A Likely Story

by William De Morgan

An ingenious friend of the author—you must have noticed how many authors have ingenious friends?—has been able to determine by a system of averages of a most convincing nature, that the cubic area of the Studios in Chelsea and Kensington alone exceeds that of the Lunatic Asylums of the Metropolis by nearly seven and a quarter per cent. This gentleman's researches on the subject are consequent upon his singular conviction that the output of the Fine Arts, broadly speaking, is small in proportion to the amount of energy and capital devoted to them. We have reasoned with him in vain on the subject, pointing out that the Fine Arts have nothing in common with the economics of Manufacture, least of all in any proportions between the labour expended and the results attained. Were it otherwise, the estimation of a painter's merit would rise or fall with his colourman's bill and the rent of his studio. This gentleman—although he is a friend of the author—has no Soul. If he had, the spectacle of the life-struggle which is often the lot of Genius would appeal to him, and cause him to suspend his opinion. It is always, we understand, desirable to suspend one's opinion.

He would do so, for instance, in the case of an Artist, a common acquaintance of ours, whom at present he condemns freely, calling him names. This Artist has five Studios, each of them full of easels and thrones. The number of his half-used colour tubes that won't squeeze out is as the sands of the sea, while his bundles of brushes that only want washing to be as good as new, may be likened to corn-sheaves, in so far as their stems go—a mere affair of numeration. But their business ends are another pair of shoes altogether; for the hairs of the brushes have become a coagulum as hard as agate, calling aloud for Benzine Collas to disintegrate them—to the tune, this Artist admits, of threepence each—whereas the ear of corn yields to less drastic treatment. Contrivances of a specious nature in japanned tin and celluloid abound, somewhat as spray abounds on oceans during equinoxes, and each of these has at one time fondly imagined it was destined to become that Artist's great resource and stand-by, the balustrade his genius would not scorn to be indebted to. But he has never drawn a profile with the copying-machine that has legs, nor availed himself of the powers of the graphoscope—if that is its name—that does perspective, nor done anything with the countless wooden figures except dislocate their universal joints; nor, we fear, for a long time paid anything on account of the quarterly statements that flutter about, with palette-knives full of colour wiped off on them, that are not safe to sit down upon for months. But no impartial person could glance at any of the inaugurations of pictures on the thousand canvases in these five Studios without at once exclaiming, "This is Genius!" The Power of the Man is everywhere visible, and no true lover of Art ever regrets that so few of them have been carried into that doubtful second stage where one spoils all the moddlin' and the colour won't hold up, and somehow you lose the first spirit of the Idear and don't get any forwarder. It never occurs to any mature Critic to question the value of this Artist's results, even of his least elaborated ones. And, indeed, an opinion is current among his friends that restriction of materials and of the area of his Studios might have cramped and limited the free development of a great mind. They are all unanimous that a feller like Tomkins must have room to turn round, or where are you! And, if, as we must all hope, the growth of genius such as his is to be fostered as it deserves, no one should look with an ungenerous eye upon such agglomerations of Art-workshops as the Pimlico Studios, or sneer at them as uncalled for, merely because a Philistine Plutocracy refuses to buy their produce, and has no walls to hang it on if it did. We for our part can only note with regret that any Studios should be so badly adapted to their purpose, and constructed with so little consideration for the comfort of their occupants, as these same Pimlico Studios.

We have, however, been tempted away from our subject, which at present is the community of Artists that occupied them; and must return to it to say that these very drawbacks were not altogether without their compensations. For though these Studios were, like the arguments of Dissent, unsound—being constructed to admit rainwater and retain products of combustion, each of its own stove and the Studio beneath it—these structural shortcomings were really advantages, in so far as they promoted interchange of social amenities between the resident victims of the speculative builder who ran up the congeries. Sympathy against their common enemy, the landlord, brought all the occupants of Pimlico Studios into a hotchpot of brotherly affection, and if the choruses of execration in which they found comfort have reached the ears for which they were intended, that builder will catch it hot, one of these odd-come-shortlies. This expression is not our own.

When Mr. Reginald Aiken, with his domestic perplexity burning his tongue's end and crying aloud for utterance, called upon the Artist from whom we have borrowed it, that gentleman, Mr. Hughes, one of his most intimate friends, was thinking. He had been thinking since breakfast—thinking about some new Aspects of Nature, which had been the subject of discussion with some friends the evening before. They were those new Aspects of Nature which have been presented so forcibly by Van Schronk and Le Neutre; and of which, in this Artist's opinion, more than a hint is to be found in Hawkins. He was thinking deeply when Mr. Aiken came in, and not one stroke of work had he done, would that gentleman believe him, since he set out his palette. Mr. Aiken's credulity was not overtaxed.

Mr. Hughes wanted to talk about himself, and said absently, "You all right, Crocky?" addressing Mr. Aiken by a familiar name in use among his intimate friends. He was not well disposed towards a negative answer when Mr. Aiken gave one; an equivocal one certainly, but not one to whose meaning it was possible to affect blindness. The words were "Middlin'—considerin'!" But Mr. Hughes was not going to be too coming.

"Wife well?" said he remotely.

Mr. Aiken sprang at his inattentive throat, and nailed him. "Ah, that's it," said he. "That's the point."

Mr. Hughes was forced to inquire further, and stand his Idea over, for later discussion. But he might just as well have let it alone—better, if you come to that. He really was a stupid feller, Hughes, don't you know? "I say," said he, "don't you run away and say I didn't tell you what would happen." For he had interpreted his friend's agitated demeanour and equivocal speech as the result of a recent insight into futurity, showing him in the position of a detected and convicted parent, without the means of providing for an increasing family. For they do that, families do.

"Don't be an ass, Stumpy," said he, using a familiar name no fact in real life warranted. "It's not that sort of thing, thank God! No—I'll tell you what it is, only you mustn't on any account mention it."

"All right, Crocky! I never mention things. Honest Injun! Go ahead easy." Mr. Hughes was greatly relieved that his surmise had been wrong. Good job for Mr. Aiken, as also for his wife! Mr. Hughes desired his congratulations to this lady, but withdrew them on second thoughts. Because, you see, her escape from the anxieties of maternity was entirely constructive. Mr. Hughes felt that he had put his foot in it, and that his wisest course would be to take it out. He did so. But Mr. Aiken had something to say about his wife, and made it a corollary to her disappearance from the conversation.