25

In which Sir William Orpen and Mrs. Elinor Glyn reveal
their Souls

And now, on returning to London, I decided that it was time to ‘become a journalist.’ So many hundreds of otherwise sane young men have made the same decision, without success, that it really might be worth while to tell them just one thing about it. They have such glorious dreams, at Oxford, over a cigarette and a whisky and soda, of writing palpitating articles for vast prices, that it is only fair to disillusion them.

The one thing which the embryo journalist must realize is that mere writing is only one-quarter of his equipment. He may be able to produce brilliant articles, to star every page with epigrams, to compose perorations that wring the heart, to evolve leaders that would stir the Empire, and still not be a successful journalist.

He must certainly begin at the beginning. And to do that he must have a hide of brass. Brass, I said. No other substance is strong enough. He must ring up irate Duchesses at midnight and ask them what they think of bobbed hair. He must do it, at any rate for a few months, for it is only right for him to know how it feels. He must go to successful stockbrokers and ask them what they think of the financial situation. He must visit the Zoo and grovel about in dirty cages to see if the latest lizard has laid an egg, or if the latest elephant has recovered from its pain. He must do it, even though it makes him feel ill, even though he blushes over the telephone, is terrified by elephants, and feels like hitting the stockbroker fair and square on the chin. One day he will be telling other people to do these things. He cannot tell them unless he has done the things himself.

For—and this is the whole point of the matter—three-quarters of modern journalism consists in making other people say things, not in saying them yourself. Do not hope, my young friend, that anybody will pay any attention to your articles. You may get them accepted from time to time, but unless you are an overpowering genius you will not make much of a living out of it.

I could write a lot more on the subject but I won’t. Nobody ever wants advice. It is enough to say that in the August of 1922 I ‘got on’ to a paper.

The first man I ever ‘interviewed’ was Sir William Orpen. Really, one could hardly call it an ‘interview,’ for it merely consisted in having tea with him, eating quantities of very excellent cucumber sandwiches, and smoking many cigarettes.

After about the tenth sandwich, I said, ‘I have to interview you, and I haven’t the vaguest idea how to begin.’

‘Have another sandwich.’

‘I shall be sick.’

‘That’s what they’re for. I don’t want to be interviewed.’

‘But you said you would.’

‘Did I? Well, fire away.’ (Pause.) ‘You’re a dud sort of journalist, aren’t you? Where’s your notebook? And your pencil that ought to leave indelible ink stains all over your chin?’

All this, to be appreciated, would have to be written musically. Orpen’s conversation, if one set it to music, would be pitched in the alto clef, marked ‘prestissimo,’ and accompanied by a sort of Debussy bass, intermittently striking weird gurgly sounds at the most effective moment.

It would also have to be played with an Irish accent, if that were possible. The whole result, at any rate, is very intriguing, especially as Orpen is practically never serious, except when he is working. And then he is a devil.

How we ever really got to business I don’t know. I thought ‘if all interviewing is like this it will be very charming, and exceedingly fattening, because it apparently necessitates the consumption, on the part of the interviewer, of endless quantities of cucumber sandwiches.’

However, we did do it, and then he let me look at some of his work. There was a picture of a woman (one of the most amusing women in London) on the easel, in a delightful greeny dress.

‘How you must have loved painting that dress,’ I said.

‘Made her put it on.’

‘Can you?’ And then ... ‘What would you do if a woman with red hair came and sat for you in a purple dress?’

‘Make her take it off.’

‘But supposing she wouldn’t?’

‘Take it off myself. Or else show her the door. Couldn’t paint that sort of thing. Give me heart attack.’

‘What ought red-haired women to wear, then?’

‘Green, I should think. Depends on the hair. Fair-haired women look fine in black. Dark women can wear orange. Anything bright. All this is tripe anyway. Not a dress designer. Could do it, though. Might pay. Bright idea. Have another sandwich?’

As a matter of fact, it would be rather a bright idea if a particularly enterprising dress designer were to pay enormous fees to some artist with a name to come for an hour a day, examine the faces and figures of the clients, and say, ‘You ought to wear mauve georgette,’ or ‘You would look wonderful in jade-green something or other.’ Can you imagine John doing it? Or Orpen? The latter would probably say, ‘Wrap yourself up in a rug and go home.’

‘Look at this,’ said Orpen. It was the picture of Lord Berkeley which was hung in that year’s Academy, a brilliant, sparkling piece of work. ‘Nice splosh of colour. Yellow coat. Pink face. Bits of blue. Came off pat. Not everything comes like that.’

It certainly didn’t. A friend of mine who has just had his picture done by Orpen said that he painted out the face eleven times before he was satisfied, and then scratched the whole thing because he didn’t like the pose.

The next time I saw him—this time unofficially—was just after the discovery of the tomb of Tut-ankh-Amen, when the first photographs of the lovely things inside were beginning to be published in the English papers.

He was standing underneath the great window in his studio, stroking his chin and looking at a full page of illustrations.

‘My word,’ he said, when he saw me, ‘what an age to have lived in! Look at that.’

He pointed to the photograph of a lotos vase in perfect condition. Even the reproduction in flat grey colours gave one a thrill which one gets rarely indeed to-day.

‘Would you rather have lived with Tut-ankh-Amen than now?’ I asked him.

‘What questions you ask. Getting better though. Didn’t do anything but eat cucumber sandwiches when you first came. Never seen anybody eat so many cucumber sandwiches. Disgusting. Would I what? Rather have lived with Tut-ankh-Amen? Sounds improper. Yes, I should. No other age so stimulating. Lovely lines. Lovely lines. Just look at it. Put your nose on it. Eat it.’

And he himself devoured the picture with his own eyes.

We talked a lot about ages we should have liked to live in. I stood up for Venice in the eighteenth century, with Longy’s masks and his shadowy ladies who eternally hold their fingers to their lips in dim rooms overlooking some secret canal.

‘M’yes. Longy’s all right. Damn fine costume. Hides ugly legs. Can’t always live at fancy-dress ball though. Jolly interesting to know if an age was like what the painters tell us. Middle Ages, now. Wish Renaissance painters hadn’t chosen so many Church subjects. One Virgin very like another. Beautiful, of course, but sick of ’em. Think if they’d painted the life around them. Like Rembrandt.’

He got up and started pacing round the room, the alto clef of his voice deepening a little....

‘Ever seen Rembrandt’s butcher’s shop? No? See it. Beauty, beauty, beauty. All out of a lot of meat. No, not out of that. Out of Rembrandt’s brain. Doesn’t really matter a damn what age you live in if you’ve got the goods. There.’ (Tapping his forehead.)

I should think whatever age Orpen had lived in he would have reflected life pretty brilliantly.

‘Funny thing, you know,’ he added, taking up a tube of ultramarine and sniffing it slightly, ‘how one’s got to get away from an age quite a long way before you can judge it purely æsthetically. Look at Sargent’s picture of that woman, Lady What’s-her name, with the big puffed-out sleeves. Painted in the ‘nineties. Damned fine painting. Damned ridiculous dress. You say to yourself, “Lord, what a frump!” In fifty years you’d just look upon it as a design. Can’t do that yet. Funny. Earth of the earth, earthy we are.’ (Pause.) ‘Got blue paint on nose. Why the hell didn’t you tell me?’

I left him sitting down on the hearthrug, underneath a bright light, gazing at the photograph of the vase which had once been Tut-ankh-Amen’s. I felt quite romantic. ‘Perhaps,’ I said to myself, ‘one of his incarnations had made that vase, and he is seeing in it some of the beauty which he had once realized, and forgotten, and lived again.’ Then I remembered the paint on his nose, and laughed.

******

There is nothing like variety, and journalism certainly gives you that. Soon after the Orpen episode I came in contact with Elinor Glyn, whom one never seems to meet in England except on business.

This lady’s appearance is so exactly like that of her own heroines that one can hardly believe she has not just stepped from between the covers of Three Weeks. I really have no idea of how I ever was admitted to the presence, for Elinor Glyn has a very good knowledge of the commercial value of her utterances, and is usually so hedged round with Press agents, publishers and literary agents, all waiting to see that her emotions are duly registered, collected, and sold, that there is little chance of gathering anything for nothing. I do not blame Elinor for it. If I had her reputation, I would not express an opinion even on the English climate without demanding a fee, payable in advance.

However, I found myself, one dreary afternoon, in her flat overlooking the Chelsea Embankment. This flat, with two exceptions, contained nothing of the atmosphere which she herself carries with her.

One felt quite sweet and simple in it. A few books, a few rather dull pictures, and an exceedingly upright piano. The two exceptions were, firstly a tiger skin, draped ‘negligently’ over the sofa, and secondly a pile of cushions, purple and mauve and black. When I saw these, I thrilled. I felt sure that when the authoress entered the room she would leap on to the cushions and begin to talk about life in a hoarse, strangled voice. She entered the room, but she made no sort of attempt to lie on the cushions. On the contrary, she sat straight and still, looked me full in the face, and said, ‘Who arranged this?’

I told her that I had not the faintest idea.

She shrugged her shoulders. ‘I never give interviews. Still, I suppose it’s all right.’

Silence. How deadly a silence can be. Then suddenly, with a charming smile:

‘The most terrible people come to see me sometimes. People who ask abominable questions, and look at me as though I were in a cage. You don’t appear to do that.’

This interview was turning out to be completely different from anything that I had anticipated. I had come prepared to listen to views on the modern girl, and instead I was treated to a searching cross-examination. Where was my father? Where did I live? I found myself lured by the fascination of those green eyes and orange hair. Suddenly she turned to me and said:

‘Do you believe in re-incarnation?’

I gave an evasive answer.

‘You should do. You, æons ago, were a horse.’

She may not have used these precise words, but she definitely stated that if my family were traced back sufficiently far, it would eventually prove to be equine in origin.

‘And I,’ she added, ‘come from some cat tribe. Don’t laugh.’

She smiled herself, but I think she was serious, for she added: ‘The English people completely misunderstand me. They only know things like Three Weeks and The Visits of Elizabeth. They think of me only as a foolish, sentimental, rather sensual woman. They’re blind to the philosophy in me. However—who cares? And anyway, we must get to business. Now what do you want to talk about?’

I gave her a cue—something on the lines of the eternal modern girl, and as soon as she heard that phrase her nostrils quivered, her eyes glared like lamps, her backbone seemed to stiffen like that of a cat on the offensive. And she looked extraordinarily beautiful.

‘Women to-day,’ she said, ‘are revolting men’s senses. Look at me. Do I slouch into the room, with a guilty look, as though I had not been to bed all night? Do I take out a lip stick and slash it over my mouth without caring where it goes? Do I daub powder all over my nose until it looks a totally different colour from the rest of my face?’

I answered her that, in our brief but entrancing acquaintance, she had done none of these things.

‘Look at my hands.’ With a gesture of scorn she held out five very white and exquisite fingers. ‘Are my hands yellow and horrible through incessantly smoking bad cigarettes?’ She leant forward and showed her teeth, looking like some furious goddess. ‘Are my teeth stained, for the same reason? I ask you? No, they are not.’

She relaxed, but she still looked very grim. ‘I can’t bear it,’ she said, ‘this abominable slackness. If I saw my daughters slouching through life like that, I should shoot either myself or them. It is worse in England than anywhere else.’

And then she began to talk about America. ‘Perfect dentistry, perfect knowledge of hygiene, and a universal common sense had made the American girl the most wonderful type in the world to-day.’ I could see that she adored America....

She said dozens of other things, but I forget them. And one cannot really write about Elinor Glyn, so that I shall stop here and now, leaving this thumbnail sketch as it stands.

I liked her enormously. If there was ever any occasion on which I found myself forced to use that nauseating word ‘queenly,’ it would be now. She is ‘queenly.’ She ought to have been born on some dark evening when Balkan thrones were tottering like scenes on the back-cloths of our less draughty London theatres. She ought to have been hustled over the waters of the Ishky-Repoka by faithful nurses, while grizzled prime ministers faced bloody men who demanded a new régime. She ought to have grown up among surroundings of crêpe and asphodels. And then, one day, she ought to have returned in a golden chariot, driven towards a beflagged palace, walked slowly down immense corridors, stood on a throne and started a world-war in a girlish caprice.

It seems a great pity that such a fiery personality should have caused only ink, and not blood, to flow.