me, I put my trust in Lady Malkinshaw’s power of living, and portrayed the face of Mr. Batterbury in all its native horror. At the same time, I sensibly guarded against even the most improbable accidents, by making him pay me the fifty pounds as we went on, by installments. We had ten sittings. Each one of them began with a message from Mr. Batterbury, giving me Annabella’s love and apologies for not being able to come and see me. Each one of them ended with an argument between Mr. Batterbury and me relative to the transfer of five pounds from his pocket to mine. I came off victorious on every occasion — being backed by the noble behavior of Lady Malkinshaw, who abstained from tumbling down, and who ate and drank, and slept and grew lusty, for three weeks together. Venerable woman! She put fifty pounds into my pocket. I shall think of her with gratitude and respect to the end of my days.

One morning, while I was sitting before my completed portrait, inwardly shuddering over the ugliness of it, a suffocating smell of musk was wafted into the studio; it was followed by a sound of rustling garments; and that again was succeeded by the personal appearance of my affectionate sister, with her husband at her heels. Annabella had got to the end of her stock of apologies, and had come to see me.

She put her handkerchief to her nose the moment she entered the room.

“How do you do, Frank? Don’t kiss me: you smell of paint, and I can’t bear it.”

I felt a similar antipathy to the smell of musk, and had not the slightest intention of kissing her; but I was too gallant a man to say so; and I only begged her to favor me by looking at her husband’s portrait.

Annabella glanced all round the room, with her handkerchief still at her nose, and gathered her magnificent silk dress close about her superb figure with her disengaged hand.

“What a horrid place!” she said faintly behind her handkerchief. “Can’t you take some of the paint away? I’m sure there’s oil on the floor. How am I to get past that nasty table with the palette on it? Why can’t you bring the picture down to the carriage, Frank?”

Advancing a few steps, and looking suspiciously about her while she spoke, her eyes fell on the chimney-piece. An eau-de-Cologne bottle stood upon it, which she took up immediately with a languishing sigh.

It contained turpentine for washing brushes in. Before I could warn her, she had sprinkled herself absently with half the contents of the bottle. In spite of all the musk that now filled the room, the turpentine betrayed itself almost as soon as I cried “Stop!” Annabella, with a shriek of disgust, flung the bottle furiously into the fireplace. Fortunately it was summer-time, or I might have had to echo the shriek with a cry of “Fire!”

“You wretch! you brute! you low, mischievous, swindling blackguard!” cried my amiable sister, shaking her skirts with all her might, “you have done this on purpose! Don’t tell me! I know you have. What do you mean by pestering me to come to this dog-kennel of a place?” she continued, turning fiercely upon the partner of her existence and legitimate receptacle of all her superfluous wrath. “What do you mean by bringing me here, to see how you have been swindled? Yes, sir, swindled! He has no more idea of painting than you have. He has cheated you out of your money. If he was starving tomorrow he would be the last man in England to make away with himself — he is too great a wretch — he is too vicious — he is too lost to all sense of respectability — he is too much of a discredit to his family. Take me away! Give me your arm directly! I told you not to go near him from the first. This is what comes of your horrid fondness for money. Suppose Lady Malkinshaw does outlive him; suppose I do lose my legacy. What is three thousand pounds to you? My dress is ruined. My shawl’s spoiled.
He
die! If the old woman lives to the age of Methuselah, he won’t die. Give me your arm. No! Go to my father. I want medical advice. My nerves are torn to pieces. I’m giddy, faint, sick — SICK, Mr. Batterbury!”

Here she became hysterical, and vanished, leaving a mixed odor of musk and turpentine behind her, which preserved the memory of her visit for nearly a week afterward.

“Another scene in the drama of my life seems likely to close in before long,” thought I. “No chance now of getting my amiable sister to patronize struggling genius. Do I know of anybody else who will sit to me? No, not a soul. Having thus no portraits of other people to paint, what is it my duty, as a neglected artist, to do next? Clearly to take a portrait of myself.”

I did so, making my own likeness quite a pleasant relief to the ugliness of my brother-in-law’s. It was my intention to send both portraits to the Royal Academy Exhibition, to get custom, and show the public generally what I could do. I knew the institution with which I had to deal, and called my own likeness, Portrait of a Nobleman.