There is a prevalent opinion that Chelsea is the British counterpart of the Quartier Latin, but the resemblance each bears to the other is only superficial. The Quartier Latin and respectability are poles asunder; its population does not only never think of respectability, but it does not know what it is. Parisian Bohemians have no use for it. They do not condemn it, for it may suit others; for themselves, it is as useless as yesterday’s dinner.
Chelsea is not in revolt against morals or anything else; for the most part, it is quiet, law-abiding and hard-working. Very little is demanded of new-comers; in order to obtain entrance to that magic land, you must be a “good fellow,” you must have personality and a real love of the arts, and you must be a democrat through and through. One thing is never forgiven—a reference, however remote, to your own success. You may be as successful as you like without creating the slightest envy, but you must not thrust your success down other people’s throats.
My own introduction to Chelsea was rather of a wholesale kind; indeed, it would be truer to say that Chelsea was introduced to me. One evening Ivan Heald and I finished a rather strenuous day’s work at the same time. I had just finished my daily column of chat for The Daily Citizen when the telephone rang. “Is that you, Gerald? ... Yes, Ivan speaking.... Finished? ... Cheshire Cheese? Right-o! It’s now thirteen minutes past seven; we’ll meet at sixteen minutes past.” So while he ran 167down Shoe Lane, I ran up Bouverie Street and we met at the door of that caravanserai where, sooner or later, one comes across all the bright spirits of Fleet Street and every American sightseer who sets his foot on our shores. We feasted and, replete, adjourned to the bar for gossip. But there was no one there to gossip with and, presently, Ivan said:
“Come to my flat and play Irish songs.”
“But your piano’s such a poor one. Much better come to my place and listen to Wagner.”
So we jumped into a taxi and were soon racing through Sloane Square for Chelsea Bridge on the way to my flat in Prince of Wales’s Road, opposite Battersea Park. At the Bridge Heald tapped the window, and, the taxi having stopped, he jumped out on to the pathway and promptly closed the door upon me inside.
“And now,” said Ivan, “do you know what you are going to do?”
“Whatever you tell me, I suppose. What is it?”
“You’re going home in this cab to prepare your wife for a lot of visitors. Tell her there will be ten or maybe twenty. We sha’n’t want any food; we’ll bring that with us. All we shall want is coffee. Ask her if she’ll make gallons of coffee, Gerald. For the women, you know. There’ll be whisky for us, won’t there?” he added rather wistfully. “Now trot along. I sha’n’t be a quarter of an hour behind you.”
“But, Ivan——”
“But me not a single but,” he said, grinning, and turned away.
Half-an-hour later a taxi-cab full of strangers carrying parcels arrived at my flat. Heald was not with them. In answer to their ring, my wife and I went to open the door to welcome them.
“Come right in,” we said. And then they told us who they were and we told them who we were. A couple of 168minutes later another taxi full of strangers arrived. Still no Ivan Heald. It was now about ten o’clock, and during the following hour Chelsea people still kept arriving, some in cabs, some on foot. It appeared that Heald had routed up half the people he knew in Chelsea and told them that he had found someone “new,” that we were just “it,” and that the sooner we all got to know each other the better.
This “surprise party”—so dear to Americans—turned out a complete success, though half the people had to sit on the floor. Norman Morrow, away in a corner behind a pile of books, sang Irish songs, Herbert Hughes played the piano in his brilliant way, and Harry Low and Eddie Morrow, with two clever girl-models, acted plays that they invented on the spur of the moment. Heald came in late, armed with loaves, butter, cakes and fruit. Not until dawn (the month was June) did we separate. I was to meet these delightful people many, many times later, but so casual yet intimate was our relationship that I never heard—or, if I heard, I soon forgot—the surnames of a few of them. We called each other by our Christian names or by nicknames.
Perhaps of all the Chelsea people Augustus John is the most interesting. We became acquainted at the Six Bells, the famous King’s Road hostelry, and he took me to his studio near at hand. It was a big barn-like place with a ridiculous little stove that burned fussily somewhere near the entrance and from which you never felt any heat unless, absent-mindedly, you sat on the stove itself. The studio was crowded with work of all kinds, the most conspicuous canvas being a huge crayon drawing of a group of gipsies. Augustus John planted me in a chair in front of this, seated himself on another chair and stared—not at the picture, but—at me! Now, I had been told that John does not suffer fools gladly, and I suspected from his inquisitorial glance that he was waiting to see if I 169was of the detested brood. Sooner or later I should have to speak, and I groped despairingly in my mind for something sensible yet not obvious to say about his bold, vivid and arresting picture. Through sheer apprehensiveness I found nothing, so, after gazing at the canvas for a few minutes, I rose and passed on to the next picture. John’s large, luminous eyes followed me.
“You don’t like it,” he said, softly but decisively.
“Oh yes, I do,” I answered, “or, rather—what I mean is that ‘like’ is not the right word. It attracts me and repels me at the same time. It makes me curious—curious about the gipsies themselves, but more curious still about the man who has drawn them. But you didn’t make it for anyone to ‘like,’ did you?”
“No; I don’t suppose I thought of anyone at all. There the thing is, to be taken or left, to be accepted by the onlooker or rejected.”
“Quite. But to me it is not a passive kind of picture at all. It thrusts itself on to you very violently, I think, and it rather demands to be ‘taken,’ as you put it. It is not like your Smiling Woman, for instance, who mysteriously glides into one’s mind, wheedling her way as she goes. Your gipsies assault the mind. Your picture is quite contemptuous of opinion.”
He appeared to be satisfied, for he smiled; if I had proved myself a fool, it was clear I was not the kind of fool he detested.
We met often after that. I would see him two or three times a week in the Six Bells. He used to drink beer, and he would talk in his slow way, or listen to me, nodding occasionally and saying just a word now and again. But John is the least loquacious of men. His presence makes you feel comfortable, not only because his personality is tolerant and roomy, but because you know that if you are boring him he will not think twice about edging away to the billiard-room or telling you abruptly that he must be 170“off.” Like so many very hard workers, he appears to be an accomplished loafer. I have never seen him at work; I don’t know anybody who has. I have never heard anybody say: “John can’t come to-night because he’s busy.” I expect that when the fever is on him, he keeps at his easel night and day.
But perhaps you are wondering what Augustus John looks like? Have you seen Epstein’s bust of him? Wonderfully good, of course; extraordinarily good; but it is rather solemn—heavy, I mean. John is not ponderous, and he does not wear the air of a prophet, and I have never seen him look precisely like that. His hair is long.... Of course, most of you will feel disposed to sneer at that; so should I if it were anybody but John.... But he carries it off splendidly. You know, even Liszt (at all events in his photographs) looked frightfully conscious of his locks, but though John’s hair makes him conspicuous, he does not appear conscious of his conspicuousness. He is tall, deliberate in his movements, deep-voiced, very self-contained. His shortish beard is red, and he has large eyes that, in some extraordinary way, seem separate from his face; I mean, they belie it. His features are so composed that one might think them expressionless; but his eyes are brooding and deep and quiet. He has not the noisy, fussy little eyes of the “trained observer,” the man who notices everything and remembers nothing; he notices only what is essential to him, the things that are necessary for him to notice.... Of course, I haven’t described him in the least; I might have known I could not when I began to try.... But it seems to me that the essential thing about Augustus John is the quiet, lazy exterior which, in some peculiar way, contrives to suggest hidden fires and volcanic energies. A Celt, of course, and the mystery of the Celt hangs about him.
I think John loves fe............