Give the Devil His Due (23 page)

Stephensen intervened. “Jews are at the heart of the capitalist oppression of the worker, Rowland,” he said, placing a conciliatory hand on Rowland's shoulder. “The greed-driven money lenders have Europe in a vice-like grip.”

Rowland shook off Stephensen's hand. “Aren't you supposed to be a Communist, Inky?”

“It's because I'm a Communist that I understand how damaging the cooperation of Jewish interests has been to the rights of the worker.”

“I spoke of this at the Royal Academy of Arts,” Lindsay said. “I'll never forget. Afterwards Sir Edwin Lutyens kissed me on both cheeks and cried, ‘At last, an honest man'!”

“He could have kissed you on the mouth and proposed marriage for all I care!” Rowland replied angrily. “What you're saying is detestable, Norman, and aside from being codswallop it's dangerous.”

Lindsay's sharp eyes were piercing. “Why are you surprised Rowland? I have never made any secret about what I know. I admit, I am truly fond of Milton Isaacs, and I am not saying that Jews as people are necessarily bad, but as a race you cannot deny that they are responsible for a great deal of the world's troubles. You can't blame people for finally taking a stand.”

Rowland was white. Disappointment and fury left him momentarily speechless. How could this be the case? Lindsay had taught him so much as an artist. Rowland had looked upon him as a friend and a mentor, a man of letters and wit. He felt like Norman Lindsay was dying before his eyes and he was staggered by grief and anger.

Rowland gathered up Rosaleen Norton's folio. “We'd best be off.”

“Nonsense,” Lindsay said. “Stay, let's have a drink and talk of how we will resist the modernist movement. I can show you papers, essays which prove the extent of the problem.”

If it were possible to curse without saying a word, Rowland was doing so.

“We won't discuss the Jews if that upsets you, comrade,” Stephensen offered.

Rowland's voice was controlled, but the strain of keeping it so was audible. “What I wish to say to you gentlemen, cannot be said in the presence of a lady, let alone my mother, so I think that we shall leave.”

Elisabeth Sinclair returned to her son's side, and bade Lindsay and Stephensen farewell, before allowing Rowland to escort her from the studio.

Elisabeth patted Rowland's hand as they sat in the back of the Rolls Royce, much as she had done when he was a child beset with emotions he needed to control.

“I am sorry about that, Mother,” he said, furious with himself for so many reasons.

Elisabeth sighed. “You mustn't worry about me, Aubrey. I gather you and Mr. Lindsay had a falling out?”

“Yes, I expect we have.”

“I heard Mr. Lindsay mention Mr. Isaacs. Does he not have a good regard for Mr. Isaacs?”

“No, I don't think he does.”

“Well, that won't do. Mr. Isaacs is a thorough gentleman.”

Rowland rubbed his face. He leaned forward and gave Johnston an address in Woolloomooloo.

“Where are we going Aubrey?”

“Dancing,” Rowland replied. “I'm taking you dancing.”

“Don't be silly. It's two in the afternoon!”

Rowland nodded gravely. “It is decidedly scandalous, but I believe dancing in the afternoon is all the rage now.”

A PROGRESSIVE MOVE

According to “Newspaper News” of 18th instant, Mr. P. R Stephensen, who visited Melbourne last month, says the objective of P. R. Stephensen and Company Ltd., is the publishing of one book a week. He has come with his partner, Mr. E. C. Lemont, to establish a Melbourne branch of the business. The Commonwealth he considers is happily placed for the book industry. The South African market is as accessible to Australia as it is to Great Britain, in Japan, the second language spoken is English, and elsewhere throughout the East there are communities of English people whose interest could be attracted to novels and other works by Australian writers. The exchange rate, too, is an advantage in marketing books to that public. “Australian authors in England,” said Mr. Stephensen, “are asked to write about some other country more acceptable to English readers than Australia. We can put a stop to such effrontery only by developing our own literature on our own soil, as the Americans have done.” Mr. Stephensen hopes to reprint many worthwhile Australian books which have been allowed to go out of print by the original publishers.

The Central Queensland Herald, 1934

____________________________________

E
lisabeth Sinclair bubbled excitedly as she told her son's houseguests about her day out. Already, the specific memories of where she had been, and their sequence were a little muddled, but the fact that she had willingly participated in something quite outrageous had not. “Heavens, who would have thought a woman in her forties would suddenly take up dancing in the afternoon!” she said blithely.

Rowland smiled at his mother's diminishing age and the manner in which his friends accepted her frailty without question. The tea dance had for the most part been attended by fresh-faced couples and hopeful, unchaperoned singles. For their five pence entry, there had been tea and scones as well as punch on a linen-draped trestle, a sixpiece band and a bunting-decorated hall. A cheeky young man had asked Elisabeth to dance and hinted that Rowland should request the same of his sister, who stood nearby in mortified expectation. Rowland had done so, as declining seemed impolite and possibly unkind. Plump and pale, the young lady was unsure of her steps and painfully shy. She appeared to blush with all of her body, her rounded arms suffusing pink with her cheeks. Rowland spoke gently to her while they danced and by the end of the bracket elicited that her name was Jane, but that was all. Now, he sketched her into his notebook from memory while he listened to his mother explain the nuances of foxtrotting as if the dance were some new fad. He would have liked to paint Jane, to capture her shyness and uncertainty on canvas, but that disposition in itself would probably ensure she would never pose.

Exhilarated and exhausted by an afternoon of dancing, Elisabeth Sinclair elected to retire early.

“Right, Rowly, what's bothering you?” Edna asked when it was just the four of them again. She peered sternly into his face as if she could read the truth in the dark blue of his eyes. “You're brooding, my darling.”

Rowland told them of his conversation with Norman Lindsay and Inky Stephensen.

“He said that?” Edna said, unconsciously grabbing Milton's hand. Rowland shook his head, too furious to speak.

“I've always said Stephensen was an idiot,” Milton said calmly.

“But Norman?”

“I did wonder sometimes, you know, but you want to believe a man like him is not… I guess we all wanted to believe it was just his cracked sense of humour.”

Rowland groaned. In hindsight he could see that Lindsay's anti- Semitism was not new found. He had dismissed it because he wanted to believe in the artist. And now he was as appalled with himself as he was with Lindsay, ashamed that his principles had been so conveniently forgotten in his esteem of Lindsay.

“Look, Rowly.” Clyde was philosophical. “Norman is rude to just about everyone. He doesn't like Catholics, or Freemasons, hates Europeans and regards modernists as a scourge on the earth. Is it any wonder we assumed that he was just being characteristically offensive on this matter, too?”

“It's unnerving,” Rowland murmured. “Norman is one of the cleverest people I have ever known. That someone like him could possibly think that way…” He shook his head. “I don't understand it.”

“Probably a good thing, comrade,” Milton said coldly. “Far too many people understand hating Jews.” He stood. “Can I borrow your dog, Rowly?”

“Len? He's in the kitchen with Ed's kittens, I expect.”

“I'm going to take him for a walk,” he said, declining offers of company.

Rowland let him go, recognising the poet's need to be alone with his anger. For Milton Isaacs this was all the more personal.

Once Milton had gone, Edna embraced Rowland gently. “I'm sorry you've lost Norman, Rowly. I know how much you admired him.”

Rowland shook his head. “Not anymore.” For some reason, he felt personally betrayed by Lindsay, and by his own naive assumption that men of art and literature were above ridiculous prejudice.

Edna perched on the arm of Rowland's chair. She had modelled for Lindsay often and learned much from him as an artist. It was under his guidance that she'd begun to sculpt. But Rowland Sinclair had been Lindsay's particular protégé. Edna combed Rowland's dark hair back from his face with her fingers, sensing the self-recrimination in his thoughts. “We were mistaken about him, darling, that's all. When we visited Springwood we were distracted by art and poetry and Norman's wild soirées.”

“I daresay we won't be invited to any of those again.”

“Well, perhaps you should invite Norman to your exhibition,” Edna suggested. “You may be able to reach him with your work.”

Rowland closed his eyes. “I sincerely doubt it, but I will invite him.”

“Are you going to repaint this?” Clyde asked, standing before the painting the bullet had pierced.

“Actually, I thought not,” Rowland replied, sitting forward. “The bullet hole is fitting somehow.”

Edna nodded. “I agree. There's a quite portentous violence in the painting, and Mr. Röhm did, after all, attempt to have you shot.”

“I was contemplating patching the painting from behind with black canvas… a bullet hole through which to glimpse Röhm's soul.” He glanced at the work. “I'm tempted to shoot it a few times, myself.”

Clyde smiled slightly. “Sounds dangerously modernist.”

Edna laughed. “I took the pages of your notebook in to be framed today,” she informed Rowland, making sure the conversation did not return to Norman Lindsay.

“Thank you, Ed.” He stood. “I ought to telephone Wil while I think of it… make sure he brings his Old Guard chums.”

“Are you going to tell him what you're doing?”

“I'll tell him I'm having an exhibition.”

“Won't he think it odd? He knows what happened in Germany.”

Rowland frowned. That was true. How was he going to explain a sudden desire to exhibit? He didn't want to make his brother complicit, but Wilfred was not a fool.

As it happened, Wilfred was not at home when Rowland telephoned and he spoke instead to his sister-in-law. Kate Sinclair was delighted to learn of his upcoming exhibition.

“Why Rowly, how exciting. I'll write to everyone I know in Sydney, and all the families who'll be in town for the Royal Easter Show to tell them they simply must come!”

And then it occurred to Rowland that the powerful men in Wilfred's acquaintance had wives in Kate's. In this respect, she probably had more influence than Wilfred. His brother's young wife did not even think to ask about the motivation behind the exhibition. “That would be very kind of you, Kate. I'm afraid I haven't exhibited in so long that nobody may come otherwise.”

“Of course they'll come, Rowly,” Kate said determinedly. “Once I tell them what a talented artist you are…” She trailed off. “Rowly will you be exhibiting paintings of… of models?” she asked hesitantly. She had seen some of Rowland's portraits of Edna when she'd visited
Woodlands
the year before.

Rowland chuckled. He had not been home when Kate Sinclair, and her chum Lucy Bennett, had entered his studio, but Clyde and Edna had given him lurid accounts of the shock and horror and fainting spells which ensued. “There's not one naked person in the exhibition, Kate. I promise.”

“Oh, that's wonderful!” The words were breathy with relief. “Leave it with me, Rowly. As soon as Wil returns, we'll get in touch with everyone we know.” Her voice rose in pitch as she became excited again. “I know Premier Stevens and Mr. Bruxner will come. Perhaps Wil could persuade Prime Minister Lyons to attend.”

“You're a brick, Kate.”