FullReads

The case was worse with the Major–nothing I could do would keep himdown, so that he became useful only for representation of brawny giants. I adored variety and range, I cherished human accidents, the illustrative note; I wanted to characterise closely, and the thing in the world I most hated was the danger of being ridden by a type. I had quarreled with some of my friends about it; I had parted company with them for maintaining that one hadto be, and that if the type was beautiful–witness Raphael and Leonardo–the servitude was only a gain. I was neither Leonardo nor Raphael–I might only be a presumptuous young modern searcher; but I held that everything was to be sacrificed sooner than character. When they claimed that the obsessional form could easily becharacter I retorted, perhaps superficially, “Whose?” It couldn’t be everybody’s–it might end in being nobody’s.

After I had drawn Mrs. Monarch a dozen times I felt surer even than before that the value of such a model as Miss Churm resided precisely in the fact that she had no positive stamp, combined of course with the other fact that what she did have was a curious and inexplicable, talent for imitation. Her usual appearance was like a curtain which she could draw up at request for a capital performance. This performance was simply suggestive; but it was a word to the wise–it was vivid and pretty. Sometimes even I thought it, though she was plain herself, too insipidly pretty; I made it a reproach to her that the figures drawn from her were monotonously (betement, as we used to say) graceful. Nothing made her more angry: it was so much her pride to feel she could sit for characters that had nothing in common with each other. She would accuse me at such moments of taking away her “reputytion.”

It suffered a certain shrinkage, this queer quantify, from the repeated visits of my new friends. Miss Churm was greatly in demand, never in want of employment, so I had no scruple in putting her off occasionally, to try them more at my ease. It was certainly amusing at first to do the real thing–it was amusing to do Major Monarch’s trousers. They werethe real thing, even if he did come out colossal. It was amusing to do his wife’s back hair–it was so mathematically neat–and the particular “smart” tension of her tight stays. She lent herself especially to position in which the face was somewhat averted or blurred; she abounded in ladylike back views and profils perdus. When she stood erect she took naturally one of the attitudes in which court-painters represen
t queens and princesses; so that I found myself wondering whether, to draw out this accomplishment, I couldn’t get the editor of the Cheapsideto publish a really royal romance, “A Tale of Buckingham Palace.” Sometimes however the real thing and the make-believe came into contact; by which I mean that Miss Churm, keeping an appointment or coming to make one on days when I had much work in hand, encountered her invidious rivals. The encounter was not on their part, for they noticed her no more than if she had been the housemaid; not from intentional loftiness, but simply because as yet, professionally, they didn’t know how to fraternise, as I could imagine they would have liked–or at least that the Major would. They couldn’t talk about the omnibus–they always walked; and they didn’t know what else to try–she wasn’t interested in good trains or cheap claret. Besides, they must have felt–in the air–that she was amused at them, secretly derisive of their ever knowing how. She wasn’t a person to conceal the limits of her faith if she had had a chance to show them. On the other hand Mrs. Monarch didn’t think her tidy; for why else did she take pains to say to me–it was going out of the way, or Mrs. Monarch–that she didn’t like dirty women?