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Lawson, interrupting. ‘Let me paint the man like Manet,
and the intention of his soul can go to the devil.’
‘That would be all very well if you could beat Manet at his
own game, but you can’t get anywhere near him. You can’t
feed yourself on the day before yesterday, it’s ground which
has been swept dry. You must go back. It’s when I saw the
Grecos that I felt one could get something more out of por-
traits than we knew before.’
‘It’s just going back to Ruskin,’ cried Lawson.
‘No—you see, he went for morality: I don’t care a damn
for morality: teaching doesn’t come in, ethics and all that,
but passion and emotion. The greatest portrait painters
have painted both, man and the intention of his soul; Rem-
brandt and El Greco; it’s only the second-raters who’ve only
painted man. A lily of the valley would be lovely even if it
didn’t smell, but it’s more lovely because it has perfume.
That picture’—he pointed to Lawson’s portrait—‘well, the
drawing’s all right and so’s the modelling all right, but just
conventional; it ought to be drawn and modelled so that
you know the girl’s a lousy slut. Correctness is all very well:
El Greco made his people eight feet high because he wanted
to express something he couldn’t get any other way.’
‘Damn El Greco,’ said Lawson, ‘what’s the good of jaw-
ing about a man when we haven’t a chance of seeing any of
his work?’
Clutton shrugged his shoulders, smoked a cigarette in
silence, and went away. Philip and Lawson looked at one
another.
‘There’s something in what he says,’ said Philip.

0 Of Human Bondage