We have a tradition of reading books filled with rollicking fun every so often. Joyce Cary, who started out to make a career in art before he switched to writing, has left this portrait of an artist as a blithe spirit making his way through London untroubled by the norms of art or society.
He is committed to his vision of art and pursues it relentlessly, often ending in absurd situations, dogged by ill-luck and the police. Reduced from the renown of a moderately well-known artist who was collected by the famous, he is now in penury, having to cadge a few shillings to buy paints. A fresh canvas is now a luxury and he has to resort to a palimpsest, effacing an old painting to cover it anew with his latest vision.
Walls have been my salvation.... Walls and losing my teeth young, which prevented me from biting bus conductors and other idealists.
Joyce Cary once wrote about the character he created: “Jimson, as an original artist, is always going over the top ... and knows that he will probably get nothing for his pains and enterprise but a bee-swarm of bullets, death in frustration, and an unmarked grave. He makes a joke of life because he dare not take it seriously.”
For all his waywardness Gulley Jimson has his epiphanies. Quotes and comments on a dozen poems from William Blake, who was the visionary print-maker and poet of the Romantic Poets era, dot the text. Blake is a companion wanderer of Jimson through the novel. There are lines from an early lyric, Infant Joy, and quotes from the late Prophetic Books, Milton and Jerusalem. Some are short like the phrase the “starry wheels”(from Jerusalem); there are more than thirty taken from Visions of the Daughters of Albion and forty-eight dispersed lines from Milton, and twenty-six stanzas of The Mental Traveller. (See https://www.jstor.org/stable/24780427 Joyce Cary's Blake: The intertextuality of The Horse's Mouth by Annette Shandler Levitt). Levitt maintains that “One could describe The Horse's Mouth as a mosaic of richly varied tesserae representing the interlocking worlds of Gulley Jimson and William Blake.”
It is never resolved whether Gulley Jimson was a great artist unappreciated in his time like a van Gogh, or a footnote in the history fo English art. It does not matter, for when we collide with the sheer force of will and creative frenzy of Jimson we are wholly swept up by the mad urgency of his impulses and imagine we are in the presence of the creative act. That is Joyce Cary's art.
Jimson‘s mind is a restless cauldron of painterly images:
An evening by Randipole Billy. Green lily sky, orange flames over the West. Long flat clouds like copper angels with brass hair floating on the curls of the fire. River mint green and blood orange. Old man lying along the water with a green beard, one arm under head, face twisted up—vision of Thames among the pot-houses. I could use that, I thought—that blunt round shape like a copper St. Paul’s with a squeeze in the middle—like a teat with a long end.
...
I had a good view … of the sky, through the top of the window, and the sky was like a cinema film gone mad. Great whirling heads and arms and noses, naked legs and trousered bottoms, guns, swords and top hats, rushing past all night. Sometimes you saw a lovely lady in a pose plastique, but before you could wink she had swelled out like a balloon, lost her leg or her head, and turned into an ammunition wagon galloping over the corpses.
As Jack Stewart in his study of five authors, Colour, Space and Creativity, notes: “For Gulley Jimson, the creative process is a life-affirming ritual and if he does not have paints and brushes handy, he pursues it in words. Through the artist's reflections of the Thames Embankment, Joyce Cary dramatises painterly ways of seeing the world.”
Jimson has a unique response to the scrapes he gets into. A street vendor thumps him while Jimson is trying to sell a few cards. “Then he kicked me up and kicked me down; kicked me in the guts and kicked me on the jaw; kicked me into the road and danced on me three or four times. His feet moved so fast one couldn’t see them.” When Jimson totes up the damage it is extensive: “When they put me to bed they found I had a broken nose, a broken arm, a broken collar bone, four broken ribs, three broken fingers, three or or four square yards of serious contusions and a double rupture.” But his reaction is summed up by this soliloquy:
I was so angry that I might have done myself a serious injury, if I hadn’t said to myself, Hold on, Gulley. Don’t lose your presence of imagination. Wash out that blackguard till you’re well again and get a new pair of boots. With nails in them. Forgive and forget. Till you have him set. Remember that he had a certain amount of excuse for his actions. Give him his due, but not till you are ready with a crowbar. Don’t get spiteful. Keep cool. It’s the only way to handle a snake like that.
Jimson is always beginning – “It's a new world with every heartbeat,” he remarks. It does not seem to matter that the city planners have decided to raze the building on whose walls he has thrown up a new masterpiece of a fresco (The Creation). His enthusiasm cannot be contained even as doom closes in, for he is sure something great will emerge on the next attempt. Even as the author is never defeated by a blank page, the artist who looks on a blank canvas will only see visions rising up.
The session started with Shoba telling the life of the author Joyce Cary in brief. A fuller introduction to Joyce Cary's life and work is given below.
Joyce Cary – Short Bio by Shoba
Arthur Joyce Lunel Cary, (born Dec. 7, 1888, Londonderry, Northern Ireland, died March 29, 1957, Oxford, England), was an English novelist who developed a trilogy form in which each volume is narrated by one of three protagonists.
Cary was born into an old Anglo-Irish family, and at age 16 he studied painting in Edinburgh and then in Paris. From 1909 to 1912 he was at Trinity College, Oxford, where he read law. Having joined the colonial service in 1914, he served in the Nigeria Regiment during World War I. He was wounded while fighting in the Cameroons and returned to civil duty in Nigeria in 1917 as a district officer. West Africa became the locale of his early novels.
Resolved to become a writer, Cary settled in Oxford in 1920. Although that year he published 10 short stories in the Saturday Evening Post, an American magazine, he decided he knew too little about philosophy, ethics, and history to continue writing in depth. Study occupied the next several years, and it was only in 1932 that his first novel, Aissa Saved, appeared. It is the story of an African girl converted to Christianity but still retaining pagan elements in her faith; it was followed by three more African novels – An American Visitor (1933), The African Witch (1936), and Mister Johnson (1939), and a novel about the decline of the British Empire, Castle Corner (1938). Childhood was the theme of his next two novels: his own in A House of Children (1941) and that of a cockney wartime evacuee in the country in Charley Is My Darling (1940).
Cary’s trilogy on art begins with the first-person narration of a woman, Sara Monday, in Herself Surprised (1941) and follows with that of the two men in her life, the lawyer Tom Wilcher in To Be a Pilgrim (1942) and the artist Gulley Jimson in The Horse’s Mouth (1944), his best-known novel. Monday is portrayed as a warm-hearted, generous woman who is victimised both by the conservative upper-class Wilcher and by the talented but disreputable painter Jimson. The latter character is a social rebel and visionary artist whose humorous philosophy and picaresque adventures in The Horse’s Mouth helped make him one of the best-known characters in 20th-century fiction.
Introduction to Joyce Cary (1888 – 1957)
Arthur Joyce Lunel Cary (he assumed his mother's maiden name, Joyce) was born in Londonderry, Ireland, on Dec 7, 1888. His family was of English origin, owning land in Northern Ireland for hundreds of years. The Carys were good landlords, who lived on their land and were kind to their tenants. The Irish Land Act of 1882, ruined them because it erased payment of rent for past arrears.
Cary’s father moved with his family to London and worked as an engineer. There were many Cary relatives living nearby, and they were a closely knit family.
He observed later that that children's pleasure in exploring the world, long before they can speak, is very obvious. He called it the same thing as the intuition of the artist, direct acquaintance with things, with characters, with appearance.
Cary’s weak constitution as a child made him stay in bed often., and he came to love books, especially adventure and fantasy stories.
Cary's mother died when he was nine. A young aunt came to live with him and his brother. Cary's imagination, even at that young age, was fertile. When he was not reading adventure stories, he was leading a pack of boys across the countryside. A favourite activity was acting in plays, the dialogue invented extempore.
Joyce Cary, with his younger brother Jack, was educated at English public schools. In 1903 Joyce finished primary school and went off to Clifton College, a secondary school near Bristol. His poor eyesight and fragile health had kept him behind. But he began telling the other boys stories, and was soon established as a great teller of tales, in nightly instalments.
In his fifteenth summer Cary went on a sketching trip to France with a cousin. He became wildly enthusiastic about Impressionism, an art form which had yet to spread its fame. He met an old painter, once very popular, who was no longer in fashion, and could not make a living. The person became the kernel of the idea for the picaresque artist-hero of The Horse's Mouth.
Cary realised that the painter's problem was due to a failure of creative imagination which afflicted most of humanity. Having settled on one style, the man had failed to grow, had shut his mind off from new ways of seeing.
On finishing at Clifton, Cary, then seventeen, talked his father into letting him study art in Paris. Having won school prizes for his drawings, he believed he could become a real artist with training.
Paris in 1906 was a heady experience for Picasso, Braque, and Matisse were there, shaking up the world of art. Cary found himself spending more time on the beach and in the cafes than in front of an easel with brush in hand. The next year he went to Edinburgh, hoping to learn the basics of drawing. But after spending two years in Scotland , he knew he lacked any special genius to become a first rate artist.
He then took up the pen, determined to become a writer. A book of bad verse he published impressed his father. He went to Oxford, but didn’t do well.
Cary’s redemption was to join the Red Cross during the Balkan War of 1912. This was good experience for him. However, Cary found that war was not fun, and he returned home in the middle of 1913. In 1913 he enlisted in the Nigerian service. In Nigeria his art studies would help him draw accurate maps. His work in the Balkan had trained him in first aid and accustomed him to doing without some of the amenities of life. He had spent time studying agriculture and administration and had learned to write clearly. Now, at twenty-five, it was time for him to make something of himself and hold down a steady job.
At the top level, the Muslim ruling class, Cary had to deal with the ever present corruption, which, because of the leaders' greed, threatened to destroy the benefits to the people that Cary was working so hard to produce. The common people were without imagination, passively accepting their lot: hard work, poor crops, starvation, and sickness. Cary felt that this passivity was due to their environment rather than to a lack of intelligence. They seldom sat down to think and this inhibited their creativity. They loved to look, and to speculate, but logical thought was rare.
In Africa, Cary began to see that change was a stimulus necessary for existence. World War I broke out shortly after Cary arrived in Nigeria, and he was nearly killed while fighting the Germans in the Cameroons. After recovering in England from his war wounds, Cary was put in charge of Borgu territory, the wildest in Nigeria. It gave him more freedom to deal with his situation creatively than he would have had in a more pacified district.
One of Cary's duties at Borgu was to judge the more important cases, such as witchcraft, kidnapping, political corruption, and murder. Witchcraft trials demanded special understanding, because the majority of the natives were pagan and firmly believed in juju. The judge had to be a teacher too, gradually weaning the people from their superstitions.
At the time Cary was in Nigeria the usual attitude of the British in Africa was indifference. Cary was fond of ‘his people,’ in a paternalistic way. To help them he began building bridges and roads, using his own money in many cases and native manpower.
Besides judging people and building roads Cary also devoted a great deal of time to his writing. This was an apprenticeship of sorts, as he learned to handle themes and characters, viewpoint and perspective. From the beginning Cary wrote in a distinctive way. He would first write sketches of characters, then possible major scenes, and finally fill in the gaps. One of the most perceptive of the critics writing before Cary's death, the critic Walter Allen, noted that Cary succeeded, like Shakespeare, in submerging his own identity as an author and seemingly becoming the character.
While in Africa Cary started at least ten novels but finished none of them. He knew enough about literature (his favourite writers were Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, Hardy, Conrad, and Joyce) to be aware his writing had little literary worth at the time Cary was quite serious about his craft and refused to publish a book until he was satisfied with it. In fact, he burned all but two of his novels before leaving Africa.
Stories were a different matter, though. In 1919 Cary sold three ‘pot-boiling’ stories to the Saturday Evening Post, which paid more than he earned from a whole year of working in Nigeria. He quit the Nigerian Service, thinking he would now be able to support his family by writing (he had a wife and children by that time), and leased a house in Oxford, where he was to live for the rest of his life.
He managed to sell about a dozen stories, but the pot no longer boiled vigorously, and finally the Post editors stopped buying his stories, because they were becoming too literary for their audience. He missed the money, but Cary was glad to be freed to write according to his taste. Until 1932, he published nothing. He and his family had to eke out a living on savings and inheritances. In the meanwhile, Cary kept on writing to perfect his art. What he developed was a very clear, simple style, which moved quickly.
In 1974, he came out with a long novel set in Africa called Cock Jarvis. Sections of the novel were good, but it was not a success. He was still searching for something he could believe in, forming his ideas. As he wrote: “The writer ... has to find some meaning in life before he gives it to us in a book.”.
Cary read a great deal of history and philosophy at the Bodleian Library in Oxford, close to his home. As he immersed himself in thought, he saw more and more clearly the importance of freedom, the freedom to use creative imagination, to create one's own world. He also saw the need for God, the greatest ordering principle of the universal chaos. He was in his forties by the time he started his real career as a novelist.
Cary's novels can be divided into six subject areas: Africa, children, art, politics, women, and religion. His first five novels were all attempts to come to terms with his experiences in Africa, to bring order to his chaotic impressions, and to work out his ideas. The first, Aissa Saved (1932), dissected the African mind, with special attention to its perception of religion.
Cary's books were powerful, because they had that force and authority. They had it because he had worked hard, not only on his style, but on his beliefs. This is not to say that Cary's novels were didactic – nowhere in his books did he preach. He revised each book carefully, excising passages which brought out a moral explicitly. He wrote that he would rather be thought slightly obscure and disorganised than too obvious.
Cary's second book, was An American Visitor (1933), and looked at different European views on how Africans should be introduced to the 20th Century. He followed up with The African Witch (1936), Castle Corner (1938), and Cock Jarvis. The final and best African novel was Mister Johnson (1939), which looked at creative imagination and the African who adopts English ways.
Charley Is My Darling (1940), about a juvenile delinquent aspiring to be an artist, examined the creative imagination in children, and how it could be turned toward the bad or the good. Cary was very interested in art, where the creative imagination was most readily observed, and this was the topic of his first trilogy. The first book, Herself Surprised (1941), looked at an artist from a non-artistic, but sympathetic viewpoint; the second, To Be a Pilgrim (1942), showed a man who was the opposite of the artist, and afraid to be creative; and in The Horse's Mouth (1944), the artist told his own chaotic story.
For his second trilogy, Cary decided to take a look at politics: Prisoner of Grace (1952), had for its speaker the wife and lover of the central characters of the other two books. The second book, Except the Lord (1953), looked at the politician's childhood, and the last, Not Honour More (1955), saw him from a conservative, tradition-bound viewpoint.
Between the trilogies came The Moonlight (1946), and A Fearful Joy (1949), about a female counterpart to the hero of the first trilogy. In Cary's final novel, The Captive and the Free (1959), he looked at the virtue and necessity of religion. The book was originally meant to be a trilogy, but, because of rapidly intruding paralysis, Cary had to settle for a single volume.
Besides his novels, Cary wrote a number of essays in his last decade, on Africa, on childhood, about writing, and other subjects. In his last few months he put together a series of influential lectures on his theories, published as Art and Reality (1958), in which he emphasised the need for a combination of creative imagination and moral certainty and concern in the writer.
Cary died on March 29, 1957, at the age of sixty-eight. Before his death he completed sixteen novels, in all of which he looked at some form of creative imagination, that impetus to life and major theme in his work. His life embodied his belief in the free and creative mind, and his work remains to inspire others.
E. Christian writes: “ … the man was as memorable as his work. He made a picturesque and exhilarating first impression. His elegant, virile handsomeness, his racy, vivid, appreciative talk, and something at once heroic and debonair in his whole personality, suggested a gentleman rider in the race of life, risking his skin for sport rather than for a prize, and looking on every crisis of existence as a hurdle to be surmounted gaily and gallantly, however many bruises and spills might be incurred in the process. This was a true .impression but a partial one. The gentleman rider was also a sage and a saint.”
References:
Malcolm Foster, Joyce Cary: A Biography (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1968
E. Christian, Creative Imagination in Joyce Cary's Trilogies, a thesis at Loma Linda University
Wiki article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joyce_Cary
The Horse’s Mouth by Joyce Cary, full text https://archive.org/details/horsesmouth00cary
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Shoba had the impression before she read the book that paintings appear fully formed on canvas. But reading this book she realised a painting emerges in dribs and drabs and goes through many stages before the artist is satisfied.The process takes long, and Jimson says it may take twenty years before it is accepted and admired. By then the artist's life has gone by, often in poverty and suffering. Even though this is a very sad book, the way Jimson handles life's vicissitudes lightly is admirable. You feel his pain – you know he is going through a hard time.
‘He did't earn much,’ KumKum said. Shoba replied ‘They never do, right? Until they are dead, and then only the very rich can afford to buy the paintings.’ There's a lot of humour in the book too. Joe noted how Jimson always has the belief that something great is in the offing, and will soon find expression at the tip of his brush on canvas. When he sees clouds his mind is alive to all the possibilities of what they represent. Arundhaty mentioned how Jimson comes out of his struggles, rescued by a bit of philosophy and a spark of wit. The film starring Alec Guinness as Jimson has more of the slapstick and humour, but the book is imbued with the pain as well, said Arundhaty. Everybody is forthcoming to help him. Shoba noted that Jimson has to constantly tuck newspapers into his trousers or shoes for protection.
KumKum
The story is nothing, but it is the way Joyce Cary wrote that gives a lustre to the novel. In KumKum's reading there is a poem extract from Blake's Provers of Hell 2:
The pride of the peacock isthe glory of God.The lust of the goat is thebounty of God.The wrath of the lion is thewisdom of God.The nakedness of womanis the work of God.
KumKum was piqued by the comment that “there must be about fifty meetings every night somewhere in London, on Ruskin.” She googled and found Ruskin was known as a an art-critic, writer, and essayist, in fashion at the time, but he had personal life that was interesting. He was married to a girl, Effie Gray, whom he saw growing into a woman in his neighbourhood. The girl's father had fallen on hard times and encouraged the liaison, as John Ruskin was quite rich. So they got married and for their honeymoon they went to Venice where he was to write about the churches. But on the wedding night he could not consummate the marriage. Six years they lived together and then she filed for a divorce on the grounds of “incurable impotency” and an annulment was granted. But Ruskin disputed the charge.
Please read Ruskin's wiki, because he is far too important a figure to be dismissed on the curious charge of impotency. Emma Thompson and her husband are making a film on Ruskin.
Thommo
Thommo said there are several biographies and novels written about artists, for example, Irving Stone's The Agony and the Ecstasy about Michelangelo. And the Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini (1500-1571); and Somerset Maugham's The Moon and Sixpence, based on Paul Gauguin's life. The difference here is that there is quite a bit of humour, although it is a sad story in the end.
The Horse' Mouth is perhaps the finest novel written about an artist, according to the blurb on the jacket, and gives a profound insight into the mind of an artist. The passage Thommo chose is about Sara Monday who had been in prison for various thefts. Jimson reveals a secret about artists’ success with women:
You’d be surprised, the women that go for artists, especially artists that paint the nude. Makes ’em feel themselves in themselves, I suppose.
And after a frisk in the bed with Jimson, this was how Sara Monday relieved her conscience:
‘Oh, Mr. Jimson, how did it all happen, I can’t believe it, it all seems like a dream, doesn’t it? Just a bad dream. And I’m so fond of my husband. He’s such a true good man. Oh dear, I feel so awful—’
Geetha
Geetha started by quoting from a paper of Peter J. Reed titled The Better the Heart: Joyce Cary's Sara Monday
When it comes to the character of Sara Monday, however, Gulley 's description is neither complete nor wholly accurate. Gulley 's tendency to type people, which he does with Sara, is one reason why he gets a shock when he sees her again after many years. He has remembered his typing of her – the bourgeois, pushing, nagging cook-cum-housekeeper with a tempting figure, a provoking eye, and a spark of fun – but has forgotten something else, the deeper vital force that makes “the old individual geyser” distinctive. Sara invites but defies categorization, so that the reader cannot wholly accept Sara's typing of herself, but neither should he take the word of Gulley as being necessarily more reliable.
Having painted her in the nude, Jimson's thoughts hark back to describing the delights of her anatomy for a painter:
... all at once she put her two hands on her thighs, elbows out, tossed up her head and straightened her back. And I knew that back. I saw it again, the big flat muscles under the skin, the lift of the shoulder blades and the dimples moving like little whirlpools over their spines; the lovely flexible turn of the flanks over the solid hips. ... I was seeing Sara in her bath with the brush. And drying her feet, leaning down all back and arms with her hair falling over her knees, and a bluish light on the shiny flats round the spine—sky reflection—a sweet bit of brushwork.
You can't define what it is about each of the characters that makes them unique, said Priya; Jimson is a maverick.
Pamela
Pamela’s passage is about an uninitiated person, Plantie, trying to describe a Biblical piece painted by Jimson, and making a total hash of it, questioning whether the human form in the painting (anatomically speaking), could assume the position of the male figure. Jimson has to pretend he hasn't heard a word of Plantie's naive commentary.
Pamela said she has overheard at the Kochi Biennale common folk speaking about the art they see. They don't know anything about the piece, and make random comments, not bothering to read what the curator has written in the accompanying note. This humorous account of Plantie reminded her of that. Priya said she has relative who is an art curator, and says emphatically that curators writing about art have to be the biggest bull.....ers in the world. Indeed, pretentious and meaningless nonsense spoken in some art reviews are abundantly in view, for example:
“…a group of sculptural works that aims at a void that signifies precisely the non-being of what it represents…”
“The practice examines hesitation as part of the process of decision-making, where the object is neither the object of object-hood nor the art-object. It is rather the oblique object of the artist’s intentions. …”
Deep purple colour. Aromas of rich dark currants, nectarine skins, gushing blackberry, but lots of fragrant tobacco, rich soil, white flowers, smashed minerals and metal. Medium-bodied and saucy but racy acidity stabilises the wine nicely with the robust tannins. Deep red currants and ripe cherries, laden with mocha, loamy soil, charred herbs, pencil shavings, roasted hazelnut. Dense like characters that make it perfect for cellaring, however it is drinkable straight away once you expose it to the earth’s atmosphere. This is a delicious Sonoma Cabernet!
Pamela was making fun of the yokels at the Biennale who see the paintings and create their own imaginary descriptions – that's exactly what Gulley Jimson is doing here. He is letting his imagination run wild and envisioning all sorts of things in the cloud shapes. You have to give credit to the Biennale viewers, said Joe, because they are re-igniting in themselves as viewers the kind of inspired imagination that may have been in the artists’ minds. Geetha was reminded of a film called Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, where tiny little people are running through the grass. You can also sympathise with the viewers who are trying to understand what on earth the painter was thinking about, said Arundhaty. KumKum remarked that you have to admire our common Indian viewers – they are interested in anything and come in their thousands to see all these exotica of modern art. Pamela, however, thought that the majority find their way to the cafeteria – perhaps it assuages the hunger art creates. Literary criticism is another form in which the original author might disagree with the interpretation laid on hiser work by the critic.
The readers had a good laugh recounting some of Jimson's antics in the novel. For example, KumKum cited Jimson meeting a rich art patron and asking if he could paint her in the nude (this is part of Joe's passage below). And when Jimson visits the art collector Hickson who had bought a number of his paintings in the old days, he stuffs his pocket with valuable artefacts in order to pawn them for buying paints and brushes. Priya called Jimson a ‘con man’, but that is a misreading of Jimson's essential nature, akin to that of a poète maudit, (French: “accursed poet”) – the poet as an outcast of modern society, despised by conservatives who fear the poet's penetrating insights. In spite of his free-wheeling refractory nature his only commitment is to his artistic vision, a vision of the greatness that eludes him. What matters to Joyce Cary is to depict the creative process, the most important element in this exuberant novel. It gives Cary through Jimson an opportunity to transpose the painter’s Thames-side impressions into words.
KumKum said everybody liked him. But what about his son, asked Priya? – his life is completely dysfunctional. Joe took the example of Van Gogh who sold one painting in his lifetime – to his brother Theo – and here is Jimson whose paintings are in the National Gallery; surely he deserves respect. Geeta pointed out that book critics often go way off from the author's intentions; but Geetha asked: just as poetry readers are allowed to take away their own understanding of a poem, isn't the reader of a book also allowed to interpret according to their prior experience in life and inclinations? Indeed that is a feature of art; it is not precise, it leaves ambiguity and a degree of vagueness, said Arundhaty, which gives the latitude to read between the lines. Geeta mentioned a concert of Hariprasad Chaurasia, the flautist, who was tuning and setting up with the tabla player and when they stopped the audience in London stood up and gave an ovation! Thommo said Chaurasia is known to call out people in the audience who are out of line.
Geeta
She read a passage where a speaker is addressing a weekly audience while Jimson and Sara Monday are seated in the scullery at the back, smooching. Once again we note that Jimson’s interest is to paint her rather than to take advantage of her:
Well, Sara, and I wouldn’t mind drawing that shoulder again—when you come to me next week. I shouldn’t be surprised if your back and thighs weren’t as good as ever they were.”
“Oh dear, I could never make out whether it was me or my flesh that you wanted—that was the beginning of all our trouble.”
Jimson adds in reverie: “I could have painted the old trollop that minute if I could have got her clothes off.”
Zakia
There is lots of humour in the book. Zakia chose to read a piece describing how Sara stumbles into the hall and tries to find a seat and ends up tumbling into the scullery where Jimson was ensconced. It was good of Zakia in spite of her busy time with her son's wedding to have managed to read a good part of the novel and come to the session with this piece.
Joe said it was surely unkind of Jimson to punch Sara Monday on the nose in such a manner as to permanently change her physiognomy; he maintained it was to keep her nose out of his business. He wondered whether it was perhaps Jimson the painter not being satisfied with the structure of her nose and taking a hand (or fist) to change it – readers laughed at the idea. KumKum said everybody forgave him, understanding the funny side of his disposition.
Shoba
Shoba chose a passage where the wife of Sir William, the second millionaire in Jimson's life, wants his opinion of her water-colours. The Professor who has introduced Jimson to the couple, signals to Jimson he should be diplomatic and not say anything rude. Jimson, however, is not really bothered about delicacy in expressing an opinion. When Sir William places the first water-colour on the easel for his opinion, Jimson comments:
Sky with clouds, grass with trees, water with reflection, cows with horns, cottage with smoke and passing labourer with fork, blue shirt, old hat.
Jimson expresses promisingly: “Lovely, only wants a title – what will you call it? Supper time. You can see that chap is hungry.” His comment on the sky is Joyce Cary at his best in metaphors: “the sky is just a leetle bit chancy, looks a bit accidental, like when the cat spills its breakfast.” Jimson continues his free commentary, uninhibited by the need to please his future patrons.
Joe said the passage has moments of humour and expressions that sing off the page such as: “The Professor began to hop about like a dry pea on the stove.” He reassures the Professor: “I’m not pulling her ladyship’s leg. I wouldn’t do such a thing. I have too much respect for that charming limb.”
It is a charming passage, full of Jimsonian vivacity and pointed put-downs that only manage to earn the respect of Lady William.
Joe
Joe chose this passage because of this quick-fire banter between Jimson and Lady William:
“Talking of bathrooms, I have something to ask your ladyship. I should like to paint you.”
“Not in my bath?”
“No, in the nude.”
“But I am fearfully thin, Mr. Jimson.”
“I want the bony structure to go with the face.”
“I’m afraid my husband wouldn’t approve.”
“He needn’t look.”
Besides the humour, the passage makes reference to the two paintings of the Duchess of Alba, by Goya, which Joe saw hanging side by side in the Museo del Prado in Madrid. The pictures were enclosed with the reading passage for illumination.
Duchess of Alba, nude by Goya ca.1797
They bring to mind the well-known limerick
Said the duchess of Alba to Goya
‘Paint some pictures to hang in my foya!’
So he painted her twice:
In the nude took nice,
And then in her clothes to annoya.
Geetha said we should have one session on limericks – what a racy session that would be! Another equally famous museum in Madrid is the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza. founded by the makers of Thyssen lifts and escalators.
And every moment has a couch of gold for soft repose,
And between every two moments stands a daughter of Beulah
To feed the sleepers on their couches with maternal care.
And every minute has an azure tent with silken veils—
Arundhaty
The young boy, Nosy, admires Jimson's work very much and he is such a devoted fan that he is willing to sacrifice his entire career to follow Jimson. The interaction between them and how Jimson handles the disappointments and the destruction of his paintings is the subject of this passage. Jimson imparts his wisdom in an unpretentious way: “on the whole, a man is wise to give way to gaiety, even at the expense of a grievance. A good grievance is highly enjoyable, but like a lot of other pleasures, it is bad for the liver.” Shoba liked this saying.
The Fall by Jan Brueghel de Oude and Peter Paul Rubens
In the latter part of the passage Jimson is planning his second attempt to paint the Fall, depicting the fateful moment in the Garden of Eden in which Adam takes a bite of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. It's going to be even better than his first attempt that has been destroyed; more solid, because the Fall was “the discovery of the solid hard world, good and evil. Hard as rocks and sharp as poisoned thorns.”
As the critic Jack Stewart says: “Before Jimson can construct a mythic vision he must grasp the sensory things that compose this market still life. Nails, leather, fish eyes, pigment, plank are all grist for his visionary mill. A cornucopia of incongruous objects provides raw data that imagination transmutes into visionary forms.”
Priya
Priya said when Jimson paints an object he observes every detail, but when it comes to humans she wondered whether Jimson exercises the same close observation. In this passage there is a comparison between Rozzie and Sara, two wives of his. His relationship with Sara is more vibrant.
He has observed Rozzie enough to note that “It took several minutes to walk round her. You studied her from different aspects, like a public building. Something between St. Paul’s and the Brighton Pavilion.”
“Rozzie was so fierce in her look and rough in her tongue, that it was only after she was dead and I had time to think about her and to see her in the all round, that I realized she was all bark and no bite. Take off her clothes and she was like a port-wine jelly rabbit shelled out of the tin, a pink trembler; massive and shapely in the forms, but inclined to spread at the edges; firm to the eye, but soft to the touch. Deep but transparent; something like a lion, but not much.”
So much for Priya's complaint about Jimson’s lack of intimate knowledge of humans, at least of the female kind. Here's another discernment from life: “Every billet has its bullet, there’s a fatal woman waiting for every man. Luckily he doesn’t often meet her.”
Everyone agreed Priya’s was a a very good selection. Jimson reminded Arundhaty of Manto, the Urdu writer of short stories, whom we read in translation. Manto sympathised with all kinds of odd people, castaways in society. Priya said Jimson is off the spectrum, and has a bit of petty criminality in him. Readers agreed the story is a very sad one. But he never felt sad for himself, fortunately, said KumKum. As the novel notes, out of his grievance came gaiety. Shoba said, even when the painting (the Fall) is cut up, he doesn't give way to sadness but takes it as an opportunity to create a fresh ‘Fall’ with a new vision. You might say Jimson creates a Redemption out of every Fall!
Priya made a comment everyone would agree with – the way we read the book, select key passages, and discuss them, makes us enjoy beyond what any private reading could offer.
When the reading was over Zakia introduced us to Fatima Khan, her new daughter-in-law who is married to Zakia's elder son, Suhail Ahmed. They both appeared in the Zoom session and are pictured below:
Fatima is currently working (remotely) as an architect on a project in Pune; she previously worked in Bombay, she said. They promised to put in an appearance when we next have a physical meeting – may that be soon! The readers expressed their happiness at having met Zakia's dil.
Passages Selected by Readers
KumKum – Ch 7
Cold morning. My legs a bit stiff. Didn’t look at Adam and Eve in case it hadn’t come back. But went straight out.
Frost on the grass like condensed moonlight. Moon high up, transparent. Like snow mark in ice. Birds very lively. Sparrows fluffed out like feather dusters. Met friend Ollier delivering first post. Drop on his nose, a pearl, and two more on his moustache, diamonds. “Hullo, Mr. Ollier, know where I could get some coffee?” “Good morning, Mr. Jimson, if you would care to have one with me in about five minutes.” “Thank you, Mr. Ollier.” “It’s a pleasure, Mr. Jimson, to be sure.”
Took a walk up and down to crack the joints. Sun coming up along a cloud bank like clinkers. All sparks. Couldn’t do it in paint. Limits of the art. Limits of everything. Limits of my fingers which are all swole up at the joints. No fingers, no swell, no swell, no art. Old Renoir painting his red girls with the brushes strapped to his wrists. Best things he ever did. Monuments.
The pride of the peacock is
the glory of God.
The lust of the goat is the
bounty of God.
The wrath of the lion is the
wisdom of God.
The nakedness of woman
is the work of God.
And the nakedness of these trees, pavements, houses, old Postie’s red nose and white moustache. “Nice day, Mr. Ollier.” “A bit chilly for October. Bringing the leaves down.” “You’re right, Mr. Ollier.”
“Coming to the meeting, Mr. Jimson?” “Another meeting?” “Mr. Plant’s got a meeting on the tenth.”
Mr. Plant was an old friend of ours. Plant and Ollier and three or four more had a society and held meetings. They got some schoolmaster or preacher or lecturer from the Workers’ Education Association to give a lecture and smoked over him for a couple of hours. Chief idea for the married, to get away from the home for one evening; for bachelors, to find a home for an evening. There are a lot of these clubs in London. Some of them are simply habits, a few friends who meet regularly in a pub to discuss the dogs, religion, the government, and the state of Europe. I liked Plant’s club because Plant had beer for his friends.
“Thank you, Walter,” I said. “What’s the subject?” “I don’t know,” said Ollier. “But the last one was on Ruskin,” I said. “How did you know?” said Walter surprised, as we went into the Korner Koffee Shop. “Because it’s generally on Ruskin, or Plato or Owen or Marx. But Ruskin comes first. I should think there must be about fifty meetings every night somewhere in London, on Ruskin. (453 words)
Thommo – Ch 8
“This Sara Monday,” she said, “where did you pick her up? Is there a place for models or did you take her off the street?” “She wasn’t a model and I didn’t pick her up. She was a married woman, and she picked me up.” “What, you don’t mean to say she went on the street?” “Of course not, she didn’t need to. It was in her own house when I went to paint her husband.” “What, you don’t mean to say she gave you the eye in her own house?” “Two eyes and the aye-aye. Threw herself at me from the kick.” “A married woman.” “Married seven years, five kids.” “Five kids,” said Coker. “A woman like that ought to be hung on hooks.” “You’d be surprised,” I said, “the women that go for artists, especially artists that paint the nude. Makes ’em feel themselves in themselves, I suppose.” “Don’t you call them women,” said Coker, still working up her drill. “A lot of whores, I say. And worse if they’re ladies and haven’t any call.” “Sara had the call,” I said. “Just getting up in the thirties and full blast on all cylinders. Regular man-killer. ‘Oh, Mr. Jimson, I do love art,’ and she didn’t know a picture from a bath bun. Never did. ‘Oh, Mr. Jimson, how wonderful to be able to paint like that.’ Bending her neck, too, and spooning her eyes at me. She believed in butter, Sara did. Greasing the slides. I’ve known some liars and crooks, but Sara was the queen. Why, she couldn’t ask you to have some more cream without putting the come-hither in her voice and shooting off her eyes and jerking up her front.”
“Oh—it turns my liver.”
“And, what made me laugh, to see her at a tea party in her frills. ‘Some more tea, Lady Pye; another slice, Mrs. Paddle. Oh, do try. Just a little bit of the angel cake.’ They all loved her. Sweet young British matron—guardian of the home.”
“Don’t tell me about her,” said Coker, “I can see her.”
“Family prayers. Down on her knees every night and morning. The Scripture moveth us in sundry places. And then hop-skip round to my studio. ‘Would you like me to sit?’ ‘Not today, thank you, ma’am.’ ‘But you’re drawing that figure out of your head.’ ‘Yes, ma’am.’ ‘Wouldn’t it be better from a model?’ ‘Depends on the model, ma’am.’
‘Anything I can do to help?’ And in two two’s there she is in her skin.”
“I’d skin her.”
“Church on Sunday. Bible and prayer book in red morocco with gilt edges. Cold supper in the evening. Salmon, salad, lobsters, tongue, brawn, cold beef, stout, burgundy. Trifle with a pound of Devonshire cream and a couple of pints of old brown sherry. Evening hymns in the twilight. ‘Oh, Mr. Jimson, what a lovely tune—it always makes me cry. What a sweet moon, shall we take a turn in the garden, to see if the tobacco has got another flower? Oh, Mr. Jimson, isn’t it a sweet scent—it goes to your head.’ Head was the word. And then the summerhouse and somebody had left the cushions in the deck chair.”
“Oh, the bitch,” said Coker. “The whip is too good for them.”
“And afterwards, you know, Coker, she used to shed tears—real tears—and it was: ‘Oh, Mr. Jimson, how did it all happen, I can’t believe it, it all seems like a dream, doesn’t it? Just a bad dream. And I’m so fond of my husband. He’s such a true good man. Oh dear, I feel so awful—’ ”
“And you swallowed it all,” said Coker. “Just like a man, encouraging the bitch.”
“Sara? Not on your life. I used to laugh at her tricks.”
“Yes, and let her grab you as soon as she’d murdered her husband.”
“Sara never grabbed me. Poor old Sara, she didn’t have much of a success there, when she got too much of a nuisance I threw her out on her neck.” (680 words)
Geetha – Ch 9
“It’s quite like old times,” Sara said, looking at me with both eyes and smiling for the first time. “And how well you look,” meaning I looked so old and ugly she was sorry for me and wanted to stuff me up.
“So do you, Sall. No one would take you for thirty-five.”
“Oh yes,” said Sara. “Oh dear yes,” giving a great sigh that shook her cheeks and chin and neck and bosom. “You’re being nice to me. But I know. I’m getting an old woman, Gulley. Well, I suppose it’s only to be expected.” And she looked so broken down that I thought she was going to cry. “Yes,” she said, “when you really think, it’s got a sad side, life,” and all at once she put her two hands on her thighs, elbows out, tossed up her head and straightened her back. And I knew that back. I saw it again, the big flat muscles under the skin, the lift of the shoulder blades and the dimples moving like little whirlpools over their spines; the lovely flexible turn of the flanks over the solid hips. Sara was smiling at me. “What it was to be young,” she said. “But there, those that don’t know, no one can tell them.” Just as she might have looked and spoken thirty years before. It made me stare. As if that woman I’d known, all cream and gold and roses, had resurrected under that old skin. And then, before I could speak, she said, “There’s the kettle boiling. Don’t come,” and heaved herself up with a groan, and waddled out, flat foot, with her crinkly old hand on her buttock, palm out. An old stump again. She left me staring. I daresay my mouth was open.
“You old fool,” Coker said. “Why don’t you stand up to her? She’s turning you right round her finger.”
“Not me,” I said, “and not Sara. I know her games.”
But the fact was, I was seeing Sara in her bath with the brush. And drying her feet, leaning down all back and arms with her hair falling over her knees, and a bluish light on the shiny flats round the spine—sky reflection—a sweet bit of brushwork.
And there was something else about the old boa constrictor that I’d forgotten. Till that moment when she squared up to me and threw me her old smile. Herself, Sara. The individual female. The real old original fireship. Yes. The old hulk had it. Still. A spark in the ashes. (425 words)
Pamela – Ch 11
The trouble is that though all good Protestant preachers round Greenbank including anarchists and anti-God Blackboys love beauty, they all hate pictures, real pictures. Each time Plantie sees one of my pictures, he gets a worse shock. This, of course, excites him to great enthusiasm, and makes me feel depressed. I don’t care for people to admire my pictures unless they like them. So when Plantie began to cry out to the two other preachers, “Look at that—beautiful, isn’t it? Why, Mr. Jimson, I think those fish are wonderful—a wonderful bit of work. You could almost eat them.” I felt a kind of gloom rise from my belly and darken my windows.
“Mr. Jimson has a picture in the National Gallery,” said Plantie, blowing the trumpets of the Lord and art, with all his might. “He used to paint from the life, but now he prefers Bible subjects.” Trying to tickle them with their own breast feathers.
The preacher with the blue nose, who had been staring at Eve like a bull at a picnic, now gave a loud sniff, and Plantie, seeing that this picture was going to be more unpopular with art lovers even than the last, made a great effort. “This one represents the Fall. Adam is on the left. He is not quite finished down the back. Eve on the right is kneeling down. The serpent on the left is speaking in Adam’s ear. The flowers at the side are daisies and marigolds. Really, Mr. Jimson, I’ve got to congratulate you on those flowers. Don’t you agree with me?” turning towards the bloodhound. “Don’t you think daisies are just right for the Garden of Eden, Mr. Dogsbody?” or some name like that.
But the more he tried, the worse I felt. As if I had been a happy worm, creeping all soft and oily through the grass, imagining the blades to be great forest trees, and every little pebble a mountain overcome; and taking the glow of self-satisfaction from his own tail for the glory of the Lord shining on his path; when all at once a herd of bullocks comes trampling along, snorting tropical epochs and shitting continents; succeeded by a million hairy gorillas, as big as skyscrapers, beating on their chests with elephant drumsticks and screaming, “Give us meat; give us mates,” followed modestly by ten thousand walruses a thousand feet high, wearing battleships for boots, and the Dome of St. Paul’s for a cod-piece; armed in the one hand with shield-shaped Bibles fortified with brass spikes, and in the other with cross-headed clubs of blood rusty iron, hung with the bleeding heads of infants, artists, etc., with which they beat up what is left of the grass, crying, “Come to mother, little worm, and let her pat your dear head and comb your sweet hair for you.”
The bloodhound then opened his mouth and bayed, “Most interasting, Mr.-ah-Mister Johnson. Of course, I know nothing about art, but I wonder could you tell me if—ah—the human form—anatomically speaking, could—ah—assume the position of the male figure. Of course, I know—ah—a certain distortion is—ah—permissible.”
I had to pretend to see a spot on Eve’s nose and to rub it off with my finger. And I couldn’t get out a word. It was most embarrassing. There was the poor chap doing his best, and I had to pretend to be stone deaf. Come, I said to myself, say something, anything. Something they can understand. That’s all they want. (601 Words)
Geeta - Ch 15
“Nature, that supreme creator intended man for happiness and peace, in the enjoyment of all her beauties—” the skate was saying.
“It all helps,” said Sara, “but not unless there’s some kindness on both sides—and perhaps when Nature goes out, the kindness comes in. I think we’re both kinder sort of mankind than we used to be, Gulley. When we had our nature more fidgety, and indeed it may be intended for peace in our old age—”
“Damn old age,” I said. “I’m not old, and if I wasn’t so busy and had the money, I’d take you to Brighton tomorrow.”
“Too busy,” said Sara. “Oh well, I suppose that’s a good thing. But, oh dear, how I used to hate that word. Why, even on our honeymoon at Bournemouth, it was always, ‘Just keep like that a minute, Sara, while I catch the slant of the left shoulder.’ ”
“Well, Sara, and I wouldn’t mind drawing that shoulder again—when you come to me next week. I shouldn’t be surprised if your back and thighs weren’t as good as ever they were.”
“Oh dear, I could never make out whether it was me or my flesh that you wanted—that was the beginning of all our trouble.”
“Who made the trouble? It was nag, nag, nag—”
“I never nagged you, Gulley. I would never do such a thing to a male body. I’ve more contrivance than that, I hope. And who hit me on the nose? Well, look at it even now.”
“It was the only way to teach you to keep it out of my business.”
“Well, perhaps I made too much of the nose, Gulley, but you know a woman has her feelings, especially a young woman, before she learns sense.”
“You were forty when you hooked me.”
“Ah, but that is the youngest time—I mean in your feelings—that’s when a woman acts her youngest and silliest. Well, I was a silly girl I know, but I couldn’t bear for you to hit me on the nose—it wasn’t the pain, it was making it so red and ugly. Well, I always knew my nose was my weak point—”
“Point—”
“There you go,” and Sara began to laugh and cry at the same time. “Oh, isn’t that you all over? Oh, it’s cruel. Well, I know it always was too soft and spready, and you know you did make it worse. I’m sure you broke the gristle—yes, if I’ve got to carry about this awful sponge now, it’s because of you.”
“And a few score hogsheads. Come, Sara, fill up and don’t let it stick to the glass. You and I were a pair of fools, but that’s no reason why we should go on being foolish—you come along next Saturday and bring some beer, and I’ll do a nice sketch or two and give you a copy. You always liked to keep a drawing of yourself. I daresay you have some now.”
“You only want me for a cheap model, Gulley, I know.”
“The best model I ever had. Why, Sara, they’re giving thousands for those old sketches of you in the yellow bath. And you’ve got it about you still,” and, in fact, I could have painted the old trollop that minute if I could have got her clothes off. There was always something about Sara that made me want to hit her or love her or get her down on canvas. She provoked you, and half of it was on purpose.
The skate was working himself up. “On the one hand the home; a little sketch or picture of that paradise which Nature meant for the whole world.”
“Yes,” said Sara, sighing again, and a tear or perhaps a drop of porter sweat rolled off her nose into the glass. “That’s what I always felt—if only people could be sensible and not so jealous and spiteful—there’s such a lot of happiness that God meant for us.”
“And what do we see about us?” cried the skate, working himself up and answering his own questions like the end man at the nigger minstrels.
Zakia – Ch 15
The people kept floating in. Like fish in an aquarium full of dirty brown water, three dimensions of fish faces, every one on top of the other. Bobbing slowly to and fro, and up and down. Goggle eyes, cod mouths. Hanging in the middle of the brown. Waiting for a worm or just suspended. Old octopus in corner with a green dome and a blue beak, working his arms. Trying to take off his overcoat without losing his chair. Old female in black with a red nose creeping about in the dark corners like a crawfish, shaking her bonnet feathers and prodding her old brown umbrella at the chairs. Young skate stuck up the wall with bulgy white eyelids and a little white mouth. Never moving. You’d think he was glued to the side of the tank. People kept falling over and sitting on me. I took a chair into the scullery to be out of the way, and shut the door to be at peace.
…
But still I might have got the door shut if just then the old crawfish hadn’t come working sideways along the row, apologizing and groaning, and sticking her umbrella into everybody’s eyes; until she got her backside wedged up against the scullery door. Then everybody began to hiss at her and she got her umbrella jammed between a chair and an old man’s waistcoat, and some good Christian, looking carefully the other way, gave her a hard shove with his shoulder and she tumbled into the scullery. She fell on the empty chair, panting like a steamboat, and then began to push her dress about and pull her bonnet and jerk her legs and elbows, as old women do when they’re flustered. But all at once she felt me just behind her and gave a jump and turned half round. And I said, “Sara.” (314 words)
Shoba – Ch 22
But of course they both wanted me to see her work and say that it was wonderful. And why not? They were so kind, so good.
“Why,” I said, “amateurs do much the most interesting work.”
The Professor began to hop about like a dry pea on the stove. He coughed and made faces at me, meaning, “Be careful, be tactful, remember these people are used to luxury of all kinds.”
But I laughed and said, “Don’t you worry, Professor, I’m not pulling her ladyship’s leg. I wouldn’t do such a thing. I have too much respect for that charming limb.”
Sir William got out an easel and a big portfolio, in red morocco with a monogram in gold. And he took out a big double mount, of the best Bristol board, cut by a real expert, with a dear little picture in the middle. Sky with clouds, grass with trees, water with reflection, cows with horns, cottage with smoke and passing labourer with fork, blue shirt, old hat.
“Lovely,” I said, puffing my cigar. “Only wants a title—what will you call it? Supper time. You can see that chap is hungry.”
“I think the sky is not too bad,” said she. “I just laid it down and left it.”
“That’s the way,” I said. “Keep it fresh. Get the best colours and let ’em do the rest. Charming.”
“I’m so glad you like it,” said she. And she was so nice that I thought I should tell her something.
“Of course,” I said, “the sky is just a leetle bit chancy, looks a bit accidental, like when the cat spills its breakfast.”
“I think I see,” said her ladyship, and Sir William said, “Of course, Mr. Jimson, you do get skies like that in Dorset. It’s really a typical Dorset sky.”
I saw the Professor winking at me so hard that his face was like a concertina with a hole in it. But I didn’t care. For I knew that I could say what I liked to real amateurs and they wouldn’t care a damn. They’d only think, These artists are a lot of jealous stick-in-the-muds. They can’t admire any art but their own. Which is simply dry made-up stuff, without any truth or real feeling for Nature. “Yes,” I said, “that is a typical sky. Just an accident. That’s what I mean. What you’ve got there is just a bit of nothing at all—nicely splashed on to the best Whatman with an expensive camel-hair—”
“I think I see what you mean,” said her ladyship. “Yes, I do see—it’s most interesting.”
And she said something to Sir William with her left eyelash, which caused him to shut his mouth and remove the picture so suddenly that it was like the movies. And to pop on the next. A nice little thing of clouds with sky, willows with grass, river with wet water, barge with mast and two ropes, horse with tail, man with back. (503 words)
Joe – Ch 23
I began to laugh. “This place is called Beulah. It is a pleasant lovely shadow, where no dispute can come because of those who sleep.”
“I’m afraid you are a cynic, Mr. Jimson.”
“No, but I’m not a millionaire. Don’t you ever stop being a millionaire, your ladyship. It would spoil your art.”
“But we are poor. Really quite poor. Or we wouldn’t live in a flat like this, would we, William? With only one bathroom.”
“Talking of bathrooms, I have something to ask your ladyship. I should like to paint you.” “Not in my bath?” “No, in the nude.” “But I am fearfully thin, Mr. Jimson.” “I want the bony structure to go with the face.” “I’m afraid my husband wouldn’t approve.” “He needn’t look.”
“Goya,” said the Professor, “painted the Duchess of Alva in the nude and also clothed.”
“I know the pictures,” said Sir William. “Wonderful work—what brio—”
“Wonderful,” I said. “The girl has no neck in the nude and no hips in her chemmy. Yet there they are, distinctly something.”
“Don’t you like Goya, Mr. Jimson?”
“A great man who painted some great stuff—too big for a dinner party. The Queen’s nose in the court picture is alone a very serious matter.”
“A lyric artist,” said the Professor.
“On the brass.” But Goya was making too much noise. The Queen’s nose in the court picture began to trumpet at me and the walls of Beulah trembled. “Don’t talk about him,” I said. “Let me look at your missus and give me some more port. When shall I paint you, M’dam, I’m free tomorrow afternoon.”
“I’m afraid I have an engagement.”
“No, not one you can’t put off. And this is a great chance, you understand. Wouldn’t you like to be immortal, like Goya’s Duchess?”
“Have some more port, Mr. Jimson,” said Sir William.
“With pleasure.” But I couldn’t help laughing. For I could see he was put out. He was pipped. And he was only a dream in Beulah.
“We must think of your wonderful offer,” said her ladyship.
“Yes,” said Sir William, warming his brandy glass, and his voice was warm again, his voice sleepy. “It is an honour.”
And every moment has a couch of gold for soft repose,
And between every two moments stands a daughter of Beulah
To feed the sleepers on their couches with maternal care.
And every minute has an azure tent with silken veils—
I did not feel sleepy. Far from it. Dreams were moving in front of my eyes like festivals of Eden. Land of the rich where the tree of knowledge of good and evil is surrounded with golden rabbit wire.
“Yes,” I said. “I shall paint you in Beulah, ma’am, and your loom and your tent, it will only cost you a hundred guineas; and fifty for the Professor—cheap for immortality.” (478 words)
Gopa – Ch 25
Now the truth was that, though I had sent letters to Mrs. Coker every day, and even managed, on one dark evening, to put three rats through a side window, I hadn’t yet taken the last decisive step. My idea was, if she wouldn’t go by persuasion, to remove my picture and then take the windows and door off, and possibly some of the roof. Make a ruin of the place. And when she had been blown out, and rained out, I would go back again. I’d often lived in ruins before.
And I had formed, by careful observation, a pretty good idea of Mrs. Coker’s habits. She went shopping at any time she fancied, and she was usually away for an hour. So I only had to watch her off the premises, and then get to work with a screwdriver. And it had better be today, I thought, if I’m going to sell the Fall. I have no time to waste. I must close with the Professor at once before he gets thrown out again, or his Sir William has a fit. And the Fall will certainly need touching up, even if I pass those legs.
But I had bad luck. I waited there all that afternoon by the Eagle, and still Mrs. Coker remained in garrison. I saw her now and then empty a bucket into the dustbin or throw a piece of coal at a cat, but she did not go shopping. Then it began to rain chandeliers in the afternoon sun; big drops which went through the thin spots in my overcoat like shot through blotting paper. And when I was trying to take cover against the side wall, down came young Barbon, fizzing like a ginger beer bottle. He annoyed me. “What the hell,” I said. “Didn’t you swear to go home and leave art alone and do some real work?”
“Oh, but Mr. Jimson, I did work. And you know it’s my holidays now. Since last week.”
“Holidays? The only chance you’ll ever get to do your own job. As it ought to be done. My boy Tom always worked in the summer holidays. It’s the best time to work because there’s no masters to waste your time.”
“I d-did work, Mr. Jimson. But I saw you going down Greenbank, and I thought you were going to paint on the Fall.”
“I wish I could paint on the Fall,” I said. “But I have to wait till my lady guest goes out before I can even see the damn thing.” And like a fool I told him all about the Cokers. I am always inclined to talk too much to ugly boys, because they are so modest and so keen on everything and because they ask such a lot of questions. Of course, as soon as I explained the case to young Barbon, he got so excited that he could hardly speak. He was so sympathetic that I wanted to jump into the river. I like a little sympathy in the right place, but a lot of sympathy always makes me feel as if I had lost my clothes and didn’t know where to hide. And when I had explained my plan for removing the doors and windows he rushed off to borrow a hatchet and screwdrivers and wanted to start at once. I had to tell him that this matter was more serious than that. “There mustn’t be any violence,” I said, “or the thing wouldn’t be legal. First we have to take formal possession, and then we can remove the doors and windows. That is the way bailiffs do it. But we must establish possession first so that if Mrs. Coker calls in the police, we shall be able to make them think we thought we were on the right side of the law. We’ve got to have a case.” (651 words)
Arundhaty – Ch 26
For the fact is I was beginning to feel very lively. You might say, gay. I couldn’t believe it at first. And so I went on being dejected.
“A wonderful picture like that,” said Nosy. “P-put on the r-roof.”
“A serious thing for me,” I said. But I almost burst out laughing at Nosy’s indignation. And I decided to give way to my gaiety. It’s not an easy thing to do when you have a real grievance, and if I had been fifty years younger I shouldn’t have done it. But for some time now I had been noticing that on the whole, a man is wise to give way to gaiety, even at the expense of a grievance. A good grievance is highly enjoyable, but like a lot of other pleasures, it is bad for the liver. It affects the digestion and injures the sweetbread. So I gave way and laughed.
“W-what is it?” said Nosy, quite terrified. He thought I was going mad with grief.
….
And all at once I knew why I was sick of the Fall. And I knew what I wanted to do. That blue-grey shape on the pink. The tower. The whatever it was, very round and heavy. Something like a gasometer at full stretch without its muzzle. Or possibly an enamel coffee-pot. And chrome yellow things like Egyptian columns or leeks or dumb-bells or willows or brass candlesticks, in front; and to the left, also round but much smoother, a fat pillar or glass rolling-pin coming out of green waves or mountains or crumpled baize—very dark green with a broken surface. And a strong recession. A dark red below, curving up towards the right, a beach or range of mountains or German sausage. The pink, rather misty, volcanic eruption or cottage wallpaper. And a swag of red across the top left, clouds of volcanic smoke, or a plush curtain. All very solid. But not hard. Three-dimensional. With great attention to texture. “And besides,” I said to Nosy, “I’ve got a far better thing all ready.” It wasn’t all ready, but I felt that it was going to be ready in five minutes. “All ready in my eye.”
“A b-better thing?” said Nosy, in a doubtful voice. Like a child whose oldest boat has just gone down the drain, when you tell him that you’ve got something much nicer in the cupboard. “But it wouldn’t be the F-Fall.”
“Yes,” I said, for why shouldn’t I call it the Fall? “It might as well be that as anything else. The blue tower could be Adam and the red wave Eve, and the yellow things the serpents. Yes,” I said, “it’s going to be the Fall, only much better. Much solider. I’ve learnt a lot since I started that last Fall. And I know what was wrong with it. It wasn’t immediate enough. It didn’t hit you hard enough. It wasn’t solid enough.”
“S-solid enough?” said Nosy. “No,” I said, “what was the Fall after all. The discovery of the solid hard world, good and evil. Hard as rocks and sharp as poisoned thorns. And also the way to make gardens.”
“G-gardens?”
“Gardens. Adam’s work. You have to make the bloody things and pile up the rocks and keep the roses in beds. But you don’t get the thorns in your tender parts, by accident—you get them in your fingers, on purpose, and like it, because a garden, as old Randypole Blake would say, is a spiritual being. (598 words)
Priya – Ch 38
Rozzie was the only girl in the world for me except Sara. They nearly finished me between them. The seven years when I had those two women on my mind and body were as good as fourteen penal. For each of them was a harem and you never knew which spouse you had to deal with.
Of course, I always liked big women. I suppose I was meant to be a sculptor or architect. And what attracted me to Rozzie in the first place was her size. She was bigger even than Sara in those days. It took several minutes to walk round her. You studied her from different aspects, like a public building. Something between St. Paul’s and the Brighton Pavilion. But though I may have had some idea of getting away with Rozzie, I didn’t reckon to fall in love with her.
They say, of course, any woman can catch any man if she takes him at the right moment, on the bounce, in the air; going up or coming down. But Rozzie didn’t try to catch me. When Sara refused me the first time, and I was suffering from temporary sanity, I went to Rozzie just round the corner and took her by as much as I could get hold of with my two arms and my teeth, and said, “Rozzie, you’ve got to marry me, or something like that, or I’ll cut both our bloody throats.”
Rozzie brushed me off like an earwig and said, “I’d smack your face if I wasn’t afraid of catching whatever it is. I’m Sara’s friend, and don’t you forget it. Do that again and I’ll tell her.” But she said it very nicely. Rozzie was a nice girl. She couldn’t be rough if she tried, in spite of her big fists.
“If you’re Sara’s friend,” I said, “you’ll be nice to me, because I’m going to cut my throat and that will upset Sara considerably. She’s fond of me, though she doesn’t know it.”
“Go on and cut,” said Rozzie. “Sara and I want a good laugh.” But by this time I was sitting on her knee and making myself accustomed. And Rozzie didn’t brush me off. I expected that smack every minute, but it didn’t come. And Rozzie was so fierce in her look and rough in her tongue, that it was only after she was dead and I had time to think about her and to see her in the all round, that I realized she was all bark and no bite. Take off her clothes and she was like a port-wine jelly rabbit shelled out of the tin, a pink trembler; massive and shapely in the forms, but inclined to spread at the edges; firm to the eye, but soft to the touch. Deep but transparent; something like a lion, but not much.
Why did I fall in love with Rozzie? Most men fall in love because they want to; that’s why they can’t be stopped. But I didn’t want to fall in love with either Sara or Rozzie. I wanted to get on with my work. I was the victim of circumstances.
Every billet has its bullet, there’s a fatal woman waiting for every man. Luckily he doesn’t often meet her. I was born six men and I had six fates, but thank God, I only met five of them. As a religious man, I fell for a Sunday school teacher, but I converted her to Christianity and she ran away with a primitive Communist. As a Briton I fell in love with Mrs. Monday, the mother and the wife. I wanted to rest upon the domestic bosom. But she turned into a bride and wanted to rest on mine. As an artist, I fell in love with Sara, and her grand forms, but she was an artist herself, and she appreciated herself so much that she couldn’t bear me to paint anyone or anything else.
But the man who fell in love with Rozzie was the poor little Peter Pan who wanted to creep back into his mother’s womb and be safe and warm and comfortable for the rest of his life. Isolationist. With navel defence. Sure shield. And lo, Rozzie only wanted to creep into my stomach.
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