“Now, your busts! Especially that wonderful head of Augustus John’s son!—beautiful, marvellous! But those extraordinary red drawings.”
“I cannot explain them,” said he, “but I would [53] ]certainly like you to understand them, for it seems to me that you are not unintelligent.”
He gave me a quick, sly look, and we began to talk of John. I am afraid that Epstein must have qualified his opinion of my intelligence, for he asserted, in contradiction to what I was saying, that John was on the wrong tack, and we failed to come to any agreement about this most wonderful of living painters.
Like most artists, Epstein is pronouncedly inarticulate. He is, I suppose, as much a mystery to himself as he is to others. But his work is, of course, a hundred times more interesting than himself.
I used to see him often, but we rarely did more than acknowledge each other’s existence, and when I saw him the other week in khaki, sitting in the Café Royal, it was clear to me that, though he said he remembered me, he had only a vague recollection of my personality and had completely forgotten my name.
. . . . . . . .
I have often thought it strange that while singers like Madame Patti and Madame Tetrazzini should conquer the world—and by the world I mean every section of the musical public, vulgar and fastidious alike—another and, to my mind, a very much finer artiste, Madame Ackté, should be regarded with delight only by those whose musical experience is wide and whose minds have been tutored by comprehensive study. Personality, after all, is almost everything in Art, and Madame Ackté has a personality that dwarfs into insignificance nearly all singers who are her equal in technical attainments and in musical subtlety.
Her great part is Salomé, in Richard Strauss’s opera of that name. With the wonderful intuition of a healthy, robust mind she has divined all the perverted wickedness of that most tortured woman. Her acting is among the finest things of our day.
[54]
]No one could guess, in talking to this quiet, almost demure woman, that she has in her such fires of passion, such powers of portraying devastating wickedness. She has charm, graciousness
, simplicity. Like Yvette Guilbert, she has worked hard almost every day of her life. Her talk is all of music and acting. She seems most unmodern. Her ingenuous love of praise is delightful, and if you notice the little subtleties in her singing and acting that most people do not notice, she is your friend for ever.