Antic Hay, Aldous Huxley [whitelam books .txt] 📗

face, the lips of the wide mouth were surprisingly full.

“Precisely, precisely,” said Mr. Albemarle in his juicy voice. He was a round, smooth, little man with a head like an egg; he spoke, he moved with a certain pomp, a butlerish gravity, that were evidently meant to be ducal.

“That’s what I’ve set myself to recapture,” Lypiatt went on: “the size, the masterfulness of the masters.” He felt a warmth running through him as he spoke, flushing his cheeks, pulsing hotly behind the eyes, as though he had drunk a draught of some heartening red wine. His own words elated him, and drunkenly gesticulating, he was as though drunken. The greatness of the masters⁠—he felt it in him. He knew his own power, he knew, he knew. He could do all that they had done. Nothing was beyond his strength.

Egg-headed Albemarle confronted him, impeccably the butler, exacerbatingly serene. Albemarle too should be fired. He struck the table once more, he broke out again:

“It’s been my mission,” he shouted, “all these years.”

All these years.⁠ ⁠… Time had worn the hair from his temples; the high, steep forehead seemed higher than it really was. He was forty now; the turbulent young Lypiatt who had once declared that no man could do anything worth doing after he was thirty, was forty now. But in these fiery moments he could forget the years, he could forget the disappointments, the unsold pictures, the bad reviews. “My mission,” he repeated; “and by God! I feel, I know I can carry it through.”

Warmly the blood pulsed behind his eyes.

“Quite,” said Mr. Albemarle, nodding the egg. “Quite.”

“And how small the scale is nowadays!” Lypiatt went on, rhapsodically. “How trivial the conception, how limited the scope! You see no painter-sculptor-poets, like Michelangelo; no scientist-artists, like Leonardo; no mathematician-courtiers, like Boscovitch; no impresario-musicians, like Handel; no geniuses of all trades, like Wren. I have set myself against this abject specialization of ours. I stand alone, opposing it with my example.” Lypiatt raised his hand. Like the statue of Liberty, standing colossal and alone.

“Nevertheless,” began Mr. Albemarle.

“Painter, poet, musician,” cried Lypiatt. “I am all three. I.⁠ ⁠…”

“… there is a danger of⁠—how shall I put it⁠—dissipating one’s energies,” Mr. Albemarle went on with determination. Discreetly, he looked at his watch. This conversation, he thought, seemed to be prolonging itself unnecessarily.

“There is a greater danger in letting them stagnate and atrophy,” Lypiatt retorted. “Let me give you my experience.” Vehemently, he gave it.

Out in the gallery, among the boats, the views of the Grand Canal, and the Firth of Forth, Gumbril placidly ruminated. Poor old Lypiatt, he was thinking. Dear old Lypiatt, even, in spite of his fantastic egotism. Such a bad painter, such a bombinating poet, such a loud emotional improviser on the piano! And going on like this, year after year, pegging away at the same old things⁠—always badly! And always without a penny, always living in the most hideous squalor! Magnificent and pathetic old Lypiatt!

A door suddenly opened and a loud, unsteady voice, now deep and harsh, now breaking to shrillness, exploded into the gallery.

“… like a Veronese,” it was saying; “enormous, vehement, a great swirling composition” (“swirling composition”⁠—mentally, the young assistant made a note of that), “but much more serious, of course, much more spiritually significant, much more⁠—”

“Lypiatt!” Gumbril had risen from his chair, had turned, had advanced, holding out his hand.

“Why, it’s Gumbril. Good Lord!” and Lypiatt seized the proffered hand with an excruciating cordiality. He seemed to be in exuberantly good spirits. “We’re settling about my show, Mr. Albemarle and I,” he explained. “You know Gumbril, Mr. Albemarle?”

“Pleased to meet you,” said Mr. Albemarle. “Our friend, Mr. Lypiatt,” he added richly, “has the true artistic temp⁠—”

“It’s going to be magnificent.” Lypiatt could not wait till Mr. Albemarle had finished speaking. He gave Gumbril a heroic blow on the shoulder.

“… artistic temperament, as I was saying,” pursued Mr. Albemarle. “He is altogether too impatient and enthusiastic for us poor people⁠ ⁠…” a ducal smile of condescension accompanied this graceful act of self-abasement⁠ ⁠… “who move in the prosaic, practical, workaday world.”

Lypiatt laughed, a loud, discordant peal. He didn’t seem to mind being accused of having an artistic temperament; he seemed, indeed, to enjoy it, if anything. “Fire and water,” he said aphoristically, “brought together, beget steam. Mr. Albemarle and I go driving along like a steam engine. Psh, psh!” He worked his arms like a pair of alternate pistons. He laughed; but Mr. Albemarle only coldly and courteously smiled. “I was just telling Mr. Albemarle about the great Crucifixion I’ve just been doing. It’s as big and headlong as a Veronese, but much more serious, more.⁠ ⁠…”

Behind them the little assistant was expounding to a new visitor the beauties of the etchings. “Very intense,” he was saying, “the feeling in this passage.” The shadow, indeed, clung with an insistent affection round the stern of the boat. “And what a fine, what a⁠—” he hesitated for an instant, and under his pale, oiled hair his face became suddenly very red⁠—“what a swirling composition.” He looked anxiously at the visitor. The remark had been received without comment. He felt immensely relieved.

They left the galleries together. Lypiatt set the pace, striding along at a great rate and with a magnificent brutality through the elegant and leisured crowd, gesticulating and loudly talking as he went. He carried his hat in his hand; his tie was brilliantly orange. People turned to look at him as he passed and he liked it. He had, indeed, a remarkable face⁠—a face that ought by rights to have belonged to a man of genius. Lypiatt was aware of it. The man of genius, he liked to say, bears upon his brow a kind of mark of Cain, by which men recognize him at once⁠—“and having recognized, generally stone him,” he would add with that peculiar laugh he always uttered whenever he said anything rather bitter or cynical; a laugh that was meant to show that the bitterness, the cynicism, justifiable as events might have made them, were really only a mask, and that beneath it the artist was