Rotting Hill Read Free Page A

dictionary.
        As I saw him for the first time I observed of course the eyes of a somewhat worried but stubbornly amused, big dog. I saw that the nose was shapely, the brow large. Those first impressions did not have to be modified: but in the end one would forget the ecclesiastical chin-line; one would assess at their proper value the disfigurements associated with eloquent verbal discharges—such as the spout-like propensities of the shooting-lips, the wildly wrinkled brow.
        There was no clerical collar on his large weather-beaten neck. It was framed instead with the gaping collar of a soft blue shirt. “Where is your collar?” I demanded. Minus his master’s name upon a brass-plate, collarless and unidentifiable, this big dog was at large in London. But, “Got it in my pocket!” came popping out the brisk rejoinder: “Do you want me to put it on?” He had produced it and held it in his hand. “Not before coming in,” I said. “Not at once,” he echoed, putting the collar back in the pocket.
        The collar had looked authentic. “Please come this way,” said I, leading my incognito man-of-god upstairs, into my work room. I looked narrowly at him of course. We were there under the vast sculptor’s window: he exposed his rugged worried countenance to the glare of the sky without an unbecoming diffidence, but quite simply as if to say, “Well here I am. Since you seem inclined to scrutinize my person, this is what I look like.” I was searching for signs of the Rot, of course.
        What he actually said was: “You must have thought it great cheek for me to write to you. I feel I am here under false pretences.” “You must not feel that,” I said. “Why should you?”
        “It is very good of you to say so.”
        “Please sit down,” I told him as I sat down myself. He followed suit, silently. Rather stiffly expectant he sat there as if awaiting my next move. I sat studying him, however, and he did not look at me.
        It was not that he really felt in a false position, I’m sure of that: and there is nothing shy about Rymer. At this first meeting, for a little while, I had a sense of a youthful manner: of an attempt rather curious in view of his massive maturity—to suggest the early years of manhood. This did not survive our first meeting. It was perhaps a manner he adopted, under certain circumstances, with strangers. I think he produces (however battered it may be) the undergraduate he once was. In any case, it was a very different approach to the aggressive book-slapping of the Museum.
        “You like pictures?” I enquired, as I saw him looking at a Rowlandson which hung near him.
        “I do very much. I have some. Two or three, perhaps you might like.”
        “I understand you wish to add to your collection?” I then said, for this patron would have to be brought to the point, if he was a patron. And if he was not, it was best to find out what his errand was. His response was satisfactorily prompt and clear.
        “Yes. I should like to acquire a work of yours, unless it is altogether beyond my means.”
        After I had produced two small canvases, and perhaps a dozen drawings, he stuck one of the drawings up against the back of a chair, returned to where he had been sitting and proceeded to examine it (from much too far off, as a matter of fact). It was a large, strongly coloured, gouache of a number of nude horsemen. Rigidly stylized, certainly; but with the black arcs of the horses’ legs against a shining lagoon, and so on, possessing enough romantic literary appeal to recommend it to an intelligent clergyman. I knew it would look far better on his walls than he could foresee.
        I left him in front of the drawing, and went downstairs to answer the telephone. When I returned he was standing up. He asked me whether I would sell the drawing—he liked it very much. I told him I was glad and the price of it was thirty