The Spanish Virgin by V. S. Pritchett

Author:V. S. Pritchett
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2012-08-24T04:00:00+00:00

Tragedy in a Greek Theatre

Those who used to go to Sicily for the winter will remember old William Bantock, the artist, who had such a delightful studio on the cliff at A—. From his window you could see the widening floor of the Straits of Messina lain to the sky. It was a pretty studio. There was a heaped deluge of purple bougainvillea pouring from its roof; a vine trellised over its porch. All will remember old William Bantock with his fat thumb angled over his palette, his head as bald and ripe and shiny as a cheese; and his corpulent, windy way of talking. He was a bachelor and he lived alone.

You will remember edging round his studio, looking at the innumerable panels and little sketches of Etna and the Greek Theatre. Volcano, theatre; volcano, theatre; one after the other almost like picture postcards. I wonder how many thousand studies of Etna and the Greek Theatre he painted in his lifetime, and how many thousand he sold to the tourists. Somebody once asked him. Old William became suddenly very testy, and gruffly steered the fellow out of the room.

The studio was a longish room with a window looking on to the Straits. This window must have been added at a later date. And at one end of the studio was a door leading into another room. No one was allowed to go into that room. It became a mystery. Those people with a flair for other people’s private sorrows used to discuss the room. And old William himself added to the mystery by lying so carelessly when you asked him about it. To you he would say, “Oh, that is my study.” To you, “Oh, that? My bathroom.” To another, “Bedroom.” Some would catch him unawares, and he would stutter, “Oh, that’s my … it has.… Oh, lumber room, old junk, nothing! It’s empty.”

After his death, with no one left to prevent them knowing the mystery, people’s curiosity dropped. The proprietor of the Volcano Hotel, who had been old William’s landlord, went with me one day to the studio and we opened the door of the mystery room. It was empty. That is, there was no furniture in it. Nothing except a dozen large canvases leaning against the wall, cobwebbed and sooty. And on an easel was another large canvas, half finished, and with evidence of recent paint. It was the usual thing of Etna and the Theatre. The sky was very black and dead-looking. Some vague forms were sketched in it. You could not say what they were. We pulled out the other canvases and banged them on the floor to shake out the cobwebs. The same subject again. Did he never paint anything different? A big spider rolled out like a bead.

The room was very warm. The air was stagnant, tepid. We tried to push open the skylight, but the rod had rusted, and sifted down red dust into our eyes as we looked up, poking away. The air of the room was flat and stale.

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