Back To Posing
. . . I was going back to posing not because I still preferred it to all other ways of earning a living but because there was nothing else for me to do. . . Only four years had gone by since I had last been a full-time model, but I was shocked to find how much worse the situation had become. . . During the war things had been somewhat haphazard. Now students enrolled for chaos. Work had almost ceased. The young people wandered through the corridors in droves, shouting, cursing, singing and necking. . . Although these young people took almost no notice whatsoever of what went on in the outer world, they did go to the galleries and in them they no longer saw any paintings of naked girls flopping about on piles of cushions. No nudes was good news. This change in aesthetic fashion meant that they could produce a large number of pictures with very little study. The sudden arrival of a model in the life room signified a temporary return to a pursuit that was old-fashioned, unprofitable and difficult.
For the first three years after I returned to posing I did not take any of the drawbacks involved very seriously. I expected them - indeed, the whole world - to end at any moment.
. . . I continued to pose in the art schools - chiefly in the recreational classes. As I sank into old age I was more often given portrait sittings. This was not because my face had crumbled any less than my figure. It was in an even worse state or repair. . . certain Slade-type students can paint a tragic greatness into eyes that hang like an impending avalanche over the cheekbones. Nothing for which life beautiful has a name can be read into a potbelly.
I never had been legally married to real life. Between the ages of twenty-two and forty I had merely conducted an uneasy and illicit liaison with it. In taking up modeling once more, it transpired that I had gone home to mother culture once too often. I made a desperate effort to get another full-time job but now, not only my odd appearance but also my age were against me. All doors were shut.
Ironically, long after the shouting and the tumult had died, a feature-writer from the London office of the Scotsman telephoned. He suggested that he should write an article about me. . .
'They've got the idea that you're the most famous model in the world - up there,' he said.
Me : In heaven?
Scotsman : No. In Edinburgh.
Me : Pity.
Scotsman : Is there any justification for this opinion?
Sadly I explained that, as far as I knew, the conditions in which anyone could be a famous model had vanished long ago. Those of us who were still in the racket had dwindled into naked Civil Servants.
Here ends 'The Naked Civil Servant'
For the first three years after I returned to posing I did not take any of the drawbacks involved very seriously. I expected them - indeed, the whole world - to end at any moment.
. . . I continued to pose in the art schools - chiefly in the recreational classes. As I sank into old age I was more often given portrait sittings. This was not because my face had crumbled any less than my figure. It was in an even worse state or repair. . . certain Slade-type students can paint a tragic greatness into eyes that hang like an impending avalanche over the cheekbones. Nothing for which life beautiful has a name can be read into a potbelly.
I never had been legally married to real life. Between the ages of twenty-two and forty I had merely conducted an uneasy and illicit liaison with it. In taking up modeling once more, it transpired that I had gone home to mother culture once too often. I made a desperate effort to get another full-time job but now, not only my odd appearance but also my age were against me. All doors were shut.
Ironically, long after the shouting and the tumult had died, a feature-writer from the London office of the Scotsman telephoned. He suggested that he should write an article about me. . .
'They've got the idea that you're the most famous model in the world - up there,' he said.
Me : In heaven?
Scotsman : No. In Edinburgh.
Me : Pity.
Scotsman : Is there any justification for this opinion?
Sadly I explained that, as far as I knew, the conditions in which anyone could be a famous model had vanished long ago. Those of us who were still in the racket had dwindled into naked Civil Servants.
Here ends 'The Naked Civil Servant'