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space for it on his painting table, and then set it down without mishap.
    â€˜Thank you, Lawrence,’ said Davenant, as the boy withdrew. ‘That was Turner’s view,’ he went on, as if there had been no interruption. ‘To hate humbug, and meddling, and condemnation, was almost a religious principle with him. I never heard him speak ill of a fellow-creature, or fail to put the best construction he could on another’s behaviour. If he couldn’t defendyou, or approve your work, he’d hold his tongue. Will you take some wine, sir?’
    â€˜Thank you.’
    â€˜He wouldn’t pry into your private affairs,’ he said, busying himself with the decanter, ‘and asked nothing more in return than that you shouldn’t pry into his. And all I can say is: I wish to God there were more like him.’ He handed me a glass, full to the brim with brown sherry; then raised his own, and, looking straight before him, as if he could see Turner’s face etched upon the empty air, said: ‘Here’s honour to your memory, you old scamp.’ He drank, and turned immediately towards me. ‘Your very good health, Mr. Hartright.’
    â€˜And yours,’ I said. And yet I did not drink; for, in some obscure way, it seemed that to do so would be to set a kind of seal on our conversation, implying that I accepted not only his hospitality, but also his account of Turner – which, in truth, had left me more puzzled and unsatisfied than ever. I merely touched the glass to my lips, therefore, and tried feverishly to compose a question that would press him further without angering him.
    Once again, he seemed to anticipate my thoughts.
    â€˜You may yet wonder’, he said, sitting down again, ‘how such a man could have been the butt of so much malice, and so many hateful anecdotes? And the only answer I can give you is: envy. Most people seem to conceive of artists as little less than angels, but they’re not, by God! – in my experience, outside a schoolroom, you won’t find a bigger pack of squabbling, jealous, back-stabbing cheats and bullies anywhere on earth. They all try to make themselves into geniuses; and if they can’t do that, they’ll say anything, and believe anything, that seems to make the geniuses more like themselves.’
    He hesitated; and for a moment I considered pointing out that I was an artist myself, of sorts; but quickly thought better of it.
    â€˜And Turner
was
a genius, Mr. Hartright,’ he went on. ‘He was
the
genius, I’d take my oath upon it. Varnishing Days at the Academy, before the Exhibition, the rest of us’d just be putting the finishing touches to our work; but he’d send in a more or less bare canvas, and you’d see the younger members looking at it, and laughing, and saying: ‘What’s he going to do with that?’
    And then he’d walk in, and open his little box of tricks, and get to work – never standing back, to look at what he was doing, for it was all in his head – and within a few hours he’d have conjured a picture out of nothing. If a savage had seen it, he’d have sworn it was magic. I remember, indeed, a young Scotch fellow watching it once, and going quite pale, and muttering something about sorcery.’
    â€˜But surely’, I said, ‘no painter could fail to admire …’
    He gave a derisive splutter. ‘Imagine, Mr. Hartright,’ he said, ‘you have laboured for six months on a painting, and are mightily pleased with it, and think it will get you a knighthood; and along comes Turner, and in a single day produces its nemesis, so that you are utterly eclipsed …’
    I laughed nervously, for his words had struck a hidden weakness in me; and I suddenly found that I
could
imagine it, all too easily; and for a moment felt the chill of some bottomless desolation fall upon me like a shadow.
    â€˜If you did a bright sun or a