CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Two Plain and One Coloured

Quite the most amusing person I met at about this time was H. L. Mencken, whose books _Prejudices_ so perfectly describe the particular standpoint in art which he has adopted. We met, as far as I remember, at some party or other at the Café Royal, but as it was impossible to talk in that establishment, under the distracting influence of Epsteins, Augustus Johns, Laverys and successive glasses of absinthe, we arranged to meet the next morning at his hotel. ‘And then I’ll give you something that’ll wake you up.’

He did. And it did. When I called on him he was tramping backwards and forwards in his rooms, making a strange spluttering noise with his lips that suggested a large and angry bird stalking round its cage. After refusing the inevitable double whisky which Americans apparently seem to consider an hourly necessity for Englishmen, I asked him what was the matter.

‘Matter?’ Again the spluttering noise, this time a little louder. ‘I’ve just been looking at London. What the devil are you doing to it? Do you want to make it another New York? A filthy sky-scraper in the Strand, half the most exquisite buildings being scrapped and thrown on to the muck heap, and obscene advertising signs that are as bad as anything we’ve got on Broadway.’

Splutter, splutter, splutter.

I thought it would be a good idea to ask him what he would do if he were suddenly given despotic powers over the reconstruction of London.

‘The first thing I’d do,’ he said, lighting a cigar with a sort of aggressive courage that reminded one of firing a torpedo, ‘would be to hang every mother’s son of an architect who was polluting one of the world’s best cities. And when they were dangling high and dry, I’d go out with a packet of dynamite, blow up all the monstrosities in Regent Street, get hold of Nash’s old plans, and slave-drive a few thousand British navvies until we’d got the thing back as it used to be--superb crescent, full of grace and beauty.’

Splutter, splutter, splutter.

He resumed his perambulation round the room. ‘Then I’d invent a whole lot of brand-new tortures for any hulking Philistine of a manufacturer who started writing his blasted name on God’s sky at night. Piccadilly Circus nowadays is an eyesore. It’s bad enough in Broadway. But you can at least say there that the vast scale on which the signs are put up, the enormous size of the whole thing, does at least leave a certain feeling of awe on one’s mind. Disgust too, but at least, _big_. Whereas in Piccadilly you’ve got a lot of footling little electric squares and circles, a yellow baby spitting fire, an undersized motor squiggling its wheels, a God-forsaken bottle pouring red liquid into a glass so damned small that it wouldn’t make me tight if I drank out of it all night. Take ’em away!’ (Splutter, splutter.) ‘Take ’em away! You’re killing London!’

I think I have got in most of his adjectives. His conversation was also scattered with a good many examples of that word which Bernard Shaw employed with such effect in _Pygmalion_. These I have omitted.

He went on for some time in this strain, until I felt it time to point out to him that at least we were putting up a few new buildings that were quite worthy to stand by the old ones.

‘Show ’em to me!’ (Splutter, splutter.) ‘Take me along to see ’em. I’ll stand you drinks for a month if what you say is true.’

‘Well, there’s the new L.C.C. building on the other side of the Thames. Knott’s the architect. One of the biggest buildings of its kind in the world, and one of the most beautiful.’

He looked at me despairingly. ‘Oh, you ought to have been an American if you say a monstrosity like that’s beautiful. I looked at it yesterday, and I spat in the Thames to show my contempt of it.’

‘But the line of it is perfect--the proportions are admirable....’

‘Perfect rot. For one thing, what on earth induced the fool who built it to stick a hulking great red roof on top of it? All down that side of the Thames is grey. Grey old buildings, peering out of the mist, like veiled faces, tumble-down old ruins, wharfs, docks, bridges, grey, all grey. And then this fool comes along and sticks up a blasted Noah’s Ark, covered with pillars and crowned with this futile roof. What’s the good of that?’

I told him that if he were a real Londoner, he might not be so angry at the sight of an occasional touch of colour. He might not be so keen on his universal touch of grey if he had to live in it for ever. He might, if he had to cross the Thames day by day, year by year, come to welcome that red roof, sparkling across the grey water, and bringing even into the dullest days a glow of cheerfulness, as of reflected sunshine.

But he would have none of it. The roof should have been grey, and that was an end to the matter. I understood then why he had written three books called _Prejudices_.

None the less, a charming man, who is more American than he would care to think, for all his constant nagging at his own country. I said something vaguely derogatory of a certain section of American opinion, and he was down on me like a shot. I liked him best at that moment.

* * * * *

One of the most tiresome things I ever had to do was--Rudolf Valentino.

It was only after hours of ringing up and fixing appointments, over which more trouble was spent than if he had been an Arch-Duchess, that I eventually was told I could see him one morning at ten o’clock at the Carlton Hotel. The Carlton Hotel, in fact any hotel, is sufficiently depressing at ten o’clock in the morning, and when I discovered that Valentino, instead of giving a private appointment, was standing in the centre of a circle of admiring females, telling them, I should imagine, a lot of nonsense, I felt like going straight away and leaving him to his own devices.

However, after a time, I got him into a corner, and by carrying on the conversation in atrocious French, kept the subject of most our remarks a secret from 50 per cent of the said females. Unfortunately there proved to be nothing to keep secret. ‘Did he get many letters?’ ‘Yes, he got three thousand a week.’ ‘Were there many letters from adorers?’ ‘They all adored him.’ ‘What sort of letters?’ ‘He never read them.’ And so on. He could say nothing as to whether he was elated by his success, he had no sort of theories, not even bad ones, on the film as a medium of art, and he was without a spark of humour in his composition. This is the most adored man throughout two continents.

The only subjects in which he seemed to be at all interested were, firstly, his own photographs, and secondly, clothes. Of photographs there were literally hundreds, lying scattered all over the room. He pointed to a pile and said, ‘These go off by the next mail.’ Surely he saw some romance in that? I tried to get him to understand the thrill that most people would have at the thought of their own faces smiling down from ten thousand London mantelpieces and bringing, presumably, a disturbing ecstasy into the hearts of ten thousand maidens. He merely looked blankly at me and said he supposed it was good publicity.

But when it came to discussing the photographs themselves it was a very different matter. Did I like this one looking down, or did I prefer the one looking up? Would the chin be a little better if it were switched round more to the right, and did I not think that the eyes had come out beautifully in that one? Yes, I said, the chin _was_ nicely switched, and the eyes _had_ come out beautifully. Upon which he brightened considerably, and offered me a photograph for myself, which I declined.

The only thing we had in common appeared to be a tailor. He asked me if I had heard of any good tailors (not if I _went_ to a good one, a rather intriguing difference) and I told him that I always went to a certain place, which made clothes that appeared to fit, and also gave one as much credit as anybody could reasonably desire. ‘Why, that’s where I’m going myself,’ he said. ‘How extraordinary.’

He certainly did know a great deal about clothes, as I discovered later when a man from the firm in question called on me one morning with some new and demoralizing stuffs from Paris. He had just finished cutting three new double-breasted grey flannel suits for Valentino, and had evidently met a kindred spirit.

I should imagine that half Valentino’s success (once one has acknowledged the purely sensual attraction of his face and his shapely limbs) came from his wife. A very beautiful creature, I thought her, with a vivacity and a sparkle that Valentino will never have.

* * * * *

Of caricaturists there are legion, but I never met one even vaguely resembling the genius that is ‘Sem.’ Sem is, of course, famous all over France, and in a good many other countries as well. Queens of every description have screamed when they opened his portfolio, and they tell me that as soon as the Aga Khan heard that he was one of Sem’s victims, his knees clattered together in soft and mutual sympathy. For some reason, however, he is not so well known in England, though, naturally enough, many lovely ladies have unsuccessfully offered enormous sums, if only Sem would make them sufficiently ridiculous.

You would not think, when you met him, that Sem ‘had it in him’ to be so very naughty. Such a tiny little man, rather like an amiable monkey, with a small wizened face, and eyes that blink perpetually in a sort of mild surprise at the fantastic comedy of life. It is only when his face suddenly sets, and his neck cranes forward, that you realize that here is a man who sees more than you would even imagine there was to be seen.

It was just after the publication of one of his most sensational folios that we met. I wanted to know how he did it--a sufficiently comprehensive question to ask any artist.

‘Do you go about with a pencil and paper, looking for monstrosities?’ I asked him. ‘Getting a nose here, a neck there, a double chin somewhere else?’

He shook his head emphatically. ‘Never do I draw a line from life,’ he asserted. ‘I look at people when they do not know that they are being watched. At Deauville, when they are plunging into the water, in the theatre, when they are excited by the stage, at dinner, when they are excited by the soup. At times like that they forget that they must make the best of themselves. The large women forget to hide their chins, the large men forget to be dignified. That is the time for me. But I do not _draw_, then. Oh no! I wait a week, a month, six months. And suddenly I think, that woman, she was like a horse, or that fellow, he resemble a camel. Then I draw.’

One of his caricatures which had struck me as most delightful was that of Lady Idina Gordon, whom he saw as a heron, and whom everybody will see as a heron for the rest of her natural life.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I say, that is a heron, as soon as she comes. Very English. Head so. Neck so. And the voice. Just like I draw. And the Aga Khan? You see him like a fish too, like me? All of a fishiness, I see him, with the large eyes and the mouth.’ He made an exquisite little grimace to illustrate his meaning.

‘And the King of Spain? They say I am rude to draw him so, but it is not rudeness. It is only Truth. I draw them as I see them. I do not make a monkey of a lion, nor a peacock of a sparrow.’

And yet, Sem can be kind as well as cruel. He dips his pen alternately in poison and soothing syrup, and draws, first with a knife and then with a caress. His curly, twisting nib worms right into the heart of his subject, dragging out the most astonishing intimacies. A twist of the lip and he has condemned not only an individual but a whole class. A swelling of the stomach and the whole monstrous regiment of profiteers stands shameless before you.

He didn’t seem much impressed by English caricaturists. Even after his second Bronx, the mention of Max Beerbohm merely drew a sigh from his lips and a little flick of the monkey fingers. ‘There is nothing much about him,’ he said. ‘He is not a caricaturist. He is a commentator. His drawing is not strong enough to stand alone, and so he must put little bubbles into the mouths of his characters, and make them speak for him. That is amusing’ (and here he nibbled his moist cherry much as monkeys nibble peanuts at the Zoo) ‘but it is not caricature.’

He swallowed the cherry and, leaning forward, burst into French. ‘Caricature,’ he said, ‘must stand by itself. It must have a line that shatters, a cut that kills. There must be no mists, no legends, no little sentences stuck here and there to say “this is a fool.” You must _draw_ him as a fool, and your very _line_ must be foolish, it must wriggle with absurdity, it must twist itself remorselessly into the grotesque. There is only one man in England who can do that to-day.’

‘And who is that?’ I asked.

‘Bateman. Mr. H. M. Bateman. Now he has no need to put balloons into the mouths of his characters. They speak for themselves. They laugh out loud. He is a great caricaturist, that man. He could kill a man with a single drop of ink.’

He leant back and closed his eyes. Poor Sem has bad eyes, and he blinks, not through astonishment, as I first surmised, but because a strong light hurts him. All round us surged the highly coloured and slightly ridiculous set of people who are always to be seen drifting through the lounges of London’s three hotels at cocktail time. Women whose complexions all come out of the same sort of bottle, men whose clothes all come from the same sort of tailor. The same tired voices, the same overfed stomachs, the same underfed intelligences. Immediately in front of us was a much _soignée_ lady in black--dress by Molyneux, diamonds by Cartier, furs by Reville, perfume, I should imagine, by request. I wished that Sem would look at her.

But he was already looking at her. ‘I shall draw her,’ he said, ‘as a cat.’

And he did.