An Artist's Life
l'ins is not a book which the artist himself would ever have bought. Printed on hand-made paper, with sixty-seven collotype plates and numerous illustrations in the text, it would not have appealed to a young man who often had nothing to eat and whose bedstead was riddled with bugs. He now appears embalmed in dainty and dignified pages. Peace, therefore, to his soul ! The old irony has been accomplished again ; again Croesus has paid tribute to Bohemia—too late— too late to benefit the particular Boheinian who died sixteen years ago in France. 'It is useleis to blame either the Bohemian or Croesus. They tried to find one another earlier, but could not, owing to the character of our civilization.
Let us recall for a moment not Gaudier-Brzeska's art or opinions, but his life, here excellently set forth by Mr. Ede. It is the queerest little life imaginable. A fevi will sympathize with if ; others will be repelled ; others will docket it as a " case " ; but all must admit that it is unusual. Henri Gaudier (that was his original surname) was the son of a carpenter at Chartres. He was clever and intended for a business career, .and-:he..w.on a scholarship which took him to England. At the age of...Algieteen he returned. to - Paris to continue his studies, and also to serve in the French Army : his term of conscription was approaching. Except for an interest in art, he seemed normal enough. Suddenly every- thing crashed. He was working in the Ste Genevieve library, and close to him worked a Polish woman twenty years older than hiniself, and ObVionsly a little mad. He complained to her of his loneliness and of his desire to find someone who would sympathize with his ambitions. All that was fine in her broke forth, and she cried : " I am too old for you, but I will be a mother to you if you agree." He agreed. From that moment their lives were entangled, and her name, Brzeska, was added to his own.
Sophie :Brzeska; also known by the names of ZoSik, ,Sisik, ZOsisik, Mamus, Madanka, Mamusienka, Mumsie, and other maternal derivatives, was an extreme example of, the mother- mistress, an example so extreme that civilization consigned her at last to a lunatic asylum. She wanted to control and protect the boy, and she wanted at moments to marry him. She ,could not bring herself to marriage, so their relationship remained platonic, much to the misery of both ; achingly platonic, if his sketches and letters bear any witness. He certainly wanted to marry her. He, loved her increasingly, and though he could play the baby he did it out of his sense of her needs rather than out of any need of his own. He was cruel, capricious, and untruthful, but his affection for his fantaitic partner ,never died, althotigli.she smashed his work, quarrelled with his, friends, debarred him from other women, misbehaved at parties, could not cook, and had seizures which drove her suddenly out into the streets where she was lost for
hours. -
At first they tried life in France, but he was discovered sitting beside her sick bed by the police ; so they migrated to England, apparently the home of freer manners. Here he got a commercial job in the city and did sculpture in his spare time, while she wrapped a doll in a shawl and begged at street corners: They began with no friends. _Then they got into Bohemia—that is to say into the company of artists and
writers who were very poor and who were beginning to be watched cautiously by connoisseurs. They were invited out sometimes, and Henri's personal beauty must have been an asset. But Sophie made everything so difficult. She grew red and excitable in company, contradicted people or made grotesque overtures to them, had a glass of whisky to steady herself, and could not be persuaded to catch the last 'bus. The connoisseurs decided she was a hindrance. This enraged Henri, passionately loyal. He took no pains to please people, was insolent to Mr. Frank Harris, Mr. Haldane Macfall, Mr. Middleton Murry, Katherine Mansfield, and many others, and ignored the blood that streamed from his nose while he modelled Miss Enid Bagnold's bust. Perhaps he was a genius . . . . but he was not accommodating and she was impossible.
Then came the War, and the queer little life—queer and little because it was so short—returned into darkness. In leaving France he had avoided military service, and so lost all his civil rights : one of the most spirited of his letters is a retort to the mayor of his native town. With the outbreak of hostilities he suffered a change of heart, returned to France, and offered himself as a volunteer. The French, with their impeccable logic, imprisoned him for desertion, and detailed a sentry to guard him ; but he escaped, and after further changes of purpose reached the front, where he was killed in the summer of 1915. He seems to have regretted nothing. Perhaps he had no time to remember anything." Like Gauguin, he was always busy quarrelling, and changing his opinions, and working, and perhaps theirs is the only type that knows happiness.
But Sophie "Brzeska had seven more years to drag out before she ended in Cardiff asylum, and she spent them in ceaseless remorse. She wished that she had been kinder and gayer'with her " little boy," and that she had brought herself to marry him ; she believed she had &a-en him to his death. When her own death came, her papers, since she was a pauper, became Government property, and amongst them were found her diary (which Mr. Ede skilfully uses in his narrative), Henri's letters to her (here translated from the French), and many sketches by him (some of which are here reproduced). A Gaudier-Brzeska sketch fetches money, so after all she died rich. Peace, therefore, to her soul ! To what extent did she enrich him ? It seems sensible as well as charitable to reply that, but for her, he would have accomplished nothing. She guarded him during the productive years, she inspired while she tormented. And although she is " over the line," and too grotesque to be interesting, nevertheless on this side of the line stand some eminent women who resemble her—for instance, Georges Sand, protectress of Chopin, and the unseen benefactress who financed Tschaikowsky. The mother-mistress type is not attractive. But, like all types, it can evoke and experience devotion, and there is no doubt that Henri and Sophie loved. It is appropriate that, besides the present gorgeous edition there should be a cheap one, more consonant with their fate. Somehow it is a little distasteful that comrades who starved in the flesh should attain to de lure in print: too mocking, to Love's re-expression, is Time's repartee. E. M. FORSTER.
[ A cheap edition of this book is also published, under the title of " Savage Messiah." (Heinemann, 10s. 6d.)1
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