The Documents in the Case (7 page)

There has been a very amusing sequel to this. Your old friend (or should I say enemy?) Miss Milsom has taken it into her head that her fair features ought to be immortalised, too! Lathom, with his usual extraordinary good nature, has actually consented to make a picture of her — but only on the understanding that this time, if it turns out well, he shall have the right to do as he likes with it! Miss Milsom is only too enchanted at the idea of being hung at Burlington House. I did not feel called upon to interfere, since he is obviously only ‘pulling her leg’, and there is not the remotest chance of the portrait’s being exhibited; for, as you know, the lady is scarcely the Venus of Milo! She is very much excited about it, and has produced the most incredible garment to be painted in — very tight as to the bust and voluminous as to the skirt. I understand that a quattrocento effect is aimed at.

I am very hard at work of an evening now — with a number of sketches to work up and my little opus to prepare. I am illustrating it with water-colours of various plants and fungi in their natural habitat, and it should turn out a very pretty and useful volume.

I enclose the formulae you asked for, and remain,Your affectionate Dad

1. Agatha Milsom to Olive Farebrother
   

15, Whittington Terrace 22.11.28

Dear Olive,

I have received your letter about Ronnie. No doubt you think you know best. I will not allude further to the matter.

I am feeling much too upset to discuss such things just now. Mr Harrison has been behaving abominably, undoing all the good his absence has done, and creating his usual atmosphere of unpleasantness.

Mr Lathom painted a most beautiful picture of Mrs Harrison. They both worked like galley-slaves to get it finished in time for his return (H.’s, I mean). I say both, for sitting is most exhausting work, as you would know if you had ever sat to anybody for a portrait, and she would end up sometimes so cramped she could scarcely move. As for Mr Lathom, he seemed quite inspired over it, and painted and painted away without food or rest, till I got quite worried about him, and had to bring him up cups of hot Bovril and Ovaltine, for fear he should over-tax his strength. He is an extraordinarily generous young man, because, though he cannot be well off, he actually painted the portrait to give to Mr Harrison, when I feel sure he could have sold it for a big price, it is such a splendid piece of work, and he says himself it is one of the best things he has ever done.

Well, they got it finished in time for the Bear’s return, and Mrs Harrison was ever so delighted with it, and thought the creature would be pleased. It was quite pathetic to see how eagerly she looked forward to surprising him, poor woman. Well, he was pleased, in his grudging kind of way, though he had the impertinence to criticise the painting — as if Mr Lathom didn’t know more about Art with his eyes shut than Mr Harrison could learn in a month of Sundays. And then it was all spoilt by the Bear’s horrible selfishness. Mr Lathom said — very nicely and courteously — he hoped Mr Harrison would see no objection to its being sent to the Academy. Of course, as it was the best thing he’d done, you’d think anybody would see he had a right to exhibit it, and you’d think, too, that when anybody had received a valuable present like that, he’d be only too willing to be obliging. But the PIG just said, ‘Well, Lathom, I don’t quite think we can go as far as that. My wife would hardly like to be put on show, you know.’

I could see that Mrs Harrison felt the discourtesy to Mr Lathom dreadfully, and she said at once she would be quite pleased to let the portrait be shown, and then he laughed — just laughed, as if it was of no importance to anybody, and said, ‘Oh, Lathom won’t insist on making an exhibition of you, my dear.’ I could see how vexed Mr Lathom was, and so could Mrs Harrison, and she begged and prayed him not to be so selfish and unkind, and Mr Lathom spoke up and said, if Mrs Harrison would like her portrait shown, surely he was not going to be a Victorian husband. Of course, that was unwise (as I could have warned him if I could have got the chance), and we had one of the worst rows even I can remember. Mr Lathom couldn’t stand it and went out of the room in disgust, and Mrs Harrison cried, and her husband said the most insulting and unjustifiable things, ending up with: ‘Of course, if you want to make a public exhibition of yourself you can. Do exactly as you like’ — as though anybody could, when they had been spoken to like that about it. So that was the end of trying to do something to please one’s husband! It was a most miserable ending to the day we had all looked forward to with so much hope and pleasure.

For once Mrs Harrison has taken a firm line with him and refuses to speak to him. It is a very uncomfortable situation for me, and I am feeling very unwell. All my insomnia has come back, and so has the uncontrollable longing for shrimps. It is very tiresome and disappointing.

Mr Lathom has been perfectly sweet about it all. He went in to see Mr Harrison when the uproar had calmed down a little, and finding it impossible to move him, gave way gracefully. I was determined to do my best to make it up to him, so I went up and said how sorry I was, and added that I insisted that he should do exactly as he liked with my own portrait. He could show it anywhere he chose, I said, even if he liked to call it Portrait of a Middle-aged Spinster. He laughed, and said he wouldn’t think of calling it anything of the sort, and he certainly wouldn’t show it if I would rather he didn’t, and I said I was determined he should show it, whatever it turned out like. So he said, very well, that was a bargain, then. So we have begun the sittings. I am rather nervous about the result, because as you know, I always photograph very badly. But then a photograph cannot show the animation of the face as a portrait can, and people have so often told me that my animation is what gives character and interest to my looks. I hope it will be a good likeness — perhaps you will say that if it is it won’t be an attractive picture, but Mr Lathom seems very keen on it, so perhaps it will turn out better than you, with your sisterly prejudice, might expect.

I am very tired with keeping the pose — I sat for two hours this morning and again in the afternoon — so I hope I may get some rest tonight.

The scarf will be finished tomorrow, if I can get the right shade of silk for the fringe.Your affectionate sister, Aggie

1. John Munting to Elizabeth Drake
   

15a, Whittington Terrace 1.12.28

Beloved Bungie,

Here we are again! Back home and full of beans and fit to face anything, even Lathoms and Milsoms.

By the way, I’ve got to take back what I said about Lathom. I’ll forgive him anything for being such a bloody fine painter. My God, he has made a fine thing of Mrs Harrison — old Halkett would grunt in his funny gruff way and say, ‘It’s a masterpiece.’ He wants to send it to the Academy (where it would probably be the picture of the year, if the Committee didn’t hang themselves in their own wires under the shock of seeing a decent bit of painting for once) — only, of course, those imbecile women have made a hash of it and put Harrison’s back up. Blether, blether blether — rushing at the poor man with chatter about newspaper sensations and standing under my portrait on opening day, blah! blah! before the poor man had finished reeling under the impact. Row, of course. I told Lathom not to be a silly ass, and to go and apologise quietly to Harrison afterwards and tell him there wasn’t any slightest intention of showing it against his wishes. If he uses a little tact, the old boy will take it for granted three months hence that the thing is going to be shown and imagine he suggested it himself. I’ve got Harrison fairly well sized up, but his wife is a silly egoist, and Lathom has no practical sense at all as regards human relationships. Anyway, I hope the thing will be there, because I’d like you to see it. It’s really first-rate. And revealing, my God! only Mrs H. doesn’t see that, and I don’t think Lathom realises it either.

I’ve had a letter from Merritt — he ‘has read the book with much interest and would be glad if I could find time to call and discuss it with him at my convenience’. First time anybody’s even offered to discuss it. I suppose that if I will consent to cut out all the ‘advanced’ passages, and ‘brighten’ the style and give it a more ‘satisfactory’ ending, he will consider doing something with it. Well, he won’t get the chance, that’s all.

Thank heaven, the Life is practically finished with. I’m thankful to get rid of it. It has led me into reading a lot of scientific and metaphysical tripe which is of no use to anybody, and least of all to a creative writer (a fact I have taken delight in rubbing in, in the course of the work!) And the further you go with it, the worse it gets. Lucretius could make great poetry out of science, and Bacon got some good work in on it — and even Tennyson could screw some fine lines out of an unsound theory of evolution and perfectibility and all the rest of it. But now, oh, heavens! after the bio-chemist, the mathematician. What can you make out of the action of the glands of internal secretion upon metabolism, or Pi and the square root of minus one? Despair and a kind of gloomy grubbiness, that’s all. I’d rather have a Miltonian theology to make poetry of than all this business of liver and gonads and the velocity of light. Perry the parson gets out of it by pretending that the Catholic Church knew all about it from the beginning, and that inaccurate theological metaphors can be interpreted as pseudo-scientific formulae, which is a lie. The origin of life is our great stamping-ground for discussion. You can’t make life synthetically in a laboratory — therefore he deduces that it came by divine interference! Rather an assumption! But, after all, he is little worse than the man of science. ‘In some way or other, life came,’ they say. ‘Sometime, somehow, we may learn how to make it.’ But even if one could learn to make it, that doesn’t account for its having arrived spontaneously in the first place. The biologist can push it back to the original protist, and the chemist can push it back to the crystal, but none of them touch the real question of why or how the thing began at all. The astronomer goes back untold millions of years and ends in gas and emptiness, and then the mathematician sweeps the whole cosmos into unreality and leaves one with mind as the only thing of which we have any immediate apprehension. Cogito, ergo sum, ergo omnia esse videntur. All this bother, and we are no further than Descartes. Have you noticed that the astronomers and mathematicians are much the most cheerful people of the lot? I suppose that perpetually contemplating things on so vast a scale makes them feel either that it doesn’t matter a hoot anyway, or that anything so large and elaborate must have some sense in it somewhere.

I wish I had Lathom’s robust contempt for all this kind of thing. His attitude is that bio-chemistry cannot affect his life or his art, so let them get on with it. I am tossed about with every wind of doctrine, and if I’m not damn careful I shall end by writing a Point Counterpoint, without the wit. You can’t really make a novel hold together if you don’t believe in causation.

Said a rising young author, ‘What, what?If I think that causation is not,No word of my textWill bear on the nextAnd what will become of the plot?’

Perhaps this accounts for my never having been able to produce a book with a plot — except, of course, the one Merritt wants to see me about. And that was a sort of freak book.

Well, never mind. Only a fortnight now and I shall be seeing you. Praise God (or whatever it is) from (if direction exists) whom (if personality exists) all blessings (if that word corresponds to any percept of objective reality) flow (if Heraclitus and Bergson and Einstein are correct in stating that everything is more or less flowing about).Your ever faithful Jack

1. The Same to the Same
   

4.12.28

Bungie Dearest,

Just a line to say that the unexpected has happened! Merritt is all over the book!!! Thinks it’s the biggest thing that ever happened, and has offered me a first-class contract (Ł100 advance, 10 %, to 500, 15 % to 1,000 and 20 % thereafter, with a firm offer for the next two beginning at top previous rate), on condition he can get it into print instanter to publish before the end of Jan. The man’s as mad as a hatter!

I nearly sent round to get him certified, but instead found myself accepting the terms. When you consider the frightful flop Deadlock was, you realise that the thing is sheer stark raving madness, but who cares?

7

Damn it, I always believed there was something in the book, but I thought I was a fool to think so. But how can he ever imagine that it will sell!. . But that’s his funeral.

He says it must have a new title. Try and think of something that will look well on a jacket, there’s an ingenious cherub. It’s fearfully urgent, because he’s got to get his travellers out with it at the beginning of next month.

Lathom’s portrait of Miss Milsom is the wickedest piece of satire you ever saw. She, fortunately, does not see it at all. In fact, she lugged up the parson to have a look at it yesterday. Perry, though a parson, is no fool. He looked grave, said that it was a striking picture, and added that Mr Lathom had a great gift which should be put to great uses. Lathom grinned, and Miss Milsom began to babble about the Academy and Mrs Harrison’s portrait, at which Perry looked graver still. I suppose he thinks that idiots should be charitably protected from themselves. Lathom is in wild spirits and is working like something inspired. O si sic omnes, meaning me!

Jim reports that he is toiling away like stink and really sticking to it. I hope so. He will be at home when term ends, so you will meet the white-headed boy of the family. I trust you will be able to bear with us all. He is inflicting on us a friend of his who went down from Caius this year — man called Leader — one of those infernally high-spirited youths who bounce all over the shop like Airedale puppies — he rouses all my worst instincts, but is perfectly harmless. He is now in London, at St Anthony’s College of Medicine, and I suppose one of these days he will muddle through his hospital work and be turned out as a genial G.P. — ‘Dr Leader is such a nice, cheerful man; he makes you feel better the minute he comes into the room.’ I hate cheerful people. Still, he and Jimmy will amuse one another, and we shall have a chance to get off on our own a bit.