the subject. A natural jealousy, I thought, particularly as she had not seemed altogether impressed by my quixotic gesture. But women are unconquerable realists, and nowadays they are not taught to flatter male delusions as they once were. It is uncomfortable to think that perhaps our repressed Victorian ancestresses were as clear-sighted as their franker granddaughters. If so, how they must have laughed, as they made their meek responses. In this century we do know, more or less, what they are thinking, and meet them on equal terms—at least, I hope we do.
I was reminded of Lathom by receiving my ticket for the Private View at the Academy on May 3rd. We had had our honeymoon, and were ready to return to our place in the world. Almost the first thing I saw, as we surged through the crowd, was the painted face of Mrs. Harrison, blazing out from a wall full of civic worthiness and fagged society beauties, with the loud insistence of a begonia in a bed of cherry-pie. There was a little knot of people in front of it, and I recognised Marlowe, the man who paints those knotty nudes, and created a sensation two years ago with The Wrestlers . He was enjoying his usual pastime of being rude to Garvice, the portrait-painter. His voice bellowed out over the din, and his black cloak flapped gustily from a flung-out arm. “Of course you don’t like it,” he boomed lustily, “it kills everything in the place dead. That’s none of your damned art—that’s painting—a painting , I tell you.” Several pained people, who had been discussing values in low tones, shrank at the unseemly noise, and dodged waveringly from the sweep of his hairy fist. “None of you poor pimples,” went on Marlowe, threateningly “can see colour—or thickness—you’re only fit to colour Christmas cards at twopence a hundred. There isn’t a painter in the whole beastly boardinghouse crowd of you except this chap.” I will do Marlowe the justice to say that, except where nudes are concerned, he is singularly generous to the younger men. He glowered round through his bush of beard and spectacles, and caught sight of me. “Hullo, Munting!” he bawled. “Come here. Somebody said you knew this fellow Lathom. Who is he? Why haven’t you brought him round to see me?”