“No; I don’t suppose I thought of anyone at all. There the thing is, to be taken or left, to be accepted by the onlooker or rejected.”
“Quite. But to me it is not a passive kind of picture at all. It thrusts itself on to you very violently, I think, and it rather demands to be ‘taken,’ as you put it. It is not like your Smiling Woman, for instance, who mysteriously glides into one’s mind, wheedling her way as she goes. Your gipsies assault the mind. Your picture is quite contemptuous of opinion.”
He appeared to be satisfied, for he smiled; if I had proved myself a fool, it was clear I was not the kind of fool he detested.
We met often after that. I would see him two or three times a week in the Six Bells. He used to drink beer, and he would talk in his slow way, or listen to me, nodding occasionally and saying just a word now and again. But John is the least loquacious of men. His presence makes you feel comfortable, not only because his personality is tolerant and roomy, but because you know that if you are boring him he will not think twice about edging away to the billiard-room or telling you abruptly that he must be [170] ]“off.” Like so many very hard workers, he appears to be an accomplished loafer. I have never seen him at work; I don’t know anybody who has. I have never heard anybody say: “John can’t come to-night because he’s busy.” I expect that when the fever is on him, he keeps at his easel night and day.
But perhaps you are wondering what Augustus John looks like? Have you seen Epstein’s bust of him? Wonderfully good, of course; extraordinarily good; but it is rather solemn—heavy, I mean. John is not ponderous, and he does not wear the air of a prophet, and I have never seen him look precisely like that. His hair is long.... Of course, most of you will feel disposed to sneer at that; so should I if it were anybody but John.... But he carries it off splendidly. You know, even Liszt (at all events in his photographs) looked frightfully conscious of his locks, but though John’s hair makes him conspicuous, he does not appear conscious of his conspicuousness. He is tall, deliberate in his movements, deep-voiced, very self-contained. His shortish beard is red, and he has large eyes that, in some extraordinary way, seem separate from his face; I mean, they belie it. His features are so composed that one might think them expressionless; but his eyes are brooding and deep and quiet. He has not the noisy, fussy little eyes of the “trained observer,” the man who notices everything and remembers nothing; he notices only what is essential to him, the things that are necessary for him to notice.... Of course, I haven’t described him in the least; I might have known I could not when I began to try.... But it seems to me that the essential thing about Augustus John is the quiet, lazy exterior which, in some peculiar way, contrives to suggest hidden fires and volcanic energies. A Celt, of course, and the mystery of the Celt hangs about him.
I think John loves few things so much as simply sitting back in a chair and looking at people: ruminating upon [171] ]them, as it were; chewing the cud of his thoughts. I remember his coming to my flat on one occasion at one o’clock in the morning when he knew there was a party there. His eyes were very bright and he came in rather eagerly, and rather eagerly also he sat and watched us, sipping cold coffee as he did so and occasionally raising his voice into a half-shout when something happened that amused him. But though he sat until nearly all our guests had departed, he scarcely spoke at all.
And yet another evening I remember very vividly, an evening at Herbert Hughes’s studio where, by candle-light, we used to have music every Sunday evening and where, in the half darkness at the far end of that long room, one could, if one wished, just sit and look on and perhaps talk a little to one’s neighbour. There John sat in the dark, like a Velasquez painting, his limbs thrown carelessly about, his head turned gently towards a sparkling Irish girl who seemed to be teasing him.
It is only now, when I have set myself to write about him, that I realise how little, after all, I know about Augustus John, though I have met him so often. He reveals himself most generously in his work, though even there he keeps back more than he discloses. But I think that even to his closest friends he reveals very little, and that perhaps is why so many legendary stories about him are afloat. He has the mystery of Leonardo. One feels that his personality hides a great and important secret, but one feels also that that secret will remain hidden for ever. Sombre he is, sombre yet vital, sombre and full of humour.
. . . . . . . .
Allusion to the impression that Augustus John gives of habitually loafing reminds me that this characteristic is typical of Chelsea. They are the most casual people in the world, and it is their casualness that the worker-by-rote [172] ]cannot understand. I know a score of studios where one could walk in at any time of the day and be welcomed or, if not welcomed, treated with most disarming frankness. If the owner of the studio were busy on some work that had to be finished, he would say: “There’s a drink there on the table and a smoke. Do what you like but, for God’s sake, don’t talk!” Or: “Go round to the Bells, Old Thing. I like you very much and all that sort of nonsense, but even you can be a bit of a nuisance at ten in the morning. It’s like drinking Benedictine before breakfast.” But receptions such as this latter are very rare, and most artists—because they are artists, I suppose—are ready enough to throw down their work and play for half-an-hour.