“you are a willful man. You would curdle cream. Have you not yet learned that artless prattle is superior to the artful kind?”
“Not twenty-four hours a day.”
“Ah well, perhaps not,” agreed the Bishop, and taking her hand, led Emma out into the garden, to name the flowers and plants and any animals therein at that time residing.
“Must I really read Dr. Johnson?” asked Emma.
“No, my child,” said the Bishop, who had been contemplating a zinnia, a most rare flower, and did not want his pleasure spoiled. “If an elephant could have written verse, he would have written much in the style of Johnson. It is not easy; it does not convince; but it is full of ponderous felicities. There is even here and there the gleam of a tusk. But though it is quotable, it cannot be read.”
“Not even the Dictionary? ”
“The Dictionary is different. Here and there the Dic tionary is amusing. As good as a novel, but with the words in their proper order, so I am told.”
“You are making fun of me.”
“No, I am only making fun with you. If Charles mustconvert you into that horrid grownup thing, a gentlewoman, he is going about it the wrong way. Even he should know a gentlewoman never reads, except, of course, the ‘Court Gazette.’”
“There is little other diversion here, except to sing and play the spinet and sew.”
The Bishop of Derry was shocked. “How sad,” he said, “to be so serious so young.”
“I am not sad. I find it paradise.”
“A strange Methodistic paradise, all gray. Now had you read the Alcoran, you would know that true paradise consists of nothing but your pretty self and milk and honey. My dear, you are diversion.” And the Bishop went back to contemplation of his copper zinnia, a plant from the New World, but in England, a novelty.
*
It was Mr. Hayley who provided the diversion, not the Bishop of Derry, and most certainly not Greville. Mr. Hayley had gone to see his friend Romney, the painter, who though he had been living in London for some years, had only recently arrived, and was at the moment fashionable. “Romney’s pictures are hard, dry and tasteless, and such as you would not like in the least. And I am enough secure that he will never make a first-rate painter,” wrote Northcote to his brother. That showed you how well established Romney had become. In these matters, a word from Northcote was enough.
Mr. Romney was a paranoiac of great charm, which is to say, in his own day, an original. His studio in Cavendish Square was vast. It was not England; it was not Italy; it was not anywhere. Freed for a moment from his vanities, his insanities and his own innate inabilities, he shut his eyes and life came flooding in, sepia wave after sepia wave of women who writhed and turned and were waves and not women, badly drawn, not drawn at all, merely fixed in the act of being either that bright turbulence the nearly blind see by daylight, or else the promise of something unknowable.
What I am I am, and that’s a pity, thought Mr. Romney. But what I draw for myself is quite anotherthing. For he had long ago given up hope that those half-understood and barely attended-to visions of his would ever find a model through whom he could express them.
He did not enjoy being a fashionable painter, for since all women of fashion desire to have the same face, he was forced to draw the same face always, which was not even the face of any particular woman, but only the face of fashion, and no relief in sight, but a change of style, which would merely be the same thing all over again with different eyebrows. Where is the woman with the courage to look like herself? Where, for that matter, the man? These do not exist. We are all afraid of something. Besides, he could not but hanker after the history or fancy piece, for since he had no talent for composition, that, of course, was what he longed to do.
In short, he was in the dumps. His talent was limited, in so far as he could draw accurately
“Not twenty-four hours a day.”
“Ah well, perhaps not,” agreed the Bishop, and taking her hand, led Emma out into the garden, to name the flowers and plants and any animals therein at that time residing.
“Must I really read Dr. Johnson?” asked Emma.
“No, my child,” said the Bishop, who had been contemplating a zinnia, a most rare flower, and did not want his pleasure spoiled. “If an elephant could have written verse, he would have written much in the style of Johnson. It is not easy; it does not convince; but it is full of ponderous felicities. There is even here and there the gleam of a tusk. But though it is quotable, it cannot be read.”
“Not even the Dictionary? ”
“The Dictionary is different. Here and there the Dic tionary is amusing. As good as a novel, but with the words in their proper order, so I am told.”
“You are making fun of me.”
“No, I am only making fun with you. If Charles mustconvert you into that horrid grownup thing, a gentlewoman, he is going about it the wrong way. Even he should know a gentlewoman never reads, except, of course, the ‘Court Gazette.’”
“There is little other diversion here, except to sing and play the spinet and sew.”
The Bishop of Derry was shocked. “How sad,” he said, “to be so serious so young.”
“I am not sad. I find it paradise.”
“A strange Methodistic paradise, all gray. Now had you read the Alcoran, you would know that true paradise consists of nothing but your pretty self and milk and honey. My dear, you are diversion.” And the Bishop went back to contemplation of his copper zinnia, a plant from the New World, but in England, a novelty.
*
It was Mr. Hayley who provided the diversion, not the Bishop of Derry, and most certainly not Greville. Mr. Hayley had gone to see his friend Romney, the painter, who though he had been living in London for some years, had only recently arrived, and was at the moment fashionable. “Romney’s pictures are hard, dry and tasteless, and such as you would not like in the least. And I am enough secure that he will never make a first-rate painter,” wrote Northcote to his brother. That showed you how well established Romney had become. In these matters, a word from Northcote was enough.
Mr. Romney was a paranoiac of great charm, which is to say, in his own day, an original. His studio in Cavendish Square was vast. It was not England; it was not Italy; it was not anywhere. Freed for a moment from his vanities, his insanities and his own innate inabilities, he shut his eyes and life came flooding in, sepia wave after sepia wave of women who writhed and turned and were waves and not women, badly drawn, not drawn at all, merely fixed in the act of being either that bright turbulence the nearly blind see by daylight, or else the promise of something unknowable.
What I am I am, and that’s a pity, thought Mr. Romney. But what I draw for myself is quite anotherthing. For he had long ago given up hope that those half-understood and barely attended-to visions of his would ever find a model through whom he could express them.
He did not enjoy being a fashionable painter, for since all women of fashion desire to have the same face, he was forced to draw the same face always, which was not even the face of any particular woman, but only the face of fashion, and no relief in sight, but a change of style, which would merely be the same thing all over again with different eyebrows. Where is the woman with the courage to look like herself? Where, for that matter, the man? These do not exist. We are all afraid of something. Besides, he could not but hanker after the history or fancy piece, for since he had no talent for composition, that, of course, was what he longed to do.
In short, he was in the dumps. His talent was limited, in so far as he could draw accurately
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