shade of grey that flicks your hair, how far the hairline had receded, what difference it would make when more of that high forehead was revealed. Nothing bad, by the way; it adds to the air of intellectuality. I also knew in advance that your hands have become more bony, so that the impression of claws is accentuated. The fates have reserved corpulence for my decrepitude; you are awarded an ever more skeletal appearance, the skin of the neck beginning to drag down in lines like a lace curtain. I also knew that age would not have lessened that angularity that makes you seem uncomfortable and ill at ease. It has made it worse, in fact; you now seem to have no patience for anyone in the world. If you get older, that will get more pronounced. You can look forward to no physical ease; your body will not permit it. The inevitable beckons already; time is short.
I still enjoyed your company, long after we came back to London. I looked forward to our evenings, when you would, as much as possible, stop being the critic, and I would stop being—whatever I was trying to be at the time. It all ended when you married, alas; then you became domestic and proper, and went to clubs instead of taverns, and dinner parties instead of whelk stands. You lost the last slither of your integrity in Mayfair, and learned to hide the earnest intensity that had always redeemed you. Slowly you said less that was good about people, more that was bad. Didn’t you miss it, though? On those night-time voyages we were adventurers in the dark lands of London, seeing subjects for paintings down dingy alleys, or huddled in doorways. We thought of ever more exotic places to meet: a tea shop in Islington; a chophouse at Billingsgate; a tavern in Wapping; a dance hall on a Saturday night in Shoreditch where we would watch the clerks and the cleaners, the cooks and the shop girls as they forgot their cares for a few inexpensive hours. There was something of magic in those places for me, something you do not get at the Athenaeum. A recklessness, and an energy, and a desperation. The very stuff of paintings, I think, if only a means can be found of persuading people to buy it.
And there was that pub in Chelsea, the only place we went more than once. Poorly lit, with terrible food and the air so heavy with tobacco smoke you could scarcely see the person across the table from you. So thick that a river fog outside was easier to see through. Stiflingly hot from so many bodies crammed in, and smelling dreadful from the sweat and beer, cheap food and pipes. But I remember looking at it, and suddenly saw the place come alive; not tobacco brown, but brilliant colours—the red of a neck scarf, the orange of an Irishman’s hair, the purple of a whore’s dress. The gold of the landlord’s cherished watch-chain, the ambers and browns and whites of the bottles on the shelves. And all those bodies, contorted and hustled together like a Renaissance battle scene. This is where the great tragedies and comedies of the modern world are played out. Not on an imagined medieval battlefield. And not in the South Seas, nor yet in Paris. There.
But do you remember how it all faded as we settled in? I do; I remember those conversations as though we were in an empty room, with no difficulty hearing or being heard, with no one bumping into us, as we sat and talked and drank and laughed, with you leaning over the table, your eyes blazing with the fire that came over you when you were fully engaged with an idea. You did not yet argue for pleasure, or merely to win. The truth still mattered to you.
“What do all men desire, except fame?” I did look around then, and you took the point. Did these people desire fame?
“Of course they do, in their little way,” you said. “Fame in their limited universe; the fame of being a good drunk, a generous fellow, one amongst everyone else. They wish their reputation to extend as far as their eyes can see. But as that is not too far from the end
I still enjoyed your company, long after we came back to London. I looked forward to our evenings, when you would, as much as possible, stop being the critic, and I would stop being—whatever I was trying to be at the time. It all ended when you married, alas; then you became domestic and proper, and went to clubs instead of taverns, and dinner parties instead of whelk stands. You lost the last slither of your integrity in Mayfair, and learned to hide the earnest intensity that had always redeemed you. Slowly you said less that was good about people, more that was bad. Didn’t you miss it, though? On those night-time voyages we were adventurers in the dark lands of London, seeing subjects for paintings down dingy alleys, or huddled in doorways. We thought of ever more exotic places to meet: a tea shop in Islington; a chophouse at Billingsgate; a tavern in Wapping; a dance hall on a Saturday night in Shoreditch where we would watch the clerks and the cleaners, the cooks and the shop girls as they forgot their cares for a few inexpensive hours. There was something of magic in those places for me, something you do not get at the Athenaeum. A recklessness, and an energy, and a desperation. The very stuff of paintings, I think, if only a means can be found of persuading people to buy it.
And there was that pub in Chelsea, the only place we went more than once. Poorly lit, with terrible food and the air so heavy with tobacco smoke you could scarcely see the person across the table from you. So thick that a river fog outside was easier to see through. Stiflingly hot from so many bodies crammed in, and smelling dreadful from the sweat and beer, cheap food and pipes. But I remember looking at it, and suddenly saw the place come alive; not tobacco brown, but brilliant colours—the red of a neck scarf, the orange of an Irishman’s hair, the purple of a whore’s dress. The gold of the landlord’s cherished watch-chain, the ambers and browns and whites of the bottles on the shelves. And all those bodies, contorted and hustled together like a Renaissance battle scene. This is where the great tragedies and comedies of the modern world are played out. Not on an imagined medieval battlefield. And not in the South Seas, nor yet in Paris. There.
But do you remember how it all faded as we settled in? I do; I remember those conversations as though we were in an empty room, with no difficulty hearing or being heard, with no one bumping into us, as we sat and talked and drank and laughed, with you leaning over the table, your eyes blazing with the fire that came over you when you were fully engaged with an idea. You did not yet argue for pleasure, or merely to win. The truth still mattered to you.
“What do all men desire, except fame?” I did look around then, and you took the point. Did these people desire fame?
“Of course they do, in their little way,” you said. “Fame in their limited universe; the fame of being a good drunk, a generous fellow, one amongst everyone else. They wish their reputation to extend as far as their eyes can see. But as that is not too far from the end
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