80
ELIZABETH HARDWICK
to see his own essence threatened with devastation. For him, the
agile will, the effort to maintain security and preserve courage had
been everything. Hesitation, nihilism, abstraction appalled this puls–
ing ego that had sought to define in his work and personal existence
a compact, ennobling, classical example. It was odd that in the
lighter arts, in living personalities, he was extremely in-the-know,
open to feeling, to humor, to affection, to wild originality.
Pride and conscience urged Berenson to the gritting work of
writing. His style was clear and sensible, but literally brought forth
in sorrow because he hadn't the luck of ready eloquence, except in
conversation. Santayana's contented industry puzzled him. "He
loved writing! Preferred it to reading and talking. Imagine such a
man!" StilI, write Berenson did, and some of the vices and tempta–
tions of the literary character were his as much as if he had been
living in New York, producing regularly for the art publications.
He gave hints of jealousy and of thinking himself under-valued. He
was inclined at times to composition on topics that did not deeply
engage him, but which he felt necessary to undertake because of
wishing to keep in step with subtle changes in taste and emphasis.
I once heard another
art
critic cry out in pain, "That wicked B. B.!
He would never have thought of writing a book on Caravaggio if
he hadn't known I was doing one!" Berenson noted with chagrin
the fee Sir Kenneth Clark was reported to be receiving for his
lectures on the nude in the National Gallery in Washington. (The
older critic had lived a longer life than most are granted well before
the age of plushy lectures, easy endowments, fabulous stipends.)
His disappointments were only reality, his firm sense of
things
as
they were in life. A deeper truth of his nature was caught in odd
moments-I remember seeing him, ancient, regal, stepping along
nimbly, like a little gnome king, on the arm of the dancer, Kather–
ine Dunham.
The great age Berenson achieved did not strike one as an acci–
dent, a stroke of fine heredity or luck; longevity was an achieve–
ment, the same as his books, bought with a good deal of anguish
and hard work. His nature, with its prudence, its routine, its rich
mixture of work and pleasure, like a private stock tobacco, seemed
to have been designed for long use. We happened to be paying a
