THE BLESSED ARTIST
By Barry Pain
There was once an artist who lived in a great town. He was painting a picture, and he took a great deal of trouble to make it as difficult for himself as possible. He tried for effects of lighting that needed miracles. In his work he sought and worshipped difficulties. In the garden beyond the studio he found plenty of difficulty without seeking for it. But this was difficulty of a kind that maddened him. He wanted a garden, but he did not want to make a garden. So he employed a man one day a week, and was profoundly dissatisfied.
One afternoon he had a dream. He dreamed that an angel came into his room—a beautiful angel of the accepted Doré Gallery type. The angel had a pleasant voice and said pleasant things to him.
“You have lived well,” said the angel, “and you have worked well. You have earned for yourself the blessedness that belonged to the Garden of Eden. That blessedness shall fall upon your garden. Go and look at it.”
So the artist went out on to his lawn and was quite surprised. It was of one beautiful tint of fresh green all over, with never a brown spot. There had been many daisies on that lawn, but they had all gone now. It had suffered from moss, but the moss had vanished. It had been superficially irregular, but it was now level. The perfect grass was just three-quarters of an inch in height, and no tall bents stuck up anywhere. He went to look at his roses. He remembered them as they had formerly been—spindly bushes which he had forgotten to prune, and that bore leaves only at the extreme end of their branches. They had changed to compact bushes that were green all over and flowered like an illustration in a seedsman’s catalogue. Caterpillars had played havoc with them aforetime, but now he could find no caterpillar and no trace of the caterpillar’s work. He went on to his two apple trees. They had borne no blossom that year that he could remember, and the white tufts of American blight had bedecked their trunks. The American blight was all gone now. The blossom had set, and the fruit was swelling, and each tree would bear exactly the right number of apples, neither more nor less. The carnations were very large, numerous, and fragrant. The madonna lilies promised well. There was no weed to be seen anywhere, and the paths had been newly gravelled with the red gravel which he had always wanted, and never been able to get. The very quality of the soil had changed, and was now dark and rich. It was worth while to work in such a garden as this; he took his coat off and went into the potting-shed to get his tools.
And then he realised his blessedness. There was absolutely nothing for him to do in the garden. It was all quite good. The drought had not brought down the leaves nor cracked the surface. The strong winds had not dishevelled and laid low the sunflowers. He noticed, moreover, that things were tied up now with green bast to green sticks. He had always wanted green bast and green sticks, but had used the other kind because it was the only kind that the man round the corner sold.
He put on his coat and stretched himself on a deck-chair on the lawn in the evening sunlight in a great state of contentment. When it grew dusk, from the shrubbery at the end of the garden came beyond mistake the voice of the nightingale. He had always wanted nightingales, but so far he had put up with imitative blackbirds. Blessedness had come to him indeed.
He lit a cigarette and reflected how he would show his garden to Smith, and how much Smith would be annoyed about it. Smith had a garden of his own, and was a toilsome amateur with a certain amount of knowledge. Smith would undoubtedly be green with jealousy. He would ask Smith to luncheon, and afterwards they would have coffee in the garden. He would carefully abstain from calling Smith’s attention to anything; but he would watch him, as he slowly drank it all in and meditated suicide.
On the day that Smith was to come to luncheon, the blessed artist rose early in order that he might mow the lawn before breakfast. But when he went out, he found that it did not require to be mown. The grass grew to just the right height and then stopped. At luncheon Smith was inflated with pride, and talked freely about begonias. He mentioned other things which he had in his garden—things that that artist ought to come and see. The artist sat quite meekly, and was very polite until luncheon was over. Then he said: “I think we might have coffee in the garden, Smith, if you call that backyard of mine a garden.”
“Ah,” said Smith, “you should give a little more time and attention to it.”
Then they passed out into the garden, and Smith was struck dumb. At last he said: “How do you manage to get those fine dark wallflowers in full bloom at the end of June?”
“Takes a bit of management,” said the blessed artist complacently.
Smith began to walk round the garden. He admired exceedingly. The confession that he had got nothing like that escaped him frequently; and when he had seen it all, he pulled from one pocket an old envelope and from another a short stubb of a pencil.
“Look here,” he said, “you might just give me the name of the chap who does your garden for you.”
“The angels do my garden for me,” said the blessed artist.
“Oh, all right,” said Smith, “if you don’t want to tell me, you needn’t.”
And he put back the old envelope and the pencil in their respective pockets, and he went away in a very bad temper. But this incident reminded the blessed artist to countermand the jobbing gardener—a man of intemperate habits and quite unfit to collaborate with angels.
The next day the artist went into his garden and enjoyed it extremely.
The day after he enjoyed it less.
The day after that he began to be dissatisfied. Dissatisfaction began to settle like a cloud upon him. He wondered why. It came to him slowly that he felt like a man who had stolen the Victoria Cross and was wearing it ostentatiously. He was exhibiting a perfection for which he had never worked; and there was no savour in it.
“Better,” he cried, “imperfection towards which one has contributed something. Better even the sickly wilderness that this garden once was.”
The sound of his own voice woke him.
He found that he was sitting in a deck-chair on the lawn. It was a decayed chair, having been left out in many rains. The lawn was just as bad as ever it had been. He could almost hear the caterpillars crunching up the surrounding vegetation. One glance showed him that his rose trees were still a shame and a reproach. And down the steps from the house came his old friend Smith, smiling and rubicund.
“Been asleep in this rotten old garden of yours?” he said. “It looks to me as if you would have done better if you had been working in it.”
“I am inclined to think so,” said the artist.
As a rule it is easier to do much work than little. The man who is underworked rarely does the little that he has to do thoroughly and punctually. The more leisure one has, the more one desires.
I feel confident that if I had a thousand rose trees, I should be up bright and early in the morning to do for them all that they required. I should study the literature on the subject and become expert. Possibly I should not go so far as some experts, who provide a kind of conical tin hat for each rose bloom to shelter it from the rain. But it would not be slackness which would stay my hand; it would be because I cannot think that the conical tin hat adds greatly to the beauty of the garden.
But I have not got a thousand rose trees. It is none the less essential that I should cut off all the dead blooms. This labour, carried out with no unseemly haste, might possibly occupy me for five minutes.
And how many times have I shirked those five minutes of labour? I am shirking them now. Let me see, where are the scissors?