‘Forthcoming Exhibition of Works by Casimir Lypiatt.’ The announcement caught his eye. And so poor old Lypiatt was on the warpath again, he reflected, as he pushed open the doors of the Albemarle Galleries. Poor old Lypiatt! Dear old Lypiatt, even. He liked Lypiatt. Though he had his defects. It would be fun to see him again.
Gumbril found himself in the midst of a dismal collection of etchings. He passed them in review, wondering why it was that, in these hard days when no painter can sell a picture, almost any dull fool who can scratch a conventional etcher’s view of two boats, a suggested cloud and the flat sea should be able to get rid of his prints by the dozen and at guineas apiece. He was interrupted in his speculations by the approach of the assistant in charge of the gallery. He came up shyly and uncomfortably, but with the conscientious determination of one ambitious to do his duty and make good. He was a very young man with pale hair, to which heavy oiling had given a curious greyish colour, and a face of such childish contour and so imberb that he looked like a little boy playing at grown-ups. He had only been at this job a few weeks, and he found it very difficult.
‘This,’ he remarked, with a little introductory cough, pointing to one view of the two boats and the flat sea, ‘is an earlier state than this.’ And he pointed to another view, where the boats were still two and the sea seemed just as flat – though possibly, on a closer inspection, it might really have been flatter.
‘Indeed,’ said Gumbril.
The assistant was rather pained by his coldness. He blushed; but constrained himself to go on. ‘Some excellent judges,’ he said, ‘prefer the earlier state, though it is less highly finished.’
‘Ah?’
‘Beautiful atmosphere, isn’t it?’ The assistant put his head on one side and pursed his childish lips appreciatively.
Gumbril nodded.
With desperation, the assistant indicated the shadowed rump of one of the boats. ‘A wonderful feeling in this passage,’ he said, redder than ever.
‘Very intense,’ said Gumbril.
The assistant smiled at him gratefully. ‘That’s the word,’ he said, delighted. ‘Intense. That’s it. Very intense.’ He repeated the word several times, as though to make sure of remembering it for use when the occasion next presented itself. He was determined to make good.
‘I see Mr Lypiatt is to have a show here soon,’ remarked Gumbril, who had had enough of the boats.
‘He is making the final arrangements with Mr Albemarle at this very moment,’ said the assistant triumphantly, with the air of one who produces, at the dramatic and critical moment, a rabbit out of the empty hat.
‘You don’t say so?’ Gumbril was duly impressed. ‘Then I’ll wait till he comes out,’ he said, and sat down with his back to the boats.
The assistant returned to his desk and picked up the gold-belted fountain pen which his aunt had given him when he first went into business, last Christmas. ‘Very intense,’ he wrote in capitals on a half-sheet of notepaper. ‘The feeling in this passage is very intense.’ He studied the paper for a few moments, then folded it up carefully and put it away in his waistcoat pocket. ‘Always make a note of it.’ That was one of the business mottoes he had himself written out so laboriously in Indian ink and old English lettering. It hung over his bed between ‘The Lord is my Shepherd’, which his mother had given him, and a quotation from Dr Frank Crane,
‘A smiling face sells more goods than a clever tongue’. Still, a clever tongue, the young assistant had often reflected, was a very useful thing, especially in this job. He wondered whether one could say that the composition of a picture was very intense. Mr Albemarle was very keen on the composition, he noticed. But perhaps it was better to stick to plain ‘fine’, which was a little commonplace, perhaps, but very safe. He would ask Mr Albemarle about it. And then there was all that stuff about plastic values and pure plasticity. He sighed. It was all very difficult. A chap might be as willing and eager to make good as he liked; but when it came to this about atmosphere and intense passages and plasticity – well, really, what could a chap do? Make a note of it. It was the only thing.
In Mr Albemarle’s private room, Casimir Lypiatt thumped the table. ‘Size, Mr Albemarle,’ he was saying, ‘size and vehemence and spiritual significance – that’s what the old fellows had, and we haven’t . . .’ He gesticulated as he talked, his face worked and his green eyes, set in their dark, charred orbits, were full of a troubled light. The forehead was precipitous, the nose long and sharp; in the bony and almost fleshless face, the lips of the wide mouth were surprisingly full.
‘Precisely, precisely,’ said Mr Albemarle in his juicy voice. He was a round, smooth, little man with a head like an egg; he spoke, he moved with a certain pomp, a butlerish gravity, that were evidently meant to be ducal.
‘That’s what I’ve set myself to recapture,’ Lypiatt went on: ‘the size, the masterfulness of the masters.’ He felt a warmth running through him as he spoke, flushing his cheeks, pulsing hotly behind the eyes, as though he had drunk a draught of some heartening red wine. His own words elated him, and drunkenly gesticulating, he was as though drunken. The greatness of the masters – he felt it in him. He knew his own power, he knew, he knew. He could do all that they had done. Nothing was beyond his strength.
Egg-headed Albemarle confronted him, impeccably the butler, exacerbatingly serene. Albemarle too should be fired. He struck the table once more, he broke out again:
‘It’s been my mission,’ he shouted, ‘all these years.’
All these years . . . Time had worn the hair from his temples; the high, steep forehead seemed higher than it really was. He was forty now; the turbulent young Lypiatt who had once declared that no man could do anything worth doing after he was thirty, was forty now. But in these fiery moments he could forget the years, he could forget the disappointments, the unsold pictures, the bad reviews. ‘My mission,’ he repeated; ‘and by God! I feel, I know I can carry it through.’
Warmly the blood pulsed behind his eyes.
‘Quite,’ said Mr Albemarle, nodding the egg. ‘Quite.’
‘And how small the scale is nowadays!’ Lypiatt went on, rhapsodically. ‘How trivial the conception, how limited the scope! You see no painter-sculptor-poets, like Michelangelo; no scientist-artists, like Leonardo; no mathematician-courtiers, like Boscovitch; no impresario-musicians, like Handel; no geniuses of all trades, like Wren. I have set myself against this abject specialization of ours. I stand alone, opposing it with my example.’ Lypiatt raised his hand. Like the statue of Liberty, standing colossal and alone.
‘Nevertheless,’ began Mr Albemarle.
‘Painter, poet, musician,’ cried Lypiatt. ‘I am all three. I . . .’
‘. . . there is a danger of – how shall I put it – dissipating one’s energies,’ Mr Albemarle went on with determination. Discreetly, he looked at his watch. This conversation, he thought, seemed to be prolonging itself unnecessarily.
‘There is no greater danger in letting them stagnate and atrophy,’ Lypiatt retorted. ‘Let me give you my experience.’ Vehemently, he gave it.
Out in the gallery, among the boats, the views of the Grand Canal, and the Firth of Forth, Gumbril placidly ruminated. Poor old Lypiatt, he was thinking. Dear old Lypiatt, even, in spite of his fantastic egotism. Such a bad painter, such a bombinating poet, such a loud emotional improviser on the piano! And going on like this, year after year, pegging away at the same old things – always badly! And always without a penny, always living in the most hideous squalor! Magnificent and pathetic old Lypiatt!
A door suddenly opened and a loud, unsteady voice, now deep and harsh, now breaking to shrillness, exploded into the gallery.
‘. . . like a Veronese,’ it was saying; ‘enormous, vehement, a great swirling composition’ (‘swirling composition’ – mentally, the young assistant made a note of that), ‘but much more serious, of course, much more spiritually significant, much more –’
‘Lypiatt!’ Gumbril had risen from his chair, had turned, had advanced, holding out his hand.
‘Why, it’s Gumbril. Good Lord!’ and Lypiatt seized the proffered hand with an excruciating cordiality. He seemed to be in exuberantly good spirits. ‘We’re settling about my show, Mr Albermarle and I,’ he explained. ‘You know Gumbril, Mr Albemarle?’
‘Pleased to meet you,’ said Mr Albermarle. ‘Our friend, Mr Lypiatt,’ he added richly, ‘has the true artistic temp –’
‘It’s going to be magnificent.’ Lypiatt could not wait till Mr Albemarle had finished speaking. He gave Gumbril a heroic blow on the shoulder.
‘. . . artistic temperament, as I was saying,’ pursued Mr Albemarle. ‘He is altogether too impatient and enthusiastic for us poor people . . .’ a ducal smile of condescension accompanied this graceful act of self-abasement . . . ‘who move in the prosaic, practical, workaday world.’
Lypiatt laughed, a loud,
