The Merciless Ladies Read online

  ‘It depends whom you mean it has been shown by.’

  ‘Never mind that for the moment. Shall we say that this painting of yours has given rise to a good deal of heart burning and ill-feeling?’

  ‘If you wish to put it that way, yes.’

  ‘In fact it might have been better all round if your original reluctance to paint this portrait had never been overcome.’

  ‘It would not’, said Paul, ‘have been better for the legal profession.’

  There was a ripple of amusement in the court.

  ‘Tell me, Mr Stafford, why were you reluctant to paint your good friend, Mrs Marnsett?’

  ‘I did not say I was reluctant. An artist accepts a commission in much the way, say, that a barrister does, not necessarily because he is in sympathy with his client but because it is his job.’

  ‘And in this case you were ‘‘out of sympathy’’ with Mrs Marnsett?’

  ‘No. The result may have distressed her, but personally, after an initial reluctance, I found the commission stimulating.’

  ‘Got a kick out of it, one might say?’

  ‘I found it stimulating.’

  ‘A bit of good fun, I suppose.’

  ‘Fun doesn’t enter into it.’

  ‘No’, said Sir Philip reflectively, staring at the picture. ‘On consideration fun is too harmless a word.’ He left his seat and walked over to the picture. Then he beckoned an usher to hold the painting where it could be seen by both the witness and the jury. ‘This is a modern painting, Mr Stafford?’

  ‘In style, d’you mean? Not particularly.’

  ‘You will surely admit that it is unconventional?’

  ‘Well, a portrait can be painted in a number of ways. It can be photographic, merely trying to copy the camera. Or it can simplify detail, giving an impression of the sitter rather than a meticulous transcription. Or the portrait may give rise in the artist’s mind to a creative expression which doesn’t conform to normal portraiture at all.’

  ‘I am indebted for the explanation. Which of these three ways have you followed here?’

  ‘To some extent the second, but mainly the third.’

  ‘So I should imagine!’ The barrister glanced at his client, who was sitting on the bench near him. ‘You don’t, I suppose, deny that the portrait is an unflattering one?’

  ‘So far as its exact reproduction of the sitter goes, no. But all portraits should be good paintings first and good portraits second.’

  ‘You consider this a good painting, Mr Stafford?’

  ‘Witnesses today have said so.’

  ‘I’m not concerned with them. I’m concerned with your own opinion. Do you consider this a good painting?’

  ‘Well, I like the carnations.’

  There was another ripple of laughter in the court.

  The judge had also been looking at the picture. ‘The trouble is’, he said dryly, ‘that you put the bloom in the wrong place.’

  The laughter was less restrained this time, broke, died away.

  ‘My Lord’, said Paul, ‘I put the bloom where my instinct told me it should be.’

  ‘And the plaintiff, I think’, said his Lordship, ‘apportions the blame by the same process.’

  While the rising murmur again filled the court Sir Philip stood patiently, arms folded on chest. I remembered Freeman saying: ‘Bagshawe hates his examinations to be interrupted.’

  ‘Did it never occur to you’, said Sir Philip at length, ‘that your old friend might be deeply hurt at this – this insulting portrayal?’

  ‘I didn’t consider it insulting.’

  ‘Come, Mr Stafford, look at the plaintiff. Don’t you see a beautiful woman? How could you have expected any woman to be pleased at this extraordinary representation of beauty upon canvas?’

  Paul hesitated. ‘It didn’t occur to me that she would be either pleased or insulted. I was too deeply absorbed in the painting to consider the feelings of the sitter.’

  ‘You are, I suppose, a pretty successful artist, are you not?’

  ‘Yes. On the whole.’

  ‘Make a pretty good income, I suppose?’

  Paul turned slightly towards the judge. ‘My Lord’, he said, ‘if my income will in any way influence the result of this case I shall be pleased to furnish the court with details.’

  His Lordship put down his pen. ‘Hardly likely, is it, Sir Philip, that his income will affect the outcome?’

  More laughter.

  Sir Philip cleared his throat loudly to gain silence.

  ‘You are still young, Mr Stafford. You started, I understand, at the bottom of the tree. Your rise, in fact, has been exceptionally rapid?’

  ‘Fairly, I suppose. But I have been painting many years.’

  ‘Cast your mind back over this brilliant career of yours. Is there any one incident in it which stands out as a milestone on your road to success?’

  ‘There are a number. I don’t think one specially.’

  ‘No one portrait?’

  ‘Several have been very successful.’

  ‘What was the first portrait of yours to be hung on the line in the Royal Academy, the first to bring your name fully before the public?’

  Paul pursed his lips. The first portrait of mine to be hung on the line was my earlier portrait of Mrs Marnsett. But I had had a portrait in the previous year’s show, before I met her.’

  ‘I suppose you will admit that that earlier portrait of her was a special success?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Certainly.’

  ‘Do you consider that it would have been such a success if it had resembled the extraordinary portrayal which we have here?’

  ‘Quite possibly.’

  ‘With Mrs Marnsett?’

  ‘No, I see it would not with Mrs Marnsett.’

  ‘You were wiser then, eh?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘But you were poorer, less successful?’

  ‘Naturally.’

  ‘Naturally. With an eye to future recommendations?’

  I saw a steely glint come into Paul’s eyes. ‘Five years ago I painted Mrs Marnsett as I saw her then. This year I painted her as I see her now. I couldn’t in any case have painted her this way the first time, for I had not then the technique.’

  ‘Or the success. Success is necessary before one can take the risk of being insulting. Would I be right in suggesting that throughout the earlier period of your career Mrs Marnsett was constantly helping you by recommending you to her many friends and by offering you all manner of advice?’

  ‘She was certainly very kind at the time.’

  ‘You felt grateful to her?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And you have shown your gratitude, I suppose, by painting her a second time in such a way as to make her look old and ugly?’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘But you did do that, didn’t you?’

  ‘My dear sir’, said Paul sharply, ‘one doesn’t paint a picture with gratitude, one paints it with oil on canvas.’

  ‘That is a frivolous response and an excuse for evading the issue! Please answer me.’

  ‘I think, Sir Philip’, said Mr Justice Freyte mildly, ‘I think, that the witness means that a work of creative art, once begun, is not dictated by the homely emotions of affection or dislike for the subject painted. One follows deeper impulses of the spirit.’

  ‘Thank you, my Lord. The court is much indebted to you for the clarification of that point. With deference, however, I should like to pursue it one stage further. How long, Mr Stafford, did it take you to paint that picture?’

  ‘About five days; I believe. That is not including a few preparatory sketches.’

  ‘And can you honestly tell the court that during the whole of the time, while you were painting, and while you were resting and sleeping in between, it never occurred to the non-artistic side of you, the ordinary human side of you which deals presumably in ordinary human emotions like friendship and gratitude, that
this painting you were doing might hurt and upset your old friend and bring her great unhappiness?’

  Paul hesitated, frowned. He suddenly began to look tired and older. ‘I can only repeat what I’ve already said: this was a normal professional engagement, just as you are in court on the engagement of the plaintiff. Would you expect her to retain a permanent grievance against you if you didn’t conduct this case exactly as she expected? Would you not consider yourself the better judge of law, as I am of paint?’

  ‘Well, answer me this, then. Would it be true to say that in this portrait of Mrs Marnsett gratitude and friendship never entered your thoughts at all? Answer me, yes or no.’

  ‘Yes, certainly. It would be true of every one of the portraits I have painted.’

  Sir Philip exhaled a deep breath and stared at the jury. ‘So far we have progressed at last. So far. When you paint a portrait, whosesoever it is, you are carried away on the wings of artistic passion so that you are dead to any of the ordinary human feelings which govern the life of lesser mortals?’

  Paul stared steadily at his baiter for some moments. ‘If you wish to put it so offensively.’

  ‘Well, tell me this, Mr Stafford: are you also in the grip of such an artistic passion when you come to arrange about the hanging of a picture in a private show?’

  ‘Naturally not.’

  ‘So that in the course of such an occupation you might be expected to have some consideration for the feelings of your friends?’

  ‘If the occasion arose.’

  ‘I suggest to you that such an occasion arose in April of this year when you took Mrs Marnsett’s portrait round to be hung in the Ludwig Galleries.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t think the occasion arose.’

  ‘Shall I offer you a suggestion why? Because by then Mrs Marnsett was no longer your friend.’

  ‘That was not the reason.’

  ‘Do you assert that on 30 April of this year, when you hung the picture of Mrs Marnsett in the Ludwig Galleries, that on that date she was still your friend?’

  ‘Possibly not.’

  ‘Indeed not! I suggest to you that you had what you conceived to be a strong grievance against her.’

  ‘That certainly isn’t true.’

  ‘Then just why did you hang the picture in that room?’

  ‘I have said, because it is a picture which needs a strong light to bring out the tonality, and in that room the light is much better than in the other.’

  ‘These historical paintings of – hm – famous women of fortune; you were proud of them?’

  ‘I liked them.’

  ‘That, I suppose, was why they were given the best room?’

  ‘They too needed good light.’

  ‘They are a sort of series, I suppose?’

  ‘They’re a number of paintings with a connecting idea.’

  ‘Exactly. A historical series. Yet you were prepared to break up this series, of which you admit you were proud, in order to interject in their midst one single modern portrait of an entirely foreign mood and conception. Come, Mr Stafford. We shall need a better reason than that.’

  ‘I have told you the truth. I can give you one other reason only: that the exhibition had already been open a week and the total effect, as it were, of the historical paintings had been absorbed by a fairly large section of the public. What I wanted now was to give this portrait prominence.’

  ‘Why?’ demanded Sir Philip.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Yes, why give it this prominence?’

  ‘I’ve already told you. Because in it I had been breaking new ground.’

  ‘No other reason?’

  ‘Not so far as I can remember.’

  ‘You were not annoyed at the time?’

  ‘Annoyed?’

  ‘Well, this painting had just been summarily rejected by the Academy. Tell us your feelings when that happened.’

  ‘… I was disappointed.’

  ‘Not annoyed?’

  ‘Yes … annoyed.’

  ‘So annoyed, in fact, that you withdrew your other painting from the Exhibition as a protest and gave an interview to various reporters on the supposed decadence of the Academy selection committee.’ ‘In the circumstances I think my annoyance was reasonable.’

  ‘And what did you do with the other portrait – of Lady Blakeley?’

  ‘I hung it in the Galleries.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In the upstairs room.’

  ‘Why? Did that not need the light too?’

  ‘It was a more conventional painting. But in any case I had to divide them. There was not space in either room for two more paintings. So I hung one upstairs and one down.’

  ‘Were you not very angry with Mrs Marnsett because you thought she had persuaded her husband to put pressure on the hanging committee to have her portrait rejected?’

  ‘The idea may have occurred to me.’

  ‘And as a result of this unfounded suspicion did you not conceive such a hatred – yes, hatred – of your benefactor that you looked around for how best you might give her further offence? And with a row of royal harlots to place her among, the opportunity was not lacking! The chance was too good to miss. There: hang her, let her be pilloried and scorned!’

  ‘You are entitled to your own view of the facts.’

  ‘So is the court, Mr Stafford. So is the jury.’

  II

  Mr Hart was standing up.

  ‘Please tell us again, Mr Stafford; how long is it since you painted your first portrait of Mrs Marnsett?’

  ‘About five and a half years.’

  ‘During this intervening period, did your relationship with Mrs Marnsett remain one of consistent, unbroken friendship?’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t say that.’

  ‘It fluctuated on both sides?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You too have many friends?’

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘A rising young artist, I imagine, has even in the early stages many acquaintances among the moneyed and pseudo-artistic classes who like to constitute themselves mentors and friends of the brilliant new star, get in as it were on the ground floor of friendship and take to themselves a little of the reflected glory of his success, some of the kudos of being able to boast that he was one of their discoveries?’

  ‘Yes. That’s so.’

  ‘Did you feel under any special obligation to Mrs Marnsett in the matter of her earlier – hm – sponsorship?’

  ‘I felt a measure of friendship – a due measure.’

  ‘Do you consider that you owe your present success to her?’

  ‘Good Heavens, no!’

  ‘Did you feel any animosity towards Mrs Marnsett at the time when you began to paint her second portrait?’

  ‘None whatever.’

  ‘Did you, rightly or wrongly, feel any animosity towards her after your picture had been rejected by the Academy?’

  ‘It’s unusual to have a painting rejected by the Academy after it has once been accepted. I couldn’t help but feel annoyed.’

  ‘Towards Mrs Marnsett specially?’

  ‘No, not towards her specially.’

  ‘I put it to you: did you feel sufficient annoyance towards her at any time to wish to cast any imputation on her moral character?’

  ‘Of course not. I wouldn’t be so petty.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Stafford.’

  III

  The closing speeches had been made, and the case would end that afternoon as Kidstone had predicted. It was still the only prediction he had made. The clock pointed to the time at which I had slipped out yesterday, but there was no air of somnolence about the present proceedings. The court was more crowded than ever, for word had spread that the case was near its end and a number of extra barristers had pushed their way in to listen to the judge’s summing up.

  The jury seemed to pull itself together for this
final effort of concentration. Paul sat quite still without a muscle moving in his face, and his long lashes hid any revealing expression there might have been in his half-closed eyes. He had been in this mood during lunch, suffering no doubt, as we all do on such occasions, from staircase wit, the knowledge of how much better one might have answered the question if one had had a few more seconds to think.

  Mr Justice Freyte said: ‘I have considered the unusual features of this case at some length. Libel, we are accustomed to think, concerns the written word. No man shall write of another that which is untrue and which shall bring him into loss or disrepute. Nor any woman. No man shall be able to injure another’s business or profession by making false statements to his discredit. These are the axioms of our law.

  ‘But in the present case we have no written word, and no slanderous utterance. The plaintiff alleges libel by imputation in the arrangement of certain pictures in a public exhibition of the defendant’s paintings.’

  Mr Justice Freyte went on to restate the main facts of the case.

  ‘If we ask ourselves’, he continued, ‘ whether the circumstances as here presented can in fact constitute a libel, the answer is, yes. Libel by effigy can exist, and libel by imputation and arrangement has in fact many times been conceded. It has, for instance, been ruled as libellous for a man to exhibit a red lamp outside a neighbour’s house, thus suggesting that that house is one of ill repute. In a case which has a number of close resemblances to the present one – I am referring to Monson versus Tussaud, 1894 – it was held as libellous that the effigy of a man recently charged with murder and acquitted should be exhibited in such proximity to the Chamber of Horrors as to impugn his innocence. Indeed, so obvious a libel was this considered that an interlocutory injunction was granted to restrain further exhibition of the effigy pending the hearing of the action – a course which so prejudges the outcome of an action as to be resorted to only in the most flagrant of cases.

  ‘In Monson versus Tussaud, of course, the libel implied that Monson was an unconvicted murderer. The present alleged libel concerns the morality of the plaintiff. The similarity lies in the circumstances, not in the imputation. But the imputation of unchastity in a woman is deemed so serious that by a comparatively recent statute it is made actionable – and rightly so – without proof of specific damage sustained by her. The circumstances of this case, therefore, are in no way incompatible with a verdict of libel. It is your duty, members of the jury, to decide from the evidence whether such a verdict should be found. Now let us consider the evidence that has been put before us.’